Even the J-Pop genre has its own console-exclusive songs! Indeed, this March will begin with one of these rare licensed songs.
Tamashii Revolution (タマシイレボリューション) Superfly| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (122) | x4 (214) | x6 (407) | x8 (588) |
Taiko 0 S (promo only), Taiko Wii 3
132
none
tamrevJ-Pop songs on console games would usually be on the arcade as well, and vice-versa. This is one of those songs which remains console exclusive, on the 3rd Taiko Wii game, which covers most of the popular J-Pop from the Taiko 13/14 generation and few exclusives. From the latter category, we had a couple of 8* Oni songs: Ikimono-Gakari's Kimi ga Iru and today's featured song.
Released as a single on July 18th, 2010, Tamashii Revolution (lit. 'Soul Revolution') is made by a 2007 Japanese rock band named Superfly, after the song of the same name by Curtis Mayfield. The act started in 2004 by creating covers of blues songs by Finger 5 and Rolling Stones, and its members were mostly students attending the Matsuyama University. After the group disbanded in 2005, two of its older members - lyricist/singer Shiho Ochi (越智志帆) and guitarist Tabo Koichi (多保孝一) - continued to compose and perform under the Superfly label. In 2007, Koichi officially left Superfly (though still active in the music industry), leaving Ochi the only surviving member of Superfly, who always quotes the names of her past collaborator as part-time composer. The band's popularity lives on today, with all of their studio albums hitting high ranks in the Oricon charts at least once.
Tamashii Revolution is the second song solely composed by Shiho Ochi, as well as the main theme of the Japanese NHK broadcast of the 2010 FIFA World Cup (hence its cameo on Taiko Wii 3). According to Ochi, the song itself was indeed created in order to "lift (the soccer fans') good feelings and tension", with an upbeat pop-rock tune filled with metaphors and second-person speech (very much like VICTORY by Exile, another Japanese soccer theme song on Taiko). This song is the second one by Superfly to be featured in a Taiko game, after the arcade-exclusive Ai o Komete Hanataba o.
Despite the low BPM, Tamashii Revolution's Oni chart manages to throw different kinds of clusters at the players, playing the stamina card pretty well (though the fact that the song is CS-exclusive undermines it a little). It may be unfitting for today's 8-star standards, but the challenge ratio provided can be matched with some of the most recent licenses, even thanks to its generous note count.
