That special day of the year is approaching fast, one that around the Taiko turf was used to get jokey scenarios exclusively around the infamous 2000 song series. Until this one song, that is...
| Game | Genre |
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| AC Nijiiro (Y2; Ura Oni from Y3) |  |
★5 (152) |
★7 (306) |
★8 (477) |
★10 (692) |
★10 (1070) |
36.46-312.5
yumikk (ghost character title breakdown; see below)For the longest time, April Fools meant that the active arcade Taiko version of the time (in the years joining the laughs-a-plenty celebration of a given year) was given a humorous take on the 2000 series in a number of ways, counting things like a faux dual interview with McLinn and Linda Ai-CUE with "maid"-somethings all over it in chart-embedded Morse codes or extreme makeovers of past 2000-series songs. In 2022, however, the script was flipped and one ominous QR code was shared on the main Taiko no Tatsujin Twitter/X field, for everyone to try out in the arcade. By using it, Donders would find a rather-suspicious "Botadeta" (ぼつでーた, or "hidden/missing data") folder in the song selection screen, harboring quite the unique feat for everyone to enjoy...
By going past the intimidating descrption of said folder, going with choice messages as "this data is suspicious" and "it looks no good", players would find themselves the first QR-code-based song distribution for a Namco Original, also achievable by playing a multiplayer session with another Banapassport enjoyer who already unlocked it! Its title is a made-up Kanji word in ghost characters (幽霊文字, "yuurei moji"), colloquially known as Ka both for convenience and as a reference to two of the three Kanji characters used to create the ghost character title, spelling out the gibberish word 'Yumikaka' when put together: Yumi (弓) and Ka (可) twice, a factoid also reference internally with the 'yumikk' SongID.
Thanks to the prolific online documentation from its composer -the infamous LeaF of Mopemope fame-, we've been given quite the generous background rundown on it in the few days since Ka's first public outing; namely, we learnt that way how the song is about someone who was born as lost/damaged data and that its creation was heavily inspired by the Namco Original Donkama 2000, a process that took its creator over a year in order to finalize. This is also how we came to know about some of the early names for it before walking the ghost characters room, simply going by lower-caps Roman letters with 'a' and 'test'. The release of Ka was also shortly followed by an insanely-popular MV release from LeaF's longtime video contributors Optie and Fiz, with sensory overload in messaging of many layers and quite the dangerous hidden QR code inside, leading to the Twitter/X account termination screen! Last year, there has also been some minor controversy surrounding the official videos of Ka and another of LeaF's BMS songs (MARENOL) having its animations plagiarized for a character reveal video in the ongoing MiHoYo gacha game Honkai Star Rail, but according to the same LeaF on SNS (link), there's no involvment for that late-February gacha video's making, nor bad blood from the OG composer/music video makers for the allegations on either side!
The original QR code for Ka's unlocking method got obsoleted with a brand new one just for April Fools of the year after, this time enclosing the song in the "2-Tadetsubo" (2たーでつぼ) folder with a little something more to the platter: an Ura Oni, something that ever since the afore-embed 2022 tweet was revealed to be actually made for releasing during the 2021 April Fools debut as a dual-charting project with the song's overall charter -the ex-BNSI composer steμ- as a way to further pay homage to the infamous Donkama 2000 inspiring Ka's creation. Due to time constraints (and the base Ka's charting process being already complex as-is), the idea had to be shelved and postponed for the later year, becoming infamous on current-gen arcade grounds not only for being the first song in 2.5 years without a documented Donder-Full Combo performance on launch day (since AC0 Green's Connect Colors), but also the first one without an accounted launch-day False Full-Combo performance (all "OK/Silver" hits and no misses) since White Version's Synchronica-ported New World!
It's really rare for me on song features to have to resort to direct links to the chart sheets created by Taiko wiki contributors, but when it come to explain just how complex its charting structure on stanza composition is, a picture speaks louder than a thousand words. When we're used to an average 4-beats-per-stanzas ratio on most songs, here we have an irregular breakdown of the whole playing field in 35 stanzas, each of varying length and bearing a varying number of BPM/scrolling speed dual shifts that are reflected ingame with the irregular backup dancers' pace during the song play in action. And this is just for the regular Oni -you know, the one regular Donders of the time argued beyond its-latter shock value for its legitimacy in the top-difficulty range! Those who longed for undercharting issues, however, sure they got their monkey's paw wish, with a trial that is directly-comparable to the frightening scrolling gimmickry of Donkama 2000 in its first half... only it's not heavilly played for its first half alone- it keeps you company the entire time! Delayed Ura release or not, I wager the "hardest official Taiko challenge releasing on April Fools Day" wasn't in many people's Taiko Bingo cards for 2022...
