Music Monday: Culture Shock’d
February 9th, 2009
The first thing that comes to mind when reviewing a music game for me usually happens to be…Is Radiohead in it? Once that question is answered I take a look at the rest of the track listing and see if it is really worth a purchase, because as fun as a music game’s mechanics can be, I see no reason to pick it up unless there is a significant number of tracks that I enjoy on their own. However, every once in awhile I come upon a music game that does something so completely different that I have to pick it up on principle alone.
While the idea of a male cheerleading game seemed strange to me at the time, everything from the art style to the games mechanics seemed to work in my mind as I read about, and subsequently pre-ordered ‘Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan’ in early 2005. Besides some random youtube clip surfing the only thing that remained a mystery to me was if the soundtrack would be any good, or if it would confirm my initial thoughts that all musical recording equipment should be removed from Japan. As bad as the pop idols are in the United States from everything I had heard and listened to, the quality decreased exponentially as you crossed the Pacific.
Excerpt from ‘Loop & Loop’ - Asian Kung-Fu Generation
My anticipation continued to grow in the lead up to the release, but the tracklist continued to stay in the back of my mind in an effort to manage my expectations. However, as soon as I booted the game I was met with a feeling of both surprise and relief. Certainly there were tracks that I would have never listened to normally, the overwhelming majority of the soundtrack syncs so well with both the art style and game mechanics, that it is hard to find fault in it.
Excerpt from ‘Koi no Dance Site’ - Morning Musume
Even though everything was in Japanese and I had a hard time understanding both the context for the story as well as the songs, a certain charm was born from this odd introduction of culture shock. Many out there may say that there are better J-Pop or J-Rock songs out there, but the track list that was selected for Ouendan was truly top notch. Almost 4 years later I still play it and it’s sequels regularly as there is no other experience like it on the DS. Although I enjoy the other games in the series, I feel as if they couldn’t quite attch themselves to me with the same feelings I had when playing the original release after having such mixed feelings about how the first game would be.
Excerpt from ‘Taisetsuna Mono’ - Road Of Major
-Eric Wall
Tags: Japan, Music Monday, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
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February 10th, 2009 at 12:19 am
I have to say that after dating a japanophile for 4 years (no not who I’m dating now ^_~) I’ve found that Japanese music is sort of an acquired taste… you know, like fish eggs and snail. And I’ve found that since I started listening to japanese music I’ve lost the ability to tell if music is good or not and the people around me suffer immensely… which has lead to my public apology for para para sakura… I don’t know if I was going anywhere with this at all… *goes off to listen to mini moni*
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Eric Wall reply on February 10th, 2009 12:32 am:
I feel like the genius of Ouendan came in the almost uncannily bad japanese music which worked well within the context of the game. I try and stay away from Japanese music as much as possible, but every once in awhile it creeps in.
Although I have a very broad range of musical interests, I tend to shut of my last.fm scrobbler if I feel the need to throw on J-Rock.
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