...these livestream recap titles of ours sure are getting as stacked as a Jenga tower, are they?!
Until it crumbles, at least, we're once again here to regale you of what happened in yesterday's livestream, with the slides/recap shared today on today's official blog entry, a few extra shots on our side for anything else left uncovered there and an update shared via X right as I was in the middle of writing this very post. Let's just jump into it!
We begin with the usual recap on the upcoming Nijiiro update of this week, which was already disclosed in the previous official blog entry. Today, however, it was also notified via X how the June 4th update will also mark the removal of special ingame elements (ie. custom dancers) from all the Namco Original song covers involved in the FOCUS ON collaboration campaign of last year. These, however, are bound to stay in the collaboration Namco Original track that was introduced with the event (Koko Doko? Tabun Dokka-tou!).
【お知らせ】
— 【公式】太鼓の達人 ゲームセンター版 (@taiko_team) June 2, 2025
6月4日(水)25:59をもちまして、「FOCUS ON (#にじさんじ)×太鼓の達人」コラボで収録された下記楽曲に実装されている特別演出が終了となります。
・いっそこのままで / 山神カルタ / FOCUS ON (にじさんじ) × 太鼓の達人
・濃紅 / レヴィ・エリファ / FOCUS ON (にじさんじ) ×…
Just as quickly as the new JP-side contents were repeated, it was revealed the contents of the upcoming Arknights collaboration, with the following two tracks joining (most) Nijiiro areas by the end of July. For those keeping the scores at home, the following songs are also avilable in Peropero Games's Muse Dash, across the two collaboration events they got thus far!
In game-center-related news, we've got a bunch of slides pertaining the latest Namco game centers and Taiko-related live events! Down there are snaps from the fifth Taiko-themed Donder Station arcade, operative at the Namco Store Aeon Lake Town since April 5th and housing a Real Ranking Dojo event in the following May 10th.
Here, on the other hand, are the image collages from the latest RRD events held in this Spring season, across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Mainland China! Etou and Kimizu share the same enthusiasm and appreciation with their Taiko Team colleagues for how well are these events being received, voicing their wish to cast their arcade-events net wider in the coming seasons.
As usual, click in the pictures for a greater resolution on each!
And here at last, the final standings for the Japanese Ranking Dojo rounds for the 2024 main trials. This wasn't shown in the blog entry, so we're up to pick up the slack!
We've also got a lightning-round merchandise cornrer, consisting this time only of a bunch of Taiko-themed stickers that are going to be sold soon. Both outfit combos from the name and original designs are shown off with these!
We then lend to more collaboration rounds that are more catering to the idol grounds, both pertaining male and female idol franchises.
For the latter, while we got a reminder of the ongoing Idolm@ster TOURS x Taiko collaboration event lasting up until this month's end, there's going to be a Part 2 to said collaboration to benefit the TOURS players! Like for Part 1, Banapassport players have to play first on Tours and then on up-to-date Nijiiro cabs in the promotional period (from July 4th to August 17th), after which a code will be generated. Punch it in the promotional page to get printed out a promotional Taiko-based card of Mirai Kasuga you can see down here! All codes will expire on August 18th, so plan accordingly.
What comes here on the male-idol side of the talk isn't exactly new stuff for the eager 'uns among you to catch up with our own X and BlueSky coverage of the past weeks. A two-sided collaboration with the Ensemble Stars!! Music mobile/PC is in the cards and after media coverage of the collaboration on the other party's turf, it's about time it also got addressed by the Taiko crew!
As already revealed via social media, three Taiko no Tatsujin songs are set to become playable tunes in Ensemble Stars: Go-Go Kitchen, Kita Saitama 2000 and a male vocal cover of Sacred Ruin! The launch of Sacred Ruin's harder modes and Kita Saitama 2000 are time-gated to the dates shown below.
A custom skin for Taiko-themed note markers in the game is also planned!
At the same time, Japanese Nijiiro arcades will be graced by four Ensemble Stars!! songs, each netting the unlock of their respective lead singer as Petit Chara unlockables for Banapassport users. There's also going to be a raffle campaign to award one of 120 acrylic keychains for each of the idols/Taiko combos shown below (the keychains sent to winners are chosen at random).
You can find out more about the Taiko stretch of this collaboration via a dedicated section on Nijiiro's website.
At long last, we come to know about the BanNam-picked winner of the VOCALOID6 galaco/ZOLA Project contest to become playable in Taiko gaming this Summer. As also stated in the contest's winners section on their official website, expect the galaco-powered ★Rakuen☆CASINO GALAXY! to become playable both on Nijiiro cabs and via Taiko Music Pass on Donderful/Rhythm Festival.
For one final collaboration talk of the day we're not straying that far away from Vocaloid fields, as the contents of the previously-announced Gundam x Miku campaign are finally being disclosed.
In celebration of the iconic mecha franchise's 45th anniversary, Mitchie M's collaboration song Idol Warrior will grace Japanese cabs by the end of July, with other regions soon to follow up. Exclusive to the Japanese audience, however, are the exclusive unlock of a Gundam x Miku Petit Chara by playing the promotional song with a Banapassport card, as well as the sales distribution of two limited-time passport design cards starring Miku with one of the two Taiko siblings.
More talk on later merch endeavors will be revealed by the Taiko Team (and on the campaign's official website) at a later date.
