Today's entry is here to state how selected Pops entries from the Taiko Team aren't pushed around in rather sketchy ways, as the slight scouting on yesterday's official blog entry on our part has seen...
Hai Yorokonde Kocchi no Kento
はいよろこんで／こっちのけんと
はいよろこんで／こっちのけんと
| Game | Genre |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y5) NS2 (MP) |
 |
★2 69 |
★4 202 |
★5 306 |
★7 395 |
★9 512 |
147-147.43
hai465 (Hai Yorokonde, as in 4=Yoku, 6=Roku, 5=go/ko)Topping 2024's Billboard Japan Heatseekers Songs chart and charting relatively high across both Billboard Japan Hot 100 (4th) and Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan. (2nd), this is a song from last year's month of May singing about one living condition that is highly valued and commonplace across modern Japan: the struggle of your average salaryman to handle peer pressure while the everyday life's accumulated stress is approaching its boiling point. What better person to sing about such a topic than a person formerly aquainted with the same salaryman livestyle, I say?!
Hai Yorokonde (lit. "I'll Be So Glad To") is the 6th single from YouTube personality Kocchi no Kento, art name for the 29-aged Kento Sugō (菅生健人). He's the 2nd sibling of a household well versed into the entertainment world with his elder (Masaki Suda) and younger brother (Araki Sugo) being both actors and their father -Arata Sugo- being a journalist and well-versed television personality. The same Arata was also the one figure to inspire Kento to thoroughly follow his musical inclinations, ...to the point of quitting his company job in 2020! The chosen art name also reflects this will, standing for "This One Kento" who is fully expressing himself with music in contrast to the "other Kento" who became a salaryman as soon as he graduated from school. Before his original songwriting career, his YouTube channel was popular in Japan for acappella covers of popular songs, stong of his past accolades in the university years as the two-times consecutive winner of the biggest national competition in the filed, the A Cappella Spirits.
Clashing the troublesome topic with an upbeat songs geared up with an 80ies/Showa-era anime style from Kazuya Kanehisa, the original YouTube video upload nowadays boasts well over 180 million views, with its success boasting a few alternative versions, all published under the Blowout Inc. label. Among those, the most notable ones are an a cappella version from the same Kocchi no Kento in a 'going-full-circle' kinda way for his musical cover-making roots, an English version translated by twin vocal band Penthouse's Shintaro Naomika and a parody version going under the title of Hai Yorokonde Kikikiki Don, made as an instant noodle Donbei plug for Nissin Foods and discussing about the difference of taste between the East and the West. After seeing such a foods company for Vocaloid-related stuff another two times in the past, it's official at this point- they're stalking us Donders, I tell you!!
Despite being the earliest commercial adopter of this catchy tune, the Taiko franchise bolsters the shortest cut of the original version across all currently-available parties, with the recently-launched Groove Coaster Future Performers and CHUNITHM's latest firmware version getting a slightly-extended (incomplete) cut of the original (link) and Sega's maimai getting the whole deal, with the full video playback on toe. What did either external party lack, however, was direct acknowledgement for music gaming from Kocchi no Kento himself, who appeared during last September's official Taiko livestream broadcast (relevant timestamp) in pre-recorded video form, a few days ahead of the original song debut for Nijiiro cabs. Thus, the song can count on two different kinds of approaches to its charting management: one mostly featuring monocolor clusters and the other offering a backbeat-based challenge, with the added perks of a few quick 1/24 Kat clusters and big note/small drumroll charting in x2 scrolling speed portions to better highlight the repeated ...---... Morse code message in the song (SOS).
