Banking a bit on how suspicious last week's song has an average Oni rating for what might lead into future Ura shenanigans, we're closing this month with a double feature of very recent Nijiiro tracks that bank on one of Taiko gaming's favourite videogame-related tropes since the 3rd arcade generation.
Get ready to gamble your chances for a super shiny image file, as gacha gaming is back in town!
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro |
 /  |
★3 (79) |
★5 (147) |
★4 (204) |
★7 (351) |
- |
90-180
???The ongoing pandemic has dampered the development of many a media format in the world, but for some parties these times are spelling out a window of exceptional success, including among these the gacha game based upon the Uma Musume Pretty Derby series by CyGames. Quite fitting too, considering how the game has actually come out 5 years after the source series' first press release and including a massive game production delay!
Penned between May and September 2016 by Huan Yu (ZECO) of the manga-based CyGames division dubbed Cycomics and originally released for an online viewing, a number of free digital comic series were released on a modern-day world setting where the world's most illustrious race horses could reincarnate after their death into a human girl with some of their horse traits and memories from their equine life, granting them a second chance to race once more. Four Uma Musume series were released this way with different 'horse girls' as the main protagonist up until the franchise was picked up in 2018 for an Anime adaptation by P.A.Studio, resulting in 13 episodes and 3 OVAs. Later on, the franchise was granted a 2nd Anime season for 2021's beginning, this time around produced by Studio Kai.
Also announced in 2016, the Uma Musume Pretty Derby gacha game was originally supposed to come out in late 2018 for both smartphones and browser-compatible devises, but was ultimately delayed up to February 24th this year, with the PC-friendly version getting released some weeks later. True to some of CyGames' former gacha hits, this is an idol-rasing game in which the horse girls obtained by the players can be trained in order to make them compete on the race fields, alongside a plethora of side events profiling each of the characters' traits as well as the real-life horses they're based on. Uma Musume Pretty Derby proved itself to be one of 2021's shiniest gacha meteors with a partial grossing of 26 million dollars of revenue, rounding up the million-selling manga series on physical formats.
Arranged by Aratame Shun (新田目駿), Make debut! is the opening theme for the Uma Musume Anime's first season, in line with the Taiko-proved tradition of starring music from CyGames series' animated transpositions rather than their ingame tracks. The vocalists are collectively credited as Team Spica (スピカ), a 7-horsegirl assemble from the in-universe Tracen Academy in which horsegirls are trained for their competition duties by their respective trainers. The seven horse girls in question are Special Week (CV: Azumi Waki), Silence Suzuka (CV: Marika Kouno), Tokai Teio (CV: Machico), Vodka (CV: Ayaka Ōhashi), Daiwa Scarlet (CV: Chisa Kimura), Gold Ship (CV: Hitomi Ueda) and Mejiro McQueen (CV: Saori Oonishi), each being on the spotlight for both Anime seasons.
Both the Anime and the newly-returning Game Music genres are the arcade hosts of this song on Nijiiro Version pastures, starring your average blend of 7* Oni charting that other idol-powered tracks from both genres are used to obtain, time and time again. Slow starting aside, it's just as fast as said average, too!
Gensou ni Saita Hana Kishida Kyoudan&The Akeboshi Rockets x Kayoko Kusano/Touhou Danmaku Kagura
幻想に咲いた花／岸田教団&The明星ロケッツ×草野華余子
「東方ダンマクカグラ」より
120-186
???
Thanks to the the generous terms-of-use policies set up by Team Shanghai Alice's ZUN about derivative works on the Touhou Project universe in general, many a gacha starring the world and girls from the beer-loving doujin game maker have been released in the past few years in many a different direction. Some have died in about one year, others might go as low as to copy assets or rush out limited rateups/events planning for their Global localization, but today's gacha story is about the latest one of them to come out... the first one pushing itself as a rhythm game, too!
Published by DeNA and Xeen on an August 4th release date for Android smartphones (and the day later for Apple's family of devises), Touhou Danmaku Kagura runs under the premise of rebuilding a ravished Gensokyo's landmarks by the power of corporeal memory condensations of its inhabitants known as the Mitama and the performance of the titular Danmaku Kagura ritual to perform those memories and restore the land in return with a collection of tunes and arrangements and a touch-based gameplay approach with note markers to tap, slide across and hold. It's also notable for being the very first rhythm game starring some of the official games' original songs from Jun'ya Ota (太田順也) himself!
This fangame's concept started out as early as 2016 with ECLIPSE-Create's art doujin project DANMAKUHEROINES, gathering out several artists for the creation of an art book depicting several girls from the Touhou Project series in a chibi-fied artstyle that would fit the "popular landscape of gacha games" in the likes of Puzzle&Dragons and Monster Strike, with the resulting DANMAKUHEROINESα artbook being available to purchase in the same year as well. In late 2020, it was revealed from the project's Twitter account how this project in reality was made in preparation for assets aimed to a doujin Touhou gacha game being in the works, with said gacha -Touhou Danmaku Kagura- absorbing its art assets for the animated portraits of the featured girls. To further tie in the through-and-through doujin nature of this title, its developer is the doujin circle AQUASTYLE, already renowned for the Mystery Dungeon-styled Touhou fanseries Fushigi no Gensokyo/Touhou Genso Wanderer, with member JYUNYA being the head of the nicknamed Unknown X sponsor assosiation which is made of a plethora of Touhou doujin circles that regularly join and finance many a Touhou-themed venue in Japan, yearly Reitaisai outings and all!