We've now come to the usual user-question corner, gathering a handful of arcade-versed inquiries via Quesant poll inside a box to be drawn and answered live. There's usually nt that much to talk about on our part about this, but this past livestream regaled us with so much intel and assorted trivia to warrant its own section in this recap!
First of all, in fanbase-versed news we've got a peculiar show of scolding from the Taiko Team hosts in reguards of one infamous episode in which a player has reportedly punched a Taiko cab in the midst of a Real Ranking Dojo session. It made the SNS rounds so much in Japan that it had to be addressed live!
くりけん公式から遠回しに注意受ける
— え〜す (@Ace__1123) June 1, 2025
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww pic.twitter.com/rZcvPbW2V8
By popular demand, in the box segment it was also revealed how Ranking Dojo Gaiden title unlocks will have their own animated title plates in the future! Here's a static image on how they will look like, while you can see how these will look like in animated form in the broadcast, at around the 55-minute mark.
Five minutes after that and with got quite the treat... an audio-only interview about the recently-launched Toro-ika 2000 and its creation, starring Yuji Masubuchi and Linda AI-CUE! The whole segment was scored with an instrumental version of Soroban 2000 and a few choice snaped of the interviewed ones, as the pre-recording goes through.
Closing up the corner and by popular demand, here's a small slideshow about this year's April Fools and related character/song on toe. It's
To get a grasp of the momentuous parenthesis, we've even gotten an introduction worthy of the Star Wars intro playbook!
A long time ago in a music game blog f-oh wait, we've already done this joke...
In a nutshell, the dark counterparts of AI Don and Machina have their own introduction and profiles listed, alongside a (now-seemingly-dead) Machina.
We even got a few choice comments about the Dark Ex Machina song!
Out of the Box corner, and into the broadcast's main event! 2025's edition of the Ranking Dojo main courses will premiere worldwide (except Mainland China) on June 7th, with the slide below offering a taste of the contents of the main courses that will be available on launch.
We're then greeted with the brand-new song that will close the 10-Dan trial! Seifuumeigetsu's SoulStone -Yami Kui Isakasu-Dan- has also been played live by No.11 in the usual no-chart-viewing fashion, while still showcasing the amount of notes to expect from its Ura to land-
The song will also be one of five items showcased in the upcoming Summer 2025 Rewards Shop update, starring a Nintendo Switch launch song, two of the Ranking Dojo Gaiden-debut Ura Oni settings and one Taiko Session revival that was saved from the clutches of RHYTHM CONNECT's End-Of-Service corpse.
At the same time, we got these four items among purchasable songs/Uras/songs-with-Uras to become publicly unlocked with the upcoming Rewards Shop update.
Like in the past main Ranking Dojo reveals, we're also graced with the reveal of the title/artist(s) combos for three upcoming original songs that will be employed at the end of the Kuroto-Meijin-Chojin main courses that are coming up in a few months! Each also have a brief song introduction from one of their creators to boot.
The first of the trio is Kakashi-hime -Princess Scarecrow-, from the CreoFUGA-awarded duo of Harunaba and Chihiro Ishiguro whose last joint work for Taiko gaming was the WCS '13 Area Elimination dual song Ghost Mask. This time around, they're bringing up a song with the theme of telling an original fairytale, full of moving parts and such. As all the storytelling had to be squeezed into an about-2-minutes audible form factor, Harunaba hopes Donders will be up to listen to it multiple times to fully catch on it!
The 'obligatory BNSI new NO slot' this year went to the duo of Sho Okada and Bonjour Suzuki, last heard of together for the Donderful/Rhythm Festival Taiko Music Pass debut song Bubble Lips Rave Machine. Sho Okada in particular took advantage of the small writeup here to bring up his fond childhood memories of spending a whole Summer in order to Full Combo Kita Saitama 2000 on Taiko no Tatsujin Portable 2, one of the giant difficulty spikes in the series at the time.
Getting to hear how with just two kinds of notes it's possible to infer all sorts of sentiments into a Taiko song is an aspect dear to the BNSI artist even back then, but from time to time it also came with a "strange feeling" of sorts where regularly-charted parts are a bit empty, as in "there's a bit of music missing there". To the end of trying to better convey this idea, he came up with a song by the title of Pitch Fader, a tool more commonly used to change the audio playback speed with DJ equipment and the likes.
Another blast from the past awaits the third and final early song reveal for the day: Sadakichi, previously known in Taiko for his CreoFUGA-awarded Hurtling Boys from 12 years ago... back to the scene with a full-blown song sequel to it!
The sentiment behind this song's creation mirrors the one felt by fellow Taiko contest-winning artist Yomii as we've seen it last time on SotW shores: it's been a long time since the first song in Taiko and whoever heard it as a kid back then is now an adult, so the artist's drive is to make something to recapture the energy that could be harnessed in the youth, both with personal gabba-drawn music influences from the past and inputs from more than a field, including the same Taiko Team with which has been keeping contact in reguards of song-composition stuff. It's currently a work-in-progress and Sadakichi's heart is moved at each playback, but the will to come to completion is stronger than ever!
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This ends our (and the Taiko Team's) coverage about yesterday's broadcast, but here's a little something before we go! Courtesy of Discord user Legulus, we've gotten one extra chart about the maximum final ranking achieved in 2024's Ranking Dojo across the globe as collected by Japanese wiki Wikiwiki's users, complete with gold-ranks-bests results on toe. Good job, everyone!
See you next time.
Official Links
Taiko no Tatsujin official blog (2025/06/02)
