The final month of the year is here once more. Just like in recent years, it doesn't matter what one wants to celebrate along its lines -Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, the ever-elusive December birthdays and anything inbetween- as we're tiding the wait around here with a returning side-actuvity of ours: the Drumvent Calendar!
Once per day, this page will be updated with one 'dream pick' among songs suggested by the kind residents in our Discord server, songs that are deemed to be Taiko-worthy by each of their respective requesters that will have some of its secrets unfolded, in the style of our Song of the Week/Song Series Showcase articles. There's gonna be a new daily pick up until December 24th, but who knows if there's room for something more at the end...
Once per day, this page will be updated with one 'dream pick' among songs suggested by the kind residents in our Discord server, songs that are deemed to be Taiko-worthy by each of their respective requesters that will have some of its secrets unfolded, in the style of our Song of the Week/Song Series Showcase articles. There's gonna be a new daily pick up until December 24th, but who knows if there's room for something more at the end...
For the time being, sit back with refreshments of your choice at hand and let us delve once again inside many a Donder's Taiko-aimed lucid dreams...
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Tabiji Yoiyoi Yume Hanabi (旅路宵酔ゐ夢花火) SHOW BY ROCK!The first 'wish pick' for this year comes from server user minic, drawing us closer to the world of music idol games once more. This is one of the songs to come from a videogame-spawn mobile music game franchise, so a few words about it are a must, considering how said anime's plot hinges on it in quite the particular (and arguably isekai-ish) way!
The franchise-starter from Sanrio's first older-demographic project, Show by Rock!! (subtitled 'Gonna be a Music Millionaire!') made its debut in July 2013 as an Apple-exclusive music game/idol raising sim by developer/publisher Geechs, later down the road ported on Android marketplaces and lasting up until 2019, with its final year being managed by dev/publisher Edia instead. For the lack of better terms (and if gameplay footage of this song in action isn't enough), this was a Tapsonic-like experience in portrait mode with notes flowing vertically in 3 lanes and markers to hit when they reach the bottom in different ways, succeeded in 2020 by the Square-Enix-published Show by Rock!! Fes A Live for the years 2020-2022, playing on landscape screen orientation and 5 lanes just like many of the other contemporary idol games of the ground (see it in action here!). The original 2013-2019 mobile game also went on for the distinction of having survival boss battles for each of the featured bands, which were triggered once its respective members' Melodisian Stones are turned dark and had to be purified with one of their image songs in retailation, a trend that was also inherited by the later-releasing first Anime series of it!
As addressed in advance, the first foray of Tabiji Yoiyoi Yume Hanabi (lit. 'Enchanting Dream Fireworks of a Night Journey') was for the first eponymous anime series of the franchise, one of three to be realized by Studio Bones and spanning across 12 episodes between April and June 2015. Episode 4 not only starts the track at hand but it also draws its name from it, as it's mainly about Show by Rock's 3-members enka band performing it: Tsurezurenaru Ayatsuri Mugenan (徒然なる操り霧幻庵, lit. "Involuntarily become puppet Kirimaboroshian"), starring the tan Shiba Inu A (阿), the grey mouse Un (吽) and a red daruma by the name of Daru Dayu (ダル太夫). The first three songs of this fictional unit from the SbR universe's MIDI City were all performed by the nicknamed Saila from Unicorn Table, with everything else (this here track included!) employing the actual band members' respective voice actresses instead: Saori Hayami (早見沙織) for A, Eriko Matsui (松井恵理子) for Un and Megumi Han (潘 めぐみ) for Daru Dayu. Worth noting is how A and Un's VAs are also starring in one of Bandai Namco's idol-oriented projects- both for the Idolm@ster series' Cinderella Girls branch!
Vairocana pop'n musicWell, it didn't take too long to have an extra tie-breaker randomic decision this year! Two were, in fact, the picks proposed by user shoxk this year, with what you're seeing here being the end result of a coin-toss decision. Nerding out for neighbouring music game series is approacing fast!
