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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Song of the Week! 5 April 2014


Today is Namco Original time, and we're featuring one of the newest songs from the genre, coming from Taiko Wii U!

 Alexander no Theme (アレキサンダーのテーマ)
Version
Allx4 (130)x5 (247)x8 (537)x8 (644)
 Taiko 0 M, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko Wii U, CD Tokaigi '16
 90-120
 none
 alexan


The HD arcade has been adding console debut Namco Originals on their Don Point unlock list since it was first released. Kayou ~Flourishing Blossoms~ on Taiko Katsu-Don, for instance. This is another such tie-in, this time featuring Taiko Momoiro and Wii U.

Both the title and the song's lyrics refer obviously yoan important historical figure: Alexander III of Macedon (commonly known as 'Alexander the Great'), the king of Macedon whose kingdom became one of the largest empires in ancient history, thanks to a streak of successful military campaigns throughout Egypt, Persia and Asia. The pressure of the ruler to conquer new lands so as to not be conquered by other kingdoms is also felt in this song's lyrics.

Alexanderno Theme's creation involved two people: bermei.inazawa as the composer and Shirakami Mashiro (白神真志朗) as the song's singer and lyricist. The latter is a composer/VJ from the Okayama prefecture, whose Internet celebrity status started two years ago after his debut as an 'utaite' (a singer who posts videos of himself doing covers of popular songs) on NicoNico Douga. He is part of a two-man electro rock unit called Stella Thinkers (ステラ・シンカ), as a singer, composer and bassist. As for Mashiro, he made some music arrangements from ZUN's works and Vocaloid compositions as well, about three of them. He is also the bassist in all Vocaloid songs made by Jin!

Much like Toryu's Ura Oni, Alexander no Theme's main gimmick are the 1/48 clusters of two Don notes, inserted into almost every beat throughout the song, and despite being easy to pass overall, those clusters are extremely disorientating; it's not an easy song to FC. The cluster is also the densest in all of Taiko, with the gap between the two Don notes being 41.67 milliseconds, on the same level as Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu Ura Oni. It's much slower than Miku however; thus the scroll is sped up to 1.3 times its BPM to make those clusters visible.

For Dokodon! Mystery Adventure's Story mode, Alexander no Theme is the 2nd solo mid-boss fight that is used while battling Arnorld from the secret society Hexaglia.