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Saturday, November 14, 2015

Song of the Week! 14 November 2015


It's been a while since we had a "future song" feature on this corner... How does a double-header sound?

 Kaitou Miracle Shounen Boy (怪盗ミラクル少年ボーイ) Mysterious Joker
Version
Allx3 (93)x5 (162)x5 (237)x7 (428)
 Taiko Wii U 3
 163
 none
 kjoker


Original Song

Two new major Taiko releases require a strong enough preparation to both fronts, and for the Wii U one we have the opening theme for the Anime adaptation of Mysterious Joker (怪盗ジョーカー), mangaka Takahashi Hideyasu (たかはしひでやす)'s most recent and successful manga series. Aside from the popularity of the song that lead to be featured today, how many music videos have the guts to shoot something weirdly awesome like a human-sized black cat with pink sunglasses on a sidecar?!?

...anyway, Mysterious Joker is a Corocoro Comic series which was originally intended as a one-shot story; the self-conclusive story's popularity lead the adventures of the Mysterious Joker to be serialized since March 2008 in the main of Shogakukan's magazines, while also getting stand-alone tankōbon volume releases. Still active to this day, the series is about the titular Joker, a phantom thief who travels the world to steal its most precious treasures with his apprentice Hachi, while avoiding the many traps set by the police and other personalities in the series.

The Mysterious Joker series' popularity made it win the 58th Shogakukan Manga Award in the Children's Category in 2013, leading the way to other media-related products, such as the aforementioned Anime serialization and a Bandai Namco-developed in 2015, going by the translated name of 'Mysterious Joker: The Phantom Thief Who Crosses Time & the Lost Gem'.

The show's Anime adaptation is produced by Asatsu DK and animated by Shin-Ei Animation, stretching into two 13-episode seasons between October 2014 and June 2015; the manga series, however is still active to this date. Kaitou Miracle Shounen Boy, the Anime series' first opening theme, is the first song from Japanese 5-man independent band Arukara (アルカラ) that goes under the alias of Arukarider (アルカライダー). The song was released as a single on November 5th last year and peaking the 68th place at the Weekly Oricon charts for 2 weeks in a row.

As you can see from the... *sigh* copyright-muted video above, Kaitou Miracle Shounen Boy's Oni notechart likes to play with the players' endurance skills through a barrage of mono-color clusters and really few resting places in the song itself.

 I my moko Haruko Momoi
Version
Allx3 (151)x5 (231)x6 (362)x8 (465)
 Taiko 0 W
 140
 none
 ???


Ultra Techno School performance
Taiko Team Livestream performance

Our preview track for the next big arcade firmware marks the return of J-Pop musician/voice actress Haruko Momoi (桃井はるこ) on Taiko gaming, after the Tobikkiri! Anime Special song Wonder Momoi. So much so that said song is also returning for White Version in honor of the new Momoi song's release! While we already had occasion to talk about Momoi herself in one of our past SotW features (see here!), today we're going to focus only to the peculiar story behind I my moko.

You see, this song has been in the works for almost 5 years (and finished a year later), but it could never actually see the light of day as a commercially-available release up until the launch of STAY GOLD, Haruka Momoi's latest album which was released on October 21st this year! The reasons behind that are multiple, the biggest of which is the song's final version not being recorded in time for her previous 2012 album, Pilgrimage 〜Momoi World of Travel〜 (あんぎゃ 〜モモーイ世界の旅〜) due to the many blackout/monetary issues happened as a result to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. As the STAY GOLD album's message is to give hope to people in any kind of dire situations, I my moko's troubled story made the song itself to be finally featured in an actual album.

While Haruko Momoi is the lead composer and singer of the song, I my moko's album version is arranged by professional orchestrator Hideki Matsutake (松武秀樹). Long before its release, the song has been performed by Momoi herself in 2012 for one of the Ultra Techno School's NicoNico livestreams, which is also the place the video above comes from. One day prior its Taiko debut in White Version, Momoi performed the song live for the last Taiko Team livestream of the year 2015, together with Wonder Momoi.

I my moko's Oni mode fares as a low-tier 8-star challenge, mainly starring repeating patterns with some tricky cluster sections along the way.

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As time has passed since this feature's original posting, Oni videos for both songs are now available! BPM and note count for the other modes on both songs will be updated in a later date.