Koujou melancholy

荒城メランコリー

Song Information

荒城メランコリー's pop'n music banner.

Artist: 劇団レコード feat.Mille Face
Composition/Arrangement/Lyrics/Guitar/Charango/Mandolin: Tomoaki Hirono
Vocals: mikarin
Quena: Yasuyuki Shimizu
BPM: 150
Length: 2:04
pop'n music Genre: TRADITIONAL ROOTS (トラディショナルルーツ)
pop'n music Character: Castle [20]
pop'n CG designer: Cheloniidae (design), ちっひ (animations)
First Music Game Appearance: pop'n music 20 fantasia
Other Music Game Appearances: None.

Lyrics

Japanese

砂の海に浮かぶ朽ちた荒城
最後の灯火さえ　虚空の彼方

憶えば幾つもの季節があった
残された城壁は　何も語らない

森源郷は戦火へと
神話は藻屑となり
誰がために・・・
眩き瞳は何処へ

眠れ　帰らぬ日々よ　幾千の歴史超えて
廻れ　生命の息吹　いつか出会う暁まで

Song Connections / Remixes

None.

Trivia

• 荒城メランコリー was available in pop'n music 20 fantasia's INTERNET RANKING category during Week 3 of INTERNET RANKING #1 (January 18th to 25th, 2012).
  • As of February 15th, 2012, it is available by default.
• 荒城メランコリー is one of the songs part of the Kimi mo★ pop'n character designer! (キミも★ポップンキャラクターデザイナー！) contest.
  • The winner was announced on December 21st, 2011; Castle, designed by Cheloniidae. Their pop'n music animations were created by ちっひ.
• Cheloniidae's character comment is written in both Japanese and Korean.
• Mimi and Nyami make cameos on Castle's Lose animation.
• A 3P palette for Castle is available for inputting the code found at the back of the pop'n music card PF20R002/016. The code must be inputted at the final e-AMUSEMENT screen, where your already unlocked Secret Characters are shown.
  • From pop'n music éclale onwards, this 3P palette is available by default.
• 荒城メランコリー marks the first song composed by Tomoaki Hirono that he wrote the lyrics by himself.
• 荒城メランコリー received an EASY chart in pop'n music Sunny Park, replacing its old 5-Buttons chart. This chart has the same notecount as the 5-Buttons chart, but it uses seven buttons instead of five.
• 荒城メランコリー is available in pop'n music Lively as part of the pop'n music Lively Music Pack vol.4 (pop'n music Lively 楽曲パック vol.4).

Music Comment

Let it resonate! The solitary melody! And let the earth's prayers come true!

Song Production Information

Kimi mo★ pop'n character designer! Official Website

Gekidan Record

Congratulations on receiving the highest excellent prize!
Among the many wonderful entries, Cheloniidae's work has a particularly outstanding impact.

Its overall impression is just like the song's image, although a castle on his head was unexpected, but it's very interesting and great.
Cheloniidae conveyed my song's intention, and their work perfectly linked with my song and became one! That's how I feel.
It's wonderful!

pop'n music 20 fantasia

Gekidan Record

Hello. How was GekiReco's new song "Koujou melancholy"?

"A ruined castle standing on a ruined desert, I wonder what this conveys...."
... For this song, as I had clear scenes and thoughts during the composing stage, I also wrote the lyrics.
I think this song has a richer Gekidan Record taste than ever before.

mikarin from Mille Face showed her extremely melancholic and clear singing voice.
Yasuyuki Shimizu performed the sobbing quena.
And I, Hirono, played the charango, mandolin, and gut guitar.

This song's quite high on the "crying index", so ＾＾
Please play the sad melody with your passionate soul!

Character Information

Kimi mo★ pop'n character designer! Official Website

A soldier who wanders and searches for the forgotten kingdom.
Lost in the desert. After wandering for a long time, it's extremely tiring and difficult...

Chihi

Song B was difficult to choose from out of the 20 nominated works.

Since we took applications for designs, I thought it'd be nice to have something with an impactful appearance, while conveying this song's melancholy and atmosphere.

It's... a castle... on his head!!!

Cheloniidae, thank you very much for your wonderful design!!
The pop'n team wouldn't think of this idea, so it's a big success! I'm glad to be involved in this plan~
It's a wonderful idea! It's extremely easy to do things that no one else thought about!
I think about secretly peeking into their daily life and what kinds of idea training they usually do.

Even the characters that were unfortunately not selected had really wonderful qualities, that I think the result would've changed if the song and lyrics were different.
Through this work, I felt the power of everyone's love for pop'n, and as a designer, I'm studying a lot.
Thank you very much!

The comments section also depicted character settings and action ideas, so how could I reflect them? Through trial and error.
Please look forward to meeting Castle at the arcade♪

pop'n music 20 fantasia

Birthday: June 9th
Birthplace: Sand Country
Hobbies: Building sand castles, enjoying everyday life
Likes: Peace, trees, sand castles
Dislikes: War, water, tears

It's been many months and years since I searched for the forgotten kingdom.
There's no trace of the former oasis, and I'm tired of wandering and walking around...

