Today's feature has a special spin into it, as our blog has reached another important milestone: since we put the Visitor Counter add-on, this blog has been visited over a million times!
As a result, here's a Namco Original song that became infamous in recent times for a certain grinding task... possibly taking as long as reaching our first million-view goal!
Jinpuumaru (迅風丸)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (141) | x4 (174) | x6 (318) | x8 (507) |
Taiko 0, Taiko 3DS2, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko Wii U
148.8-151.44
none
cna4After being the creator of many in-house Namco Original songs with a long version in the previous generations, legendary Bandai Namco composer Go Shiina (椎名豪) stepped into the current Taiko gaming times with a progressive slew of playable songs, starting with the swansong for the very first Taiko HD arcade firmware.
Jinpuumaru (lit. 'Circle of Fast Wind') is an instrumental Namco Original song that came out right before the release of the first arcade firmware update (codename KATSU-DON) by a really short period (22 days), thus currently standing as the song released closest to an arcade version's replacement. Incidentally, in second place is Yuugen no Ran, which came out 31 days before Kimidori.
The violin performance for the song is provided by Yu Manabe (真部裕), a professional violinist from Hokkaido, Sapporo who became famous for their pop, classic and jazz-styled vibes of violin performance/composing. Since his graduation at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2002, Manabe has been a member in many orchestral and jazz-oriented units, such as Anovio, Snake and Celebrity String Quartet (セレブ弦楽四重奏団). For more information about Manabe and his works, the best sources are his own website and Twitter profile.
The song's Oni mode stands out as a quite regular, cluster-based notechart which follows great part of the main violin's sonority throughout the play with pretty standard 1/16 note stacking.
Jinpuumaru (迅風丸)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x9 (659) |
Taiko 0 Mu, Taiko 3DS2, Taiko Wii U 148.8-151.44 none ex_cna4If there has ever been a Taiko equivalent of 'tedious RPG-styled grinding', Jinpuumaru's infamous Ura Oni mode easily takes the cake! As Taiko Wii U players know very well, Ura modes are unlocked one-by-one after reaching the six-digit mark on the Taiko Counter, with Jinpuumaru's Ura being the final unlock at 999,999 hits. That's nearly 10 times the effort to unlock all Ura modes in the previous Wii games, and a 100 times more effort than Taiko 3DS2!
If you managed to endure this tiring grindfest and unlocked this chart on Wii U, you'll find a mid-tier 9* which contains many long streams in tune to the violin melody, in the same fashion as Tsukikage SASURAI's Ura Oni. And, if you don't want to grind all the way through, this Ura is now opened up for play on the arcade starting from Murasaki version, and available to download on Taiko 3DS2 for a nominal fee of 162 yen.
