Dash Kappei anime unreleased or potentially lost OST/BGM

Hey beefman32!

I’m glad to see that there’s someone else interested in this topic. I really don’t know if we can consider the OST of Dash Kappei as lost media because the OST/BGM has simply not been officially released.

As you mentioned, several singles and an LP with insert songs from the series were released. This LP is the most interesting of all and is called "Dash Kappei Best Hit Song Collection", which contains 12 vocal tracks. I own a copy of this album and, beyond the magnificent artwork, there’s nothing remarkable. The remaining material are singles and appearances of the opening and ending themes in Tatsunoko compilations.

Anyway, over the years I’ve found some interesting stuff regarding this. Firstly, the composer is Koba Hayashi, who was a well-known composer in the world of japanese commercial jingles and also participated in the early years of Tatsunoko, and there are at least two official albums where themes from Dash Kappei appear:

· MUTEKING ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK (とんでも戦士ムテキング オリジナル・サウンドトラック). This album is composed by Koba Hayashi and recycles at least a dozen BGM tracks that appeared in Dash Kappei!

· Il était une fois... L'Homme OST (Once upon a time... man)
How is it possible that part of Dash Kappei’s BGM appears in a French cartoon? Well, basically because it was a Franco-Japanese co-production produced by Tatsunoko. The composer was a guy named Yasuo Sugiyama. The first time I listened to the CD, I realized there were two tracks from Dash Kappei and I went a bit crazy trying to figure out what had happened. In the end, my theory (which is not confirmed) is that Yasuo Sugiyama is an alias of Koba Hayashi, as there is no record of Sugiyama and also the soundtrack is very similar to Hayashi’s style. The tracks "A l'affût!" and "Danger!" from this album appear in Dash Kappei.

Beyond this, in the Italian DVD/Blu-ray set of Dash Kappei (Gigi La Trottola) released 3 or 4 years ago by a company named Yamato, there are 4 clean BGMs in the menus, including a version of that theme you mentioned in your post.

This is all that exists today regarding the OST of this anime, which, by the way, was tremendously popular in both Spain and Italy due to the crazy dubbing it had (in the style of Samurai Pizza Cats). The reason why they released the entire soundtrack of Muteking and not Dash Kappei in a country where such practice is common remains a mystery. Maybe Dash Kappei wasn’t popular enough in Japan in the 80s.

In any case, I hope I’ve helped shed some light on the topic. In my years of searching, I would have liked someone to have done the same.