2025's first Anime-coded Song of the Week sure was one held in high-regards from the people at the helm of the Taiko franchise, considering its source material went to have two different collaboration campaigns with the arcade branch... and both in the same year, mind you!!
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y4) |  |
★3 (66) |
★4 (102) |
★5 (244) |
★8 (446) |
- |
195
tensr1 [TenSura (title contraction) 1st Theme]Just like the zombie-show craze that hit Western countries about a decade ago, you couldn't escape the Japanese popular-media without eventually stumbling upon a literary/animation work from the so-called isekai genre, whose premise is to have its protagonist be forcefully relocated into another world and having to ward for themselves between friendly new faces and looming disasters. It's still a strong-going trope in the Land of the Rising Sun with either new works or continuation of older ones with new media of sorts, including this here work from the early 2013. It goes to show how strong some fads can last worldwide, even if your work's official English translation reads like the incipit for a Family Guy flashback gag!
Tensei Shitara Suraimu Datta Ken, more-commonly known with the form-contracted TenSura, starts as a light novel series from the nicknamed Fuse, originally released as a free web novel for the self-publishing website Shōsetsuka ni Narō (小説家になろう, lit. "Let's Become a Novelist"). The story being told is one of salaryman Satoru Mikami, who died in the real world by protecting a friend of his from a white-blade assailant. A mysterious voice, then, asks a few questions to the freshly-deceased worker, ending up afterwards into a sword-and-sorcery fantasy world as the series' titular slime, being granted an array of abilities according to the answers given to the mysterious voice like the most prominent one "Predator", the ability to devour anything and being able to take their appearance. This is how the bubbly slime eventually ends up with a human form once again -one from a deceased blue-haired girl- as well as the powers of the mighty Storm Dragon known as Veldora, bound by a curse who the skeletonless mob from another world decides to befriend and help getting rid of. This peculiar relationship will eventually end up with Veldora bestowing the reborn slime the name of Rimuru Tempest alongside part of his powers, while at the same time putting the same Rimuru in a delicate position as the next-in-line leader of the Great Forest of Jura, due to the power vacuum generated by Veldora's absence attracting all sorts of agents from different kingdoms to try take advantage of the situation and extorting its inhabitants in some way or another.
The rights for TenSura's distribution were acquired by Micro Magazine, publishing the original (still ongoing) physical light novel run with later press agents furthering its reach: Kodansha for its manga run (and the later Anime's English localization, for its USA branch) and Yen Press for said manga's localization. The foreshadowed Anime run by Eightbit co., Ltd studios currently spans three seasons (the last of which aired in 2024) and a movie (subtitled Scarlet Bond), with plans for a 4th anime season and an additional movie currently slated for a 2026 release. On the videogame side, we got a still-alive gacha game from 2021 (ISEKAI Memories) and last year's ISEKAI Chronicles, a more-conventional action RPG release for PC/modern consoles walking down through the original story's bits.
Talents from the 2004-founded Elements Garden unit shine through this series's first opening theme for the Anime show, as we got the unit's founder Uematsu Noriyasu (上松範康) as its composer and Fujita Junpei (藤田淳平) as its arranger. As the lyricist/singer of the piece, we also find the return of singer/VA Terashima Takuta (寺島拓篤), several years in a non-cover song in Taiko after the few iDOLM@STER SideM song ports and ST☆RISH's Maji LOVE 1000%/2000%. Aside for that, gameplay-wise it's one of the many upbeat-tempo Oni charts for an Anime chart you'll ever face for the presented star difficulty range. Watch out for those brief 1/12 cluster segments if you want that Donder-Full Combo, though!
