A small yet intense circle of Namco Original songs, this trio of top-difficulty contenders have been made by a couple of guitar-playing artists who already boast strong rhythm gaming connections: Infinite Rebellion artist Daisuke '96' Kurosawa (黒沢大佑) and independent songwriter Masakiro 'Godspeed' Aoki (青木征洋; Linktree), a former Capcom composer and owner of the the ViViX indie label. His name was already already heard of in many a music game series beforehand, from Chunithm (Gate of Fate; Gate of Doom) to GITADORA (Surge; Blaze), Cytus II (Ramen is God) and many a modern videogame's soundtrack, including Street Fighter V and Astral Chain.
The other factor linking these songs to each other is their respective titles, each harking back to some of Japan's most notorious military commanders that have been collectively known as the "Great Unifiers of Japan". Starting with what is arguably the most well-known warlord from the Warring States period, each succeeding song moves forward to the referenced strategist's time period of origin as well, ending with the last warlord prior to the 17th century's Meiji Restoration act which brought an end to the shogunate and paved the way to the emperor-based political structure in place to this very day.
Dairokuten Maou Daisuke Kurosawa x Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
The other factor linking these songs to each other is their respective titles, each harking back to some of Japan's most notorious military commanders that have been collectively known as the "Great Unifiers of Japan". Starting with what is arguably the most well-known warlord from the Warring States period, each succeeding song moves forward to the referenced strategist's time period of origin as well, ending with the last warlord prior to the 17th century's Meiji Restoration act which brought an end to the shogunate and paved the way to the emperor-based political structure in place to this very day.
 |  | |
 -Warlord Series- | ||
 | |
 | | |
 |  |
Dairokuten Maou Daisuke Kurosawa x Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
第六天魔王 / 黒沢ダイスケ × Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Blue ACN (Y5) [Ura Oni] Plus/STH RC |
 |
★5 (496) |
★7 (696) |
★8 (966) |
★10 (1396) |
★10 (1582) |
75-300
nobu7g (Nobu-na-ga, as in 'Na'=7 in Kun native reading)The one track we're starting with is arguably the most popular one of the trio as well, getting in late November 2018 a triumphant debut as the last charting onglaught to face in Blue Version's Tatsujin Ranking Dojo main course, getting a not-mode-gated public release nine days later and an Android/iOS port a few years after that. Dairokuten Maou (lit. "Demon King of the Sixth Sky"), the infamous monicker that also lables this very song is attributed to one of Japan's most known daimyo of the Sengoku period: Oda Nobunaga (織田信長), the fearsome ruler whose military prowess against several long-standing rival shogunates and leadership acts have set the base for Japan's unification.
Nobunaga was born in 1534 as the second son of Oda Nobuhide, mostly known for his eclectic and bizarre behaviour that warranted him the mocking monicker of Owari no Ōutsuke (尾張の大うつけ, "The Fool of Owari"). With the sudden death of his father in 1551, the resulting succession crisis of the Oda clan led Nobunaga and his allied forces into an 8-year span of internal conflicts, ambushes and assassination attempts evasion, resulting in the "Fool of Owari" becoming the undisputed ruler of the very same Owari province. This was the starting point for the Oda daimyo's successful expansion campaigns all across Japan's remaining shogunates, while fostering at the same time new reforms of the civil government and economic growth with acts such as the Rakuichi-rakuza (楽市・楽座, lit. "free markets and open guilds") economic policy, alongside merciless killing any and all who would oppose his own rule and demands. Oda Nobunaga's rule abruptly ended by a fiery ambush from one of his own retainers' army in 1582 with the so-called Honno-ji Incident (本能寺の変), in which general Akechi Mitsuhide forced the Oda clan leader to commit seppuku with his eldest son Oda Nobutada in the eponymous temple by setting it on fire with the help of his young page Mori Ranmaru, an episode that was already chronicled in Taiko no Tatsujin history through the Namco Original song Chiriyuku Tsuduru Ran no Uta.
