This time around, the music doujin circle IOSYS is on our spotlight, as we take a look at a couple of their songs in recent Taiko arcade history.
Kokihi no Shinzou -SCARLET HEART- (深緋の心臓 -SCARLET HEART- ) Touhou Project × NAMCO SOUNDS - kyo feat. Asana (IOSYS)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (113) | x5 (193) | x6 (400) | x8 (666) |
Taiko 0 Mu, Taiko Wii U 3, Taiko PS Vita
130-143
none
thnkyoDespite IOSYS' prolific Touhou Project-related music production, Taiko games are getting to know this circle more for their Taiko-exclusive songs rather than their popular works of the past. Still, there's always space for some tracks somehow related to the bullet-hell phenomenon, such as Cirno's Perfect Math Class and this one.
Kokihi no Shinzou -SCARLET HEART- (lit. 'Heart of Breathing -SCARLET HEART-') is one of the 4 songs that have been spawned from the NAMCO SOUNDS x Touhou collaboration event that started back to the November 2014's Reitasai event, with the attenders voting for the songs to be remixed by in-house Bandai Namco musicians. One of the winning songs was Septette for the Dead Princess (亡き王女の為のセプテット), a ZUN track coming from the first modern PC game of the series, The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The original song is played during the final fight against Remilia Scarlet (レミリア・スカーレット), a vampire not native of the Gensokyo (Touhou games' fictional world) and owner of the Scarlet Devil Mansion; in Taiko games, she appears with other Touyhou custom dancers as the rightmost character.
Taiko games' remix of the Septette for the Dead Princess features in-house composer kyo (more known in our grounds as the composer of the 'Zero' songs) and singer Asana (あさな) from IOSYS. About Asana, she's a singer/songwriter from Sapporo (one of the main cities in the island of Hokkaido), brewing her desire to create music since the high school years.Since her introduction into the IOSYS circle, she is mainly a singer for some of the circle's songs, while also still making individual music. In rhythm game grounds, we can also hear her voice in the song Spin me harder, made for Sega's maimai series. For other informations about Asami, there's her profile page on the IOSYS website (in Japanese).
As a Touhou arrangement about Remilia Scarlet, the song sings of dark atmospheres tainted of dark red tones, in tone with her vampire nature. The notechart might want to reflect the evil atmosphere built up as well, since the 666-notes Oni chart has an heavy emphasis on Don notes and 1/4 clusters.
Yamatai★Night Party (ヤマタイ★ナイトパーティー) Yuuya Kobayashi (IOSYS) feat. Chiyoko| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (177) | x5 (274) | x7 (505) | x9 (777) |
Taiko 0 K, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko PS Vita 131-190 none yamataFor more light-hearted times we have Yamatai★Night Party, one of the two debut IOSYS tracks in the Namco Original genre. Unlike our previously-featured song, this one is entirely made by talents from the independent music circle, featuring Yuuya Kobayashi (コバヤシユウヤ) as the composer -with MC and guitar solo portions brought by minami- and sung by Chiyoko (ちよこ), with the lyrics written by "President" Yoshimi Youno (夕野ヨシミ). It would be quite hard to surf through this feature if we extensively talk about the origin/formation of ALL the people involved in the song's creation below these lines, so for now we're just forwarding you their profile pages on the IOSYS website.
On with the song, Yamatai★Night Party has the potential -as stated in future posts by other IOSYS members- to be the first in line of a song cycle about historical figures from Japan, with the twist of putting them in weird situations or current day-styled tropes and backgrounds. This song, for example, stars shaman queen of Yamataikoku Himiko (卑弥呼) from Japan's BC times rulers as the singer of a radio song about eating rice and praying for the rain to come, in order to have a good harvest fertility. It even has a fictional radio speaker at the beginning in order to announce Himiko's song!
Both this and the other IOSYS debut NO song (IOSYS Aki no Nikushoku Matsuri 2014) have received an album release as singles, with Yamatai★Night Party receiving both regular and Karaoke versions of the songs' in-game cut and extended version.
Taiko Team leater Eto (エトウ) is the maker of this song's notecharts on all modes, including the latest 777-note Oni mode among all songs in Taiko. Being played under high BPM values for great part of the song, any kind of cluster formation becomes a challenge for your average player, while also throwing slight 1/12 cluster placing for a change in the guitar solo portion.
