Here we are- another year, another yearly final day's worth of Taiko memories! The soon-ending second Year of the Cow of the 21st Century has left behind quite the hefty trail of drumming memories to pick up once more, grouped up in a trimester-based recap format to gawk at. Have some impressions of mine of what has transpired as well, while we're at it!
It all started about 364 days ago from now...
1st Trimester
The year is 2021, quite the momentous one for the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise as a whole because of it being its 20th year since inception, paving the way to a number of events that are also branching out into 2022's very beginning! And so, besides the usual "slow-news" jazz from January and early February we're used for a while, we got a full livestream from the Taiko Team on YouTube, showcasing an incredible amount of ways to convey which directions are we going to take, hand-to-hand with series fans' expectations for the yearly milestone after the 10th anniversary content and appreciation for Taiko in general.
It's also been... quite an active yearly start, in comparison to the norm! Alongside Drum 'n' Fun and the subscription-based iOS/Android game getting monthly updates, Nijiiro Version had constant song batch updates and another Den'onbu collaboration on top of almost three consecutive months of Saturday Weekend Warrior additions, in order to house the leftover song contest winners from 2019's Faith Creation-hosted competition. Not to mention the additional contents revealed via the 20th Anniversary livestream!
Lok-approved:
- Broadcast Ourselves, Da-Don - Piling on top of last year's efforts from the Taiko Team to keep fans engaged under the pressure of the ongoing viral sensation, It's heartwarming to see Etou and pals back on stage with Taiko-themed livestreams, now easier than ever to catch even by foreigners due to them being hosted on YouTube with an easier access to reruns. Even after almost four years of livestreaming absence and the format changes, you can tell how passionate some of the Taiko frontmen still are, 20 years strong into the series' existence!
- The Taiko no Tatsujin 20th Anniversary Big Plans - While we might be far away from 2011's old "Ten Taiko Surprises" to be revealed across the anniversary year and all the physical goods it brought by, it's still amazing to see how far and wide the scope of audience was touched with many a different project, from original song-making projects of all kinds to a new arcade tournament, console tie-in releases and a few popular artists/TikTok campaigns sprinkled in, among other things. Enjoy Taiko games isn't merely about skill mastery, and such a variety of content tied into the anniversary better helped conveying this message!
Lok-abominables:
- Hands-Free Drumming - It's understandable how to keep pre-existing titles alive via DLC extensions is a cheaper way for a videogame developer to keep its fans engaged (and moreso for a music game getting a bigger song library!), but here we sit at the end of such a big anniversary year and no official voice about upcoming Taiko no Tatsujin videogames to get a hold of that is not a digital-only affair has been heard. Sure, we've got some spicy gossip by 2021's tail end and right about at the start of the next trimester we got quite the sudden Taiko game release, but would it kill to have new physical Taiko games for the household in a while? As history taught us, eventually all the digital-sustained titles come to a halt someday, and future players who would want to try as many Taiko songs outside the arcade floor might be out of luck for DLC-linked tracks...
- Taiko Times a' Chaingin - It's something we're dragging behind, but more and more often we got post scheduling released kind of messed up, especially on my part due to job-related constraints. Overlooked news post, First Video recaps going days (or a full week!) later than intended and even some of the side features' release getting delayed, on top of the slowed-down page maintenance in general... We're trying as usual to be on the news but again, my apologies for the alarming ratio it got on my part for this ending year.
2nd Trimester
Nijiiro Version's second operational year lies on the wings of the 20th Anniversary's operations, from the Namco Original circle of songs branded under the 'Taiko de Time Travel' theming mantle to
This was also the big time where the preliminary details about a brand new Taiko no Tatsujin World Championship arcade tournament is going to be held this soon from the previous round, coupled with an equally-surprising return of an original song-making contest, this soon from the previous one. Not to mention we got the series' very first shadow-dropped title ever, picture above these very lines!
Lok-approved:
- Shorter Gap for Greater Competitions - Breaking the mold of the long waits between major tourneys and music-making bout iterations, 2021 has seen the announcement of events that (on franchise records) would usually take longer to stage between iterations. Really, this was quite the surprise for me- I've penned about the subject matter (partially) during last year's recap feature!
- Shared-Grounds Time Traveling - The songs getting introduced aside, two are the elements I'm enjoying the most about the latest of the "Bandai Namco-labeled" song series in Taiko history: all of them get to go in all the currently-active games in a short span of time and the coming of each is paired with a hefty trove of trivia from the Taiko Team's official blog in form of interviews with both the involved artists and the songs' charters. As someone who talks about songs and their origins around year once per week on average, I really appreciated such a helping hand!
Lok-abominables:
- An Out-Goer's "Morbid" Competition - Alas, it was 2021 and COVID-19 is still a thing, so things had to be worked around a bit once again. On the Taiko spectrum, this meant the delay of the World Championship tourney well into next year, despite the Team's best effort of keeping everyone up to date with its structure via livestreams further down the line. The silver-lining of the tied-in Faith Creation contest going out with no hurdles and its winners getting released as Weekend Warriors is still there, sure, but it's kinda hard the same...