With the average pace of 300 beat-per-minute and its brutal cluster successions, everyone can see how the Dairokuten Maou Oni chart's raison d'etre is to brutally kill anyone who's daring enough to challenge it, but a closer inspection to the craft we got at hands unravels a subtly network of references to both the Sengoku ruler and one of the composers behind this song. For the latter, the recurring Kuro-chang art name that often times is referred to as '96' by following the Japanese Kun-reading rule that each of the tracks' songIDs also follow, resulting in all four notecharts from Kantan to Oni ending in a '96' digit for a Full Combo performance. Another quirk shared by all modes that is unrelated to either of the song's makers is that each of them start out the first Go-Go Time zone with a full-hundred combo multiple! Oda Nobunaga's influence, on the other hand, can be felt all throughout the piece with all the additional sound effects in place, from the horns of war to the cashing of weapons and the sound of crippling fire at the end, matching with Nobunaga's demize in the blazing Honno-ji temple. The famous incident is also being quoted in quite the novel way on its Oni mode, where note stanzas 119 to 122, the ones before the final Go-Go Time, feature one particular alternation of Don and Katsu notes that is repeated twice before the giant Kat note, following the sequence of 1-5-8-2 notes. Put the digits in that order and you'll have a double reference to the Honno-ji Incident's year of occurrance!
Six years later, to the surprise of many across the Web, Dairokuten Maou found itself once again as the final song of the Tatsujin Main Course, for Nijiiro Version's fifth year of Ranking Dojo trials... only this time, it came prepared for the changing times. The Taiko Team's Etou and Kimizu have teased on stream how that year's Tatsujin course songs would have been all popular picks from the proceedings of the World Championship 2024, with the former concocting the project in secret alongside a few unnamed collaborators. Once again, the end result speaks for itself between the really low point-per-note value (630) and the x6-scrolling jumpscare large clusters: all bark AND bite! Despite the peaks registered, Dairokuten Maou's Ura is not the song with the highest notecount in Taiko history (currently being the 5-minutes-long Hypnosis Mic -Division Battle Anthem-), nor it was the first song to return in different years in the arcade Ranking Dojo at the same course in different year, a honor belonging instead to Idolm@ster's Tsubomi Yumemiru Rapsodia ~Alma no Michibiki~ for appearing in 6th-Dan first during Blue Version (Ura Oni) and later on Nijiiro's first year (regular Oni).
No room for mid-chart links to the fearsome daimyo either, outside of the ridiculously-high Max Combo value of 1582 which references once again the year of the Honno-Ji Incident. For that, we have to head to the Ura Oni title unlock, which references the unique seal belonging to Oda Nobunaga in life: the 'Tenka Fubu' (天下布武, lit. 'A Lone Military Banner under the Sky').
Tenka Touitsu Roku Daisuke Kurosawa x Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
天下統一録 / 黒沢ダイスケ × Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Blue NS2 (MP) RC |
|
★5 (182) |
★7 (323) |
★8 (575) |
★10 (988) |
- |
210 hide4s (Hide-yo-shi, as in 'Yo'=4 in Kun native reading)The one regent to come after Oda Nobunaga's legacy was one of his many loyal retainers, one hailing from such humble backgrounds that when first acknowledged by Nobunaga himself at 1560's Battle of Okehazama as Kinoshita Tōkichirō, he was mostly known as a 'sandal-bearer' who's ble to leave a mark on the battlefield. That man would be later known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉), the one who managed to complete his former daimyo's lifelong ambition of a 'Tenka Touitsu-Roku' -a World Unification Record- all the while avenging his former master by defeating Akechi Mitsuhide in 1582's Battle of Yamazaki. In ten years after the fated battle, Hideyoshi managed to become the de facto leader of Japan in its entirety, all the while establishing the hierarchy-based Tokugawa class system and the restoration of many a temple all across the nation. From 1592, he launched an initially-successful military campaign in Korea, but the conflict reaching a stalemate contributed to Hideyoshi's loss of prestige up to his death in 1598.
