Well, time to catch up with the lost Ura feature time... so while we're at it,, let's giddy-up with a triple treat! As you're about to see, it's the only way for these ones...
UMA no Force Trai-nisen-gu 【BPM150 Edit】 LindaAI-CUE × Masubuchi prod. Licht Tsuboi × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
UMAのフォーストレーニ千グ 【BPM150編】／LindaAI-CUE × マスブチ prod. 坪井リヒト × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y6) |  | ★3 56 | ★4 96 | ★6 156 | ★7 208 | ★10 356 |
150
???UMA no Force Trai-nisen-gu 【BPM180 Edit】 LindaAI-CUE × Masubuchi prod. Licht Tsuboi × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
UMAのフォーストレーニ千グ 【BPM180編】／LindaAI-CUE × マスブチ prod. 坪井リヒト × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
UMAのフォーストレーニ千グ 【BPM180編】／LindaAI-CUE × マスブチ prod. 坪井リヒト × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
| Game | Genre | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y6) | | ★4 82 | ★6 144 | ★7 204 | ★8 276 | ★9 334 |
180 ???UMA no Force Trai-nisen-gu 【BPM240 Edit】 LindaAI-CUE × Masubuchi prod. Licht Tsuboi × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
UMAのフォーストレーニ千グ 【BPM240編】／LindaAI-CUE × マスブチ prod. 坪井リヒト × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
UMAのフォーストレーニ千グ 【BPM240編】／LindaAI-CUE × マスブチ prod. 坪井リヒト × Kawagen Kollagen (BNSI)
| Game | Genre | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y6) | | ★4 84 | ★5 124 | ★7 184 | ★10 316 | ★10 364 |
240 ???We've seen long and wide the kinds of curveballs Etou and Kimizu can pull on stream for the reveal of new Namco Originals, but do you know they were up to the fakeout game even before this year's very beginning? It's true! All for the latest of the yearly Chinese Zodiac songs...
The final Taiko no Tatsujin official livestream in 2025 (our recap here) ended with the reveal of the year-starter Namco Original for the Year of the Horse, with a tentative title of "UMA no Force Training" [UMAのフォーストレーニング(仮)] and a brief talk about its upbringing (relevant timestamp), with the overall project concocted by BNSI composer/DJ Rihito/Licht Tsuboi and involving a "eight-hands script", later discovered to be also including Yuji Masubuchi, LindaAI-CUE and Kawagen Kollagen, the latter for the composition of the base BGM track. January the 1st of this very year rolled by and, to the surprise of the day's arcade goers, not one but three new entries in the tracklist were spotted, one for each base BPM of the showcased music. On top of that, further inspection on the shared title root also brought to light another interesting detail: the word 'training' has now the Katakana spelling of Nisen (ニ千, or '2000') spliced in, as to reveal the trio's true nature...
Indeed, what we're looking at today are three separate flavors of referencing-action in service to the infamous Namco Original line of 2000 songs, each linked by the shared story of an endurance training performed by a character who was also featured in vocal form on previous 2000 series songs! Thus, we have Linda AI-CUE voicing Taberuna-kun for the third time after... well, Taberuna 2000 and Soroban 2000 (so we can be sure he survived that electric arcade quiz shock!), now saddling the aptly-named UMA horse (voiced by Masubuchi) as he repeats all kinds of foods and drinks the equine friend hollers at his munch-addicted jock. The three song edits also share other references to former 2000 series tracks, most prominently the metronome sound heard in Donkama 2000 and the 'Umai surugi!' (うまするぎ) line from Mata Saitama 2000, but each of the BPM variants has its unique ties to past track. The 150 BPM and 180 BPM edits both end with an incredibly-sped-up unique audio clip, respectively being clips from Taberuna 2000's final lines (150 BPM) and Soroban 2000's track portion with the morse code forks (180 BPM). Unique to the 240 BPM variant are the dishes mentioned being all featured in Mata Saitama 2000 and... I guess the ending, as UMA congratulates Taberuna-kun on a job well done instead of more sped-up antics!
For those who mourned the arcade loss of Smile! Smile! Smile! for the fastest Don/Katsu Medal farming spots, rejoice! These three
Charting-wise, here we have a handful of drum-pounding sequences that can be best compared to the notechart-study-inclined portions of the former console games' Taiko Dojo modes of yore, practicing repeated stanzas with an unchanging rhythm for different purposes and speeds in a crescendo of difficulty, only to be concluded with different special markers and some trippy barlines (TM) action at the end for these three, each shared across their respective 5 difficulties. In order to denote the audio sped-up portion in the 150 and 180 edits, a really short hitballoon scrolling at a x7.65 speed modifier closes the song, with several scrolling shifts marked by a timing tick each that gradually lower the modifier at a x1 speed at the end of the play. Of the two, the 150 Edit's final hitballoon is of particular note, as it's currently the impossible-to-clear balloon with the lowest hits required to "break" it (26, when in that short time window it's only theoretically possible to register about 12 hits). The 240 BPM one, on the other end, has something else to make up for the lack of smushed quick song reference, with gradual scrolling shifts that ramp up in a racher quick session up to reack with the final one a x20.26 value. These ARE 2026's songs, after all!
