The many music contests held by Bandai Namco these past years to enrich the overall Taiko no Tatsujin song roster holds all sorts of stories across both winners and losers alike: unyielding tenacity across editions, lucky 1st-try adoptions, illustrious names eating musical dust from the winners, no-name artists unexpectedly trumping the competition and so on.
Today's tale, however, is a bit different. One that may call for outrage in the face all other songs who didn't make it but whose reasoning for that may be as plain as day. Nonetheless, it's quite odd for such a story to have its tracks covered on contest grounds, somehow...
Love Love Love Love Love Bakyuun! Fairy Tales!
Love Love Love Love Loveばきゅーんっ！／ふぇありーているず！
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y6) |  | ★3 76 | ★4 122 | ★5 320 | ★7 555 | - |
222
???..now, I know what you're probably thinking: "Pops? Isn't this supposed to be from one of the original music contests? Why is this not a Namco Original?" and there's a reason for that, rest assured! For now, however, let's dig into the 7-idol unit behind this 6th-year Nijiiro pick.
Love (x5) Bakyuun! is brought to us by the 2018-debuting, 7-member idol unit Fairy Tales!, currently consisting of Shiraishi Uran (白石うらん), founding member Tsuzura Ichiha (津々楽いちは), Mano Sana (真野紗奈), Hazuki Rino (綺月梨乃), Yumesaki Konoka (夢咲このか), Sakura Hinata (佐倉ひなた) and Koguma Meu (小熊めう), joining the act in quite the span of time between its foundation and October of this year, for Meu's case! Considering this song's release as a contest entry in mid-June 2024, we can assume that a few former Fairy Tales! members have also contributed, which is most likely the case for the 2025-graduated duo of Hori Rie (堀梨恵) and Mikeno Mayuna (美ヶ野まゆな). This "electric idols" act also stars Toshihiko Watanabe (渡邉俊彦) as its lead composer, strong of former contributing experience to other idol-versed IPs like THE iDOLM@STER and CyGames's Uma Musume.
This song was originally input for the 2024 Taiko no Tatsujin music contest as entry no.102968, sporting a title without spacing between 'Love's that is most similar to the definitive product (link, archived). Long after both the Judges' Evaluation and General Public Voting rounds have ended, however, this one song was revealed to be joining Nijiiro Version arcades as a Pops tune (our coverage here), with many a people online highlighting its former-contest-entry status on SNS because -at the time- the original contest entry was still natively there, uncut and able to be listened to (it's how we could snap that screenshot you could see on our blog entry about this!).
Today's Song of the Week idea has risen because, one day between said blog entry and today, the LoveLoveLoveLoveLove Bakyuun! contest entry got deleted from the website, which is why I've had to resort for an archived link this time around. While no official word on either the Taiko Team or the idol unit's PR staffers has been stated about the whole situation as of yet, we can still speculate about this course of action due to the contest submission breaking one of the main rules: spanning well beyond the recommended playing time of 1:30-2 minutes which, while getting a little bit more lenient as Nijiiro-era competitions went by (ie. the "up to 2:30 minutes is acceptable" clause), is still one of the first rules to be stated every time and surely one not to overlook an over-4-minutes-long entry. The song being on the website for all this time, however, means that it could also be eligible for General Public Vote selection and while the contest's hosts could have just simply ignored any and all inputs pertaining that entry (both votes and eventual "honorable mentions" to give), it's still one "null-and-void" song that people could have easily poured in tens and tens of votes anyway, not aware of its rules-breaking status. Doesn't help that the official video for Love Love Love Love Love Bakyuun! got released shortly after the judges-elected winners were revealed, either...
So yeah, the epilogue of the story is that this song can't be a Namco Original on the grounds of breaking a rule of the contest entry in question, getting adopted one year later as a non-cover Pops tune on its stead. Love x5 Bakyuun! also found a physical housing as part of Fairy Tales!'s 4th studio album, Electrical Quest～Michibi Kareshi Monotachi～ (エレクトリカルクエスト～導かれし者たち～).
Now that the spicy talk is behind us, we can talk about its Oni and... okay, I lied- we're still in spicy range. How can we not be, when we're looking at a 7-star challenge whose base BPM matches the one of top-difficulty old glories like Kita Saitama 2000 and Gloria? At this speed, even tackling consecutive 3-note clusters and the earlier DKD/KDK ones might prove itself to be quite a challenge, despite the contained (for today's standards) notecount for a licensed tune...
