Oh spare me the condescension, Dantis. It means everything. The whole point of her character is that she subverts the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype and is actually quite spirited in personality. Reducing a character to their spell element? Bro, do you even know why she gets Fire skills in the first place? It's a core element (lol) of her character. She even outright mentions hating her name (it means Snow child). Her Persona clearly represents her true self, and unlike the other characters her element choice is extremely relevant to her character.
So no, a "cold" theme would never work because it would clash hard with her character. Not to mention it would clash with her moveset aesthetic, which is literally all about fire (do you even fighting game?). Her current theme is fine (good even), and your suggestion that it should be more aggressive is completely ridiculous. Like why??
Okay, so, I only just saw this, and it's a weirdly scattered response. So let's break it down.
So, first of all, her Persona doesn't really represent her true self. It respresents an aspect of her. Yukiko gets fire as her element because it goes against the player's initial perception of her, and it links in nicely with her design and her name and whatnot.
So when we say a cold theme wouldn't work because her element is fire, it's at best reductive, and at worse redundant.
Yukiko is a cold character. It's just a fact. She's distant and lonely and absent minded and quite scathing. When people get to know her, they discover that she's this doofy, passionate person, and that warmth is what comes through as the fire element. But that aspect, to me, is quite a nuanced one, compared to the large one, which is this quite romanticised beautiful, hardworking and traditional Japanese woman.
I suppose, if I really considered it, I'd want quite a cold, cool sounding track that warms up during the chorus. That would fit Yukiko, I think.
And as far as representing characters, I feel like you have the wrong idea. I'm not a composer, and I'm not claiming to be, so my ideas are just spitballing. The larger point is that the themes just don't fit the characters like they should, and some broad compositional choices which I would have thought were no-brainers (How does Kanji not have a metal theme?) are completely absent.
Killer Instinct did what I'm talking about wonderfully, and due to its two composers (Celldweller and Mick Gordon), presents two completely different takes on the idea.
Listen to Mick Gordon's
theme for Glacius.. Now if I tell you that Glacius is an ice-based alien character, can you honestly tell me that his theme isn't
fucking perfect?
With Celldweller, it's a different situation, because Celldweller has a specific sound that people associate with his sound, so there isn't as much variety, because it has to be Celldweller music, but it still encapsulates the character. Check out
Arbiter's theme. Not only is it a tremendous piece of music, it's so deeply rooted in references to both Arbiter and Halo.
Now compare it to RAAM's theme. It's all organs and guitars, because of course it is, because that's like Gears to a tee.
Now let's loop it back to Persona Arena. How does this represent Naoto? I don't see it at all.
How does this fit Mitsuru? All the tracks start with some (I think synthesised?) guitars, and then bust into Kitajoh's really ugly full on synth instruments.
So the issue isn't with one specific track, it's with, like, all the tracks. It's with the way the OSTs were approached. I know I've been saying it a lot lately, but it could have been done better.
