Song of the Week! 16 May 2020

Once again, we got three tracks among the leftover CreoFUGA winners... Hang in there, we're almost done!

 DIMENSIONS

Version
All	x4 (82)	x6 (120)	x8 (354)	x9 (535)

 Taiko 0.5, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko Wii U2, CD CC-8
 251.84-252
 none
 dimens


It took us quite a while but here we are, talking about the very last song among the first song-creation contest's winners! Originally submitted for the CF contest under the title of 'DIMENSIONS - ProgreRock' (DIMENSIONS - プログレロック), this guitar freeform-affine composition was made by the nick-named DUNKEL, a Japanese composer whose nick is the German word for 'Dark' and whose musical genres of choice are symphonic metal and (of course, given this song's first title!) progressive rock.

Being a winning entry from the first CF contest, there's no such thing as author's comments on the website at all, but the Taiko Team used to invite all four the original winners to pen their impression in a series of interviews for the discontinueed Taiko Team blog (archived link here). For DIMENSIONS' creation, DUNKEL held two key flairs in his mind for its final product: stylish and aggressive, while picturing a fast-moving scenery on the background such as the ones featured in fighting Anime shows. In the same interview, the author really appreciated the boost of visibilty he got with the Taiko-heated competition's victory and even declared to have his own website and doujin circle page up in the works; however, no such thing has been posted on the Internet (or, as far as we know, it's not active anymore at the very least). This guitar-based composer, however, has tried his mettle in the Taiko fore once more... and on the just-closed Faith Creation contest too, with the song ENTRANCE.

Yuji Masubuchi's Oni chart for this song plays a lot on its irregular rhythms in order to deliver a load of note clusters in lots of different flavors, all while the song's base BPM values are artificially halved with scrolling speed modifiers. Keep a faster drum-hitting pace for the final cluster passage, if you don't want to score some unfortunate last-second misses!

 Yozakura Bladerz (夜櫻ブレヰダアズ) Ponkichi

Version
All	x5 (186)	x7 (270)	x8 (424)	x9 (567)

 Taiko 0 S, Taiko Wii U2, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko PS4, Taiko +, CD CC-2
 119.45-167
 none
 4396bl


Back in the day, we used to call this one song 'Yozakura Braiders' due to its Japanese title's reading ambiguity a-la Night of Knights, but thanks to its more recent re-release on the PS4 Taiko game, we got a localized name for this chiptune Japanesque hybrid piece that settled all doubts once and for all!

In order to come up with this song's theme, its creator -the nick-named Ponkichi (ぽんきち)- was lead by a simple image association with the Taiko series' main motif. Taiko is about Japanese drums, so what can else can invoke Japan's imagery than one of its most distinguishable natural elements, such as blooming cherry blossoms? With a blend of techno-pop, soul R&B and, according to the author, 'a bit of sex appeal', the song was made to present the cherry blossom imagery as stylishly and dignificate as possible, catching the praise of Taiko contest judge Yuji Masubuchi in the process due to the stoic imagery invoked in his mind. As pointed out by Ponkichi himself, the 'Mairimasu~' vocal bit was supplied by Rin Hizuki (緋月りん).

Little else is known about Ponkichi aside from his contest winning bit and the few lines left on CreoFUGA's author profile, that mainly being a songwriting-only artist with a past of performing music with Electone players. The only other entry left to the website from Ponkichi is a long version of the song Furuki Tabibito (古き旅人) (link available until CF is active), a song with which the artist has joined a bemani song-making competition aimed for songs to be included in pop'n music 20 fantasia, which unfortunately for the artist ended with a loss.

Among all the songs ever released in the Taiko no Tatsujin series to date, this one has the unique distinction of being the only one whose title bears both Hiragana and Katakana letters at once!  Charted by Kan (カーン), its Oni mode plays a lot ontempo signature changes for its clusters, much like DIMENSIONS but at a lesser degree considering the song's longer length. One really nasty 1/24 cluster and generally note-packed Go-Go Time portions, however, are what made the mode stand tall in the 9* genre despite the lower-than-the-modern-norm note count, stretching just to reach the reverse Nam-Combo value.

 Asagao (アサガオ) BTB

Version
All	x4 (122)	x5 (172)	x7 (394)	x10 (765)

 Taiko 0 W, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko +, CD CC-5
 220
 none
 asgbtb


While nearly all the Taiko-endorsed song contests thus far have been made only for Japan residents, the World Championship 2016 competition also allowed overseas Asian composers (more specifically, from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Koreas) to join the fray with their separated division, with only one name standing tall among the rest. Considering that said composer also had his birthday yesterday, this feature doubles up as a belated gift!

The CF song entry for Asagao (lit. 'Morning Glory') leaves little to no impressions from its creator, one who we can still talk a bit about due to his more prominent presence on the Internet! The nick-named BTB (Personal/Composer Twitter; SoundCloud), standing for 'Ben TinyBunny', already has made a name of his own, thanks to a number of songs created for BMS-oriented competitions as well as a handful of tracks that made into official music gaming, aside from Taiko's Asagao. A few years after landing the drum-based victory, BTB has been found in both Dynamix (Fernand System Operating!!) and Muse Dash (Creamy Sugary OVERDRIVE!!!) and, like DUNKEL and other former CF contest winners, he's back at it again for the just-ended Faith Creation Taiko contest, with the submission of the song Niji no Muko-gawa e (虹の向こう側へ, lit. 'To the Other Side of the Raibow').

The song's gradually-increasing complexity has won the graces of the Taiko Team's Yuhei Etou, who was also left in his Judge's Impression comments wondering just what has lead BTB to the choice of 'Asagao' for the song's title! While the mystery still lives on, Marimo Institute (まりも研究所) of the Taiko Team was commissioned to the creation of the song's Taiko charts, with Oni in particular relying on repeating note stanzas and some scroll speed changes for a Nam-Combo challenge that would feel right at home with the latter years of the numbered Taiko arcades' life span.