From ET to Alien, Robot Jox to Total Recall, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is filled with loving homages to 80s and 90s sci-fi—and not just Hollywood ones. Classic anime like To Terra…, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Majokko Megu-chan all leave a noticeable mark on the game. However, the game’s most memorable moment is when it latches on to its mecha versus alien invasion roots and goes full Macross.
In Shu’s storyline (heavily inspired by Megazone 23), he finds himself contacted by Miuyki Inaba, a mysterious pop singer who talks to him through his TV—slowly letting him learn about the true nature of his world.
Later, in the battle portions of the game, she provides logistical support to our heroes, revealing that if she can stay in contact with the terminal buried below the city long enough, she’ll be able to stop the invading Demos threat. All she needs is our heroes to hold off the Demos long enough for her to get the job done.
However, while the plan is a good one, it has a fatal flaw: Inaba isn’t on Earth with the rest of them. Instead she is on a ship orbiting the planet—which unfortunately means that when she loses line of sight with the terminal, it’ll be a 14-hour orbit before she can finish shutting the Demos down.
When it becomes apparent she will not finish her work before dipping below the horizon and our heroes will need to battle non-stop for 14 hours alone, Shu asks her for a favor: to sing for him to give him strength in the coming hopeless battle. It’s here that the game goes full Macross.
Mirroring Lynn Minmay, Inaba belts out a cute pop song while Shu and the other 12 pilots battle against a seemingly endless number of oncoming mecha in an attempt to take out the game’s strongest boss yet. It’s a powerful moment—a last bit of hope before the long night of fighting begins. However, it wouldn’t be nearly as impactful if the song wasn’t so perfectly nostalgic.
The song, Seaside Vacation, is one of the most fascinating songs I’ve ever listened to. It is a song released in 2019 made to be a 1980s pop hit—which is pure insanity. A modern composer—not even Final Fantasy XII’s Hitoshi Sakimoto—can simply write a song 40 years out of time and pretend that they aren’t being subconsciously influenced by all the music that has come out in the intervening years.
Moreover, as the main vocal track of the game, this is a song that needed to be catchy to 2019 listeners—meaning that it had to incorporate more than a few modern music influences. On one hand we get a melody and background syncopation taken right out of the 80s—with singer Itou Fuu doing her best Mari Iijima impersonation. On the other, we have a noticeable lack of synthesizer and horns with a fully fleshed out strings section often overshadowing the typical bass guitar.
It truly sounds like nothing else out there because, at its heart, it is something far from the mainstream: It’s a “modern” 80s Japanese idol track—and that’s truly amazing.
But somehow, even more astounding, it doesn’t stop there. The out-of-time nature of the song itself is even a plot point in the game. In the story, Inaba herself is a singer/song writer from the 2020s. However, to integrate herself in the world of 1985, she wrote Seaside Vacation as an 80s-style hit. Despite this, one of her long-time fans is able to pick it out as one of her songs due to its DNA as a song from the 2020s. It’s a subtle twist that makes the song even cooler.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had this song stuck in my head for weeks now and I see no reason not to listen to it again right now.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is currently available on PlayStation 4 worldwide.
You really put it perfectly, right down to the Macross vibes. I cannot stop listening to it. Puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step every time. Remarkable track for an incredible game.