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Saturday, December 17, 2011

Song of the Week! 17 December 2011


Another week, another song! And just one more week before our Christmas feature....get ready to be surprised then!

Ao no Senritsu (蒼の旋律)
Version
Taiko 0, Taiko +, Taiko Wii U 1, Taiko PS Vitax4 (168)x6 (231) x7 (459)x9 (933)
Taiko PSP DXx4 (168)x6 (231) x7 (459)x10 (933)
Taiko 0, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko Wii U 1, Taiko PS Vita, Taiko +, CD Donderful
196
none
 aonose


Ao no Senritsu is PSP DX's spotlight 10* Namco Original song, and its tunes resemble the energetic vibe of the no Mai songs. Except Zeami isn't involved this time. Ao no Senritsu (literally, 'Blue Melody') is created by a totally different set of people. Its singer is Sariya-jin (サリヤ人), who was interviewed in Taiko Team's blog before this, and her voice was good, so she's definitely a keeper in Namco's circle of vocalists. In fact, two new songs in Taiko 0 were done by her as well (Chiheisen no Aeolia and Marble Heart). The composer is simply called Aile (pronounced 'eilu', not 'ah-ilu', avoiding confusion with a certain popular game series mascot)

The concept of the song was simple: to have an exciting, rousing beat which makes you want to dance and drum along to. Ao no Senritsu's theme also suggests this idea as well: its lyrics centers around dejection and hopelessness, pointing to dance and dreams as the only solutions to this desperate situation, similar to the themes explored in Senpuu and Tenyou no Mai. Eto wanted the song to be something players actually wanted to challenge (which would be the obvious case for any 10* song), and so its notechart features lots of multiple note streams with lots of Don notes, akin to other fast-paced songs around its level like mint tears. To be honest it would have still been perfect for a 10*, but nevertheless it lost its ranking in the new arcade.

Ao no Senritsu (蒼の旋律)
Version
All


x10 (976)
Taiko 0, Taiko Wii U 1, Taiko PS Vita, Taiko +
196
none
 ex_aonose


And Namco's reason for dropping Ao no Senritsu's difficulty by 1 star is made clear; because this Ura Oni was going to replace the old chart as the new 10*, and this just continues the pattern set in Taiko 0; of the three new 10* charts released so far, all of them are Ura difficulties!

If you thought Ao no Senritsu's barrage of notes were already difficult to cope with, this just makes things even worse. Although the general pattern of the notes remain largely unchanged, a lot more color was introduced to this new chart, featuring a lot more variegated clusters a la Detarame Mode style, but more organized. 3 becomes 5, 5 becomes 7, and there's several places with 11-note clusters or even longer. It may not be the toughest 10* Ura around (especially with the new standards seemingly making ninja speedup notes almost mandatory for 10*), but it will give you a good run for your money if high speed songs are not your specialty.