Today we have a couple of quite recent Namco Originals to talk about, now that their respective reading key has been made public by one of the artists involved in these console-debuting picks...
241 Deep Learning (241ディープラーニング)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (144) | x7 (237) | x8 (413) | x9 (507) |
Taiko PS4
105
none
???Session de Dodon ga Don has been receiving a lot of new Namco Original tunes, premiering over time through the game's monthly DLC releases. A good chunk of those are credited to artists from StudioGIW, to which we are going back to quite the peculiar double feature!
Roughly around the debut of 241 Deep Learning, the song's lyricist, the nick-named Kami-wa/GIW (祇羽), was eager to share some details about the song's background foundation through his personal blog (link), including the performer credits for the song as well as its set of lyrics. For this dual-vocals song, StudioGIW artist Hisui (翡翠) of many AC0-era Namco Originals fame reprises a double play as both the composer/musician as well as the male lead singer, paired with Yu Kuriyama (栗山叶) from the same independent agency.
The 'Deep Learning' bit of the title refers to the eponymous, multi-layered machine learning method (Wikipedia), a concept upon which is based this quirky song's lyrics structure. As pointed out by the very same blog post, the lyrics are written as to follow the deep learning architecture, as the lyricist himself was happy to see that the 'AI-based' stylish choice for song lyrics has been well-received for void setup, his previous Taiko-contributor track from the Nintendo Switch game's launch window. The blog entry did vaguely mention that 241 Deep Learning has "another set of lyrics is hidden beneath it", intelligible by reading the song according to the program AI structure. This concept was nothing but solifies four months later, when Kami-wa/GIW posted once more on his blog about the song's naming scheme, of which we'll talk about a little bit later on...
Letting the song's Oni chart speak for itself, this is one of the rare low-BPM songs in the NO genre's 9-star Oni range, primarily made of 1/16 charting and a scrolling visual apparel that eases the chart-reading action among many other songs in Taiko of the same difficulty tier.
241 Deep Learning (241ディープラーニング)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | - | - | - | x9 (578/512) |
Taiko PS4 105 none ???241 Deep Learning is also one of the few tracks to have custom 2P charts built up from scratch instead of being wholly based on the regular Oni setting, relocated as playable variants under the Ura Oni setting. the Major difference here is an heavier reliange on longer clusters instead of frequent 3-note bursts, while still retaining the same low scrolling speed and occasional 1/12 mixups from the previously-explored mode of this song. Follow the vocalist's voice you like the most, by picking up the appropriate musical-notation Ura Oni playing lane of your choosing!
142 Toki no Watari-dori (142トキノワタリドリ)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (184) | x6 (285) | x7 (441) | x8 (675) |
Taiko PS4 212 none ???Four months pass by and another song with a similar name from StudioGIW gets adopted into the Taiko family (and starring in the very same debut title, no less!), leveling among fans on speculations to whether are the two tracks related and to whose common elements have to be pointed out for such a correlation. The answer to this riddle, as anticipated, was given by the same Kami-wa/GIW through a blog post released at the end of July this year (link), following the PS4 release of 142 Toki no Watari-dori. While GIW himself is not the lyricist of this song, he could confirm that the title choice for this and the previous song were proposed by Masubuchi Yuji from the Taiko Team, tacking an expression as numbers for both songs' beginning as a reading key for their respective lyrics set.
For 241 Deep Learning, the '241' part has to be read as 'Two For One', an expression used in supermarket sales to address certain items that can be bought in couples for the price of one, such as the "other set of lyrics" GIW was hinting to in order to pursue the Deep Learning theming. The reading key approach is the same for 142 ('One For Two') Toki no Watari-dori as well, regardless of none of the artists from 241 (composer/chorus singer Hisui excluded) not reprising the role for the more recent song. In fact, on the lyrics board and the lead singing seats we got the efforts of different nicknamed artists that are realted to the same agency: Mori Lily (モリ・リリイ) (personal blog) penned the texts that are performed by isao and Suzuki Asuka (すずきあすか), with Hisui singing for the chorus.
Diverging paths from its musical precursor, 142 Toki no Watari-dori sports a similarly-low base BPM that is doubled up for Taiko gameplay purposes, with several x0.5 modifiers to the scrolling speed that make it flow for most of the non-Go Go Time stanzas almost as slow as 241 Deep Learning's commonplace visual notechart flow. If you don't let the speed bumps and the slightly-higher note count scare you, you'll find yourself with another taste of Taiko charting on which 241 is based upon.