This was one of the secret songs for the 12th mainline arcade in Konami's pop'n music series: the Japanesque-fashioned pop'n music 12 Iroha. Unlocking it in its hayday required arcade players to gather an assembly of ninja characters from earlier entries while exactly ending up with a 318 Max Combo value on another 12 Iroha unlockable song (a Ganbare Goemon medley, if that's not Japanesque enough!), a goroawase for 'Cyber'. Doing so would make the fabled "Cyber Gagaku" song appear as an available tune for the credit's final play. A timegated unlock would eventually make this method obsolete (in case there still were arcades still running a specific cabinet from 20 years ago!), but in case you fetch the PS2 version of this arcade entry you'll have to unlock it all the way down, although with a few changes in the method!
Behind this song was a duo of composers self-signing under the Gojoushiki Kai (五条式改) alias, taking a page from memorable landscapes in Japanese historical mythos. According to the two's impressions left on the arcade entry's website (link, archived), 12 Iroha already hosted a number of brand-new originals where Japanese-styled music with Japanese instruments were the leading daimyos of the version, so they were tasked to break this "status quo" of sorts by making a 'Cyber' Gagaku. In other words, this was the request to give out the same elegant and dignified beats of traditional music from the Rising Sun's Land... but without any of its instruments (or as little as possible)! The musical bounty was met with a song named after one of the biggest Buddha-related figures in Buddhism, so fierce at the time to ultimately become a major representative in later games for 12 Iroha's hardest songs, not only as part of the iconic 'HELL 12' challenge course, but even the later-pushed 'HELL 1~14' one, grouping together the worst evils of early-era pop'n music up until 14 FEVER! Further down the trails of time, Vairocana was also ported in the long-dead REFLEC BEAT series, also under bemani grounds.
Thanks to Vairocana appearing in later entries' artist-centric groupings in games (pop'n music 20's folder for music belonging to the unit TЁЯRA) and its credits cameo in longtime series contributor Jun Wakita's solo album Ongaku (音楽), it could be sumrised how Gojoushiki Kai was a duo alias for Jun Wakita and TЁЯRA member Naoki Maeda (前田尚紀), in his final original instrumental song for the series.
L9 paraokaHonestly, the sentiment that server user Dragonrattiger has shared alongside their request is also one I share wholeheartedly: the Taiko franchise could make use of some more Variety tunes... and more specific, some from the Be-Music Source competitive scenario! On that front, here's one of the more popular winners from its earlier contests from the 2000s.
One of the winners from 2001's B-1 CLimaX System-C BMS contest, L9 is the most-known piece from progressive chiptune artist paraoka (Twxttxr; SoundCloud), not only in its own composing/fancharting merits but also from the prolific inside-joke scenario in the scene of the time, with plenty of parody arrangements that range from altering the original's playing feel of sorts or just a straight-up smushed pie of random colors, with documented failures when trying to mod it inside the actual beatmania IIDX games for its rather peculiar crafting! The composer was also seen for commercial music games' scouting of both pre-existing and original works, including the ones signed under the Kojimachi Sericulture Museum (麹町養蚕館) alias like CHUNITHM's Wunderkammer (ヴンダーカンマー) and CROSSxBEATS's Strange Daeva (ストレンジ・ディーヴァ).
In May last year, paraoka announced on SNS (link) about working themselves out to the bone, requiring an undefined period of time without handling music production-related operations, although the use of former works in commercial materials could be still negotiated in this span of time, which brought among things their Diverse System 15th Anniversary song Astra Walkthrough to lowiro's Arcaea (link) and the same L9 in many a commercial arcade family. So far, the direct-to-arcade cut of L9 that was made playable -once for Konami/bemani in SOUND VOLTEX and twice for Sega music games (maimai and CHUNITHM) is the same for all parties, based on a shorter cut of the song's long version from a previously-released Diverse System album (Side-c).
