This week in things what make you laugh: Here's someone's mod that puts One Winged Angel, arguably the most famous piece of music to come out of Final Fantasy as a series, into Trombone Champ. You can now watch blocky 1990s Sephiroth, would-be world destroying deity, badly destroy his own theme music on the trombone.
Modder Henry Zhou's Textbook has cooked up this adaptation, complete with custom chart and background orchestration of Sephiroth playing a trombone. Not just any trombone, mind, but one with a ridiculously long slide because if Sephiroth's sword is like eight feet long you better believe his trombone is gonna be even longer.
Here's the thing: Just when I was getting kind of bored, when I figured the whole joke was playing out, that I'd seen what there was to be seen, heard what there was to be heard, I remembered something.
One Winged Angel has what amounts to three whole acts baked into it. It transitions from symphonic madness, into orchestral bombast complete with chanting, into electric guitar shredding, then climaxes in a fusion of all three styles. As each of these periods kick off the track's background imagery switches to appropriately glorious scenes.
It's a delight and if you have any memory of Sephiroth's boss music, or Final Fantasy VII, or Advent Children, or any of the places this music has turned up, I think you'll really enjoy watching it above or on YouTube. The YouTube also has a link for you to download the abomination yourself, if you want to give it a go.
Trombone Champ already gave us Megalovania, and the Philadelphia Orchestra trombone section totally sucking at it, but now this? What other gifts could this "instant game of the year contender" give?
Do I dare hope for A Cruel Angel's Thesis? I can dare, and I do hope.
