Song of the Week! 10 March 2012

Remember, March 2012 is our IdolM@ster special!

Our second feature of the Idolm@ster franchise is about its portable history, and together with it one of the most challenging songs from that universe in Taiko. You probably already know this song too.

Kirame Kirari (キラメキラリ) ---Old---

Version
Taiko 12.5 to 14, Taiko PSP DX	x4 (198)	x6 (275)	x8 (475)	x9 (691)
Taiko 0, Taiko Wii U1	x3 (198)	x6 (275)	x7 (475)	x9 (691)

 Kirame Kirari (キラメキラリ)

Version
Taiko 3DS2				x9 (691)

Taiko 12.5, 13, 14, 0, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko 3DS2, Taiko Wii U 1, im@s MS Red
180
none
 kirame


Kirame Kirari comes from the PSP game trilogy The Idolm@ster SP, and is composed from the couple Satoru Kousaki/yura, the same people who made GO MY WAY!!, one of last week's featured songs.

Due to the limited data capacity of the UMD, 765 Production's nine idols (the fictional name of the company housing idols) were split into trios for three different PSP games, named Perfect Sun, Wondering Star and Missing Moon. The three games were released simultaneously on February 19, 2009, featuring the same game mechanics which made the original arcade such a hit.

The main difference lies in the plot: now the player's idols must face off new opponents from a rival talent company, named 961 Production (sound familiar? Hold that thought for a bit). Two of their idols, Hibiki and Takane, come from rejected idol projects from the very first game, while the third one, Miki from the XBox games, has temporarily left the 765 Pro staff. Now back to 961. We've seen this number being used before as the maximum combo for a few songs, most notably Doom Noiz and Hikari no Kanata e Ura, and can be pronounced as 'ku-ro-i' (black), a perfect villain color for a rival company. Anyway, this is where the 961 in Taiko comes from, even though there hasn't been a single IdolM@ster song in Taiko with this many notes before.

Now on with the song in itself! Kirame Kirari involves the aforementioned composer/lyricist duo from many other Im@s-related songs in order to deliver one of the first personal/image songs for the idol Yayoi Takatsuki (高槻やよい), voiced by Nigo Mayago (仁後真耶子). As for many other Idolm@ster-related tracks in Taiko no Tatsujin, the playable version of Kirame Kirari is the group one with the singing provided by all the 765 Pro Studio idols; however, a playable version of the original Yayoi solo is available on Must Songs Red Album, with the group version being completely unavailable only in that game.

Started as an exclusive track to the MASTER ARTIST album series, Kirame Kirar made its playable debut in the main series with the aformentioned Idolm@ster SP trilogy of games, only to be ported months later (on May 2009) to the xBox 360 IdolM@ster game, where it became part of the downloadable content catalog alongside other customization goodies. Two months later it was featured in the Taiko Zoryoban arcade machine (a.k.a Taiko 12.5) to highlight the new song from PSP, along with the unlockable song I Want.

This song is one of the most popular IdolM@ster songs among avid Taiko players for one reason; it has been the toughest IdolM@ster song for the longest time and it's quite a high 9* when compared to other songs of the previous charting generation as well! While the note patterns don't deviate much from the usual patterns expected of an IdolM@ster song, the high BPM and presence of more and longer clusters than usual contribute to its difficulty, and it is one of the few songs which actually survived Taiko 0's brutal difficulty cuts. On Taiko PSP DX, the song is referenced as coming from a later game, The Idolm@ster 2.

 Kirame Kirari (キラメキラリ) ---New---

Version
Taiko 3DS2	x3 (140)	x4 (203)	x6 (418)	x9 (691)

 Taiko 3DS 2, im@s MS Red
 180
 none
 imskrm


Exclusive to the console grounds as of this writing, Kirame Kirari was also one of the candidates for the large-scale notechart revamp kickstarted in 2015. The new notechart comes with a different selection of clusters, large notes among those cluster almost Hyakki Yakou style, and Go-go Times by the half-stanza, all peculiarly resulting in the same note count. Made available after the big announcement, the old Oni notechart is attached with the new Regular notechart as its Ura in that game.