Toshiyuki Honda blending jazz, orchestral drama, and Dixieland into a retro-futurist anime about robots and class warfare. "St. James Infirmary" showing up in an anime film about a collapsing utopia is one of the best needle drops in animation history.
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"Ziggurat" builds with this heavy brass tension that matches the towering cityscape perfectly, while "Zone Rhapsody" gets loose and playful in the underground districts. The score constantly shifts between old New Orleans warmth and cold mechanical menace.
It shouldn't work this well. If you've ever wanted a soundtrack that sounds like Osamu Tezuka and Louis Armstrong met in a dream, this is exactly that.