Song of the Week! 2 April 2011

 

Finally, we're going to approach the Variety genre! Let's start with a couple of songs, coming from the world of TV advertisements...

Iimondana Furusato wa Meiji Karl no Uta (いいもんだなぁふるさとは 明治カールの歌)

Version
All	x1 (??)	x2 (96)	x2 (137)	x2 (137)

Taiko PS2 4
105~169
none
 curl1


The incredible length of this song's title (which is shortened to just Iimondana Furusato Wa in-game) introduces us to Karl the farmer, the mascot of a brand of potato chips which holds his name, produced by the company Meiji, one of the biggest snack-making companies in Japan. Between 80's and 90's commercials of Karl potato chips aired in Japanese TV, featuring several cartoon shorts with Meiji and his animal friends (here's one of them). And they're being featured as special dancers in the 4th PS2 Taiko game.

Meiji Karl no Uta also achieves the "merit" of being the easiest Variety song ever made. Its Oni notechart (which is identical to the Muzukashii chart) is 2*, a very low star rank previously achieved by only one other older Variety arcade song, Radio Taizou Dai Ichi, and it is the Oni 2* song with the least total number of notes. Its calm and peaceful rhythm is dotted with easy to follow 1/12 beats, although there is one handswitch stream in the end not typical of songs of this difficulty. The song also features a final speed-up zone!

Maneki Neko Duck no Uta (まねきねこダックの歌)

Version
All	x1 (40)	x3 (76)	x5 (157)	x7 (242)

Taiko 14, Taiko DS 3
94
none
 maneki


Back to the 21st century, this song is featured through several ongoing commercials of the medical insurance company AFLAC. The idea behind this ad campaign was to bring together two lucky symbols in Japan together in one mascot, a 'maneki neko' or 'waving cat' which is said to being fortune, and a duck. Thus the adorable Maneki Neko Duck was born! Insurance companies like to make their clients feel safe and secure, and this is just one of their efforts. You can listen to the full song here.

The song is composed by Tatsuya(kun) and Mayumīnu (たつやくんとマユミーヌ). This childish tune surprisingly has many note streams common in Taiko (such as the four by four red/blue streams), and the low BPM means it's good for practice.