During and After Falcom: Mieko Ishikawa

Mieko Ishikawa is one of Falcom's earliest composers, and now, a director for the company. She began composing in the late 80's, and retired in 1994 after The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch. The first two tracks I want to explore are from Sorcerian:

This captures her style perfectly. Next we can look at a battle track:

Another of Ishikawa's very impressive feats was being the sole composer of Ys III: Wanderers of Ys. The epic welcoming theme:

Here is another standout track:

And this probably the most famous of the soundtrack:

Moving on she composed in Dinosaur alongside Masaaki Kawai. It had a much darker and somewhat twisted tone compared to Ys III. This is from the FM Towns Version:

Afterwards, we move towards the more lighthearted Popful Mail. Atsushi Shirakawa gave me all his composer credits, which resulted in the remaining coming down to Ishikawa. First is the opening: Distant Valhalla:

Menu:

The next two are arranged versions from the Sega CD version. These are most likely arranged by Hirofumi Matsuoka:

And the last song is from the Super Famicom version, possibly also arranged by Hirofumi Matsuoka:

Afterwards, we continue with The Legend of Heroes II. On Twitter, a usernamed "The Spoony Bard" had asked Atsushi Shirakawa what he had composed. As a result, the remainder of the tracks fall under Ishikawa. We assume that Kawai is gone by now and the soundtrack was only between Shirakawa and Ishikawa. Here's a track by Ishikawa:

And my personal favorite from the game:

After this. 4 new members would join in 1992. They are Naoki Kaneda, Hirofumi Matsuoka, Masaru Nakajima, and Takahiro Tsunashima. They would take on the role of composing and succeed Mieko Ishikawa. Ishikawa would contribute a small number of tracks for The Legend of Xanadu and The Legend of Heroes III, but she would completely disappear from composing and instead focus on her role as one of the directors for the company which she still does to this day.