Today's regularly-scheduled feature is just as expectable as it may ever get! Hopefully, the next round of fan picks from Taiko Time's "Wish List" will make things spicier...
Christmas Song (クリスマスソング) back number| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (112) | x4 (163) | x5 (269) | x7 (446) |
Taiko 0 Y, Taiko Switch
76.46-77.49
none
bnxmasWith a title like this, we couldn't let this track slip by for the approaching Winter holidays time! Seeing also how we've already greeted one of the unit's other piecess not a month ago under these very lines, we might as well take this opportunity to talk about the Gunma-based act which produced both tracks.
Founded in 2004 by the band leader and lead singer/guitarist Iyori Shimizu (清水依与吏), back number's own nomenclature is to be attributed to the very Shimizu's sentimental life during his high school years. Duyring these years, his girlfriend left him in order to date a bandman, de-facto becoming an ex-boyfriend (or 'back number', if you will) to her. Wearing that status as a personal badge, he started to work on the creation of a rock band that was literally called that way, as a last effort to conquer her beloved's heart back. After two years of matters between study/working affirs of its member and guitarist Makio Saito (齋藤真希夫) leaving, the back number act was finalized with Iyori Shimizu as the leader, his childhood friend Kazuya Kojima (小島和也) and drummer Hisashi Kurihara (栗原寿), who incidentally was a member of the (now-disbanded) band Shimizu's girlfriend left him for one of its members! The act was signed at first at Idolsmith Recordings, while nowadays it's associated to Universal Sigma, counting 20 single releases and over 10 albums to this day overall.
Christmas Song, commonly considered as back number's first true hit, was released as the act's 14th single on November 18th, 2015, a mere 3 months since their previous single (Tegami)'s release. As the song was born as a way to homage former Winter-themed Japanese songs (namely, SPEED's White Love and T.M.Revolution's WHITE BREATH), the track's title was initially going to be titled 'White Song' instead, but as other staffers working for the band have expressed their feeling to such a title being "bruisy" and "too ordinary", the name was changed to Christmas Song. The song peaked the Japan Hot 100 billboard for three weeks in a row, while also ranking quite high on Oricon charts as well (2nd best weekly song and 6th best monthly song being the peak results). Ultimately, the song's digital version has been the first (and so far, only) of the band to being certified as a Million-seller! Several months later, Christmas Song was included in the Platinum-seller album Chandelier, while also being used as the main theme for the Fuji TV drama 5-ji Kara 9-ji Made: Watashi ni Koi Shita Obōsan (5→9〜私に恋したお坊さん〜).
As you may guess from the copyright-dodging audio distrosion in action, Christmas Song's original version has been ported in the Taiko games. While the KFM notechart set is played with a fixed x1.5 scrolling multiplier for the whole track under a linear BPM value, the Oni mode sports a lot of small BPM shifts and some stanzas where the scrolling speed value is not altered at all. Backbeat note couples is the name of the game for this piece: try not to be thrown off by the song's placid mood!
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With our usual Saturday business being over, it's time to play Santa again for the 'wish list' project from the last week. This time around, the featured songs below these lines are requests from the moderators of the Taiko no Tatsujin Discord server (the one we're also in!), whose access link is also available on our blog's Links section on the left side of our blog's bages layout.