- Yet Another Shop Closure Scare - This was also the time where a few Taiko games, as well as the entirety of the Ps Vita digitally-purchasable content, was going to be axed at some point... and while the crisis was averted (for now), it brings more to the point of an expanded-library Taiko game's life when its additional support can no longer be obtained or redeemed anymore. Is it going to be easier or not for newer Taiko fans to enjoy exclusive content that is gated behind DLCs, once these are inevitably going out of the picture?
3rd Trimester
It's that time of the year where we check the calendar and we find out how old have we been running this shtick with you all! Father Time's clock appears to be ticking at a whopping 11 years since aquabluu/pikaby's very first blog post by now, and for that we're thankful as always for those of you sticking with us, for any amount of time.
And by going through a similar motif, 'sticking by' their guns apparently was the Taiko Team's agenda for this trimester, going by the same currently-active-titles supporting style we've seen for two years. Highlights this time around include an i☆Ris collaboration, Taiko acting like a lifesaver for the defunct Synchronica music game's songs yet again, the announcement of a new tourney-approved MyBachi Taiko drumstick line and -get this- more than a Touhou Project arrange release per year. I mean, crazy stuff, right!?
Lok-approved:
- The Comedian - It was also around that time the 20th Anniversary ambassador Soshina started to appear in original Taiko media all of a sudden, both with his original songs and his peculiar charting approach for the Oni modes touched by him, in conjunction with his AI Battle Performance counterparts. I'm kinda... neutral about this guy while being okay with his songs in general, but the reason he's up here is because of some of the more heated reactions I've seen sparked by the guy over our Discord server for random chat silliness. Really, it's part of why this paragraph is titled 'The Comedian' insead of his name!
Lok-abominables:
- - Yup, not a bit of title as it's just... nothing. Of course not the kind of 'nothing' of a news-worthy nature rather than actually nothing to talk about. The unfolding of the Taiko projects and background updates aside, we have little on our plate when it comes to talking about what to expect from 2022 and beyond on a news side. I mean, personal-posting-issues aside, the number of our posts here doesn't lie: little aside from what we got ahead of us was up to cover. Sure, I get it, COVID year Mark-II, yeah, but still- given how this was the leading tempo going into 2021, it's quite perplexing to imagine where we can up with from these, considering the big-year anniversary we're in and all that jazz...
4th Trimester
We've had our jolly grand time in the last three months with matters of a "more-of-the-same" kind of affair, while also feasting our eyes upon what look up to be titles for future Taiko games, heading to either Microsoft's systems, PC gaming or both!
On the official side, however, it's more or less the same pizzaz we've seen thus far, enriched now with more of the 2nd wave of Faith Creation winners making their playable Saturday debut as time goes on.
Lok-approved:
- Leaked Drumming Germination - What makes me happy the most about the end-year leaks per-se is that they're tentatively pointing out to platforms with a broader reach than what your average device-linked Taiko game can sprout in... more specifically, a Taiko title officially playable on PC. We've had traces of that with this year's Pop Tap Beat being available for Mac devices, but such a jump could further extend the series' reach on a global scale... not just outside of Japan!
- Tai-gle All The Way - Time constraints aside, I loved bringing back the returning Wish List side feature of December under a slightly-different guise... but never would I have expected to get quite the jump on requests this time around! Be it to those whose requests got featured or not, I thank you the same for your input as I'll try to come up with something to make everyone happy!... and my typing hands...
Lok-abominables:
- Mission Complete for Drum 'n' Fun -
Last time I'm going on this point here, I swearAs the Japanese Midnight for the New Year has stopped by, Nintendo Switch Version/Drum 'n' Fun players may have noticed how the turn of a new month hasn't generated a new set of missions for the Online Ranking mode, possibly a sign of how little time is left for the 2018 videogame release. Still praiseworthy is the gigantic amount of songs it got over the years, now even topping the final tally of Session de Dodon ga Don! - The Disappearance of Game Music - For how many songs between licensed and original tunes the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise has welcomed this ending year, there's no denying one song genre is dangerously walking the way of the Classic genre... When we exclude the Touhou Project arrangements (still more than one for another year, holy shit) and the Den'onbu collaboration songs which got moved to the Variety genre once the genre splitting has happened once more, the Game Music genre only got a grand total of 3 new songs overall, less than a hand's worth of counting for another year straight.
Forget the usual pipe-dream of rhythm game collaboration tracks most general music game fans hold dear- not even Namco's gaming lineage gets to be prepped up in Taiko nowadays, a trend to supplement a diversification in the series' overall song carnet... but don't take my word for it: take a gander at how many videogame track requests got with our silly '12 Days of Taikomas' feature alone! Surely not representative of the Taiko fanbase as a whole, but playable Game Music tracks from foreign series has become quite a staple of Taiko gaming across the years... - Oh My God I Can't End A Day Without Listening to Taiko No 2000 At Least Twice A Day Somebody Please Help Me I'm About To Return To Monke I CAN'T STO-
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Once again, that's a wrap! While -in spite of illustrious anniversary grounds- this ending year has mostly seen the series' development in a "Passive Mode" of sorts, the will of the people behind it sharing the fun with everyone was heard loud and clear, with a constant support of songs for each of the 3 main legs in the ongoing Taiko no Tatsujin marathon! No one knows how far we're going to run in the end, but it's reassuring we're not doing alone; the same goes with our writer/reader relationship too!
Thanks for taking part on this journey with us! We'll see you how loud 2022's roar is going to be...
