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Saturday, June 29, 2013

Song of the Week! 29 June 2013


Even after the Variety genre was deprived of a good chunk of songs (with all the Vocaloid songs moving into their own folder in Sorairo), new songs are still made for this quirky section which still mirrors some of Japan's interesting aspects. Just like today's feature!

 Atarimae Taisou (あたりまえ体操)
Version
Allx2 (64)x3 (95)x1 (141)x5 (219)
 Taiko 0 S to 0 Y, Taiko PSP DX
 87-125
 none
 cowcow


It's a little-known fact for whoever lives outside the island of the Rising Sun, but exercise sessions have always been a well-respected habit for the Japanese culture, especially during the morning before work. So important that most of the local radio and TV networks daily broadcast something called "Radio Taisou" (ラジオ体操), morning shows which broadcast some music and a specific set of morning exercises for each day, to get warmed up for the tiring day ahead of them.

As an unwritten rule for popular media, if something grabs a lot of attention, it's going to be parodied. A lot. That's where today's song comes in! Since 2011, the Japanese comedian duo COWCOW - formed by Yoshi Yamada (山田與志) and Kenji Tada (多田健二) - has been making a sketch series called Atarimae Taisou (lit. 'Natural Gymnastics'), in which a set of exercises shown in Radio Taisou broadcasts are replaced by sillier versions, such as stretching fingers, farting, playing rock-paper-scissors and so on.

The Atarimae Taisou song featured on Taiko comes from the very first entry of the namesake sketch series, as an abridged version of the piano tune performed during COWCOW's sketch. As for the other songs in the Atarimae Taisou series, it's sung by the comedian duo and composed by someone micknamed Higuchi Taiyou (樋口太陽), who also writes the lyrics as well. Together with Megpoid GUMI's Jinsei Reset Button, this song is the 2nd one in Taiko history which has made the fastest transition from arcade to console or vice versa, being introduced on Taiko Sorairo as a new default song and then ported to Taiko PSP DX about a week later as part of the Spring 2013 DLC pack. (not counting all the simultaneous releases like Taiko 11 and DS2)

Atarimae Taisou's Oni chart is just as easy as the calm piano melody may suggest, with plain 1/4 note stacking and almost no clusters, with a few minor BPM shifts at the beginning and the end.