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Saturday, January 9, 2016

Song of the Week! 9 January 2016


Puoc a ta kool a ekat ot gniog era ew yadot- wait, this doesn't feel right...

... *A-hem* Today we are going to take a look at a couple of songs which have some notable 'Reverse Notecount' values, a trend that slowly got a decent following in the later years for certain songs' notecharts, much like for the "regular" special combo counter of 765, 876 and such.

 Hikyo Sentai Urotander (卑怯戦隊うろたんだー) Shin-P
Version
Allx3 (116)x5 (196)x6 (293)x8 (567)
 Taiko 0 S to 0 Y
 152
 none
 ???


Reverse notecount tropes are as old as the 2nd Taiko generation goes, with the 6th Taiko videogame for Playstation 2 introducing a couple of Oni notecharts whose overall number of notes is the mirrored quantity of more popular special notecount values; for the familiar 765 Namco goroawase (Japanese term for 'number-based wordplay'), Shin Garyoutensei's Oni Normal Route counts 567 notes, while CAPTAIN NEO boasted an 678-notes Oni chart, mirroring the Ban-Namco goroawase of 876. These reversed special notecounts can still be found today in a number of songs, from both the arcade and console fronts!

Among Taiko Sorairo's launch songs, for example, there's Hikyo Sentai Urotander (lit. 'Coward Fighters Urotander'), one of the first Vocaloid tracks in Taiko gaming to boast male synthesized voices (outside the Kagamine twins). Featuring the singing voices of Hatsune Miku, KAITO and MEIKO, this is a song which was mainly made as a parody to Anime opening credits, singing the ways of a supposedly-justice squadron (the Urotander Fighters) who have no problems on relying to dirty tricks and underhanded tactics in order to succeed in their operations. Under the motto of "If we win, that's what all matter", even breaking Anime tropes like NOT shouting the names of their special attacks is no problem to the cowardly team, as long as it leads to victory!

The song was originally uploaded in November 23rd, 2007 by independent composer Shin-P, only to be taken down by the creator himself and re-posted 5 days later with an enhanced video. Later being featured in the EXIT TUNES album Vocalostar, Hikyo Sentai Urotander got a couple of sequels in the MEIKO-sang That is Our Justice and -The Sword of Truth-, also made by Shin-P. With over 5 million views as of today, Hikyo Sentai Urotander stands tall among the other Hall of Legend Vocaloid songs due to an extra feat: it's currently the Vocaloid song which received the highest number of comments on the Internet, trumping ALL the other Vocaloid tracks ever made to date!

Mostly sporting even-note clusters, Hikyo Sentai Urotander on Taiko offers how hard can a portion of the original song be on Taiko drums without relying on odd note spacing/stacking rules. This is also one of the few Vocaloid songs on Taiko to have its synth voice performers not being mentioned in any Taiko game to date since its debut. With its removal from Yellow Version, this is also the first Vocaloid song to be perma-deleted from the Taiko series's official games, with no console ports of sorts to boot.

 Acceleration (アクセルレーション)
Version
Allx4 (130)x5 (251)x6 (412)x8 (678)
 im@s MS Blue
 191
 none
 imeacc


Coming to even more recent Taiko game releases, one of Idol@ster Must Songs Blue Album's debuting song isn't afraid to show some reverse-goroawase love on its Oni notecount!

Coming from the Idolm@ster ONE FOR ALL PS3 videogame, Acceleration is the first image song of Leon, the pro-active and headstrong idol who made her debut in said game. Voiced by Japanese voice actress Chihara Minori (茅原実里) of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya fame, Leon is the latest female idol who is associated with the 961 Production talent agency, fierce rival of 765 Pro since the Idolm@ster SP games trilogy.

Acceleration involved the talent of three more people for its creation; the song was composed by Toaki Usami, lyricised by Selina Higa and arranged by Hideaki Ikawa, under the alias of tatsuo. An extended version of the song can be later found in the MASTER ARTIST 3 album THE IDOLM@STER MASTER ARTIST 3 Prologue ONLY MY NOTE, released on August 27th in 2014.

Being a song for an idol from a different talent agency than the usual 765 Pro, the 678-combo reversed notecount makes sense, but when it comes to the notechart on itself, any kind of note limitations don't make its note-charter -Kuboken (くぼけん)- feel scared to underplay the difficulty potential of a nearby-200-BPM track, thanks to the many aggressive cluster formations featured in the Oni chart.

  Acceleration (アクセルレーション)
Version
All


x10 (961)
 im@s MS Blue
 191
 none
 ???


The madness only ramps up when Kuboken is in charge of an extra difficulty layer for a song! Acceleration's Ura Oni plays more on the idea of small clusters put together to make some frantic notechart portions while also playing with the song's title by literally making the scrolling speed accelerate towards the song's end.

After Doom Noiz and Hikari no Kanata e (Ura), this is also the third Oni trial whose notecount is 961... and rightfully so, considering that Leon is a 961 Production idol!