For Episode #34 of Twisted Radio Station Ruggie’s VA Ichikawa Aoi (🍩) interviewed Twisted Wonderland’s music composer Ozawa Takumi about the creation of the character songs along with Aozora Ichika, who wrote the lyrics for 11 of the 14 songs (including dorm songs).
※Note: not literal translations, only summaries of the conversations.
Ozawa: After hearing 💀 in Ignihyde’s dorm song I thought, “Ah, this person can really sing.” So when it came to the solo song, I didn’t hold back. I had the mindset of, “He can probably handle this, right?” But since it’s a solo without Ortho or anyone and he had to sing entirely alone I avoided making the melody overly complex.
💀 (Idia’s VA Uchiyama Kouki) was highly praised by the English-pronunciation coach when he sang “This is Halloween,” to the point that she asked if he was fluent. That’s how good he was. I hadn’t started writing the solo yet, but I had the thought, “I’d like 💀 to sing in English someday.” That’s why I packed so much English into the solo song. I kept thinking, “Wow, his English really is good,” and “This sounds so cool,” while working on it.
🍩: The idea of Idia being able to speak English just makes sense, doesn’t it? Gamers play a lot of overseas games, and a lot of them don’t get translated. So you have to pick up the language. Idia seems like he’d be good at that.
I thought this song would fit a rhythmic really well. There’s a part where it slows down, and then it builds up again. That section feels like a rest break, and then suddenly it goes dadadadadadada! I thought it sounded like a fun rhythmic.
Ozawa: I did the lyrics for this one, and since I focused heavily on wordplay I was changing the melody and rhythm bit by bit as I wrote the lyrics. I was told, “Pack in a bunch of complaints about extroverts.” And I was like, “Complaints about extroverts!?”
Aozora: Do you have any complaints about extroverts, Ozawa-san?
Ozawa: I don’t—I don’t have anything in particular against them. So I was stuck on what kind of angle I should take. But I figured I’d try writing while aligning myself with Idia’s perspective, and suddenly it all just came pouring out, complaint after complaint. It was so bad I ended up laughing at myself.
It seems that the kind of people Idia dislikes are those who push their brightness onto others, like over-muscular, meathead types. So I wrote the lyrics with that kind of hot-blooded, pushy personality in mind, with a kind of revulsion toward them.
Once I had a draft of the lyrics I had it “Idia-ized” with help from Toboso-sensei. I got tons of suggestions for expressions and ideas, and that’s how it all came together. I never could have written lyrics like this on my own. Toboso-sensei’s word sense is seriously amazing.
🍩: There’s even a part with rapping in it, right?
Ozawa: Yeah, that was fun. The lyrics just keep going without a break, to the point where it’s really hard to sing in a single breath. There’s almost no place to breathe. During recording, 💀 said: “Is this really something a normal human should be able to sing?” He was like, “Uh…this is impossible.” I told him, “Normal humans can’t sing it. Don’t worry.” I sung the rap part myself in the demo and had to break it up into pieces.
Twisted Wonderland Reference Note 