The second arrange in Taiko gaming based around Stage 3 BGM Kamigami ga Koishita Gensokyo (神々が恋した幻想郷, lit. 'The Gensokyo The Gods Loved') from Mountain of Faith after Yuuhei Satellite's Iro Wa Nioedo Chirinuru o, Gensou ni Saita Hana (lit. 'Flowers Blooming in Fantasy') is Touhou Danmaku Kagura's main theme, composed by Akeboshi Rocket makers Kishida Ryouan&The Akeboshi Rockets in conjunction with independent composer Kayoko Kusano (草野華余子), mostly known for her works with vocalist LiSA in the Anime sphere, with some of these touching Taiko gaming as well (Rising Hope, Gurenge and, more recently, ADAMAS). As part of a 3-header launch collaboration project, this piece and another song from the game's original launch-day pool also got ported into some of game developer Taito's ongoing games: both arcade/console branches of their ongoing Groove Coaster series and the puzzle/music game hybrid fangame Touhou Spell Bubble. The full version of the song was released on the Unknown X sponsor's YouTube channel (link), but for its first release in album form we've had to wait until this month's end, with the release of COOL&CREATE's pluri-circle collaboration album Touhou Sound Fireworks (東方オトハナビ).
With the Touhou Project root at its core, this song is labeled as a Variety track instead of a Game Music one, joining the newly-reformed genre of the greening coloring with a note-generous challenge of mostly mono-color clusters that doesn't take that much of a toll on the handswitching skills department as much as old-fashioned player endurance. Mind that slow-down ending for your perfect accuracy endeavors!
「東方ダンマクカグラ」より
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro |
 |
★3 (117) |
★5 (264) |
★6 (474) |
★8 (740) |
- |
120-186 ???Thanks to the the generous terms-of-use policies set up by Team Shanghai Alice's ZUN about derivative works on the Touhou Project universe in general, many a gacha starring the world and girls from the beer-loving doujin game maker have been released in the past few years in many a different direction. Some have died in about one year, others might go as low as to copy assets or rush out limited rateups/events planning for their Global localization, but today's gacha story is about the latest one of them to come out... the first one pushing itself as a rhythm game, too!
Published by DeNA and Xeen on an August 4th release date for Android smartphones (and the day later for Apple's family of devises), Touhou Danmaku Kagura runs under the premise of rebuilding a ravished Gensokyo's landmarks by the power of corporeal memory condensations of its inhabitants known as the Mitama and the performance of the titular Danmaku Kagura ritual to perform those memories and restore the land in return with a collection of tunes and arrangements and a touch-based gameplay approach with note markers to tap, slide across and hold. It's also notable for being the very first rhythm game starring some of the official games' original songs from Jun'ya Ota (太田順也) himself!
This fangame's concept started out as early as 2016 with ECLIPSE-Create's art doujin project DANMAKUHEROINES, gathering out several artists for the creation of an art book depicting several girls from the Touhou Project series in a chibi-fied artstyle that would fit the "popular landscape of gacha games" in the likes of Puzzle&Dragons and Monster Strike, with the resulting DANMAKUHEROINESα artbook being available to purchase in the same year as well. In late 2020, it was revealed from the project's Twitter account how this project in reality was made in preparation for assets aimed to a doujin Touhou gacha game being in the works, with said gacha -Touhou Danmaku Kagura- absorbing its art assets for the animated portraits of the featured girls. To further tie in the through-and-through doujin nature of this title, its developer is the doujin circle AQUASTYLE, already renowned for the Mystery Dungeon-styled Touhou fanseries Fushigi no Gensokyo/Touhou Genso Wanderer, with member JYUNYA being the head of the nicknamed Unknown X sponsor assosiation which is made of a plethora of Touhou doujin circles that regularly join and finance many a Touhou-themed venue in Japan, yearly Reitaisai outings and all!
The second arrange in Taiko gaming based around Stage 3 BGM Kamigami ga Koishita Gensokyo (神々が恋した幻想郷, lit. 'The Gensokyo The Gods Loved') from Mountain of Faith after Yuuhei Satellite's Iro Wa Nioedo Chirinuru o, Gensou ni Saita Hana (lit. 'Flowers Blooming in Fantasy') is Touhou Danmaku Kagura's main theme, composed by Akeboshi Rocket makers Kishida Ryouan&The Akeboshi Rockets in conjunction with independent composer Kayoko Kusano (草野華余子), mostly known for her works with vocalist LiSA in the Anime sphere, with some of these touching Taiko gaming as well (Rising Hope, Gurenge and, more recently, ADAMAS). As part of a 3-header launch collaboration project, this piece and another song from the game's original launch-day pool also got ported into some of game developer Taito's ongoing games: both arcade/console branches of their ongoing Groove Coaster series and the puzzle/music game hybrid fangame Touhou Spell Bubble. The full version of the song was released on the Unknown X sponsor's YouTube channel (link), but for its first release in album form we've had to wait until this month's end, with the release of COOL&CREATE's pluri-circle collaboration album Touhou Sound Fireworks (東方オトハナビ).
With the Touhou Project root at its core, this song is labeled as a Variety track instead of a Game Music one, joining the newly-reformed genre of the greening coloring with a note-generous challenge of mostly mono-color clusters that doesn't take that much of a toll on the handswitching skills department as much as old-fashioned player endurance. Mind that slow-down ending for your perfect accuracy endeavors!
