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Saturday, September 22, 2012

Song of the Week! 22 September 2012


Another single feature awaits, and it is one of the songs from the Taiko Memories poll back in 2011. We have already seen quite a few songs from that list, there's not many left so it should be easy to guess what this song is!

 My Soul, Your Beats!
Version
Taiko 14, Taiko PSP DXx4 (88)x4 (122)x6 (237)x8 (444)
Taiko 0x3 (88)x4 (122)x6 (237)x8 (444)
Taiko 0.5, Taiko PS Vita1x3 (88)x4 (122)x7 (237)x8 (444)
 Taiko 14, 0, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko PS Vita
 143~145
 none
 angelb


There are two types of anime in Japan; the ones that become mainstream and have episodes made every week ad infinitum, and there are the ones which are short and sweet, with a good driving plot behind them. The recent trend has been gravitating towards the faster-paced short anime with only a handful of episodes, and this is one of them. Sung by 2000s singer-songwriter Lia, My Soul, Your Beats! comes from the 2010 anime Angel Beats! (エンジェルビーツ!), directed by Seiji Kishii (誠二岸) and based on a screenplay conceived by Jun Maeda (准麻枝), one of acclaimed visual novel series Clannad's writers, who also composed the music for this anime with the group Anant-Garde-Eyes.

Angel Beats! takes place in a high school acting as a limbo for those who have died, where students learn to give up any lingering attachments they still have from their previous life before passing on. The story focuses on Otonashi - a boy who lost his memories of his life after dying - and his otherworldly experiences after joining the organization Shinda Sekai Sensen (死んだ世界戦線, SSS), or Afterlife Battlefront. The organization, founded by a girl called Yuri, is built in order to fight God for the cruel fates the SSS members experienced in life. However, SSS's main opposition is the mysterious Angel, the student council president who has supernatural powers.

Though the anime's 13 episodes barely lasted 3 months in 2010 (from April to June), the positive reception led to the further creation of a light novel, an additional OVA and two manga series, still running as you read these lines. My Soul, Your Beats! itself - the anime's opening theme - gained a lot of popularity by hitting #3 in the Oricon online charts and the 1st place in the Taiko Memories poll's Anime division. Though it was a 'last-minute winner' being included in Taiko in 2011, Lia's OP managed to capture the hearts of Taiko players almost instantly.

One of the reasons of its success in Taiko probably lies in the drumming itself, as Taiko 14's cover version has quite an effective and memorable chart with long streams, despite the low BPM. The song's Oni chart is still rated 8* even in Taiko 0, and to top it off, its max combo isn't even really that high. On another note, the max combo values of this song match exactly on all difficulties with another anime song -Triangler- which managed to reach the 2nd place in the 2011 Taiko poll. Now that's an epic number pattern if I've ever seen one.