Once again, I got no ideas for this week's feature song beforehand, so I resorted once again to the kind folks over the Taiko no Tatsujin Discord group for a quick brain-storming. Wanna see the results of that?
Kokorobo (ココロボ) Ujico*| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (98) | x4 (153) | x6 (291) | x10 (620) |
Taiko 0 W, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko +
360
none
kkroboHere's our second pick of the year from the CreoFuga-winning submissions for the World Championships 2016! Geared with a fiercely-high base BPM that can rival the likes of Honey Heartbeat and FLOWER, Kokorobo has been one of the two 10-star Oni songs to be included as part of the last arcade tournament's Area Elimination phase.
The song's composer is Keitaro Ujiie (キータロ ウジーイ), a musician who is primarily known under the Ujico* alias. With his earliest albums being dated as back as 2014, this independent artist 's musical style ranges from fast-paced tracks to 'cute and fashionable' music for genres such as Future Bass, for which he uses the Snail's House alias; an example of this musical vibe in rhythm gaming can be found in Magical, which was included in SINOBUZ, the 24th installment of the beatmania IIDX series. As Ujico*, the artist has found a place in both the BMS song creation scene and mobile music gaming with Rayark's titles, both for solo works (Memory of Skyblue, from Deemo) and collaborative pieces (Vieille Ville, from VOEZ), with Morimori Atsushi (モリモリあつし) as the singer. He's also one of the Taiko song contributors to be a Taiko no Tatsujin player, and a very skilled one on that: even on his own song he managed to accomplish quite astonishing results! Keitaro Ujiie's main Soundcloud page is the primary gateway to all the areas of the Internet that are about the artist himself and his works/social media profiles.
From the original CreoFUGA submission of Kokorobo, Ujico* revealed that the the definitive title of the song came out as a wordplay of Kokoro (心, 'heart') and Robot, as the mechanical-yet-lively song may have been made by a robot with feelings. The original title for the track was going to be DANBO, but the artist had to settle down for a more fitting song name instead. As it was crowned one of the winners of the WCS 2016 CreoFUGA contest, resident Taiko Team member Yuji Masubuchi has expressed his gratitude for the inclusion of such a song in Taiko gaming from an unheard-of genre vibe for the franchise at that point; for that reason alone, he's also been the charter of the song itself!
The first notechart score for the song was originally going to be harder, with the inclusion of way more notes to more closely follow the instrumental accompaniment of the base track; the team's un-named Music Score Leader, however, made it tone down difficulty-wise for the tournament phase it was going to be featured in, with the final result's max Oni notecount being one of the lowest for the current 10-star tier, only superior to Senpuu no Mai【Heaven】. It's still quite the feat to pass Kokorobo on Oni mode, as the low note number combined to its many compound clusters and high BGM value can lead to failures with a smaller amount of errors!
