Today's feature in store for you is a double-header concerning one peculiar artist who made its Taiko debut entirely on the Nintendo Switch game, partly due to its inclusion into a song genre that is about to become past history, come March...
Omae Butamen! (おまえブタメン！) Oyatsu Company & The Puh (おやつカンパニー＆ザ・ぷー)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (157) | x4 (209) | x5 (338) | x7 (489) |
Taiko NSwitch, CD Watagashi
150
none
butamnThe soon-to-be-terminated Variety genre has had its fair share of CM-related songs in the past, advertising a plethora of different brands ranging from potatoes to yogurt and even insurance plans! The latest member of this jolly family, however, can be treated more into the Namco Original territory, due to the song's original nature and the BanNam-related influence that birthed it.
This is a song that was single-handedly created by the nick-named Machio (街角マチオ), guitarist for the 4-member independent act The Puh (Website; Youtube), in activity since 2014 with its exotic sounds and theremin implementation being their most distinctive band traits. Shortly after the release of the Namco Original song Konamono☆, Machio had the inspiration of making a song that is about the joy of eating small portions of ramen upon hearing the 'Baby Star' lyrics bit, a trivia shared by Konamono's lyricist/notecharter Kawagen Collagen on his Twitter feed (link).
The idea association behind such link is most likely the existence of a brand of snack food -the Baby Star Ramen (ベビースターラーメン)- that is owned and sold by the Japanese food company Oyatsu Company (おやつカンパニー), the very same company who also produces the Butamen (ブタメン) snack food this Variety pick refers to. Both Baby Star Ramen and Butamen are classed as Dagashi (駄菓子) snacks, relatively cheap treats that are most commonly found in children's snack shacks and candy stores in Japan, with Baby Star being chicken-flafored deep fried noodles and Butamen being small cups of instant-ramen, sold in four different flavors -Tonkotsu, Shoyo, Tanshio and Curry- and usually running under the 100-Yen price point. As Omae Butamen (lit. 'You Are Butamen!') is basically a song about enjoying a specific commercially-available product, it was classed as a Variety pick and the Oyatsu Company itself is credited in the song's artist mentions.
A few months after the release of the Nintendo Switch game, the song's first Taiko home, Macchio himself posted on Youtube's The Puh channel an official music video for the song, filming its creator while he's having fun between... loads of Butamen cups and his own song being played on the Taiko game in question. Look at him go!!!
Kawagen Collagen is the notecharter of this peculiar track, rounding off this song's origin-story tale full circle with its Namco Original inspiration track. If you're not busy doing your own interpretative dance/singing performance of the song while playing its Oni challenge, repeating note formation passages and several special notes are the distinguishing trait that players will have to worry about the most. With its comfy average page, it's also a nice place to test handswitching skills at home, too!
ON SAY GO SAY Sho-kun (ショウ君)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (130) | x6 (210) | x7 (308) | x8 (346) |
Taiko NSwitch 130 none onsaygOmae Butamen, the only non-Touhou/NAMCO SOUNDS musician Variety track to be featured among 2018's 8-CD Taiko soundtrack project, was not the last we've heard of The Puh just yet, as another original composition was released as a iece of DLC for the same Nintendo Switch game, this time barging in as a fully-fledged-out Namco Original.
It's also one of the rare istances where I've had to do little to no research work on my part to talk about this piece myself, as a tweet from the unit itself (link) has summarized almost every spicy trivia concerning the song, from the lyrics to the authors/motif! This track stars a digitized singer, the Sho-kun (ショウ君) that is also mentioned in the song subtitle, which is one of the voice banks of the voice synthesizer software VoiceText, developed by HOYA Setup which also had some application in Japanese variety shows, such as Moyamoya Suzu 2 (モヤモヤさまぁ～ず2) which is mentioned in the The Puh tweet of a few lines ago. Machio from Omae Butamen has penned the song's lyrics, while the actual composition job went to the nicknamed AZUpubschool, also affiliated to the same act.
With its low BPM value and musical notation that goes over the singing track of the song, the comparisons between ON SAY GO SAY and veteran Namco Original Many wow bang! are written by themselves, despite the newcomer's shorter length and smaller note count.
As you're about to see, this is not locked to the Oni mode talk alone...
ON SAY GO SAY Sho-kun (ショウ君)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | - | - | - | x10 (621) |
Taiko NSwitch 130 none ???Kawagen Collagen, already in charge for Omae Butamen's charts, has also created the charts for this one song, going one step beyond with this Ura Oni difficulty.
Just like Many wow bang's own Ura, the background percussions are the main background inspiration of this song's chart formation, implementing even more tempo signature change-related passages in between longer and longer strings of notes. Although no 2-player unique charts are to be found, watch out for those two ending jumpscares that bump the difficulty up to the final rating star!
