Kenji Yamamoto (composer born 1958)

Kenji Yamamoto (山本 健司 Yamamoto Kenji, born July 1, 1958) is a Japanese music composer and arranger who has been responsible for producing and composing soundtracks, including opening and ending sequence themes for various anime, tokusatsu and video game projects in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Most notably, he has worked on soundtracks of various Dragon Ball video games. Yamamoto is a board member of the Japanese Composer Arranger Association.

Yamamoto has also composed background music for Dragon Ball Kai, a revamped version of the anime series Dragon Ball Z. On March 9, 2011, Toei Animation publicly acknowledged that many of Yamamoto's musical works for the series have possibly infringed upon unidentified third-party copyrights. As a result, Toei removed Yamamoto and replaced his compositions with those from the original Dragon Ball Z series written by Shunsuke Kikuchi.[1][2] The plagiarism of these works have been known since May 2010 as denoted by various video sites.[3] His compositions in the games will also be replaced, as the Budokai HD Collection has shown.

References

  1. ↑ "Toei Replaces Possibly Infringing Dragon Ball Kai Music". Anime News Network. March 10, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
  2. ↑ "アニメーション「ドラゴンボール改」背景音楽について" (PDF) (Press release). Toei Animation. March 9, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
  3. ↑ "「ドラゴンボール改」BGMにパクリ疑惑。比較検証動画が公開" (in Japanese). New Akiba. May 30, 2010. Retrieved April 26, 2011.