Today on corner we have yet another female-lead piece from a fictional unit to Taiko drum on, only this time oriented to more videogame-y fields than last week's Anime charades!
Seize the day Tokyo Xanadu| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (149) | x5 (182) | x7 (419) | x9 (884) |
Taiko PS Vita
210
none
xanaduThanks to a fortuitous collaboration with JRPG game developer Nihon Falcom, the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise could muster one extra idol-oriented song for V Version that has nothing to do with anything Idolm@ster-related, and from another PS Vita title no less!
The game in question is Tokyo Xanadu (東京ザナドゥ), the third entry in Falcom's Xanadu saga which was originally released in Japan on September 30th, 2015. Being a game developer mostly known for their long history of RPS in fantasy settings, Falcom's game makers wanted to try their mettle on a project with a more contemporary setting, not only from their other well-established titles (the Ys and Trails titles, among many) but also from the former PC titles in the series as well, 1985's Xanadu and 2005's Xanadu Next. With those premises, Tokyo Xanadu's story is set in an alternate-reality version of Tokyo, where a huge earthquake in 2005 nearly wiped the city out of existence.
The year is 2015 and the player will fill the shoes of high-school student Kou Tokisaka from Tokyo's fictional Morimiya City district, as the will to protect one of his classmates will lead him through a portal to the evil-pulsing realm known as Eclipse, as well as taking him to the independent group Nemesis who's hell-bent on closing all of the vortex portals leading from Tokyo to the nightmarish Eclipse. One year later, an enhanced version of the original -called Tokyo Xanadu eX+- was released in Japan for PlayStation 4 and PC, with localized versions of both the original PS Vita and the revised edition getting distributed in late 2017.
Seize the day, Tokyo Xanadu's main theme, is performed ingame by the fictional 5-girl idol unit SPiKA, all voiced by VAs who've had idol-related jobs in the past. The actual song, on the other hand, was made and performed by Falcom's inhouse unit: the Falcom Sound Team jdk, in one of the last titles where composer Takahiro Unisuga (宇仁菅孝宏) was its leader. Tokyo Xanadu's OP, on top of that, was composed and arranged by what would become Unisuga's successor: Mitsuo Singa (真我光生). Koji Sekiguchi (関口功二) of Idolm@ster fame was hired for the piece's guitar play, with lyrics penned by Falcom veteran Kyo Hifumi (一二三恭) and vocals performed by Megumi Sasaka (佐坂めぐみ), Nagisa Kawabata (川端渚) and Tsukasa Tanaka (田中津夏彩). In album form, Seize the day got an extension for Tokyo Xanadu's original soundtrack release and the SPiCA mini-album bearing the same name of the song, both released by Falcom itself in 2015. Another album release for Seize the day would occur for the source game's 2017 soundtrack re-release by Aksys Games, the software publisher in charge of Tokyo Xanadu eX+'s Western release.
All the songs from Nihon Falcom games that made it to Taiko gaming through V Version's DLC collaboration campaign were selected through a fan-driven poll among 10 different picks, with the top three candidates getting ported to Taiko gaming. Being the most voted song in the poll, Seize the day also got the extra privilege of being distributed as a free piece of DLC for a limited time, in what currently is the only official Taiko title housing it. Don't discount this song's prowess just yet for its cheap availability, though- with a fixed 210 BPM ratio and an overwhelmingly handswitch-based cluster conglomeration with no special notes, this song's Oni is definitely nothing to slouch on! In fact, it's currently the third 9* Oni in franchise history for average note density with 8.02 hits/second, trailing behind Wasabi Body Blow (8.19 hits/s) and Yawaraka Sensha's Ura Oni (8.88 hits/s).
