We're sad to report that the composer of "Edge of Soul" — the iconic opening theme song to the Namco 1990s PlayStation fighting game Soul Blade — passed away last year.
Masahiro Ohki (credited under his stage name Benten-Maru) reportedly passed away on October 6th 2024, after a battle with illness, as revealed by his wife on Facebook last year. However, we were only made aware of the news late last week when Ohki's former bandmate, Mickie, informed us of his passing.
Back in July 2022, during the first few months of Time Extension's existence, Ohki was kind enough to speak to us briefly about his career over email about his work on the track, informing us about how he had initially become involved with the classic fighting game.
He told us more about his early work in the Japanese rock group A・JYOTA and went on to discuss with us how Namco had approached that band's successor, KHAN, to create several tracks for the PlayStation game soundtrack (including 'Edge of Soul' and the ballad 'On Our Way Home').
As the band's ringleader, he wrote the music for these two songs, while Suzi Kim provided the lyrics, and the freelance musician Kazunori Miyake dealt with the arrangement.
After KHAN broke up, Ohki continued to perform as a solo performer around Japan, releasing an album in 2020. He was also a music teacher for much of his career, helping to pass on his love of music to his students. When we last spoke to Ohki in 2022, we asked him what he thought about people still listening to KHAN's music, such as "Edge of Soul", all these years later. Here's what he told us (thanks to Liz Buzhouse for the translation):
"I'm deeply moved and grateful that there are still people out there listening to that music after all this time. Thank you so much, everyone. It's not easy to create something from nothing. But I've learned that there are people in all sorts of professions and situations working together to create so many kinds of things where nothing existed before. And I think they're putting in even more work with the recent pandemic. I'm cheering them all on from a distance. Please stay healthy and do the best you can."
Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.