The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

Tom and Jerry without a soundtrack is like a lion’s head meatball without the fat, mapo tofu without Sichuan peppercorns, or hot pot beef that isn’t fresh.

You could say it’s edible—barely—but it just doesn’t taste right.

The production of Tom and Jerry followed the customs of the silent film era: no dialogue, and heavy use of music to express emotion.

Unlike the sound era, where music merely accompanied the emotion, the silent film era had a much higher demand for music due to its heavy reliance on soundtracks.

The most common solution was to make extensive use of classical symphonies. It was a very pragmatic approach—picking suitable pieces from the vast library of historical music, which also handily avoided any copyright issues.

A fully equipped symphony orchestra was standard for many film studios during the silent film era.

However, thanks to advanced recording Magic, Zog had skipped the silent film era entirely.

They had sound from the very beginning.

In previous Shadows of Evil, the soundtrack hadn’t been a major focus. Aside from Frozen, which had a bit of a musical-theater quality, everything had been left to the Zor team to handle as they saw fit.

This was mainly because Zog, a dragon, was no music expert himself. He had some understanding of the rock and pop-style songs he had sung for the Underground Discard, but that was about it.

When it came to classical symphonies, he could name only two people: Beethoven and Mozart. He couldn’t think of a single other one.

He knew Beethoven’s "Symphony of Fate" and "Ode to Joy," but he didn’t know any of Mozart’s signature works. He just knew Mozart was a child prodigy who was also incredibly hardworking and diligent.

This part of his knowledge came mainly from material for writing essays.

Exam-room argumentative essays!

A collection of celebrity anecdotes that paid no mind to logic whatsoever.

"Elsa!" Zog shouted. "Stop giggling like an idiot at that five-second clip."

"Huh? What?" Elsa snapped out of it.

She had already watched the scene of Tom getting burned twenty times, and she laughed every single time.

"Go get the composition department. While you’re at it, contact the best orchestra in the city," Zog ordered.

"You got it." Before leaving, Elsa watched it one more time, then asked reluctantly, "Is there more of this Shadow of Evil?"

"If you don’t hurry up and get them, there might not be," Zog urged.

Elsa rushed out the door.

She was only twenty, after all. While Tom and Jerry had universal appeal for all ages, it was clearly more potent for young people and children.

None of the previous Shadows of Evil had sparked this much interest in her.

And she didn’t find anything odd about a single match on a ladder creating the effect of a Flame Burst Technique.

This was a huge contrast to the Painters, who fretted over every detail for the sake of realism.

Imagination and the acceptance of new things often decrease with age. Childlike innocence is inversely proportional to the time spent struggling through society.

’When you have ideas, you lack the ability to create; when you have the ability to create, you lack ideas. It’s quite a paradox.’

Soon, the composition department and a whole bunch of orchestra leaders from the city arrived before Zog.

It was called the composition department, but it was really just those few Zor.

The ones with composing ability were mainly Xiaode and his friends. The other few Zor specialized in singing and were assigned to the composition department simply because there was nowhere else to put them.

It wasn’t worth setting up a whole new singing department for just a handful of people.

As for that bunch of orchestra leaders, everyone knows that "the best" usually means a whole crowd of them.

It’s like how there are eight or nine "top three" universities—a strange little piece of "common knowledge."

And those orchestra leaders had already started scheming and plotting right there in Zog’s office. They even bickered for a long time over who got to sit closer to him.

Every single one of them had brought a small gift for Zog.

’The ways of the world are the same everywhere.’

’You could call it a dreg of society, but it has undeniably persisted for thousands of years and is impossible to shake off.’

Everyone knew that getting connected with the Zog Group was basically equivalent to a massive increase in income.

However, Zog decided to use a simpler method: may the most capable person win.

All teams would try scoring the same episode and bid for the job.

Zog once again brought out the boards with the storyboards drawn on them.

"Mr. Zog, what is this?" one of the leaders asked.

