Shunsuke Kikuchi

From the first episode of Dragon Ball in February 1986 to the final bell of Dragon Ball Z in 1995, Shunsuke Kikuchi was the voice of the franchise in sound. Working for Toei Animation, he wrote the cues that Japanese audiences heard the moment Goku first rode his Flying Nimbus, the brass swell behind Piccolo Daimao's arrival, the nervous strings that underscored the Saiyan invasion, and the triumphant fanfares that greeted every new transformation. His music was inseparable from the pacing of the show.

Across that decade Kikuchi produced twenty three distinct music packages for the two series, amounting to well over five hundred individual cues. Each new arc and every theatrical film received its own recording session, meaning that the Red Ribbon Army, the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, Namek, the Androids, Cell, and Buu all had their own musical fingerprints. It is one of the largest anime scores ever committed to tape, and almost all of it was built around his signature sixteen beat blues and pentatonic instincts.

Kikuchi was already a veteran long before Goku was born. A graduate of Nihon University's College of Fine Arts, he began scoring film and television in 1961 and became one of the most in demand composers in Japan, working steadily on tokusatsu heroes, samurai jidaigeki, gritty action pictures, and children's anime. Fans of Kamen Rider, Abarenbo Shogun, and Doraemon know his sound as intimately as Dragon Ball fans do, and his 12/8 Doraemon theme remains one of the most recognisable pieces of music in postwar Japanese television.

His approach on Dragon Ball favoured bold, physical themes over orchestral gloss. Horn stabs, electric bass, funk guitar, and a pulsing rhythm section gave the fight scenes their forward lean, while slower cues built on modal piano and woodwinds carried the quieter moments. Tracks like Kyoufu no Ginyu Tokusentai and Chikyuu Marugoto Chou-Kessen became as iconic as the characters they underscored. When Kikuchi stepped away after Dragon Ball Z, Akihito Tokunaga took over for GT, and Kikuchi narrowed his focus to the Doraemon franchise he had also helped define.

Kikuchi's Dragon Ball music refused to fade quietly. It was reused for the 2008 OVA Dragon Ball: The Return of Son Goku and Friends, and in 2011 Toei made the dramatic decision to pull Kenji Yamamoto's replacement score from Dragon Ball Z Kai after plagiarism allegations. Kikuchi's original cues were hastily retrofitted onto the last two broadcast episodes and then used to rescore the entire series for later releases, giving a new generation of fans the soundtrack the original 1989 audience had grown up with.

He passed away on April 24, 2021, at the age of eighty nine, from aspiration pneumonia. By then his catalogue spanned more than half a century of Japanese screen music, but for Dragon Ball fans his legacy is simpler and more personal. His themes are what plays in your head the moment you hear the words Kamehameha.