Near-future-sight Song of the Week incoming! It's also one of the few whose coming was... shall we say, "foretold" by one of our resident blog staffers! (me)
Just, keep reading...
Chiki Chiki Bam Bam Ya Boy Kongming!
チキチキバンバン／「パリピ孔明」より
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y3) |
 |
★2 (??) |
★3 (???) |
★6 (???) |
★7 (448) |
- |
128
???Our history of this song starts from a more contemporary setting... on our own Taiko no Tatsujin Discord server, of all places. Three months back, there was a more general talk around how contemporary Taiko gaming -when it comes to Anime licensing- has been more keen in general on porting new themes for long-ongoing series with an already-enriched Taiko history (Pokemon, PreCure, Kamen Rider and the likes). I thought to chime in the talk with my two cents by stating that if the franchise situation was like 10 years ago, today we'd get seasonal Anime stuff "like the Ya Boi Kongming OP or something" and look at that, this ending week ended up with the announcement of just that! Legit, I'm not making this up, either- feel free to browse the general chat's log, it's all in there!
Serialized since 2019's end by mangaka Yuto Yotsuba (四葉夕卜) as Paripi Kongming (パリピ孔明, lit. "Kongming of the Party People"), this is an ongoing seinen manga in which the Three Kingdoms period strategist Zhuge Liang Kongming manages to be reborn as a younger version of himself in contemporary-day Shibuya, after wishing on his deathbed for his next life to be in a peaceful place without war. Here, after experiencing the time-lapse whiplash and passing out after a first frantic night, he's housed by the aspiring singer Eiko Tsukimi (月見英子), who helped the reborn strategist to get with the times as well as telling him about her musical aspirations, being even moved out by such effective singing to cast away her suicidal thoughts but that apparently have met a carreer-forging dead end. Being moved by Eiko's singing as well, Zhuge Kongming is set to return Eiko's favor with his tactical expertise in order to pave her way to musical stardom.
Paripi Kongming is one of the few series to receive a debut in digital form before experiencing the "conventional media" treatment, both for its manga run as well as the Anime. This seinen's chapters first made their debut Kodansha's Comic Days platform before republishing those in printed form on Weekly Young Magazine from November 2021, which is where the series is currently getting new chapters. Counting over 1.2 million copies in tankobon sales as well as a Next Manga U-NEXT Award
for best web series in 2020, the series eventually lead to a 12-episodes Anime run by P.A. Works from April to June this year, once again hitting streaming platforms one month earlier (March) than the TV broadcasting, serialized overseas as Ya Boy Kongming!.
Both of the Anime show's opening and ending themes are newly-made covers of pre-existing songs, with Chiki Chiki Bam Bam being of the former specimen. The original song from June 2013 was made by Hungarian singer JOLLY under the name of Bulikirály (lit. 'Party King'), getting later on its Japanese release on August 2020 via the avex trax label. The Japanese cover made for the Ya Boy Kongming OP was made by a plurality of srtists under the fictional unit QUEENDOM: hibiki and moca from J-POP/EDM unit lol, female dance group FAKY's Akiha and Taki, Marian Kanaya (金谷鞠杏) from GENIC as the singer and the nicknamed RUCCA for the cover's Japanese lyrics. With this song's inclusion in Taiko gaming, both the opening AND its ending theme are playable throughout the series, considering how the latter is actually a cover of Kibun Joujou↑↑, a song which is already Taiko-playable since oh so many years ago!
Now that the song is out, we can safely say how it's easy to get chitty with it at all times, sonsidering the rather dense note charting for such a slow-flowing BPM. Repeating stanzas are key to a lively success!
