History Music / YukiKajiura

* ''Manga/BlackButler'' (In part.)

* ''Anime/SoundOfTheSky'' (In part.)

* ''Anime/AldnoahZero'' (In part.)

* TheHecateSisters: Kalafina [[PlayingWithATrope plays with this]], giving us three ''young'' women who present as [[http://jpopcdcovers.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/fairytale-cd.jpg (L-R) Mother (Wakana), Maiden (Hikaru), and Crone (Keiko)]]. Perhaps unusually, the fan favourite in this case is the Crone, meaning that Keiko is also a pseudo-example of GrandmaWhatMassiveHotnessYouHave ''at the age of twenty-four.''

A GenreBusting Japanese composer, music producer, impresario, and ethnomusicologist, born in UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}} on August 6, 1965 but [[FishOutOfWater raised in]] UsefulNotes/{{Bonn}}, UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}. After returning to Japan as a teenager, she worked as an OfficeLady before [[RageQuit quitting]] in 1992. She first came to musical prominence as one half of the group See-Saw with Chiaki Ishikawa in the 1990s, and established herself as a solo composer around the turn of the millennium with the seminal soundtracks to ''Anime/{{Noir}}'' and ''Franchise/DotHack'' and a few musicals(as well as at least some of the [[LongRunners Japanese institution]] that is ''VideoGame/SakuraWars''), subsequently spending many years as the 'house composer' for Creator/BeeTrain.

She's associated with the following tropes:

Yuki Kajiura may be heard in:

** "In Your Eyes", by Kalafina, is an especially good example. The 'pure-hearted' narrator of the song, by nature of being pure-hearted, is unable to understand physical intimacy as anything other than 'a kiss that [[ThisAndThat does not just end at a kiss]]', and this is presented as a good thing, as though making qualitative distinctions about such things implies suspect priorities.

** ''Manga/DotHackLegendOFTheTwilight'' (theme song only)

** ''Manga/DtHackLegendOFTheTwilight'' (theme song only)

* [[UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} Buddhism]]: A pretty clear and major influence, more so than in a lot of other contemporary Japanese music, with a lot of imagery expropriated from other religions and secular cultural traditions mixed in. Ends up interestingly syncretistic when she works on things like the tacitly Catholic-seeming BeeTrain GirlsWithGuns shows.

A GenreBusting Japanese composer, music producer, impresario, and ethnomusicologist, born in UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}} in 1965 but [[FishOutOfWater raised in]] UsefulNotes/{{Bonn}}, UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}. After returning to Japan as a teenager, she worked as an OfficeLady before [[RageQuit quitting]] in 1992. She first came to musical prominence as one half of the group See-Saw with Chiaki Ishikawa in the 1990s, and established herself as a solo composer around the turn of the millennium with the seminal soundtracks to ''Anime/{{Noir}}'' and ''Franchise/DotHack'' and a few musicals(as well as at least some of the [[LongRunners Japanese institution]] that is ''VideoGame/SakuraWars''), subsequently spending many years as the 'house composer' for Creator/BeeTrain.

Widely considered second only (or equal) to Music/YokoKanno as an {{Anime}} soundtrack composer, her NeoClassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly sensibilities, ReclusiveArtist tendencies and generally unusual way of life, and undeniable talent have invited comparisons to such figures as Music/EnnioMorricone and LudwigVanBeethoven--amazing compliments, considering her dilettante background and relatively late start in music for a modern artist, not devoting herself to it full-time until about the age of thirty and not reaching major success until thirty-five.

* ''PandoraHearts''

Widely considered second only (or equal) to Music/YokoKanno as an {{Anime}} soundtrack composer, her NeoClassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly sensibilities, ReclusiveArtist tendencies and generally unusual way of life, and [[SoCoolItsAwesome undeniable talent]] have invited comparisons to such figures as Music/EnnioMorricone and LudwigVanBeethoven--amazing compliments, considering her dilettante background and relatively late start in music for a modern artist, not devoting herself to it full-time until about the age of thirty and not reaching major success until thirty-five.

Widely considered second only (or equal) to Music/YokoKanno as an {{Anime}} soundtrack composer, her NeoClassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly sensibilities, ReclusiveArtist tendencies and generally unusual way of life, and [[SoCoolItsAwesome undeniable talent]] have invited comparisons to such figures as Music/EnnioMorricone and LudwigVanBeethoven--amazing compliments, considering her dilletante background and relatively late start in music for a modern artist, not devoting herself to it full-time until about the age of thirty and not reaching major success until thirty-five.

* DeconstructorFleet: She started to make it big around the same time she took two of the most wildly different types of music imaginable, J-pop as it existed around the TurnOfTheMillennium and Romantic music as it existed [[ImperialGermany before]] [[TheEdwardianEra the Turn of the Century]], and ''erased'' the '''''dozens''''' of cultural and historical barriers between them.

