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Saturday, February 18, 2017

Song of the Week! 18 February 2017


Our second "Road to Song Genres" towards Yellow Version's launch day is here! Have another couple of representatives for the genre colors who first got their Japanese-worded Taiko firmware.

HOT LIMIT T.M.Revolution
Version
Taiko 10x3 (83)x4 (125)x6 (216)x8 (338)
Taiko 3DS 2, Taiko +x3 (83)x4 (125)x6 (216)x7 (338)
 Taiko 10, Taiko 3DS 2, Taiko +
138
 none
hotlim


The first of the color-labeled 3rd-generation Taiko arcade builds, Sorairo pointed at the sky blue as its color theme, right after a firmware whose guiding color was linked to license-heavy genres. As licenses have had quite the lion's share over the years, meet yet another song that managed to mind the generation gap to the modern rating standards!

The arcade-spawned HOT LIMIT is a cover of the namesake 8th single of T.M.Revolution, art name for Shiga singer/actor Takanori Nishikawa (西川貴教). Originally produced by Daisuke Asakura (浅倉大介), Nishikawa started performing in his own musical act since 1995, providing music to many Anime and videogame series (Rurouni Kenshin and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED to name a few) as well as original songs. While the TMR alias (standing for "Takanori Makes Revolution") is mainly intended to be considered as a solo project, the artist's songs are often written by Akio Inoue (井上秋緒) and arranged by his very producer, even after he left his original supervisor role. Nowadays, the artist is still active under the Japanese division of Sony Music while boasting the primate of being the first oriental artist of the Tofu Label project, made to promote the affiliated Japanese artists' works to overseas Western audiences.

HOT LIMIT was released on June 24th, 1998, counting over 900.000 copies sold to this day and being Takanori Nishikawa's second song to peak Oricon charts' #1 position, with the first one being HIGH PRESSURE from the former year. Among its many feature cameos in general media, its latest one is being one of the ending themes used for the 2016 Anime adaptation of the science fiction series ReLIFE, which most likely has been the reason that lead to the song's return as a DLC track for the 2nd Taiko 3DS title after its niche appearances in both arcade and console fronts. The song got quite the cold following on bemani rhythm games as well, with a closer-to-the-original English cover by John Desire made for the DanceDanceRevolution series (link) and a cover-of-a-cover piece for the more modern jubeat (link), sporting a cover of the rendition of the original made by the female-lead HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR act.

With us being on the Internet, we can't spare any details when it comes to viral phenomena of any kind on ths corner! A remix of HOT LIMIT by Y&Co. was used for the Cola Shake (コーラを振るだけ) internet viral trend of hand-drawn animation videos. In summary, the videos will have one character excessively shaking bottles of the carbonated drink and squirting it to the second character (and cream pie to the face is involved too). The original video featuring 2channel characters has since been removed from Nicovideo, likely due to copyright strikes on the song, but surviving re-uploads and derivatives could still be found.

Among the covers of the song is an iDOLM@STER-oriented one with three VAs from the original arcade's cast -Asami Imai (今井麻美), Chiaki Takahashi (たかはし智秋) and Hiromi Hirata (平田 宏美)- singing the song for the Idolm@ster radio series and one of its related albums: June 2008's THE IDOLM@STER RADIO COLORFUL MEMORIES. Flashforward to 2018 and this HOT LIMIT cover was also made playable for the Cinderella Girls: starlight Stage mobile game, no less! (link)

The hardest part in the Taiko no Tatsujin Oni notechart is the two 15-hit streams that opens the notechart, but by empirical testing a player can fail the two streams and still have room over for simply passing. Under the third generation's clearing-focused rating system, the rating is cut to ★7 before coming to iOS Taiko Plus and as 3DS2 DLC.

 O Vreneli (おおブレネリ)
Version
Taiko PSP 1, 2x4 (110)x3 (154)x5 (280)x8 (351)
Taiko DS 3 x3 (110)x4 (154)x6 (280)x8 (351)
Taiko 0, Taiko Wii U 1x3 (110)x3 (154)x5 (280)x6 (351)
 Taiko 0, Taiko PSP 1, 2, Taiko DS 3, Taiko Wii U 1, CD Full Combo
 120~130
 Classic -> Daily/Folk Song -> Classic -> Children
 clsvre


Left behind by the console titles from quite a while, the kid-friendly Children/Folk genre lives on modern arcades as the shortened Children genre, featuring a set of Papa Mama Support-friendly tracks from former Taiko games. With today's feature, we're finally taking a look at the last song of the genre that is still available on modern arcades... and what do you know, it's a song which even wasn't a Children/Folk-labeled song to begin with!

Quite a notable example of what happens when Switzerland and Japanese culture intertwine in popular culture fields, the popular song originally known as O Meiteli, liebs Meiteli (lit. 'O Young Lady, Dear Young Lady') has went on throughout the years by quietly being handed down within generations without any kind of record form, but all the more popular renditions to this song have been originated by a quite curious episode that made it even more popular than the original one! In 1969, during a trip to Japan, the Swiss band known as Kernser Singbuebe (lit. 'Kernser Boys Choir') was asked by some of the locals to perform the original O Meiteli. The request came in a sort of a shocking climate to the band as they actually didn't know it at all, so they had to hurry on writing a sound-alike song for their incoming performance, which in turn has been received with high praises by the audience, up to turn the Swiss song into a popular tune for children.

This version went on until a soldier from Lucerne dediced to publish it in 1910 with a set of lyrics, which became the basis for all the modern renditions. When O Meiteli became popular in the USA as a girl scout song, its title and lyrics were progressively changed by replacing some of the more Swiss-rooted terms with more all-language-encompassing terms, such as the titular O Meiteli becoming O Vreneli (a endearment of the female name Vreni); the renamed O Vreneli came back to Japan shortly after as a children song, retaining that status over the formerly-spread versions of the original song. Flashforward to the Third Millennium and the song has started to leave its stamp into the rhythm gaming scenario, with Bandai Namco's Taiko no Tatsujin series featuring a cover composed by Oogami Masako (大上昌子) and sung by Junko Nishi (西順子), already performing in Die Forelle (also a Taiko arrangement) and for selected pieces of music in the Katamari Damacy games.

A mild approach for Taiko newbies to slight speed enhancements, this song's charts play with small clusters the most while staying closer to the instrumental and singing accompaniment of the song.