A segway from the year's first Anim SotW, let's have the first Variety-themed one, while we're at it... as a double feature and, why not- both from the same core artist ensemble!
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC8 PS2 6 |
 |
★3 (115) |
★4 (190) |
★5 (295) |
★8 (407) |
- |
159
pecori (PECORI♥NIGHT)Koi no Pecori♡Lesson(おに)
恋のPecori♡Lesson(おに)
恋のPecori♡Lesson(おに)
| Game | Genre |
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|
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC9 PS2 7 |
|
★3 (97) |
★4 (130) |
★5 (257) |
★7 (496) |
- |
164.88-189 lesson (Koi no Pecori♡Lesson)Long before Donders across the overall Taiko fanbase would see the adoption of comedians for events as big as franchise anniversaries (including the one to be known in goofy and harsh whispers as as "The Comedian" across us blog editors), the 2nd-generaion of arcade Taiko entries welcomed the popular endeavors of one parody song association by featuring them in both two consecutive arcade and PlayStation 2 Taiko entries, never to be seen again afterwards (at least, as far as our current-day knowledge goes...).
Meet Toshiyuki Teruya (照屋年之), a multisectorial talent from Okinawa whose career started in the mid-90ies as one of two members in the Garage Sale comedy act, with junior high classmate Hiroki Kawata, nowadays bolstering variety show roles -both as an actor and as its host, across the years- and a few movie directorial duties from 2006 onward, with his latest movie from 2018 Senkotsu (known worldwide as 'Born Bone Born') warranting him 2019's Directors Guild of Japan Newcomer Award, the first time a still-active comedian received such an acknowledgement since the nation-renowned Takeshi Kitano.
Where the bulk of his popularity came from, however, was for one of his characters played for comedy skits in the early 2000s: a schoolgirl by the name of Gorie, appearing in the variety show One Night R&R (Rock'n'Roll) as one of its skits from the Garage Sale act. Eventually receiving a 'Matsuura' surname, the on-drag portrayal of a schoolgirl for the show proved to be successful to the point of becoming the mascot of Hawaiian isle of Oahu in 2005 and being elected as the California State Tourism Goodwill Ambassador, just the year after! Although the Gorie skits ended with One Night R&R's discontinuation in late 2006, the character was more actively brought back in these 2020ies times via YouTube broadcasts of several natures and eventually became a regular for Fuji TV's weekly daylight variety program PokaPoka, since 2023.
In the midst of the original "Gorie fever", Toshiyuki Teruya has partnered with American voice actress Jasmine Ann Allen and backing tarento singer Joann Yukari Yamazaki (山崎ジョアン 紫光) for a handful of parody song releases with Gorie performing in her own songs... and by "her own", I mean we've actually got a handful of parody renditions of popular songs from Western talents, each releasing yearly on September between the years 2004 and 2006. The first of the trio -Mickey, based on Word of Mouth by Mike + The Mechanics- even managed to peak Oricon charts, also thanks to being later used as the "main theme" of the Oahu island after Gorie bcame its mascot, while the later two 'Pecori's didn't stray that far away (3rd for PECORI♥NIGHT and 5th for Koi no Pecori♡Lesson, respectively). All three songs have been lyricized by the so-dubbed "Gorie Beautification Commitee" (ゴリエ美化委員会), each starring different arrangers for that. The earlier PECORI♥NIGHT, based on the Bay City Rollers's Saturday Night from 1973, had Yu Takami as its arranger, while the later Koi no Pecori♡Lesson employed a different (yet unknown) one to tackle Frank "J.W Stole" Pourcel and Paul "Del Roma" Mauriat's I Will Follow Him from 1963, with the Japanese parody arrangement being based around the cover version by Little Peggy March from the same year.
With the wisdom that revised rating revisions has given us across Taiko generations, we can see how a composer's work may manage to become both overrated AND underrated difficulty-wise, as pieces of the time went! We go, in fact, from PECORI♥NIGHT's pure 1/16 Oni chart whose only troubling part lies in its longer-clusters ending down to the later Koi no Pecori♡Lesson, rated one star lower on both its forays but sporting quite the nasty way for a speed escalation in-between its Go-Go Time-enhanced chorus to tackle!
