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Saturday, February 13, 2016

Song of the Week! 13 February 2016


Once again, Valentine's Day is drawing closer (and I have this funny feeling of deja-vu in my mouth), meaning that lovers around the world are ready to deliver tasty treats to their soulmate.

But whether's the case of girls giving treats to boys (in Japan) or the other way around in the rest of the world, one thought reigns supreme in the most gluttonous of lovers...

 Gimme Choco!! (ギミチョコ!!)
Version
Allx4 (198)x6 (261) x7 (467)x8 (861)
 Taiko 0 R, Taiko Wii U 3, Taiko 3DS 3, Taiko PS Vita
 220
 none
 gimcho


While definitly not being a Valentine's Day song, Gimme Choco surely touches a theme not that uncommon from sweets-based celebration, being about the girls' internal fight between staying fit and eating chocolate to their heart's content. Come to think of it, we already had a similar theming on Taiko before, with Mika Sato's Diet Padarise!

Anyway, this song is made by the Japanese heavy metal band Babymetal, consisting of lead singer Suzuka 'Su-Metal' Nakamoto (中元すず香) and the dance/singer couple of Yui 'Yuimetal' Mizuno (水野由結) and Moa 'Moametal' Kikuchi (菊地最愛). Linked to the Amuse talent agency, the band was founded in 2010 as a sub-unit of the female idol group Sakura Gakuin, aiming to realize a fusion of metal and idol musical vibes. With the band's teenage members not knowing anything about the heavy metal musical genre prior of Babymetal's foundation, their music was spread through album collaborations and concerts all over the world in the attempt to form their own sub-branch of music as "Kawaii Metal", mixing heavy metal and idol music's vibes and themes to spread messages more akin to the teenager life.

Composed by Takeshi Ueda (上田剛士) and lyricised by the lyricists MK-METAL and KxBxMETAL, Gimme Choco is the Babymetal unit's latest single, originally debuted for a concert at Makuhari Messe in December 21, 2013, nearly coinciding with lead member Su-metal's 16th birthday. Later on it was included in the band's first studio album -February 2014's Babymetal- and in May 31st it also became purchasable in the UK both as an iTunes track and as a stand-alone single, under the translated title of Gimme Chocolate!!, peaking 5th at the Billboard World Digital Songs charts for the years 2014/2015.

Kurenai's notecharter, Matsumoto (マツモト), was in charge for Gimme Choco's Taiko modes, with its Oni filled to the brim with mono-color clusters and single notes, scrolling relentlessly at over 200 BPM the whole time.

  Gimme Choco!! (ギミチョコ!!)
Version
All


x10 (1136)
 Taiko 0 R, Taiko Wii U 3, Taiko 3DS 3 Taiko PS Vita
 220
 none
 ???


One of V Version's new launch songs, this Babymetal song is the first J-Pop resident (aka no song genre changed) to receive a 10-star Ura Oni, to the surprise of many... even to notecharter Matsumono himself! This Ura Oni mode, in fact, was originally supposed to come out as the song's regular Oni mode, after that the rest of the Taiko Team has seen his first drafts for the Oni notechart and requested a much challenging chart for the regular Oni. The final results were the creation of this Ura Oni, with the original idea still kept intact as the song's regular Oni.

Historically-speaking, this is the first mode in the J-Pop genre to break the 1000-note limit previously set by Telecastic fake show, with the inception of repeated note patterns and some infamous note streams for the guitar solo, lurking for some juicy combo breaks. This song's note density values are also slightly higher than Dokadoka's Oni mode, requiring an average of 8.14 hits per second for the note clusters in comparison to the Classic remix's 8.13 hits per second.