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Saturday, December 3, 2016

Song of the Week! 3 December 2016


Gangnam Style is one of the most recent and prolific Internet-viral songs ever made, with the related Youtube video counter registering over 2.6 billion views as of today.

Anyway, moving on to today's song, ...

 PERFECT HUMAN
Version
Allx2 (78)x3 (154)x4 (235)x8 (365)
 Taiko 0 R, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko +
 128
 none
 phuman


What may seem an abrupt segway may actually turn out to be leading to somewhere concrete when it's an incipit for a Saturday feature! However, to further understand the links between this recent Variety pick and PSY's worldwide-known song, it's obligatory for us to spend some words about the people behind PERFECT HUMAN.

In activity since 2005, Atsuhiko Nakata (中田敦彦) and Shingo Fujimori (藤森慎吾) are a couple of comedians signed to the Yoshimoto Kogyo entertainment agency who became popular together as the act Oriental Radio (オリエンタルラジオ), often shortened as Ori Raji (オリラジ). While being regular Friday attenders of the Fuji TV Variety show Morita Kazuyoshi Hour: Waratte Iitomo! (森田一義アワー 笑っていいとも!, "It's Okay to Laugh!"), the comedy duo have expressed from time to time their desire to be able to expand their act in something they can have fun by also singing and dancing. Their chance was materialized in 2014 when street dancer and choreographer Hiroyuki 'FISHBOY' Nakata (中田啓之) to coreograph a musical act for a post-Christmas Fuji TV special, and due to the same FISHBOY being a huge fan of Oriental Radio himself, the partnership turned into a musical act that is releasing both original pieces and song parodies since March 2015 as RADIO FISH, a unit whose hierarchic division counts Atsuhiko as the 'Object of Worship', his sidekick Shingo as the 'SHAMAN', a group of composers/choreographers as the 'SKILL-MASTERS' (FISHBOY included) and a selection of backup talents that have contributed to some songs as 'JOKER' characters.

Composed by the nick-named JUVENILE, PERFECT HUMAN is the 6th single of the RADIO FISH act, released on December 18th in 2015, based around an idea that was originally made for an Oriental Radio sketch and being put out in musical form as a mixture of two major inspiration sources from worldwide musical phenomenon of the time: PSY's Gangnam Style (of which the musical rhythms are based on) and EDM based on the style of American electronic dance music duo LMFAO (of Party Rock Anthem fame). PERFECT HUMAN became a Japanese viral hit after been played during one broadcast of the Fuji TV Variety show ENGEI Grand Slam, achieving big peak results shortly after: No.3 on Billboard Japan Hot 100, No.1 on the Japanese iTunes chart and over 35 million views on their official video on Youtube. Shortly after the launch, the song was featured and became the name-giver of RADIO FISH's first studio album (launched on December 23rd, 2015), while on August of the year later a remix of the song was released under the title of PERFECT HUMAN (m-flo ☆ Taku Remember 1999 Samba House Remix).

PERFECT HUMAN's coming to Taiko gaming was quite the anticipated one, as it was one of the very first brand-new licenses that was announced to be released on the third 3DS title as one of its first free downloadable songs; upon fulfilling that coming, the song was also released on arcades and other Taiko-related platforms. In every version of the song, the 4-star difference between Muzukashii and Oni modes is scaled with the latter, harder mode being easy on its notecount while mixing in both short 1/16 and 1/24 note couples and clusters, for a stamina/speed degree that makes it otherwise more eager to be compared to modern 7* Oni challenges.