* ''Manga/BokuDakeGaInaiMachi'' (ERASED).

Widely considered second only (or equal) to YokoKanno as an {{Anime}} soundtrack composer, her NeoClassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly sensibilities, ReclusiveArtist tendencies and generally unusual way of life, and [[SoCoolItsAwesome undeniable talent]] have invited comparisons to such figures as Music/EnnioMorricone and LudwigVanBeethoven--amazing compliments, considering her dilletante background and relatively late start in music for a modern artist, not devoting herself to it full-time until about the age of thirty and not reaching major success until thirty-five.

All-in-all, she's generally thought of as a unique, still relatively young musician of great talent, worthy of her widely-perceived status as TheRival to YokoKanno (although they don't seem to bear each other any ill-will at all).

Her closest Western equivalent is Creator/HansZimmer, who also bears a penchant of crossing high-tech modernity with epic opera.

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* ''Anime/MaiHime''

* ''Anime/MaiOtome''

* ''SakuraTaisen'' (the musical)

* ''SoRaNoWoTo'' (In part.)

** ''[[Anime/DotHackSign .hack//SIGN]]''
** ''[[Anime/DotHackLiminality .hack//Liminality]]''

Her music ranges from [[OminousLatinChanting Ominous]] ConstructedLanguage [[OminousLatinChanting Chanting]] (''Anime/{{Madlax}}'') to PsychoStrings (''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'') to sweet pop music (many a Franchise/{{Mai Hi ME}} ImageSong) to lushly instrumented suites (''Anime/{{Noir}}'') to [[NeoClassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly whatever her band Kalafina is supposed to be]]. ''Anime/ElCazadorDeLaBruja'' is notable for having [[ShownTheirWork shown Kajiura's work]] in ethnomusicology and the musical traditions of Latin America and the American West, evoking musicians from Daniel Alomia Robles to Music/JohnnyCash and Frankie 'Old Leather Lungs' Laine. She was for a time an impresario for the innovative pop group ALI PROJECT, and brought them into the ''Anime/{{Noir}}'' production. All of this is held together by her adherence to a distinctive blend of classical and folk-based music theory regardless of instruments and tempo and her Romantic-influenced emphasis on melody and circumspectly psychological and spiritual lyrics.

YukiKajiura may be heard in:
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* WorldBuilding: Of sorts. A Kajiura piece for a soundtrack is almost always an exercise in the intersection of Kajiura's 'otherworldly spaces' and worldview with the independent assumptions of the text that it's composed for. Often (''Anime/{{Noir}}'', ''Anime/{{Madlax}}'', ''Anime/ElCazadorDeLaBruja'', ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'', ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica''), this works very well. Sometimes (parts of ''Anime/{{Mai-Otome}}'', ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'') it's a little jarring, and often either the series or the soundtrack ends up a lot more valued and appreciated than the other. Among other things, she likes to musically or lyrically evoke perceptions of the lead characters' gender, age, social status, and so on, which leads to some of the interesting gender ambiguity in her body of work; [[Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle some series]] make this a lot easier than [[LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai others]].

* ''Anime/{{Mai-Hime}}''
* ''ChronoCrusade'' (In part.)

* ''Anime/{{Mai-Otome}}''

* EternalRecurrence: A major theme that permeates her works. Well okay, the focus is not on the recurrence itself, but [[TheAntiNihilist the Nietzschean or Kierkegaardian strength]] to keep fighting even when the fight seems to be without end, simply because you have a moral reason to fight or a love to live. The theme is reflected best in Consolation, which is also a sort-of image album for ''LightNovel/FateZero'' and ''PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', in which the respective main characters fight to break a ViciousCycle.

* WorldBuilding: Of sorts. A Kajiura piece for a soundtrack is almost always an exercise in the intersection of Kajiura's 'otherworldly spaces' and worldview with the independent assumptions of the text that it's composed for. Often (''Anime/{{Noir}}'', ''Anime/{{Madlax}}'', ''Anime/ElCazadorDeLaBruja'', ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'', ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica''), this works very well. Sometimes (parts of ''Anime/{{Mai-Otome}}'', ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'') it's a little jarring, and often either the series or the soundtrack ends up a lot more valued and appreciated than the other. Among other things, she likes to musically or lyrically evoke perceptions of the lead characters' gender, age, social status, and so on, which leads to some of the interesting gender ambiguity in her body of work; [[TsubasaReservoirChronicle some series]] make this a lot easier than [[LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai others]].

* ''LePortraitDePetitCossette''

* ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle''

* ''FistOfTheNorthStar: True Saviour Legend''