2025's Taiko take on April Fools was to subject one of the series' original characters into a 'corruption' process of sorts, via the release of an alternate take on the character heavilly relying on the mesugaki trope for a young character's bratty/provocative behavior.
I mean, it's not like this was the first instance that topic has walked into arcade grounds, really...
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y5) |  |
★3 (128) |
★4 (216) |
★5 (373) |
★8 (547) |
- |
165
???Between solo music releases and the 2 (thus far) major Taiko collabs, we've seen how a popular Vtuber can be born in many a way... but something in the likes was still uncovered by us: a Japanese illustrator who decided to turn herself into one... due to the decisive push from another Vtuber whose looks were crafted by the very same illustrator!
Meet the nick-named Shigure Ui (しぐれうい), famed designer since the early 2020ies due to the Anime for the ongoing live novel Osamake and for being one of the artists for the WIXOSS card game, as well as the lead character designer for a 12-series Anime series based on it, subtitled Diva(A)Live. The artist's earliest jump of notoriety came to be for her Vtuber character designs for a number of agencies, from the Virtual eSports Project's Sendo Yuuhi and Hololive's Oozora Subaru, one of the talent agency's digital celebrities to invite her on livestreams since 2018. The same Subaru would be the one to convince Shigure Ui to pursue an independent Vtuber career, which she started from May 2019 with her own 16-aged persona, mostly oriented on drawing livestreams.
Eventually, Shigure Ui branched into many a personal project since adopting a Vtuber persona of her own, one of them being original songs when approached (among other parties) by talents of the famed IOSYS doujin. "How can I not ask them to make a denpa song with me?!" was the artist-turned-Vtuber's reaction to that, which eventually lead us to the creation of the "Purify! Loli-God Requiem", debuting as the 6th track in Shigure Ui's 1st solo album Mada Ame wa Yamanai (まだ雨はやまない, lit. "The Rain Doesn't Stop Yet") in May 2022 in collaboration with IOSYS's Maron (lyrics) and D.watt (composition/arrangement). For the song, Shigure Ui performs in a voice for fitting to a 9-aged girl instead of her usual Vtuber voice, taking the role of a "loli god" gazing down all minor-fetishizing perverts while seeking for their salvation via purifying beams of sorts. At the song's completion, all involved parties share the sentiment that what has become the finished product ended up with a rauchier lyrics set than in all former drafts, and this is coming from a track which had the loosely-translated-from "Purify!! Pervert Pigs Communication☆" as its earlier tentative title! Additional narration for the song is supplied by Norio Tsukudani (佃煮のりお), in her own Vtuber persona as Tamaki Inuyama.
Once again, we find the Taiko no Tatsujin series welcoming a song by (indirect) popular demand of random people across the web, seeing as its 100+million-views-racking music video from 2023 is currently the most-viewed video from a Vtuber content creator thus far, mostly helped by the song's choreography that spiraled into viral video danceoffs on several SNS platforms over time. You can tell, considering this song's other otoge home as of late is Konami's ongoing DanceDanceRevolution series, where some of the inputs mirror the original MV even at higher-difficulty settings!
For all the stern admonition of lolicons shown on display, its Oni mode is one that eases its player into the reoccurring trend of sudden scrolling speed bursts for single notes across the play, with simple x1.5 enhancements that leave a little more "waggle room" for 1st-timers not to be jumpscared at and lose their combo streaks for. Not too shabby, for a song partially sampling the Requiem from Dies Irae that Taiko fans know by heart for something that is far more sinister from the distant past...
