Today falls the recurring 'Day of the Dead', in many parts of the world. Here are two songs to get right into that mood!
Dead or Die (デッド・オア・ダイ) REDALiCE| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (257) | x6 (479) | x7 (691) | x10 (1096) |
Taiko 0 G
120-240
none
???From the Rewards Shop down to one of the latest Ranking Dojo courses (Green Version's 10-dan, to pe exact), here's a newcomer that has been often times on the news for the arcade firmware that marked its series debut! Dead or Die is the second Namco Original from HARDCORE TANO*C artist Yoshikazu 'REDALiCE' Nagai (永井良和), who is also featured for the very song's official MV, over the independent circle's Youtube channel (link). Who would have thought that sporting a ninja gettup would also be music video-worthy?!
Under the same BPM fluctuation range of former 10-star Oni headscratchers in the likes of Reitoko CJ ～Amen Taiko Brothers～ and Mata Saitama 2000, this beauty of a trail ismade of note clusters to the brim, most of which flowing at the overwhelming 240 BPM value at full force while also providing a trickier half-sped portion whose pace escalation can also be home for many a random mistake. Barring said segment's 'speed catching-up' portion and an immediately-consecutive passage that is reminiscing to 8OROCHI, REDALiCE's first Namco Original for the series, the song's notechart is fully charted under the usual 1/16 tempo.
Kuroi Neko no Uta (黒い猫の歌) back number / Theme Song for the Movie "Rudolf to Ippai Attena"| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (80) | x3 (120) | x4 (253) | x6 (343) |
Taiko 0 Y to 0 G 132 none ???There's a number of ways to which we can adehere to a 'Day of the Dead' theming, from death-related songs or just a simple title referencing, like in the case of the previous song pick. Of course, another kind of 'death' we've got used to talk about is when a song is no longer playable on official Taiko games (or is going to), of which the ongoing arcade line has fished out yet another example!
The latest filling the "never playable again" brigade is the first non-cover song from the Gunma prefecture-based Japanese rock band back number, with one of the few J-Pop licenses that references both the artist/unit that made the song and the piece of media the song was specifically made of. Kuroi Neko no Uta (lit. 'Black Cat's Song'), to be specific, is the theme song for the 2016 CG animated rendition of the children's novel Rudolf to Ippai Athena (ルドルフとイッパイアッテナ), penned by Hiroshi Saito (斉藤洋). The novel's story is about the titular cat Rudolf who got lost in Tokyo from his house in Gizu to the streets of Edogawa, where he meets a number of different characters on his quest to learn his way home, from the more sophisticated cat lady Ippai Attena to a ferocious bulldog who deeply injuried the newly-met feline aquaintance.
This story was published in 1987 by Kodansha as a contest-winning piece of the former year's Children's Literature New Best Artist award from the same publishing house, leading years later to an animated short in 1991 for the NHK's children broadcasting blocks (being later on released on VHS by Pony Video) and to the aforementioned 2016 movie, which brought in over 1.2 million viewers for a box office gain of over 1.460 Yen.
Repeating note stanzas with increments aside, there's not that much to say about this song's 6-star Oni notechart, one of many in the licenses ballpark who doesn't sport a rushed pace despite the instrumental/vocal lead with guitars. Just be sure to hit what you're reading on screen and not what you expect to be repeated right after!
