Our foucs for this ending week surely focused around the HARDCORE TANO*C circle's artists... So it only makes sense to end it with something from there as well!
Toymatic☆Parade!! (トイマチック☆パレード!!) DJ Genki| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (227) | x7 (337) | x8 (575) | x10 (851) |
Taiko 0 B, Taiko PS4
220-280
none
???A quick browse throughout this week's content is enough to reveal once again that three composers/units from the aforementioned music game-affine circle have lent their talents for a second Namco Original of their own (or with other people's involvment). We've already talked in length about aran and Massive New Krew as their first works have birthed the God Collection series of NO songs (click here!), so today we're going for the trifecta's closure with the remaining artist's debut Taiko work.
Born on July 23rd, 1990, Genki "DJ Genki" Hikota (彦田元気) (official website) is a Japanese producer of -core music (mainly UK hardcore) and J-Rock, being often involved in shared works with different doujin circles as well as genre music experimentation under different aliases, including Gram (symphonic psycore) and CapsColte for female-lead vocal pieces. As the owner of the SKETCH UP! Recordings label, he has published 8 different albums as of now, with some of his music also being shared on his official SoundCloud profile and YouTube channel.
DJ Genki has been another artist whose fond appreciation for music gaming has heavilly influenced his own career direction, being a pop'n music player since his elementary school years up to perfecting his skills with the beatmania IIDX series. Not to mention that one of the franchise's many original songs -the infamous Mei (冥) - ultimately was the factor that impulsed his drive into the creation of original music!
With his music gaming past so intertwined with bemani's series, it's easy to assume how his earliest otoge cameos lie within these series, from the just-namedropped pop'n music (Unmei no Paradox) and IIDX (Sweet Radar; GuNGNiR) to some of the more young (and in some istances, discontinued) series under the Konami-endorsed household: GITADORA (The Town of Sunrise; We Go Down), jubeat (Koi no Reset Game!!!!!), REFLEC BEAT (Get Future) and SOUND VOLTEX (Candy Star). DJ Genki can also be spotted on foreign grounds in the past few years, including Taito's Groove Coaster series (MIRACLE PARTY) and even Anime series' musical side, including the ending theme You Only Live Once from Yuri!!! On ICE.
Filled to the brim with stock voice clips that many music game enthusiasts may or may not already heard of in other tracks beforehand, Toymatic Parade's Oni difficulty has carved for itself a cozy 10-star comparison niche in between the Ura Oni for Swan Lake and !!!Chaos Time!!!, an harder take on the former's 1/16-based single note section at absurdisly-high BPM values and hi-density mono-color clusters while at the same time being an easier approach to the latter song's wacky scrolling speed changes.