Mei (冥) Amuro VS Killer/beatmania IIDX 66-200W̴̡̛̩͍͙̥̭̻̩̟̝̮̫͔͖̝̼̽̐͐̄͑̋̍͋͗͌̈́̿̕͘͠͠ͅH̶̳̻̗̼̜̘̮̞̝͛̏̐̂̈̐̕͝Ÿ̸̨̟̩̲̣̙͙͙̲̖̩̲̹́̑ ̶̤̥͔̮̩͓̗͕̺͕̜̫̠̜̰̄̄͂͛͝ͅW̴̡̨̳̦͈̳͇͖̌̑́̓̓̍̅͐̇͛͗̌̐̈́̕͝͠O̷̧̧̡͉̫̬̘̼̩͚̮̯͉̮̳̐͋̎̇̇͗͊́̌̚͜Ṵ̸̢̢͖̫͍̘̬̪̘̰̺̥̻̯̜͗̒̒͐̀̉̈́͐̎̕̕̚L̷̟̩̳͔̦̘̺̖͇͎̭̻̤̯̻͌͛̊͌͒̀̓̍̄͒͑̽͘Ḑ̸̧̡̡̛̬̦̖̥̼̬̖̲̬̤̪̩̔̓͂͊́͐̈̈́́͊͊̀͘͜͝ ̷̰̋͂̊̍͂̈̅̽̂̓̓̆̓͊͝Ĭ̵̡͖̩̾̓͒̇̌̅̽̚ ̶̧̪̮̹̝̠̻͙̺͉̘̣̀̐̈́̏͌̋̽͐̐̐͑̚̚̕͠͝Ä̸́̿͛̾̎̽̉̈̚͠ͅṢ̶̢̢̜͎͓͎͇͖̳̩̹̖͈̮̟̐́̾̚͝K̶͎̝̮͉̬̮̭̱̬͒̔̂̀̒̓͘̚̕̕
*coff* I mean, we're back to beatmania IIDX fields! Moderator Psyk has picked an iconic boss song from the series, a main staple since IIDX's 12th installment (HAPPY SKY). The creators that are hidden behind the two uncommon aliases area couple of names we have certainly heard of among songs in Taiko: Kyokuken co-composer Takayuki 'dj TAKA' Ishikawa (石川貴之) and Tatsuya 'Tatsh' Shimizu (清水達也) of many a Namco Original fame about dances, roses, wars and Japanese deities.
The former composer as Amuro pens out the song's theme as the tale of a single man's sorrowful fate; from his suggested incipit of the man leaving his family forever on a solitary voyage aboard of a shuttle, he hopes the song's listeners would be able to fill up the blanks of this tale themselves, by letting them be guided by their imagination as it rides along the sound of this music piece. From Tatsh as 'Killer', we further know that this journey is a no-return trip to Pluto, back when it was still classified as a planet; said theme is also hinted by the song's single-kanji name (with '冥' being more commonly used as part of the name 'meiyousei' -冥王星-, the "land of the lord of darkness" to which Pluto was associated to) and its very existence has lead the song to be ported into the DanceDanceRevolution series as part of a song course with other Pluto-related tracks inside (link). Later on, Mei was also included in the second game of the now-defunct Toy's March (トイズマーチ) series (link).
When we usually talk about boss songs in Taiko gaming, we are used to see how some really skilled players make it to perform incredible Full Combo, or even Donder-Full Combo performances in a matter of mere days, with some being cleared in the very first day or within the span of a few weeks. As a testament to the most iconic of beatmania IIDX boss songs' legacy, it took waaaay more time for the best players in order to record at least a perfect play under the fabled 'triple-A' rank. Case in point, the first documented Mei AAA clears were dated almost two full years after the original release of the IIDX game that housed it for the very first time! With 2000 notes for both its charts under the Another difficulty, the song also set a new peak in the highest-notecount departement in series history up to that point. To further solidify its high-difficulty status, Mei has become the final song of the SP-Kaiden course in every single arcade iteration of the series, from IIDX 13 DistorteD onward.
Oosanbashi (大桟橋) Ucchies (ウッチーズ)/beatmania IIDX 84-168It's another IIDX song, this time around asked by sehuny! Oosabanshi (lit. 'Large Pier') is one of the many songs in bemani fields that are brought us by Tomoyuki Uchida (内田智之) and Hiroyuki Uchida (内田裕之), two brothers whose joint works have been featured in both IIDX and pop'n music series.
