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Thursday, January 12, 2017

Namco Taiko Blog 2 (12 January 2017) - Want to Hear More? Notecharter Interview 10

The Taiko Team's family of features is turning into double digits! For this occasion, Yamaguchi is back with an interview to rookie Taiko Team notecharter Arihotto (アリーホット).

Profile
Joined Taiko Team: August 2013 (with Taiko no Tatsujin Sorairo Version)
Number of charts made: about 30
Skill level: Can Full-Combo lots of 9* Oni songs

In this feature, we come to know that Arihotto is one of the people in charge of the arcade Taiko games's planning since his hiring, as well as filling other roles to improve the series as a whole from time to time.

Notechart Speciality
-Chart difficulty relying on the base song's rhythms
-Mostly based on the bass accompaniment?
-He wonders if his muscle charts's difficulty degree is increasing...

Notechart Production Mottos
Being a muscle player and an attender to private lessons for real Taiko playing himself, Arihotto's chart-creating direction is to forge challenges that are able to let players feel that they're accompaining the base song like if they're playing with a real Taiko drum, while being keen at not drowning the base song with lots of notes in order not to lose the original track's sound.

Sample Notecharts Created
Unless otherwise mentioned, all of these comments will be about the songs's Oni mode.

-) Saa Ike! Ninninger! (さぁ行け!ニンニンジャー!)
Truthful to the source material, Arihotto's approach was to spice up its notechart by adding some fast notes in-between, like shuriken stars that are launched at high speed. This was also the suggestion left to him by the mysterious Soundon M. Buchi (wonder who he is), stating that "If the notes are coming too late, moskitoes won't stop~".

-) Ladystar Wandering
It's a Touhou arrangement... but most importantly it's a fusion track, which was what made Arihotto happy the most for having such a charting task! While other fusion songs in Taiko tend to be more tricky, however, it was the direction of this charter to craft an easier challenge that put more of a focus on understanding its rhythms in order to play it.

-) Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou (とんかつDJアゲ太郎)
This has been Arihotto's favorite charting commission to date, as the old-styled soul music translated into a Taiko no Tatsujin notechart made it for a relaxing yet groovy feeling. One that 'trascends time' for its creator!

-) Ace Attorney 123 Medley (逆転裁判123メドレー)
Finally, here we have a muscle-oriented challenge! For this song, the charter wanted to recreate the cartoon-y tension feeling that is held during the courtroom sessions of the many entries from the source material series, so that the final mallet pound from the judge at the end could be felt more satisfying after the emotionally-dense portions placed beforehand.

-) Anzu no Uta (あんずのうた)
Another song where the difficulty degree is put aside to better convey the track itself's feeling, as Arihotto's focus was to better convey in Taiko form the worries of Anzu in the song. He had an idea of making the notes disappear all of a sudden only to leave note-less stanzas with tons of white bars during the playback portion of the song, but the partially-censored Yama*chi firmly opposed by saying "No, something went wrong so don't do it, absolutely don't do it".

Anyway have you tried to take a look at the forked paths on Muzukashii and Oni

-) KUSANAGI
This has been one of the charter's most satisfying works, as he believes to have made a notechart set that feels one with the base song. EDM music in Taiko isn't that recurrent throughout the series, so the search for the perfect focus went into some trial-and-error sessions until Arihotto himself wasn't satisfied with a background Taiko accompaniment that gives a sense of unity with the main melody.

-) Hikari Are (ヒカリアレ)
Last in line for this feature's comment section is a brief talk about the latest Haikyuu song, more specifically around the satisfying feel of jam-packed note sections and the sped-up big notes in-between, which Arihotto originally placed under an insane x8.19 scrolling speed enhancement! The final product, however, isn't as fast, as *Maguchi toned it down at the 11th hour.

Below is a small list of other songs charted by Arihotto:

Toku Made
Baladium's Drive (regular Oni only)
Database
Dokkin♦ Mahou Tsukai PreCure!
Holding Hands
Itsumo Nando Demo

For the next iteration of this family of freatures, there might be something new to know concerning that Kawagen Collagen fella...

Link to original post

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(In case you're wondering, our former Behind the Drums feature on today's notecharter has been updated accordingly with the newly-revealed charted tracks!)