Not every bloodsucking creature in folklore bears Romanian connections, just as today's remixed Namco Original can attest on arcades! It's from a country with quite the strong connection for originals in this series for quite a while.
Maseijin -Zeta Asterism- Hisui feat. hiyama
魔星陣 -ゼータ・アステリズム-／翡翠 feat. hiyama
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NS2 (MP) |  | ★5 152 | ★7 229 | ★7 357 | ★9 582 | - |
230
masejn (Maseijin)Vrykolakas (from the Greek βρυκόλακας) is a folkloristic creature in Hellenic folklore which is best known for its blood-sustained lifestyle, although it is by eating flesh or livers instead of sucking it up the ole Dracula style. There's no wonder why such a name was deemed worthy for a remix for a Namco Original song bearing the name for a vampire... doubly-so, considering the extensive lineage of Taiko-original tunes starring either other Greek mythological figures or words, Greek lettering in title or a mixure of both! It is so prominent that Namco Original sequels aren't speared the influence either, as attested by today's pick.
One of the current year's very first original debuts for the ongoing Taiko Music Pass subscription service, Maseijin (lit. "Demon Star Formation") is another take on math-based occultism from StudioGIW's Hisui since the Murasaki-version-minted debut of Mahoujin -Summon Delta-, with additional backing from the SAMURAI/SASURAI-famed violinist hiyama. With the former song being a direct reference to the magic square, Maseijin is instead about the figure of the magic star, which similarly to a magic square is constructed with numbers at its vertexes and intersections so that the resulting sum of every number on each line of the star hands out the same magic constant. The title portion between lines also follows the Greek-language-referencing trend, with the letter Zeta (uppercase Ζ/lowercase ζ) being used for a number of uses in mathematics. The 'asterism' in the title is instead a proper astronomical term, the most generic term to refer to an observed pattern of stars in space.
While Mahoujin -Summon Delta- had its artist credit mentions added retroactively across the years, the artist-crediting subtitle shines from Day 1 for Maseijin, as much as its Oni charting tendencies of a semi-pure 1/16 blend where its BPM is visually halved for a good portion of the playing time, barring a lone noteless "jumpscare tick" in the middle and the very last Kat note to hit. In-between, however, the high base speed makes it unsurprisingly easy to mishit note triplets if a steady-enough sustained pounding rhythm isn't kept, especially with the single notes lying right after those!
