As this is the last Saturday before the next Taiko generational leap, it's also time to wave goodbye to the green-labeled Variety genre, one of those that was born halfaway in the numbered-era Taiko arcades which is going to be merged with the Game Music genre from Nijiiro Version onwards.
What better sendoff to its legacy can we pen for it if not with the one song who broke multiple all-timer feats in the whole franchise's collective music collection history?
Hypnosis Mic -Division Battle Anthem- (ヒプノシスマイク -Division Battle Anthem-) Division All Stars| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (398) | x6 (621) | x7 (1229) | x9 (1608) |
Taiko PS4, Taiko NSwitch
128
none
hypmicBuilding up from the 7-to-14 arcade Taiko generation, the 'colored firmware' ensemble we've been through for the past nine years has been a showcase of how much the bar for playable songs was risen up in many an aspect. Difficulty, playable song length, notecount, charting/BPM flairs... these and many more aspects have seen both new all-time lows as well as all-time highs inside the third Taiko arcade generation, even with multiple contenters stealing the feat a few years after! The crowning example of this trend is with the following song, a multiple record-broker in lots of all-time Taiko feats.
This behemoth of a composition for the soon-to-be-absorbed Variety genre comes from King Records' Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- (ヒプノシスマイク-Division Rap Battle-) multimedia rap project, started on September 2nd, 2017. Featuring character designs from Idea Factory's Otomate label with a story scenario penned by Yuichiro Momose (百瀬祐一郎), this franchise's setting pits a number of fictional male rap bands from Japan's many prefectures against each other, in order to establish the very best one's musical supremacy over the pop world through a number of projects that intertwine with the real world's media reception from the public, from real-life record sale fights of the single units' albums to a number of media that involve multiple opposing rap trios at once such as live events and additional media: three separate manga series from 2019's end, a mobile music game and an Anime series by Aniplex, both slated to release later this year.
The male performers in the Hypnosis Mic are all professional voice actors, grouped into rap crews of 3 members each that are all coming from different Japanese prefectures. The original HypMic lineup from 2017 counts 4 rap crews, whose members' voices can be heard in the Division Battle Anthem songs that is also featured in Taiko gaming: Ikebukuro's Buster Bros!! starring the Yamada brothers Ichiro (CV: Subaru Kimura), Jiro (CV: Haruki Ishiya) and Saburo (CV: Kohei Amasaki); Yokoama's MAD TRIGGER CREW with Samatoki Aohitsugi (CV: Shintaro Asanuma), Jyuto Iruma (CV: Wataru Komada) and Rio Mason Busujima (CV:Shinichiro Kamio); Shibuya's Fling Posse counting Ramuda Amemura (CV: Ryo Sekoguchi), Gentaro Yumeno (CV: Soma Saito) and Dice Arisugawa (CV: Yukihiro Nozuyama); Shinjuku's Matenrō with Jakurai Jinguji (CV: Sho Hayami), Hifumi Izanami (CV: Ryuiji Kijima) and Doppo Kannonzaka (CV: Kento Ito). In occasion of the project's second anniversary, two more crews were added from Nagoya (Bad Ass Temple) and Osaka (Dotsuitare Hompo), bringing the total number of VAs involved in the project to the ongoing number of 18.
The Division Battle Anthem song from the multimedia project's first album release -April 2019's Enter the Hypnosis Microphone- features the original four crews' members as singers, with the base song being composed by the nickanmed duo invisible manners, consisting of Daisuke Hirayama (平山大介) and Fukuyama Sei (福山整). Much like with Roki, the song has received a semi-simultaneous DLC release on the Nintendo Switch and PS4 Taiko games for all regions, with the only change being the song not getting an arcade port in the same guise of the Vocaloid piece. The main reason for it, of course, can be its unusually long duration for a Taiko song, which -clocking at a whopping 5 minutes and 17 seconds- has become the new longest playable length ever recorded for a playable song in Taiko gaming. Its duration also made easier a charting approach that let a lot of notes to be stuffed inside, so much so that its Muzukashii and Oni mode, respectively with 1229 notes and 1608 notes, bear now the highest notecount in any playable Taiko mode to date, topping even the most recent Namco Original song combinations as well as the two flavors of Yuugen no Ran!
There surely is no time to slouch on such a long play, whether difficulty setting you're picking for this song. Oni Oni, however, mind both 1/12 and 1/16 accordingly, as there's not that much of a note stanza copy-paste action that might aid your muscle memory on this! Being the first song to surpass the 1500 note milestone, both console games hosting it show that voice recordings are included only for your Taiko drum avatar to shout the '1400-hit combo' voice clip, with the 1500 and 1600 combo voice clips used being 'Sugoi, da-don!' (lit. 'Wonderful, da-don!') instead. While the song's incredible length makes it the only one not to be eligible for both games' online-related activities, it can be used for multiplayer matches with no issues, as well as the Nintendo Switch's Donkatsu Fight mode.
