With the last few Ranking Dojo main courses coming up in a few days, let's warm the ground up with a modern top-difficulty contender with a history on said mode, shall we?
Cutie☆Demonic☆Majin Emo!! (キューティー☆デモニック☆魔人エモ!!) Yuuma Mizonokuchi feat. Ai Ohsera| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (229) | x7 (334) | x8 (678) | x10 (1075) |
Taiko 0 G, Taiko +
190
none
mznemoDebuting halfaway during Green Version's lifespan with its place secured in one of the latter-end Ranking Dojo trials, this is the second Taiko-debuting composition coming from a latter of indie artists, with one of those also boasting a real-life connection with Taiko Team veteran Yuji Masubuchi through a long-lasting online messaging bond. Since this, however, has been the subject of one choice story that was also told last year through the official Taiko blog on April last year, we'll leave the reminiscing of such a relationship for another time, while using today's spotlighted song as a proxy to properly talk about the two involved artists first.
Yuuma Mizonokuchi (溝口ゆうま; Twitter; SoundCloud) is an indie composer mainly versed into vocal-ready pop songs production, while also having some composing experience in other genres (denpa and fold/classical, among those) and some guitar-playing and lyrics-penning skills on his belt. The artist's online activity mainly spins around the two doujin circles of his own making: M.H.S. (Mizonokuchi Hole Studio) for original music production and 2006's Innocent Key, which is focused on Touhou Project score arranges instead. In both acts, the most recurring contributor to Mizonokuchi's works is Ai Ohsera (大瀬良あい; website; Twitter), a vocalist in activity since 2009 whose vocal range reaches both ends of denpa tracks and symphonic metal/rock/goth ends of the musical spectrum of genre categorizations.
Be it together or for tracks made with other people, this composer and singer combo have touched quite a big number of music games in the past few years, with the lion's share made of their many victories scored in SOUND VOLTEX song-making contests, starring among these UROBØROS, Root Consciousness and Princess Lily. Other contributions between originals and Touhou arranges from either members of the duo can be found in the now-discontinued MÚSECA (Prayer), Ongeki (Lunatic Red Eyes) and CHUNITHM (【Adventure】Ingrid Kasai Advent!【Live】) from Sega and Taito's Groove Coaster with Aurgelmir and the upcoming (at the original time of this writing) Vanity on the future. The list grows even larger if we include mobile gaming into the mix, both with custom arrangements for games such as the now-defunct Touhou Cannonball (Going on Future! among many) and with other music games in the likes of Deemo (Empedrado), Cytus II (Ra; Nidhögg), Arcaea (Shiro-do, ta Kibo Hitsuji to Shinji Ari Ku.) and Lanota, with the infamous boss song SolarOrbit -Connected with the Espabrother-.
While the main artists for Cutie☆Demonic☆Majin Emo!! are the ones from its crediting subtitle, there are some other people lending a hand for its creation... namely, three people supplying additional background voices for it: the nick-named Syabadaba (しゃばだば), Riko (りこ) and none other than Yuji Masubuchi (増渕裕二) for some demonic growls as well! Another arrow in this song's trivia quiver is the numberplay shenanigans for some of its modes; not only we find the reverse Ban-Nam counter for the song's note count on Muzukashi, but its Oni mode is willing to play a bit into the demonic ritual being performed in song mode, seeing as a flawless play up until the demon's summoning (that is to say, the pause portion in the middle of the 71st note stanza) will net the player a partial-play 666 Combo counter. What better than the Biblical number of the Beast to summon one!?
While not quite there, even the average hit/second note ratio draws near to the familiar Nam-Combo value (7.63 hits/s), already a testament in on itself of the song's not-very-forgiving physical prowess required to go along with the beat with no mistakes. While sure, the first two Go-Go Time zones are nearly a mirror reflection of each other, the raw note amount combined with a nasty track finisher and some x2-sped-up Big notes might still mess up the most seasoned of players in their first tries!
