Another double-header for today, starring one musical sensation for Taiwan that gained its own share of fame across Taiko players for something that gave World Championship 2024 attenders... quite the unexpected nightmare. It even has a region-exclusive follow-up to it, too!
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y3) |  | ★2 86 | ★2 150 | ★4 224 | ★6 275 | - |
93-137.15
chdist (Eric Chou Xing-che - The Distance of Love)It's no rare scenario to see how a slow song can turn into an accuracy nightmare in music games, even among the most seasoned bachi wielders out there. What is rare, however, is how word of mouth reached the mainstream media about such a situation, up to the very same original creator of the song at hand... even if it's a cover version! But let's proceed in order, starting from a skinny of today's artist on our spotlight.
Born Chou Hsing-che (周興哲) in Taiwan, the art-named Eric Chou is a prominent songwriter and actor who made his fortune with his vocal performances and slow pop ballads of his own making, up to earn him monickers from national media outlets such as the "Little King of Love Songs" and the "King of the Lovelorne People". The currently-30-aged Mandopop sensation grew his interest into songmaking through a number of events in his life, starting from the attendance to a Jay Chou music concert rehearsal at the age of 9 and extended to a number of expereinced he could gather in his pre-adulthood studies abroad in Boston, from movies to personal experiences of those years, the latter eventually fathering what would become his very first smash hit: The Distance Of Love, with the title's Chinese portion -Yihou Bie Zuo Pengyou- standing for "Don't Be Friends From Now On".
As revealed in interviews across the years (including this one here), Eric Chou's initial motivation to get into music was to make himself appear more charming, which is reflected on the aforementioned song being inspired by a failed attempt on his part to impress a girl in his high school years. At the age of 17, thanks to his father getting in touch with Taiwanese actor Edison Huang, he was scouted to perform for his wedding with actress Queenie Tai, for which occasion he played the same The Distance Of Love for all atternders' delight. Two years later, this was also worth as the talent's first steps into the world of acting as a cameo singer in the 2014 romance series 16 Summers (16個夏天) -known worldwide as The Way We Were- and his The Distance Of Love being played as its ending theme, with a slight lyrics/general arrangement retooling respectively from Wu Yi-wei (呉易緯) and Chen Jianqi (陳建騏). The song also got its first physical recording in the same year's tail end, through his first studio album My Way to Love under the Sony Music Taiwan label. Online, the song was also worth (at the time) the quickest rise to 100-million views on YouTube for the youngest Mandopop artist!
Its a slow song with a long playtime and a low notecount, almost every single note stanza has minor BPM fluctuations (with scrolling speed modifiers to make it flow even slower!) and both single note streaks and 3-note clusters appear in the mix, making one of the many Oni case studies in Taiko to have an accuracy gauntlet without the usual suspects lingering behind the top-starred difficulties of other songs. It was so egregious to be often chosen as a song in the previous official arcade tournament's Finals due to making-or-breaking each match at the slightest misstep, like the 2013 edition's Finals having Ai Uta being chosen for a similar reason (although one of the 2024 Finalists when interviewed stated his decision for choosing The Distance of Love as a'Taiwanese representative' to the event). It even sparked nightmares among the community when it was tentatively chosen as a possible 1st Dan candidate for 2025's Ranking Dojo set of trials! Most amusing of, all, however, is how the news of 2024's arcade finalists picking and getting eliminated under the notes of The Distance of Love came to the very same Eric Chou, who decided to have a hand at it for himself afterwards, with online uploads to boot (see here and here). Even online news outlets picked that story up!
One last thing worth of note about this tune in Taiko is how, at first, each of the song's difficulties had a different ending point for the final Go-Go Time portion, with Oni mode also adding an extra couple of bar lines at the end. A later patch would remove these extra changes so that every mode's final GGT portion would end at the same time of Futsuu/Muzukashii did at launch, with the additional removal of Oni's extra bar lines.
Unbreakable Love
永不失联的爱
永不失联的爱
| Game | Genre | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro CN (Y2) | | ★2 89 | ★2 126 | ★4 222 | ★6 322 | - |
85 ???Mainland China Donders also got a currently-region-exclusive tune from Eric Chou (in cover form, once again) in Unbleakable Love, whose Chinese title -Yong bu shi lian de ai in Pinyin- stands for 'Love that Never Loses Contact' in English. This is a 2017 song that was made for the drama transposition of a 2004 online novel from short-story novelist Rao Xueman (饶雪漫), titled The Elfin's Golden Castle (小妖的金色城堡).
During said drama's production in 2017 (for which the same Chou was cast as its main lead), the novelist Rao informed Chou about the issue of the upcoming drama still lacking a theme song. During the same day, Chou hummed an impromptu melody that later in the day at home, he had recorded on his phone and completed a full-fledged song around it in the same day. After letting Rao to have a listen to it the day after, she penned its lyrics within the same day- talk about quickness! Peaking 4th at Malaysian musical charts (RIM), Unbreakable Love would eventually make its debut as a standalone song one year before the release of the drama it was intended for in 2018, with a digital debut in late May 2017 and its first physical printing as part of Eric Chou's thirs studio album The Chaos After You (如果雨之後), from December of the same year
Most of what told you about The Distance Of Love doesn't apply here: there no BPM/scrolling shift trickery and the playtime is shorter to boot, making it a bit more manageable of a slow ballad to ace with all golden hits to boot, even on Oni.
