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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Song of the Week! 30 June 2012


After a month without covering a Namco Original, let's go back once to Taiko no Tatsujin's largest genre. Here is one unforgettable console Taiko theme song!

Nanairo Harmony (七色ハーモニー)
Version
Allx3 (101)x3 (168) x5 (249)x7 (493)
Taiko 11, Taiko DS 2, CD 2008
145
none
 ds2op

Today's featured theme song may not have had the opportunity to spread far and wide like Densetsu no Matsuri and Mekadesu, but is still one of the best known themes of the portable Taiko games. The musical journey told by Nanairo Harmony is composed by Oogami Masako (大上昌子) and sung by Imai Asami (今井麻美), whose later contributions to Taiko include Tenyou no Mai.

Nanairo Harmony (lit. Seven-Color Harmony) is the opening theme of the second Nintendo DS Taiko game, in which Don-chan had to conquer the dojos of the seven islands in order to bring back a musical harmony to the archipelago. Later on, Nanairo Harmony became unlockable in the eleventh arcade through a secret code, joining its predecessor Kimi ni Touch. It is the most recent console theme song to hit the arcade, all subsequent ones from DS3 to Wii 4 have been left out. The main reason it gained quite a sizeable following was due to several factors; the song's upbeat nature fit the 'happy adventure' story mode perfectly, it has a fun and very playable notechart, and it was the very first thing everyone listened to as soon as the official site for DS2 was opened to the public, which really set the hype train going. Not many official sites place the theme song as the background music from Day 1.

Nanairo Harmony's medium range BPM value makes the Oni chart very manageable and fun, with lots of 3 and 5 note clusters for practice. There is a short stream after the first chorus of the song which is probably the only thing standing in the way of a full combo and may take a few tries. According to a Taiko Team blog entry explaining the SongIDs (link), the original ID for Nanairo Harmony was 72cm, which sounds like a short version of the game's long title: Nanatsu ('72' if read in numbers) no Shima (shorted with 'cm') no Daibouken. However, the old Taiko Team leader Takahashi-san was quite upset about how difficult it was to understand, and changed it with the more suitable ds2op, or 'DS2 Opening'.