It's surely a novel feeling for console players to be regaled with an April Fools-spawn in Taiko from the arcades, especially when you consider how this never happened before! Clearly a cause for us to delve a bit further into it.
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y4) NS2 (MP) |
 |
★5 205 |
★6 276 |
★7 384 |
★10 613 |
- |
125-350
ao8rug (Koritsu Aoharu Gakuen Kouka)As we've also reiterated a few months back around these lines, 2021 was the year when people at Bandai Namco's started to experiment with April Fools shenanigans in the more-creative part, branching out from repurposed joke-y versions of the infamous '2000' song genos. After enhancing their joke in the most brutal way possible the year after, in 2023 we've got an highschool makeover for the whole Nijiiro family, as the fabled Aoharu no Tatsujin (lit. "Master of Youth") started its
Behind the collective name of 'Blue-Back Choir' is a wide collection among BNSI musicians of old and new, one to rival the likes of one MEKADON song from the PS2 days! Yusuke Kudo (工藤祐介), the same artist behind Namco Original wonderful ROUTINE, is behind the song's instrumentals and overall direction from arrangement to its lyrics body and keyboard harmonica playing, with longtime contributor Masanobu Murakami (村上正信) for the track-down process. Kudo is also one of the lead-body vocalists, sharing the torth with a number of fellow BNSI colleagues of old and new times: Kurazu Misako (倉津美紗子), Osawa Mei (大澤めい) of Kappa-related fame, Yoshida Yuki (吉田佑貴), maiden name of now-TOSE sound designer Yuki Kusuhara (New Pokemon Snap and Tekken 8 among the most recent BanNam-related works), DAEMONxMACHINA composer Hiroki Hashimoto (橋本大樹), Sho Okada and Rihito Tsuboi (坪井リヒト) from more recent Taiko gaming memory. And that's just half the story- just as much extras were summoned for this song's chorus and unsung voice acting, too!
Coming hot for the role are also an ensemble of Bandai Namco-related personalities, from longtime contributors Yano Yoshito (矢野義人), Junichi Nakatsuru (中鶴潤一) and the Idolm@ster-affine Mitsuiro Kitadani (北谷光浩), to a number of more fresh hires: Syuri Misaki (三崎修吏; Survival Quiz CITY; SoulCalibur VI) behind the Namco Original Kumo no Kanata no Taichi no Kaze, Miyagi Yukiko (宮城裕紀子) from the discontinued RHYTHM CONNECT game's theme song, Pang E Xuan and Huang Yuxuan (黄昱璇), the two credited for sound sound direction-related roles in Tekken 8 and the 2024 PC title NOTTOLOT, the latter alongside Rihito Tsuboi.
If you got a rickety drum peripheral/controller setting and for some reason your Kat inputs are either broken or unmappable on any other button on your chosen controller by some freak accident, oh boy do I have the Oni song for you. Really, Don notes and an aptitude to react to haptic changes of speed are all you need in order to tackle a modifier-less Koritsu Aoharu Gakuen Kouka in any of its modes! One could say this is a reprisal of what happened years prior with Yokuderu 15300 telling a similar story but aye, at least we got a proper song backing the unique gimmick, this time around!
