Original Theme: The Earth Spirits' Homecoming
Arranger: JOYH-TV
Circle: Dark PHOENiX
Album: Witch Clock
Image by saltlaver: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2498493
Here's another one I've been meaning to share for a while. The Earth Spirits' Homecoming has always been my favorite Touhou ending theme with the way it alludes to the Touhou series main menu melody but does something new with it, and I tend to like arrangements of it as well. I kind of felt like looking at specific cues in this track to explain why I like it so much.
This might be JOYH-TV at his best, strongly incorporating the melody of the song he's rearranging while going in a completely different direction with it. The warm instrumentation that's anything but punchy and the way different elements are layered and interwoven make listening to this track feel like being taken on a journey, especially from the midpoint at 2:20 and onward.
It's both melancholy and kind of sinister at the same time, and these elements are heightened as a haunting choral bassline comes in at 2:37. The mood culminates a minute later as a new layer emerges from the background at 3:30, before unexpectedly getting a lot more depth at 3:34. It seems to melt into a deeper set of chorals over the next fifteen seconds that then briefly take the focus until we return to the simpler melody from the first half of the track from 4:40 onward.
It's hard to express what this section reminds me of, but it's very evocative, calling to mind a feeling kind of like nostalgia for something lost through time. It meshes well with the setting of Former Hell from Subterranean Animism in my mind (charred hellscape and all); in a way, as different as this arrangement is from the source, it captures the mythos behind the game in a way I didn't expect.