Granted, I'm making an educated guess on whether this upcoming song will come geared up with an Ura Oni or not, but if on release that isn't the case, that's another Ura Oni feature for the month involved into its public release. Now onto our scrying!
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACN (Y5) |  |
★5 (197) |
★7 (278) |
★7 (417) |
★9 (719) |
★10 (1337) |
63.75-510
???Operate Me was one of three tracks to be revealed at the direct aftermath of the World Championship 2024's conclusion, heading to the upper-echelon of this year's Nijiiro Version Ranking Dojo Main Course selection. As the past few years have taught us, the songs making their debut/timegated enhancement would join their respective RD course with an Ura Oni on toe, so it makes a rather safe bet as to the upcoming Original's Ura Haver/Have-Not status. What's sure, however, is that it marks the overall Taiko no Tatsujin debut of another independent composer!
Meet the 1993-class Masaki Sekikawa (関川聖城), mostly known online for his Chroma (黒魔) nickname and his prolific chiptune-based score, notable for also adopting the use of real musical instruments together with the genre's signature nostalgic bleeps-and-bloops of yore. The first online venue to bring up some fame to his name was the "My Junior High School" (中二の俺シ) series of videos, in which Chroma would reproduce by ear several BGMs pertaining to the Famicom/NES gaming platform's titles. Not only one to partake in solo/joint musical venues (mostly into SOUND VOLTEX-related composers cliques), Choma's songs have also adopted into several Anime shows as either insert song (Show By Rock!) or character songs, which was the case for the one of Himouto! Umaru-Chan's titular protagonist. He also has a knack of developing a few videogames on the side... some even releasing alongside his solo album releases, as bonuses!
Be it with the Chroma alias or others for multi-alrtist composition duty, the works of Masaki Sekikawa have made the rounds of your usual suspects in music gaming, most prominently -as anticipated- with SOUND VOLTEX for over a dozen hits (Space Diver Tama and Black Emperor, among those) and Groove Coaster (tiny tales continue; Zen Jinrui Inu-ka Keikaku). Mobile gaming also got a grasp of his chiptune-based talents in form of the song Lonely Departure available in both Lanota and OverRapid, as well as a few exclusive tunes to lowiro's Arcaea (First Snow; To The Milky Way). Arguably the most known otoge-shaped accolades for the artist lie on Sega fields, not for the songs heading to maimai and Chunithm but for being the maker of Ongeki's earliest popular boss song (and directly-linked sequel), in Don't Fight The Music And Revive The Melody.
BPM/scrolling speed trickery ahead, as the other-wise-commonpace of 255 BPM is very tangible a-la Venomous Oni/Ura when faved to single-color cluster strings to face, even if not as note-dense. Unique to its namesake, however, is the final scrolling trickery of multiple stanza-long big drumroll markers, flowing at double the average commonpace BPM while each scrolls out at a slightly-slower speed.
Sure enough, eventually Operate Me managed to get an Ura Oni setting as its ticket for a seat as the final challenge to face for Year 5's Nijiiro Ranking Dojo Chojin course. This was accomplished not only by the expectable denser-cluster exploits but also for a few panic-enducing visual gimmicks to catch most people out of left field, from big/small note processing quickly in the Go-Go Time a-la Swan Lake Ura and faster-into-slower scrolling gimmicks for the Don-leading note streams that not even your nth play at Hayabusa's Oni could prepare for.
As of its Max Combo value, look- we've learned a lot about numberplay and gone through several goroawase-leaning lectures across the years, but even I have to mark a line on the paifully-obvious values to give a lecture on... If you don't know what 1337-speak is online, how are you even priding yourself as a knowledgeable Internaut?!
