The next week has in store for us a brand new official livestream for the Taiko no Tatsujin series, many years after our last one has occurred.
As this line of broadcasts has a history of inviting several Namco Original song composers from time to time, have some of these artists featured here once more, after their series-introductory livestream debut! Kinda funny to think it's been about five years since then, for each of them...
Dragoon Massive New Krew
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Green Taiko + |  | ★4 (220) | ★6 (400) | ★7 (572) | ★9 (765) | - |
200
dragoo (Dragoon)The final third-generation arcade firmware was lodged between the end of Japan's Heisei era and the beginning of the Reiwa one, an event that was bridged in Taiko gaming with a trio of brand-new Namco Originals from HARDCORE TANO*C composers who already left their mark into the series. We already talked about one of the three songs (and especially its related singers) in great detail among these lines (link), while today we're taking care of the two full-instrumental songs the DJ Genki piece was release-day-sandwiched in between!
The first in line is from the hardbass-proficient act of Massive New Krew, already creators of the God Collection series-starter Kagutsuchi from the White Version days. Ever since their Taiko debut, the duo of Tachibana and JAVELIN/Jenkins.c has had an escalating presence in music gaming between the arcade and console/mobile front (accounting for the latter DARSANA from Lanota and Blaster from Arcaea, among many). It also appears the two have grown fond of the Greco-Roman pantheon for their music gaming charades, considering how some of their more memorable arcade songs are titled after some of them, from beatmania IIDX's HADES and Persephone to WACCA's Poseidon!
Taiko gaming's Dragoon doesn't follow any of these trends nor lyrics to spare, aside from a certain audio clip that may or may not let battle commence, if you catch my drift! It's also one of the 200 BPM songs that fully takes advantage of its taxing speed to drown its Oni players into cluster sequence after cluster sequence, for one Nam-Combo trial that shows some metaphorical mercy with some empty note stanza fragments every now and then. A longer variant of this song -dubbed as the 'Sword of the valiant Ver.'- is available in MNK's 5th album release OVERHEAT, and later on published by the very same circle on its official Youtube channel (link).
Aru Fuwa aran
或ル不和
| Game | Genre | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Green Taiko + | | ★4 (186) | ★7 (304) | ★8 (594) | ★10 (996) | - |
200 arufw (Aru Fuwa)Released on Green Version arcades a mere 2 days after Dragoon, this piece from electronic/UK harcdore composer aran may be considered as Dragoon's sister track in many an aspect: same BPM, same affiliated label for the artist and a Taiko livestream debut together Dragoon's makers... and for another God Collection song series kickstarter, too! Another parallel link with Massive New Krew is aran's renewed contribution to rhythm gaming as a whole, jumping from beatmania IIDX (Xperanza; L.F.O) to other bemani series (DDR's F4SH10N and jubeat's Alive in my Soul), from Groove Coaster (Bright Lights) to WACCA (Gate One) once again!
KUSANAGI's creator opted for a Japanese title for this song, literally translatable as 'some discord' but that could be actually interpreted in a different way, as a Hiragana-based reading of 'Arufa', or the 'Alpha' letter in Greek, going from the Kanji-lettering of 或る不和 to the Hiragana-based transposition of あるふぁ, standing indeed for 'Arufa'. Another element pointing to this very reading -artist name and current Twitter profile icon aside- is the Full Combo title granted with the song, Shine Like “α”.
The Reiwa era's second official Oni trial is also the one bearing the most notes of all non-digit-limit songs, snatching said title from the Linda AI-CUE's infamous Touhou arrange Eikyoku/Gyouan. It's also another heavy hitter with plenty to hit nearly all the time, managing to achieve quite the enviable 8.64 hits/sec average ratio to rival (Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu and Hoshikuzu Struck's Ura modes) and even surpass other modern 10-star giants in the likes of Black Rose Apostle Ura and UNDEAD HEART (Ikari no Warriors)... all the while sporting some generous break portions in between! In comparison to Dragoon, 1/24 spikes being more common do contribute in giving that 10-star rating a reason to exist in the ongoing chart meta.
