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Saturday, April 30, 2016

Song of the Week! 30 April 2016


In occasion of this year's Golden Week, we're doubling our monthly dose of Ura Oni features with something that's... truly golden-related!

 Dance My Generation Golden Bomber
Version
Allx2 (89)x3 (127)x6 (216)x7 (345)
 Taiko 0 S to 0 B
 133
 none
 dmgene


Continuing a silly tradition of us that started three years ago and is occasionally popping up during this time frame, here's another not-related-to Golden Week song where the gold is surely full-on display! This time, the gold has taken the form of Japanese Visual Kei rock band Golden Bomber, of which we also talked about a few years back (link).

Surfing high on their hit songs' popularity, Dance My Generation has made its debut as a single on January 1st in 2013, roughly two months after their previous limited-release single. Once again, the vocalist Sho Kiryuin (鬼龍院翔) is the main creator of the song, with Daisuke Asakura (浅倉大介) being the song's arranger and Golden Bomber's other members actively participating for the song's coreography, based on the disco music genre. Mixing musical vibes from Japan's bubble era (their 80ies) and the Eurobeat genre, the song managed to become an early-year success story, as it topped at launch both Oricon's Weekly Singles chart and the Billboard Japan Hot 100. At the end of the year, Dance My Generation was ranked 34th in the best-selling singles chart of the year, with over 170k copies sold.

While not being as popular as Memeshikute in rhythm gaming, this song has managed to score additional rhythm gaming outings outside from Taiko gaming, with bemani's REFLEC BEAT and jubeat series. Later on, the song was removed from the arcade lineup of REFLEC BEAT since the VOLTZA version, but the song is still playable on both franchises' iOs counterparts, as well as in the pop'n music spin-off pop'n rhythmin (ポップンリズミン). Much like with Memeshikute, this song is also available on the Japanese 2015 version of Just Dance! In Taiko grounds, despite the sightings of its songID among Taiko no Tatsujin Portable DX's unused DLC data, the song is still an arcade exclusive... and as such, doomed to a never-on-official-games anymore curse, once it got deleted with the Green Version firmware's coming.

Charted by the current Taiko Team leader Etou, DMG's Oni mode fares out as your average bouncy Oni mode, where a parade of small note clusters is leisurely strolling at a calm pace, allowing players to have an easy grasp on the rhythms. The song comes with its own set of Golden Bomber custom dancers, coming from the aforementioned Playstation Portable Taiko game's last DLC pack.

  Dance My Generation Golden Bomber
Version
All


x7 (186/170)
 Taiko 0 S to 0 B
 133
 none
 dmgene


The concept of truly "feeling" the song while playing it on Taiko was also enforced by the J-Pop genre's very first native Ura Oni song (second if you also count the Anime-transplanted LISTEN TO THE STEREO!!).

For one of the official Taiko blog's posts, Etou has claimed that DMG's 2-player Ura Oni is the very first one to be charted so that you can dance at the rhythm of the song's PV, letting players to mimic Golden Bomber's moves while playing this both sides of the peculiar Ura Oni challenge by one person (potentially like this). This, of course, is translated into easier notecharts to accomodate the different challenge layer that the song proposes, with the 2P chart's notecount managing to become the new lowest value for 7-star Oni modes after the One Piece ED FAITH (210 notes) and... well... the 1P Ura Oni chart of this very song!