Born in Kobe, Japan on April 1983 (real name unknown), Azu♪ is a freelance composer mainly focused on piano music, which he has studied since age 7. Aside from personal compositions and arrangements, his first works between 2009-2011 were mostly related to videogame BGMs, most notably for the XBox 360 scrolling shooter game Otomedius Excellent. Some years later, after the debut of some of his works on Taiko, Azu♪ began to contribute more often as a guest composer for many albums, both instrumental and vocalized, for emerging Japanese idol groups like Rynryn Midoroppu (Rynryn☆ミどろっぷ). Among his musical preferences are Japanese and Western musicians and bands, as well as classic composers like Maurice Ravel, who have deeply influenced his composition skills. For more information about Azu♪, check out both his website, blog, and his Twitter profile.
Each song has consistently been released one year apart from each other, one for each of the seasons in the yearly cycle.
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Toryu
冬竜 ～Toryu～
| Game | Genre |
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| AC0 (Ura Oni from 0 S) Wii 5 PS Vita PS4 (DL) NS1 (DL) NS2 MP Plus STH |
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★4 (104) |
★5 (188) |
★7 (355) |
★8 (541) |
★9 (687) |
110
furyu (Fu, as in Winter '冬' - Ryu)Previously featured in: Song of the Week March 16 2013
Toryu (lit. Winter Dragon) is one of the first brand-new Namco Originals to be introduced through a software update for Taiko 0. In a past Taiko Blog entry, Ayu♪ described the song as suitable for a very tough RPG boss battle, as its rhythm conveys a lot of intense energy to the player.
Toryu's low BPM allows for creativity with cluster density and length. Toryu has many slow-moving clusters and long streams with 1/12 clusters, and the advantage of having a low BPM shines in the final part of the song, where the scrolling speed is increased (x2 for Oni; x1.5 for the other modes) and effectively made double the original BPM. Even the mood of the background music is changed in this part. On Taiko Wii 5, Futsuu has fewer notes in order to make room for a giant note.
Rarely do you see extremely difficult Ura Onis being introduced on console Taiko (the previous one being Hakuchou no Mizuumi Ura), and this is probably the hardest of the lot. Hardest to Full Combo, that is. The song's first half has more notes and denser clusters with more complicated patterns, but nothing too taxing; and it is this part that makes Toryu Ura an easy song to pass. The real shocker is how much the Go-Go Time speedup changed from the regular Oni chart, featuring even denser clusters; the very first 1/48 beat clusters ever in Taiko no Tatsujin (1/24 on a doubled BPM of 220)! Toryu Ura is currently tied with Joubutsu 2000 for having the 4th densest clusters in the Namco Original genre (45.45 milliseconds between notes!), with the overall champion being Donkama 2000.
Although originating on a console Taiko, Toryu Ura only has a chart on Oni difficulty (along with all other Uras introduced at this point), as Taiko Wii 5's Uras are only playable on that difficulty.
Haryu
春竜 ～Haryu～
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| AC0 S Wii U1 3DS 2 PS Vita (DL) PS4 (DL) Plus STH |
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★4 (168) |
★5 (260) |
★7 (502) |
★8 (698) |
★9 (833) |
218 haryu (Haryu)Previously featured in: Song of the Week March 22 2014
Being Sorairo Version's first Don Challenge prize, Haryu (lit. Spring Dragon) is the second entry in this series, with the exact same difficulty rating as Toryu but based on the season after Winter.
In his blog and on the Taiko Team's own, Azu♪ briefly described Haryu's concepts. For the lively vibes provided by the spring season, he felt that the sense of speed in Haryu should be more tangible than the one in Toryu. The nods to classical music are also more noticeable with Haryu as well: while the song is more eastern in style, there is a small fragment in the middle on the song (referencing the Taiko patterns, before the second speed up) which directly pays homage to Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi's 4-violin set Le Quattro Stagioni, whose 1st concerto is incidentally called 'La Primavera' (Spring)!
Rather than having a low BPM with a sudden, brutal speed burst at the end like Toryu, Haryu does the opposite; an insanely high base BPM with slowdowns in between. It's a simple 8* chart which tries not to use too many 1/16s in the fast parts of the song to make things more manageable. This is also one of the few instances which one Taiko chart is handled by two team members, with current Taiko Team leader Etou dealing with the four standard modes and Kan (カーン) being responsible for a certain extra difficulty layer beyond Oni...
Much like Sword Battlers, which was also on the arcade, Haryu comes with an Ura Oni from the beginning (while Toryu debuted without one; its Ura came into play on Taiko Wii 5). Notecharter Kan wanted to give to this song more exciting patterns. There's no ending killer pattern like in Toryu; Haryu Ura is more balanced, with consistent difficulty throughout the chart and some really tough 1/12 streams which are difficult to survive without a miss, especially because each of those streams have handswitch areas that are difficult to read on sight due to the song's high speed.