After Dairokuten Maou making its grand debut as the final Tatsujin Ranking Dojo trial for Blue Version firmware, this is the second song of the cycle to get introduced after a situation where only the greatest show of skills would lead the lucky winner of one tourney to play it months in advance than everyone else! The 5th Tenkaichi Otogesai's winner of the Taiko division, in fact, could play this song in front of the audience as an extra spoil for the competition's winner, similarly to Yuugen no Ran and Amaterasu's reveals for the former Taiko arcade tourneys and 8OROCHI for the 3rd Tenkaichi Otogesai.
While ultimately this song is not as aggressive as the fearsome Oni to come before it, the commonplace high speed a-la Venomous and R.I. has its own ways to force players to learn how to tackle compound clusters that don't stick with just a note type at a time!
Bakumatsu Ishintan Daisuke Kurosawa x Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
幕末維新譚 / 黒沢ダイスケ × Masahiro "Godspeed" Aoki
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro NS2 (MP) RC |
|
★5 (294) |
★7 (521) |
★8 (801) |
★10 (1109) |
- |
260-325 ba9ma2 (Ba-ku-ma-tsu, as in 'Ku'=9 and 'Tsu'=2 in Kun native reading)With the first two tracks getting released at relatively close dates, we've had to wait a considerable longer time span for this one, up until the debut of Nijiiro Version and the 4th generation of Taiko gaming as a whole. Rather than representing one Japanese figure in particular, this track is here to represent the regent period of the Tokugawa shogunate as a whole, started with the dispatching of Hideyoshi's legitimate heir.
After the conclusion of the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, a new warlord has risen to power to lead the Japan once more as a whole: Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), the first of 15 leaders from the same shogunate. Known for the bakuhan system of rules to keep both daimyo and samurai on check, he was in charge for 3 years as a shogun, only to abdicate the title in 1605 while still remaining in positions of power up until his death in 1615. As the last of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, he implemented and unified his predecessor Hideyoshi's hierarchy-based class system as one of the factors to sustain the unity of Japan during the overall extension of the Tokugawa shogunate, which formally ended in 1687 in the act that later in history would be known as the Bakumatsu Ishintan, or the Meiji Restoration (明治維新) after the Japanese emperor who pushed the act of re-establishing practical Imperial rule to Japan as a whole in order to pursue a progression from a feudal system society to a foreigner-inspired superpower that is incline to industrialization.
While both Dairokuten Maou and Tenka Touitsu Roku got official recordings on sound company INSPION's YouTube channel with both Daisuke Kurosawa and Masahiro Aoki performing the songs (link and link), a promo clip of Bakumatsu Ishintan was only made available on Daisuke Kurosawa's official YouTube channel (link), as the song was conceived to have its album debut as a bonus track for his third solo album -May 2020's BLACK ALBUM 3- as an extra for buyers of the album's physical version.
Similarly to Dairokuten Maou, numberplay references to the subject matter at hand flock abundant for those who can see them, even if Taiko fans had to wait for this representative of the Tokugawa shogunate as a whole to come in playable form. March 24th, the very same launch day of Nijiiro Version (and conversely, this Day1 unlock), also happens to be the day Tokugawa Ieyasu took for himself the title of shogun in 1603, with its Oni mode welcoming the first Tokugawa with "visions of the generations to come", as progressively-bigger drumrolls that start on 2 hits and ends on a 15-hit one are her to mark the 15 generations of Tokugawa shoguns that ruled over Japan. At the end of the day, mistakeless plays of its Oni mode that relies more on 1/12-1/24 shifts of the trilogy will be rewarded with a 1109 Max Combo value which, when broke down in couples of digits, can be read as the date of November 9th, the day in which the 15th Tokugawa ruler -Tokugawa Yoshinobu- formally transferred his powers to the emperor of Japan in the event known as Taisei Hokan (大政奉還), marking the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the titular Meiji Restoration.
Back to song series page
