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Saturday, March 7, 2015

Song of the Week! 7 March 2015


Another new arcade firmware release for Taiko games is approaching fast, which means it's time for an unreleased song feature from among the new ones...

...but eh, we don't need to do that this time. One of Murasaki Version's new songs is already available for Taiko Plus users! Let's see what it is.

 Seishun Satsubatsu-ron (青春サツバツ論) Assassination Classroom
Version
Allx4 (109)x5 (166)x7 (318)x8 (408)
 Taiko 0 Mu to 0 Y, Taiko PS Vita, Taiko +
 146
 none
 ansa2k


The Apple Taiko game already has a share of exclusive content from the recently-brought-to-the-little-screen manga series Assassination Classroom, known in Japan as Ansatsu Kyoshitsu (暗殺教室). Now that a song from the anime series went a step beyond and is now released before the scheduled arcade debut, it seems fitting to reward the stolen thunder with a feature.

Created in July 2012 by Saitama-based manga artist Yūsei Matsui (松井優征) (father of the Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro manga), Assassination Classroom is set in a present-day scenario where a mysterious yellow creature with tentacles single-handedly destroys the 70% of the Moon's surface, and publicly threatens to blow up the Earth in a similar fashion within a year, while also offering a way to salvage the planet. During the year, the yellow alien was secretly hired as a homeroom teacher for class 3-E of the Kunugigaoka Junior High School, where its students are taught both ordinary school subjects and the ways of assassination, so they can kill the incredibly quick foreign creature, save the world and earn 10 billion Yen from the Japanese government.

Up to this day, the manga series is still serialized on Shonen Jump, counting over 10 tankōbon and some video-game recognition in the Sony fighting game J-Star Victory VS and the Bandai Namco 3DS title Assassination Classroom: Koro-sensei's Great Beseigement!! (暗殺教室 殺せんせー大包囲網!!), which is being released in Japan the very next week. With over 4.5 million volumes sold in 2013 alone and over 10 million copies printed overall, it's the 7th most popular manga series of that year, getting nominations from left to right and in general, very positive feedback from its readers. This led to the creation of a 30-minute OVA special for the Jump Super Anime Tour of October 2013 and a 22-episode anime series, which started on January this year.

Seishun Satsubatsu-ron (lit. 'The Theory of Savage Youth') comes from the aforementioned anime series as its opening theme. The song's singing group is quoted as 3-E Utatan (3年E組うた担), since the fictional act is made by many of the 3-E students' voice actors: Mai Fuchigami (渕上舞) as Nagisa Shiota, Nobuhiko Okamoto (岡本信彦) as Karma Akabane, Ryota Osaka (逢坂良太) as Yuma Isobai, Asanuma Shintaro (浅沼晋太郎) as Hiroto Maehara and Aya Suzaki (洲崎綾) as Kaede Kayano. It's also worth noticing that the last singer was the main vocalist for another recent Anime tune, in the Idolm@ster-related song Star!!.

Following the stepping stones of The Other Self, Seishun Satsubatsu-ron on Taiko proves to be a similarly-challenging 1/16 cluster challenge with little to no resting points, arguably easier from the former song for the shorter length and the lack of gimmicky, sudden 1/24 clusters.