Side.AKA TENTOKI is the companion album to Side.Sora, presenting Ar nosurge's music from the perspective of the red-haired heroine, and it might be the more daring of the two. Where Side.Sora balanced grandeur with gentleness, this album leans harder into the experimental and the intense.
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"f'aux me-morie" opens with a sense of fractured identity that sets the tone, and from there the Class-prefixed songs deliver some of the most powerful vocal performances in the entire Surge Concerto universe. "Class--AR_NOSURGE#RE -Incarnation" is an absolute showstopper that carries the weight of the game's central themes of rebirth and connection.
The Hymmn-prefixed tracks in the second half are where things get wild. The naming conventions alone tell you this is not playing it safe: "TSUNDE_RAIN," "NEURON_KILLER_Z," "SPARTAN_LIB," "TOY_INSTALLER," and the wonderfully unhinged "SCHIZOIDROPHIA" each bring a distinct flavor that ranges from playful to aggressive to deeply strange.
These are essentially musical expressions of the heroine's inner emotional states, channeled through the game's song magic system, and they cover an enormous range of moods. "BRIDAL_LAUNCH" has a celebratory energy while "Hidra Heteromycin" feels clinical and alien.
The connective tissue holding it all together includes some of the album's most memorable moments. "Ar-ciel Ar-manaf" is a gorgeous piece that connects the Ar nosurge universe back to the original Ar tonelico world, a moment of cosmic recognition for longtime fans.
"ra-ison d'etre" grapples with purpose and existence in ways that feel genuinely philosophical rather than superficial. And the closer, "AR=CIEL_SPHERE," serves as a grand finale that ties the entire Surge Concerto musical legacy together.
Akiko Shikata and the vocal cast deliver career-defining work here.