| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACN (Y5) |
 |
★4 (128) |
★6 (199) |
★8 (351) |
★9 (599) |
- |
270
???Contrary to what we penned about returning songs near last month's end, here we sit with a Year-5 Nijiiro debut for a Namco Original... as well as the series as a whole! It's also another of the triumphant winners of 2023's Faith Creation original song contest for Taiko songs, so you can be sure its creator has been paid his fair share for the winning creation. 'Salary' both for its JP song title and its contest outcome, indeed!
Saraeru's composer goes online by the nickname of Yomoda (四方田; Twxttxr; SoundCloud), with the online music-making portfolio dating as back as the early 2010s. As penned by the same author on social media about the winning reveal, Saraeru was submitted after a three-year gap since Yomoda's last Taiko contest participation, with the song opinion. While not ending up on the winners' chariot, this past effort was worth a Silver-grade honorable mention from steμ and TWO different bronze ones from Masabuchi and Etou, pushing the artist to try again, more hopeful on receiving music-making advice than actually winning (link). Little did everyone know, not only Saraeru was already good enough to become Taiko gold on its own- it even received one of Yuji Masubuchi's longest flattery pieces as Jude's Comments across winners! Starting with a simple "super cool and cool!", the BNSI alumni praised the organ-lead opening transitioning into chiptune-like sounds, making for a unique transition between techno and jazz vibes with quite the not gentle segway. It's also being lauded how for many odd-time-signature songs are out there, really few ones like Saraeru are based around the cumulative repetition of a riff without any melody, kinda like folk dances. If this song put on heavy rotation would set Masubuchi in the mood to dance to it, why wouldn't anyone else, I say!?
Once again, we're faced with an aggressive BPM measurement being halved for most of its duration, with the apparent 'speed bursts' being the charting multiplier getting closer to 1 as if it was someone stripping off their weighted training clothes. Notechart-wise, it plays really similarly to STAGE 0 ac.11, up until speed bursts a-la Hayabusa and really nasty 1/16 clusters decide to show their ugly mugs at the same time, arguably making of its note-light Oni mode one of the hardest 9* challenges to Full Combo in the ongoing standard.