Karyu
夏竜 ～Karyu～
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| AC0 K Wii U2 Wii U3 (DL) PS Vita (DL) PS4 (DL) Plus STH |
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★4 (237) |
★5 (346) |
★7 (498) |
★8 (673) |
★9 (800) |
136 karyu (Karyu)After Spring, there's always Summer! Karyu is another Don Challenge launch, this time for Kimidori Version. Just like Haryu, this song includes short extracts from Vivaldi's works from the 4-violin set Le Quattro Stagioni. Appropriately enough, this one is from the second Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315, or more simply 'L'estate' (Summer), the second one from Vivaldi's season-themed concerto set. It's the second song on Taiko to draw inspiration from this particular piece, after the new Classic song Dokadoka, which is an actual remix of L'Estate.
A first in the series, the Oni mode notechart doesn't rely on scrolling changes of any sort, relying instead on consecutive clusters and long streams for some fine hand-switching moments. Karyu's harder challenge, on the other hand, was silently added into Taiko Murasaki's August 5th update, giving the song a much-needed injection of challenge with loads of 1/24 clusters and playing around with scroll speed changes...although those aren't as drastic or combo-breaking as its predecessors.
Shiuryu
秋竜 ～Shiuryu～
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| AC0 Mu 3DS 3 PS4 (DL) Plus STH |
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★4 (226) |
★6 (315) |
★7 (558) |
★9 (750) |
★10 (1045) |
120-194 siuryu (Shiuryu)One year (and a season) after Karyu's launch, the last of Azu♪'s season-themed Dragon songs makes its appearance as yet another Donchare unlock, for Murasaki Version's last month of activity. For the Autumn-related song of this series, Shiuryu is the only one whose English part doesn't literally match the meaning of the Japanese bit, with 秋竜 more literally translatable with 'Akiryu'. So, why is that, you may ask?
Unlike for the other Season Dragon songs, Azu♪ admitted in a Taiko Team blog entry that this one has been the hardest of the bunch to create, as he originally hadn't a clear idea of what kind of sound could give a clear image of Autumn. The idea, however, came with the many celebrations running throughout the season like Halloween, and the lonely feeling that the season itself might leave due to the cold approaching fast. Because of the trick-or-treaty celebration of Halloween, the final Season Dragon has the Japanese part of the title not literally matching the English part, as it has to be read as Shiuryu for a word play, as in Katakana, Shiuryu (しうりゅう) can be roughly translated as "Tooth-uryu", as the body part that is made busy by the younger kids for munching the sweets gathered during Halloween. On the third 3DS game, Shiuryu is used as a mid-boss solo fight against Hexaglia member Matthias.
Of all the season-related tracks on this page, Shiuryu is the only one who doesn't need an Ura Oni mode to have a 9-star Oni rating, made of different cluster formation scrolling to the player at different BPM and scrolling multiplier values. Closing the Ura circle is the third game for Nintendo 3DS, which delivered Shiuryu's Ura Oni mode, a first in the series both for being rated as a 10-star challenge and for the fact of holding more than 1000 notes. The notechart's consistently-high note density makes it for an overall harder Ura Oni to pass than the others, thanks to the many variety of note clusters included.
Kooryu Azu♪
氷竜 ～Kooryu～／ あず♪
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| AC0 Mu 3DS 3 PS4 (DL) Plus STH jibblies |
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★5 (173) |
★7 (241) |
★8 (372) |
★9 (734) |
★10 (1059) |
| [2P] AC0 Mu 3DS 3 PS4 (DL) |
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★5 (173/173) |
★7 (241/241) |
★8 (372/372) |
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194-273 kooryu (Kooryu)The seasons are over, but the will of Azu♪ to continue contributing to the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise surely is not!
Debuting as one of the seasonal arcade Rewards Shop unlocks for Winter '19, Kooryu continues the Dragon genos of is into another direction, this time around with the image of an RPG battle against a fierce ice dragon made into a song. To that end, the BPM choice isn't random either, as the two BPM value extremess employed in the song can actually be read as temperature readings in Kelvin measurement about two of the water states. Respectively, at 194K (or about -79° Celsius) we have the temperature of carbon dioxide sublimation, resulting into dried ice which might be interpreted as the result of the titular ice dragon freezing the scenery around him; at 273K (0°C), on the other hand, we have water's melting point which might as well be associated with the hero's party literally heating things up in order to counteract the fierce beast's powers. This RPG-fight-themed reading of the song is well supported by Azu♪ himself, sustaining how the song abruptly ends with the dragon deploying his ultimate attack, the "Absolute Zero" (絶対零度).