Cheloniidae

I'm really happy that my 20 character was chosen.
Thank you very much ^ _ ^ !!!
I listened to all 3 songs and thought they were all great, but from the moment I read Koujou melancholy's lyrics, I had a mysterious feeling, and came up with the idea of [a soldier searching for his homeland] really quickly from the song.

It was really interesting to create my own character.
I definitely wanted to emphasize something castle-ish, so I included many castle designs.
I established the setting where the head is sand and wears a castle, while thinking that it has racial characteristics after all, so I think tokky's setting about a country wearing a castle on their head is really good. When I saw the comment, I thought "oh! There's an idea like this!". If that's the case, I wonder if the opposing country they fought isn't a castle, but instead a normal house someone's wearing on their head...!

And there were also extremely many discussions about gender, but I didn't think about it, so I don't really know. Personally, I don't think they have a gender after all, or are made of sand!

It's really interesting and great that other nominated characters from the B song also appear. Everyone suits it very well since they were all created after listening to the same song, and all the characters that appeared in the magic recall~ looks very cute, and I like them!!

Anyways, I'm really, really thankful!
Please give a lot of love to Castle, too!!

Staff Comments

PON

This melancholic song appeared as a public character contest song!
Gekidan always includes live instruments in his songs, and doesn't it feel like his songs have life in them?
I think that life is the melody which moves our hearts.

Furthermore, this time, it combines with mikarin's melancholic singing voice, with a melancholic style which became perfect for this character.

tokky

Listening to the singing voice is very pleasant.
And as expected, Castle's design is innovative every time I see it!
When I see it moving, I'm curious about the what's happening with their hair in the MISS animation.
I hope Castle safely arrives at the kingdom.

masaru

The idea that the castle itself is the character, is wonderful.
I wonder if the ideas in the corner of the illustration, such as the BAD action, helped the designer?

Chihi

The designer is helpful.
Cheloniidae knows pop'n very well, and their movement ideas almost matched my animations!
The zigzags on the head and cloak were extremely difficult to animate, and I tried my best to not power down the design.
The 3P WIN animation ended up feeling like being surrounded and picked up by cute girls, but isn't that also good?
Castle's birthday is soon approaching~, I'm curious how old they'll become!

eimy

When you look here, you can understand Castle very well, and I really like the action of the cane's eye snapping opening while the sand suddenly falls!
As Gekidan Record said, I think it's the coolest thing.

TAMA

This character is perfect for the melancholic song.
It's GOOD that I can feel the story just by looking at them.

Ga~su~

Its entire body is solidified with castle-styled equipment. It seems to have high defense power!
Even so, the quality of Mimi and Nyami's sand castle is impressive.

Mameshiba

It's an enjoyable singing voice~.
I think it's perfect for this song.
Since the lyrics were published, I thought all the submitted characters had a solid worldview, and it wouldn't be strange~ for any character to win.
The EX charts are very difficult. The double scales in the beginning are unfair.

shio

I wanted to update the homepage with comments from the highest excellent prize winners, but I ended up being quite far behind. It was very difficult for people to notice my e-A GATE email, and this is my final hope! Although I said this on twitter, I'm glad the mails were safely received~. Oh, this is the rumored power of social media!

And then, I was furthermore surprised that Cheloniidae knew about this and applied from South Korea!
Even across the sea, they're enjoying pop'n... as I actually felt this, I became very happy.
Currently, although pop'n 20 can only be played in Japan, you'll need to try hard to let many more people know about it.
I was moved by the various loving messages sent from the Asian champions who visited Japan for the AOU exhibition match in February, and the users in Taiwan and Hong Kong who wrote messages "hoping for the revival of pop'n!". Thank you very much. I'm sorry that I missed the timing to introduce you until now!
... Maybe it's because of Gekidan Record's song slot? This discussion ended up being worldwide~! Peace the World with pop'n! That's right.

wac

The public character contest was hot.
This song has singing, so reading the lyrics becomes essential.

Keywords such as sand, castle, and soldier's dreams.

Meanwhile, the castle applicant met all the requirements. It's good. The castle's good.
When I thought it had some exotic feeling, then I realized that we received an application from overseas. pop'n also became worldwide. Thank you.
The kind of character I thought about if I applied was a sand giant which has the ability to freely transform into a pyramid top, with sand which is weak against noise and collapses when something screeches "kurau". Finally, it's said that even devils have friends.

Difficulty & Notecounts

pop'n music difficulty rated from 1 to 43 through pop'n music 20 fantasia, and 1 to 50 from Sunny Park onwards. (Ratings obtained from BEMANIWiki 2nd.)

Game	Normal Mode				Battle Mode
	EASY	NORMAL	HYPER	EX	NORMAL	HYPER
Notecounts	199	324	637	1020	198	324
pop'n music 20 fantasia	14	18	30	37	18	22
pop'n music Sunny Park→Present	※12	24	36	43	18	22
pop'n music Lively	※12	24	36	43	-	-

※ The notecount of this chart is different from the old 5-Buttons chart (total notes: 199).