Hurray, my turn again! Since the last time I was here was to talk about boss songs, I'll be continuing down that line this week too! Guess which game it is this time.
Daidara 8551 (大多羅捌伍伍壱)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiko DS3 | x4 (137) | x7 (205) | x8 (455) | x9 (616) |
| Taiko PS4 | x4 (137) | x4 (205) | x8 (455) | x9 (616) |
Taiko DS3, Taiko PS4, CD Full Combo
111~150
none
ds3bs2The first of the two consecutive final boss songs for Taiko DS3's inventive rhythm-RPG story mode. Without giving away too many spoilers, the basic idea at the very end of the story is to save the world from being destroyed by the Monster King and his accomplice, Daidarabocchi. This song plays during your fight with the Daidarabocchi. In Japanese folklore, the Daidara is a massive giant whose footprints form lakes and riverbeds formed from him running his massive fingers through the ground, and in one legend, was said to have split the peak of Mt. Tsukuba while he was weighing it and Mt. Fuji.
So, wondering where the abstract kanji and the '8551' comes from? The first three are read as 'Daidara' while the last four are numbers, but instead of the simplified kanji commonly used in writing (八五五一), Taiko Team opted to use the highly complicated financial version of the numbers (捌伍伍壱) used in official accounting documents, which are pronounced the exact same way as their normal counterparts. The numbers' original purpose was to prevent forgery of documents since they were very difficult to write to begin with, but are sometimes used in games and anime like this for stylistic purposes. The reason why 8551 was chosen was because of Namco's continued obsession with astrological references, this time to an outer main-belt (the belt of space rocks between Mars and Jupiter) asteroid named '8551 Daidarabochi' discovered by two Japanese scientists, M.Hirasawa and S.Suzuki on November 1994. If you're an astrologist by any chance and you want to know more about the rock, feel free to click here to get to the database entry for the asteroid.
Enough of that though, when in regular Taiko mode it's a very unsettling song with a large portion of the song in 1/24 and the remaining bits made up of 1/16 clusters. In both regards it shares similarity with another Namco Original made at around the same time, Tokoyami no Mori, and is often viewed as a harder version of that song. A lot harder, in fact- the 1/24 clusters will be keeping you on your toes and forcing you to stay focused. The final balloon note requires 60 hits, which is about as hard to pop as the ones in Yami no Tamashii on DS2. Its song ID is ds3bs2, which means this is the second song exclusively made for DS3's boss battles (the first being KAGYUKIYO)
With the accomplice dealt with, let's head to the main boss:
Jigoku no Daiou (地獄の大王)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiko DS3 | x5 (179) | x7 (230) | x8 (405) | x10 (765) |
| Taiko Wii U 2 | x4 (179) | x6 (230) | x7 (405) | x9 (765) |
Taiko DS3, Taiko Wii U 2, CD Full Combo 75~150 none ds3bs3The theme song of the Monster King, the final boss of Taiko DS3. Unlike his minion, the Monster King isn't based on any particular youkai of Japanese legends and is your regular average demon leader/Satan/monster from hell you see in many other media with ghosts and demons as its main theme. Like Yami no Tamashii (DS2 final boss) before it, the vocals used in Jigoku no Daiou (literally, Emperor of Hell) is not Latin, but an imaginary language, however, DS3 has two separate final boss songs instead of just two different versions of the same. The composer is the same person who made Taiko Wii 2's boss song Hikari no Kanata e, which is Yoshito Yano (矢野義人)
Jigoku no Daiou's song ID is predictably, ds3bs3, and the last of the three boss-exclusive songs on Taiko DS3. None of them have ever appeared in the arcade before. The key here is the crazy difficulty. Although not top-tier 10* Oni, Jigoku no Daiou is a strenuous exercise in 1/24 notes and a middle portion of 1/4 clusters and streams. The song is even more evil in tone than Yami no Tamashii, and the notes are arguably harder too. The end portion is especially difficult to deal with as the streams are almost always made up of a mixture of 1/24 and 1/12 making for constant hand-switching. Has many large notes (67 of them throughout the whole song).
