Continuing from last week's eulogy to the Tenkaichi Otogesai legacy, today we cover up the last two songs that made it into Taiko gaming thanks to the cross-over arcade music gaming tournament.
Buckle up, 'cause they're both coming from the SOUND VOLTEX side of the isle!
Masakari Blade (マサカリブレイド) REDALiCE / SOUND VOLTEX| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (165) | x5 (294) | x6 (388) | x9 (687) |
Taiko 0 R
194
none
???Today's first pick comes from the second edition of the Tenkaichi Otogesai tournament back in 2015, where the song has been introduced as the SOUND VOLTEX series' newcomer for the qualifying rounds. Its port into Taiko gaming came to be with the next year's tourney, as part of a real-time livestream reveal from the then-AOU (Arcade Operator Unit) headquarters; a figurehead representative from all the participating software houses were invited to drawn which of the 2015 Qualifier songs from the other music series would have made the jump into their own series. Taiko leader Etou picked up the Masakari Blade card, ... and here we are!
Much like Garakuta Doll Play was t+pazo's introductory piece to come to Taiko gaming, this song marks the debut of a later-recurring artist without the intervention of a Namco Original: Yoshikazu 'REDALiCE' Nagai (永井良和), also the artist for 8OROCHI and the recently-released Dead or Die. The artist has made a long version of Masakari Blade for his third solo album from 2018 (AKA), which also includes a remix of the same track made by Rei 'Kobaryo' Furuba (古葉玲).
Despite its 'birthing grounds' as a pro-player tournament competition track, the Taiko porting action for this song does not make it into the top-rating Oni difficulty trend. Bear attention to its intertwining cluster sections, making for an unusually-high hit-per-second ratio (6.11 h/s) among modern 9* Oni picks, though!
Kyokuken (極圏) cosMo vs dj TAKA / SOUND VOLTEX| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (224) | x7 (337) | x8 (511) | x10 (806) |
Taiko 0 K 207 none ???Before ouroboros -twin stroke of the end-, there was another song transplant from another music series that involved two artists for its creation, and you're looking at it right now! Joining the Taiko fair with the 4th Tenkaichi Otogesai, Kyokuken (lit. 'Polar Circle') is the first collaboration project between cosMo@BouSouP (of Hatsune Miku songs fame) and one of the longest-controbuting artist of Konami's bemani branch as a whole: Takayuki 'dj TAKA' Ishikawa (石川貴之).
Born in Tokyo on June 4th, 1975, Takayuki Ishikawa has joined Konami since the early 90ies and currently boasts one of the longest tenure (second overall!) among all the in-house bemani musicians, thanks to both the many major roles as sound director and sound producer to several installments among the oldest music game franchises to date (most notably, beatmania IIDX and SOUND VOLTEX) as well as being the author behind some of the most memorable songs among bemani series to date, from beatmania IIDX's A to pop'n music's Votum stellarum. Dj TAKA's strive to bring classical and traditionally-written music concepts into electronic music has oriented most of his musical production towards the trance and techno styles of music, although its overall musical production (link) has brought him to several experimentations with other genres, touching most of the currently-active bemani series while also composing new tracks for nearly every iteration of the beatmania IIDX series, with the sole exception of the eponymous first installment and its sequel (beatmania IIDX substream).
Alongside with Masakari Blade and the other tracks that have been involved in the Tenkaichi Otogesai tournament along the years, Kyokuken has seen some remix-oriented manipulations in order to offer to SOUND VOLTEX players of the post-Otogesai introduction times an even greater challenge to face off! Starting with Kyokuken itself, its later released Heaven mode (link) offers far more than harder notecharts for Kyokuken, effectively mashing the song with all the Qualifier block songs for the series' 2016 Tenkaichi tourney branch, including the also-on-Taiko FLOWER and Masakari Blade but also the other SDVX-exclusive picks from said round: Harpuia, Black Emperor and Gekkou Ranbu (月光乱舞). Years later, for the last Tenkaichi's Final round, all of the bemani-rooted songs that were introduced along the years with the Otogesai tournaments -Gekkou Ranbu, Masakari Blade, Kyokuken, GERBERA (and its 'For Finalists remix') and Sakazuki (逆月) were mashed up together in order to give birth to the TENKAICHI ULTIMATE BOSSRUSH MEDLEY, suming up five years of crossover shenanigans into one last devilish treat!
Kyokuken on Taiko gorunds is easily the 10-star Oni addition that plays with cluster tempo changes the most, although this is mostly limited to the beginning and ending portions of the play. The longer clusters' pattern intricacy, combined with the unforgiving base speed, are surely the big factor to look after the most, in order not to fall into misread/fatigue-induced mistakes.