"Composing to the picture," Zog replied.

Often, the work of scoring a film doesn’t begin after all the content has been produced.

In most cases, a composer might have to start writing music based on a script, or even just an outline that barely qualifies as a script.

Sometimes they even have to work with extremely abstract client requests, like the eternally quoted classic: "Make it a little better than Mozart."

"I need a score for a seven-minute short film," Zog said, deliberately not using the word "animation." "The main story is about a cat trying to catch a bird. The bird and a mouse work together to evade the cat and eventually escape."

"And... that’s it?" an orchestra leader asked tentatively.

"That’s it. The specific details will be in the storyboards. I’ll give each of you a copy in a moment."

The orchestra leaders didn’t quite understand what was so worthy of a score in a story like that.

The work they usually did was for plays, musicals, or Church concerts.

They had come here expecting to score a full-length Shadow of Evil, which would have been a huge payday. They’d heard that the composers got a cut from every Shadow of Evil ticket sold.

But for a seven-minute short with a strange story that sounded like something to amuse a child, most of them lost interest.

It wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the Zog Group’s power, but rather that they had too much faith in their own aesthetic sense.

"The requirements are simple. You can reinterpret existing classical pieces, as long as they’re suitable. The music must match the short’s emotion and rhythm, it can’t be too repetitive, the timbre has to complement the sound effects—which I will also provide—and all key actions must have corresponding variations..."

Zog listed a whole heap of requirements.

The orchestra leaders listened with smiles on their faces, but inwardly they were already scoffing. ’And he calls these requirements "simple"?’

"In any case, I hope to have the score for the seven minutes of content ready within a month."

In the original Tom and Jerry, the music really did play almost nonstop throughout the entire cartoon.

Scoring one episode a month was necessary to keep up with the release schedule. After the final cut was ready, the rhythm would definitely need adjustments based on the details in the finished product.

"This will be a Shadow of Evil Drama with at least a hundred episodes, so there will be long-term collaboration. The pay for each episode will vary depending on the workload, but it will be at least Ten Gold Coins."

Hearing this, the people from the various orchestras finally showed some enthusiasm.

’Who cares if a seven-minute short film will be successful? Getting paid for one episode is getting paid for one episode.’

Motivated by the Ten Gold Coins, the orchestras were highly efficient. Within two weeks, all the teams had submitted their scores.

Except for Xiaode and his band. They gave up, believing their style was a complete mismatch.

A large pile of Magic Crystal Stones lay on Zog’s desk, each containing a score from one of the orchestras.

He had already listened to more than half of them. To be honest, they couldn’t even be called "barely satisfactory." The term "barely satisfactory" at least implies there’s some small part that is satisfying.

These compositions were just completely unsuitable.

It wasn’t that there was a problem with the technical skill; the performance level of all of them was superb.

But the style was all wrong.

It was the kind of symphony Zog had imagined, but it didn’t match his memory of the original cartoon.

’What went wrong?’

’It doesn’t feel energetic enough, and the rhythm isn’t tight enough.’

Zog tried his best to recall Tom and Jerry from his memory.

He suddenly realized that what the original cartoon used most wasn’t actually symphonic music.

His impression that it was all symphonic came mainly from that one unforgettable episode where Tom conducted an orchestra, and because various descriptions always praised it in the context of symphonic music.

In fact, most of the original cartoon’s score was closer to the style of a jazz band.

’This is bad. Where am I supposed to find a jazz band?’

’Am I supposed to invent a whole new genre of music from scratch? I don’t have that kind of ability, you know.’

Zog felt a massive headache coming on.

Without much hope, he activated the last Magic Crystal Stone.

A combination of continuous syncopation and complex rhythms emerged, the scales freer and more flexible.

’This is more like it.’

Zog immediately checked which orchestra had sent this Magic Crystal Stone, but there was no orchestra name, only a single name.

"Kaelan Finarfin."

It was written in the Elven Language.