This is the first of the Dragon songs to get quite the passionate advertising from the author, between the public release of some demo versions for it over Twitter (link) and supplying himself an official upload on his own YT channel, penning the same RPG-based story just told about in these lines. Close to such a following beforehand was the right-preceeding Shiuryu, although it got a piano cover upload instead of the original song. This, the preceeding and the following Dragon song are enhanced by the guitar backing of Masaaki 'Sassy' Sasaki (佐々木正明; Twitter), a Tokyo-grounded artist whose guitar contributions on Taiko roar loud and proud in a couple of t+pazolite fan favorites (!!!Chaos Time!!! and Doku LOCANdy♡) as well as PSP DX's Cycle of Rebirth.
There's no surprise on the latter end of the charting spectrum's relentless difficulty servings of Kooryu's latter two steps, but it's a first for the series to show no mercy with maxed-out KFM ratings either! To muster the Ice Breaker title on the arcades means to be really proficient on a number of skills whose extremes were already shown in former season-themed Dragon songs in an evened-out fashion on all fronts, from really dense small clusters to both speed and density changes in clusters to face together. Curiously enough, this is the only Dragon song to date to have 2P charts on non-Oni/Ura Oni settings to date!
Kokuryu Azu♪
刻竜 ～Kokuryu～／ あず♪
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| ACN (Y2) |
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★5 (176) |
★7 (304) |
★7 (476) |
★10 (885) |
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60-240 ???This scale-bound family of songs soars to new heights with its sixth entry, being introduced as one of four pre-final-boss tracks for Nijiiro Version's 2nd year of Ranking Dojo trials and as such, here it is without an Ura just like Toryu before it... but nearly-full-powered on the ratings spectrum from the getgo...
This author-commented "song full of chuunibyou" comes off with a concept about the image song for "a dragon from the future", associating this time the power of manipulating... well, time, in order to achieve such end. With this being the first of Azu♪'s songs to receive official uploads on Bandai Namco's YT channel (both in demo and full-length forms), the most curious bit of trivia we can supply you from the author himself is his suggestion to give chocolate to your Valentine on February 14th with this song playing in the background... No really, don't take my word for it!
No matter the difficulty setting you're tacking and what kind of cluster-spamming degree you're dealing with, every mode of Kokuryu will offer you plenty of scrolling variations to gawk at as the flow of time gets distorted by your figurative breathtaking fiend, alongside three nasty gaps where x8 scrolling and the near-absence of sound might make you panic-miss the sucseeding giant Kat note, flowing at x2 the base BPM speed. Good hearing is key, but if your arcade room doesn't offer the best of fine-tuning acoustics in your immediate surroundings, just count four fast-scrolling timing bars flowing towards you and get ready to hit the Kat not when the 5th bar would approach you at the same pace!
Shinryu Azu♪ & Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
神竜 〜Shinryu〜／ あず♪ &Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
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| ACN (Y3) |
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★5 (228) |
★7 (338) |
★7 (508) |
★10 (973) |
★10 (1365) |
17.06-300 ???In one of the steepest 'rank-climbing' antics within Taiko music boundaries, the next step of the Dragon songs was to move from the end of the Kurouto/Expert course in Nijiiro's 2nd Ranking Dojo year... to the very peak of difficulty as the final Tatsujin course trial to overcome just the year after! The feat is accomplished with a song to 'recap' all former Dragon songs, but with a stronger meaning to its setting than just a cool fight scenario...
Shinryu comes out as the labor of love of two distinct people sumrised in the Japanese wording of its title, with the familiar 'Dragon' (竜) standing for Azu♪ and the ominous God (神) for Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki, in another of the "reunion after a very long time" stories embedded in Taiko song form. Back in the early 2000s, both artists were actually part of the same independent unit by the name of Serenade (セレナーデ), founded on March 14th, 2004 together with the nicknamed supply and disbanded since a very long time ago. With the unit's last mini album starring the two -growl- going as back as April 2013, it's almost been ten years since the two former band members joined their efforts together to bring the most daring of Taiko players one step away from God himself!
As mentioned before, Shinryu dotes itelf in being a godly amalgamation of all Dragon songs before it, starting from a Kokuryu-resembling base with choirs than flashing before your eyes in the middle portion as time warps itself (Kokuryu) to make you flash before your ears the seasons of Spring, Summer and Autumn (Haryu/Karyu/Shiuryu), and then fastforward again to now just to hear briefly the echoes of Winter and its cold (Toryu/Kooryu) before returning to face the present threat. Non-Ura charts make it a bit easier to make such an association as note patterns calling to the ghosts of Dragon charts past are partly replicated in all applicable portions, but the landscape of its Ura Oni is a hell of its own, taking nearly every single inch that upper limit of 300 BPM can grant in order to pulverize most of its daring challengers.
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