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Saturday, January 26, 2019

Song of the Week! 26 January 2019


Ura feature time, this time drawing from the Anime song genre's pool!

 Aozora no Rhapsody (青空のラプソディ) Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
Version
Allx3 (60)x4 (82)x5 (245)x8 (510)
 Taiko 0 Y, Taiko +
 270
 none
 maidra


One of Yellow Version's original-version licenses, Aozora no Rhapsody (lit. 'Blue Sky Rhapsody') is the opening theme for early-2017's Anime adaptation of mangaka Coolkyoushinja's Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (hepburn: 小林さんちのメイドラゴン). Considering the song's name, it would have been extra fitting for its Taiko debut to have occured during the ongoing, blue-themed arcade firmware cycle!

Serialized in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine from May 2013 to this day, this is a slice-of-life story starring the titular office worker Kobayashi and a number of different mythical creatures, most prominent of which being shapeshifting dragons. One night, in the middle of a forest, Kobayashi happens to find one of these dragonkins as the result of an after-party binge stroll, earning the upmost gratitude after pulling out a holy sword from the dragon's back. The day after, Kobayashi finds again that dragon, named Tohru, at her house's front door, offering to the office worker to become her personal maid as a token of gratitude. Having forgotten all the drunken shenanigans from the last night, Kobayashi agrees in the end to the offer, leading to the coming of more supernatural beings and events occuring in her town and household.

To this day, the series counts seven Tankobon releases and two spinoff stories from the point of view of other dragons in the series: Kanna's Daily Life and Elma's Office Lady Diary. Between January and April 2017, the main story has received an Anime adaptation from Kyoto Animation, the same company who also released an OVA for the series on September of the same year. The opening theme was composed and performed by the 2012 J-Pop band Fhàna, with band lyricist Hideki Hayashi (林英樹) penning its lyrics set. Outside from Taiko gaming, this song can also befound in Sega's CHUNITHM series (link).

Taking a page from God Eater Anime OP Feed A, the song's base BPM has been left the same, with only non-BPM-interfering scrolling changes being applied across the song, making of this song the Anime pick in Taiko with the highest base BPM value, topping the very same Feed A! The beginning and end portions of the song are reminiscent of Yuugao no Kimi's scrolling speed thrills that make even the most regular of 1/16 charting sections really tense to play, but the x0.5 scrolling speed sections don't have to be underestimated as well, due to the taxing handswitching clusters being stacked one after the other!

  Aozora no Rhapsody (青空のラプソディ) Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
Version
All---x9 (486)
 Taiko 0 Y, Taiko +
 270
 none
 ???


Aozora no Rhapsody's Ura Oni chart pits its players to a different kind of challenge, starring a 1/12-based set of notes that more closely follow the underlining swing-ish rhythms of the song. As a result, we get a no-scrolling-alteration challenge where it's easy to miss notes not for the sheer amount of hits to land but rather for the unusual timing gaps between each note.

After Garakuta Doll Play, this is also the latest not-Sou-Uchi chart whose Ura Oni notecount is lower than the regular Oni's!