Of the two, the more experiences of the two brothers is Tomoyuki, with his first contribution to bemani being dated as far back as 1999, being one of the third pop'n music arcade's sound analyzers. In a similar curricular tangent to SLAKE from the last week's feature set (which at some point was managed by Tomoyuchi Uchida himself, by the by!), his main roles gravitated more around IIDX charting, which lead to the creation of songs for KEYBOARDMANIA and IIDX, most of the times under the 'Mr.T' alias
In most bemani games, a group of songs' fictional genre would often tend to group several tunes as part of song series of sorts, over time. Being labeled as a 'JAPAN' song, Oosabanshii has been dubbed the first song in a "Global Travel" rotation trope, which is made out of this and other three songs that have all made their debut on the same beatmania IIDX game (IIDX 11 RED): TOMOSUKE's Les filles balancent (genre 'FRANCE'), good-cool's Move Me (genre 'AFRICA') and D-Crew's Close my Eyes for Me (genre 'AMERICA'). Of these songs, Oosabanshi is the one to receive the highest number of alternate versions from their original creators, including a piano arrangement (for the Dream Line Out band's first album), a long version dubbed as the 'Luxury Version' (豪華編曲), an acapella version and the "Iroha-cho" (伊呂波調) shamisen arrangement, which was made playable in the console version of the 12th pop'n music game, pop'n music 12 Iroha (link).
Dream Coaster Touhou Project Arrange - A-One/Groove Coaster 168Nether of the moderation team has another music game song suggestion... and wonder of all wonders, it's not a bemani-related track! As a link to the wish list rondò from last week, we have another Eurobeat composition in our hands.
When it comes to licensed picks, a golden rule seems to reign supremen among the ranks of Taito's Groove Coaster series' conglomerate track list: "If it's not about Vocaloid, then it's a Touhou Project arrangement", a fair sentiment considering the company's shared history with the indie danmaku game series's creator over the years. Such agreement would often erupt not only with the porting of pre-existing arrangement hits but several made-from-scratch commissioned arrangements as well, with A-One's Dream Coaster fitting the latter category.
This arrangement is based on Eternal Spring Dream (永遠の春夢), the Stage 3 boss theme in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, the 15th main danmaku title in the Touhou series. Bearing ownership of this theme is Doremy Sweet (ドレミー・スイート), a baku youkai whose dream-related powers made her the highest authority in the series' Dream World. Capable of both eating and creating dreams, as well as travel through worlds, Doremy is also the Extra stage mid-boss of the very same debut game, as well as being a playable character in Tasogare Frontier's fighting game Antinomy of Common Flowers, canonically the official "15.5" entry in the series.
Starring the same vocalist duo from the Taiko-ported Endless Seeker, this song made its premiere on the Autumn Reitaisai 2016's Touhou San-Men-Roku (東方参面録) album from Taito, getting a rerelease with the Touhou Masterpiece (東方名曲蒐) album from Reitaisai '19. Both venues feature an extended version of the song, while the game cut is starring only in the former album release, full of other Groove Coaster-commissioned Stage 3 boss themes from many titles in the series. Just like Doremy is an Extra stage mid-boss, her playable song in Groove Coaster has an Extra difficulty setting to boot!
Role Playing Game ロールプレイングゲーム SoraMafuUraSakaThe last one for today is sugested by Nabix, which brings us to uncharted territory for music gaming in general: the world of utaite (歌い手) artists.
With this term are classed those who make covers for previously-released songs (mostly Vocaloid, Anime and Japanese pop songs in general) and post their own rendition online, on either NicoNicoDouga under the Utattemita (歌ってみた; lit. 'trying to sing') category or YouTube. While the majority of utaite singers only do song covers, some will also stretch to original works, parody renditions or a blend of the two, or even join forces with other utaite to perform something unique altogether! Of this very last blend is the original song Role Playing Game, released on YouTube on June 2017 and counting over 22 million views as of today.
Like in many utaite ensembles, the unit name is just an agglutinations of each of the single performers' names; in particular, the four members of SoraMafuUraSaka are the 2008-debutant Soraru (そらる), the Vocaloid-producer-turned-singer Mafumafu (まふまふ), the incredibly-video-prolific Uratanuki (うらたぬき) and Aho no Sakata (あほの坂田), whose most famous cover to date is the very same Christmas Song we've had as today's regular SotW feature!
The four incognito performers banded together for an original eight-hand piece that is all about the life of a real-life group of RPG players, stuck between the strength grind and the hope of keep going forward. The instrumental and vocal mixing were handled repectively by Soraru and Mafumafu, who also handled the overall arrangement. The other two performers finalized the serif script, with Ryusee (りゅうせー) making the background video for the song.
