At the boundary between the usual Saturday and the dawn of a new one, here's a Touhou pick to match the yearly danmaku mood! It's one of those Reitaisai-attenders-only picks, too.
Cheerful Flyer Touhou Project Arrange / Juuroku Shinzu
東方Projectアレンジ 十六神数
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC0 K (Promo only) |
 |
★4 (210) |
★6 (251) |
★6 (333) |
★8 (524) |
- |
250
thcher (Touhou - Cheerful Flyer)No need to reiterate on how close to a screeching halt is the supply of playable arrangements of music from the prolific series of Japanese-folklore-rooted danmaku every passing year, with this one having the lone yearly new pick while also axing forever the arcade-exclusive Futari no Kessho -INNOCENCE-. It wasn't like this in its infancy, do not forget- the Taiko Team was even part of Touhou-themed music contest crowning in two separate istances a handful of songs to receive venue-exclusive playable charts! Due to the limited-in-nature of this pick and the... rather difficult task of finding an official upload of the song, we'll have to resort to the Taiko simulator video before your eyes. Believe me when I say this was one of the last broadly-shared accolades of its birthing-grounds doujin circle...
Together with Yonder Voice's Hanatsukiyo, this was one of two winners of 2014's King of Touhou contest for musical arrangements to be specifically picked for the "Taiko no Tatsujin Award" accolade, wartranting the right of becoming a Reitaisai 2014-exclusive playable song alongside the contest's "proper" overall winner Moondust. It was made by the Juuroku Shinzu doujin circle (十六神数; Twxtter), a trio of performers counting the nicknamed Active-R and KANATA, a self-professed hypnotist of all skill assets! While the circle is still somewhat active, its Internet presence is not as massive; as you can see from the official Twxtter handle of the circle, only a handful of tweets for 2014's album release of ICICLED FIRE for the 11th Reitaisai appear at all, album that also happens to be Cheerful Flyer's publicly-available commercial release!
This instrumental piece mashes together three music themes pertaining the tengu reporter Aya Shameimaru, one to bear another theme that has had a more lucky entourage in Taiko gaming. Across the games, series creator ZUN made two different themes for this character in order to better convey her many facets across games: Fujin Shoujo (風神少女; lit. "Wind God Girl") to better convey Aya as the "Wind God" for her unparalleled speed and Youkai no Yama ～ Mysterious Mountain (妖怪の山; lit. "Mountain of Youkai") to portray Aya as the Tengu, thus a figure that is just as strongly tied to the youkai side of Gensokyo's dwellers as well. The former track appears in the first Touhou games where she's a playable character (her debut game Phantasmagoria of Flower View and the succeeding photography danmaku spinoff Shoot the Bullet), while the latter is played where she's a boss character to trample in the later-released Mountain of Faith.
Being a unique song to be playable in extremely-limited events alone is quite the stand-out factor, but coupling that is also its high-speed, halved-scrolling-field approach to make of it a standout among special noteless charts to drum with, even if gameplay emulation is the only known way to be able to relieve the attenders-recreated notechart of this here tune!
