Now that we're coasting away from the heated tournament clashing, we've got all the "dust-settled" mood we need to talk about its aftermath, starting off with the just-launched 5th iteration of the yearly Nijiiro-era Taiko no Tatsujin music contests, once again being hosted on Nippon Columbia's turf. The website, accessible with this here link, is available both in Japanese and in English, just like in the past years.
There's one big addition to talk about in particular for this iteration, but let's proceed with order...
There's one big addition to talk about in particular for this iteration, but let's proceed with order...
Starting off with the judges' board, we got the returning Etou and SueP respectively as judge director and chart planner on the board. Seeing as their evaluation philosophies have been digressed upon their previous profiles, they're instead up to share their excitement for one certain returning aspect with this very music contest... We're getting there to talk about it here too, just wait a few paragraphs more!!
On the Sound Direction and Sound Designers seats, on the other hand, we find respectively a welcomed return in Yuji Masubuchi -now accustomed enough to be a father of 2 to be able to return without workload rebalancing of sorts!- and a relatively-fresh hire aming the BNSI ranks: Licht Tsuboi (坪井リヒト), whose first Namco Original works have been used as "Taiko-franchise anniversary songs" for the past two years (respectively, last year's Yell Ex Makina! and this year's TENSEI -Kiyoshi ga Matsu Tsuwamono-).
Masubuchi's advice for this edition is to think well about which climate setting is best for the aspiring creators to make their contest entries; it's rather hot outside, so you might think staying indors in a cool climate would lead one to make equally cool songs... but if you're the "heat stimulates creativity like nothing else!" sorts, just be mindful not to suffer of heat-related afflictions! Being arguably the first time in an evaluation-oriented place, Licht's judge entry is longer than his more seasoned colleagues', all stemming from his appreciation of Namco Originals being his spring to make music, to travel and let others travel inside "new world" in music form just like the many original compositions for Taiko among other places have done across the years. Being a judge sure fosters a change of perspective upon looking at others' craft, but perhaps this peculiar position may be experienced by others, too...
Just like anticipated in the WCS 2024 Finals recap post of yesterday, the website is already welcoming music submissions from people all over the world and will be accepting entries up until August 26th, 6pm (JP time), with the same music-submission rules as before. Once again and for the third time in a row, we've got the judges' clause of at least one winning song coming from artist/ensemble that never had any song made for Taiko games in the past, also known as the First Recruitment Application submission pool.
What's different, this time around, is that the judges' decision is not going to be the only one to select winners... that's right- now everyone has a shot at evaluating others' craft! Once that the "regular" contest winners have been revealed by the Taiko Team via livestream (currently scheduled to happen in about two months), the contest will enter into the additional General Public Voting phase, in which Donders everywhere can vote for their favorite song among the non-winners to be playable in Taiko no Tatsujin, just like the ones picked up by the Taiko Team judges. The GPV phase articulates in two different steps:
- Online Vote - A 'Vote' button will appear next to the non-winning songs in the entries' website section and the most-voted songs will manage to proceed to the second step;
- Donder Hiroba Vote - Banapassport-donning arcade players can vote among the most-voted songs from the Online Vote step, finalizing the General Public Voting standings.
While no definite numbers have been given about the number of winning picks between Judges/General Public Voting picks, a more exaustive rundown on the public voting rounds' proceedings will be laid down at a later date. The one definite pick about the winner/s by popular voting is that these won't be bound by the 'First Recruitment Application' rule; there's no guarantee that either only veteran composers or shining meteors will be the sole winners of the people... nor the scenario of a mixup between groups, for that matter!
UPDATE (18/07/24) - In due diligence, we bring you in a belated fashion one last change concerning the entries' listing for the contest: this year, the song previews for all entries will be made available to be listened only after the submission period's ending, as opposed to the gradual drop-out approach from the previous years.
