Super Smash Bros. Brawl (#625)

[zierts]

Following up on this post: I looked into the supposed difference between the "Arrangement" and "Arrangement Supervisor" credits in Smash Bros. Brawl, that is, if someone credited as "Arrangement Supervisor" didn't actually arrange the track themselves but supervised someone else's arrangement work.

Turns out that, no, there is probably no difference: I checked the full song list (also in English for reference) for Brawl and the list both uses 編曲者 (translated as "Arrangement", though literally meaning "arranger") and 編曲担当 (translated as "Arrangement Supervisor", though literally meaning "in charge of/responsible for the arrangement"). Within that list, individual musicians are always credited as 編曲者 or always credited as 編曲担当, so a single person is credited only as one of these two terms. That would imply that there's a difference between the terms.

However, there are also news posts on individual tracks (English for reference). In some of them, the arranger is called 編曲担当 while he or she is called 編曲者 in the full song list, oddly enough.


Listed as 編曲担当 in individual news posts but as 編曲者 in the full song list:
Hirokazu Tanaka. ex
おおくま けんいち Kenichi Okuma
ササキ トモコ Tomoko Sasaki
伊藤 賢冶 Kenji Ito
岩垂 徳行 Noriyuki Iwadare
桜庭 統 Motoi Sakuraba


Listed as 編曲担当 both in individual news posts and the full song list:
酒井 省吾 Shogo Sakai
高濱 祐輔 Yusuke Takahama
なるけ みちこ Michiko Naruke
尾崎 景吾 Keigo Ozaki
本田 晃弘 Akihiro Honda
須戸 敏之 Toshiyuki Sudo
瀬上 純 Jun Senoue
光田 康典 Yasunori Mitsuda
近藤 浩治 Koji Kondo


Listed as 編曲者 in the full song list but no individual news posts exist:
岩崎 正明 Masaaki Iwasaki
桃井 聖司 Seiji Momoi
甲田 雅人 Masato Kouda
福田 康文 Yasufumi Fukuda
福田 淳 Jun Fukuda
葉山 宏治 Koji Hayama
辻横 由佳 Yuka Tsujiyoko


Listed as 編曲担当 in the full song list but no individual news posts exist:
下村 陽子 Yoko Shimomura
伊良波 穣 Yutaka Iraha
古代 祐三 Yuzo Koshiro
吉冨 亮二 Ryoji Yoshitomi
増子 司 Tsukasa Masuko
太田 あすか Asuka Ohta
山本 健誌 Kenji Yamamoto
峰岸 透 Toru Minegishi
戸高 一生 Kazumi Totaka
景山 将太 Shota Kageyama
濱野 美奈子 Minako Hamano
石坂 健太郎 Kentaro Ishizaka
若井 淑 Hajime Wakai
西 隆宏 Takahiro Nishi
飯吉 新 Arata Iiyoshi


There's no clear pattern as to why they would change the credits for some people in the list but not for others, and as to why they would put a person in the group 編曲者 and another in the group 編曲担当. So, yeah, it seems there's no difference between them. Whether they're listed as 編曲者 or 編曲担当, they probably arranged the track themselves.

This is corroborated by the fact that the Smash Bros. Dojo also uses 作曲者 ("Composer") and 作曲担当 ("Composition Supervisor"). For example, it makes no sense for Akito Nakatsuka supervising a composition for Ice Climber or Koji Kondo supervising a composition for Super Mario Bros. when they were 後輩 to Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka in the mid-1980s. That would make Nakatsuka and Kondo the ones who were supervised, if anything. Not to mention that they've long been confirmed as the composers of these games.

What's more, the German, Spanish and Italian language versions of Brawl seem to have opted not to translate the English version's "...Supervisor", "Arrangement" and "Composer" credits, while the French version does its own thing altogether, muddying the waters further. So, yeah, the term 担当 is just inconsistently used and confusingly translated in the Smash Bros. series.

[Aifread]

Yeah 作曲家/作曲担当 and 編曲者/編曲担当 often mean the same thing unless there's multiple composers/arrangers on the same track, though it is odd for them to appear inconsistently like this in the same product. My guess is that multiple people at HAL or whatever wrote up different sections of it without agreeing on which terms to use

[RBM95]

I talked about this issue some years ago in other threads, but it seems that, starting with Brawl, when examining all of the information available on each brand-new arrangement featured on the Smash Bros. in-game sound tests (including also the "Credit" section in the case of Brawl, "More info" in Smash 3DS & Wii U, or "Details" in the case of Ultimate), the specific credits strictly given for "Composition" and "Arrangement" are given to:

-Specific companies whose sound staff was involved in the particular arrangement and/or composition of the original piece (e.g. Nintendo for Koji Kondo's compositions, HAL Laboratory for Shogo Sakai's arrangements, etc.).

-Music labels, artists' "brand" names, etc. (e.g. Midiplex Co., Ltd. for Yoko Shimomura's arrangements, naru2 LTD for Michiko Naruke's arrangements).

-Individuals who either did not belong to a specific company (e.g. Motoi Sakuraba, Yuka Tsujiyoko, Keiichi Suzuki) and/or they were working as freelance individuals without tying their work to their employer (e.g. Hirokazu Tanaka, who is president of Creatures and was during Brawl's timeframe, although Creatures does not appear in any song info of his particular arrangements).

I believe the "Supervisor" credits ("Arrangement Supervisor", etc.) may be the specific workaround that the sound test uses in order to be able to attribute the specific person in charge of one arrangement, if one of the first two aforementioned scenarios happens.

As for why it is all written in such a confusing way, I have no idea, but my educated guess is that there might be some weird legality and/or contractual issues between all of these companies/labels/individuals/etc., and a "company" must receive a credit before any person does, specially considering the huge amount of licensing that goes on in the soundtracks of Smash (Satoru Iwata once mentioned that Nintendo's department that handled contracts and copyrights said Brawl had thirty games worth of music).

I also don't really know about the differences between the Smash Dojo posts and the in-game sound test either, but pretty much all credits that figured in Brawl's sound test carried over in further entries without change, so I'd probably give more validity to the sound test.

Keep in mind that all of this is just speculation on my part.

[Aifread]

That seems consistent with other places I've seen 担当 appear; it's often the company name with 担当: (composer's name) in parentheses.

[zierts]

Brawl's sound test follows the full song list on the website rather than the individual news posts. The 担当 could indeed be a requirement with outside contractors, meaning arrangers employed by companies, a thing which only started with Brawl (the original and Melee were arranged by HAL musicians only).

The important thing is that the person credited did the arrangement themselves, either way.