BEMANI

About

BEMANI (ビーマニ, Bīmani)is Konami's music video game division. Originally named the Games & Music Division (G.M.D.), it changed its name in honor of its first and most successful game, Beatmania, and expanded into other music-based games, most notably rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks, and Drum Mania.^[1]

History

The first beatmania video game was released for the Japanese arcade in December 1997.

Cultural Impact

Doujin & Club music culture

Free Rhythm Game Engine

Be-Music Source (BMS)

BMS is a file format for rhythm action games, devised by Urao Yane in 1998. The format was originally developed as a format specific for a simulator of the game Beatmania by KONAMI, and currently, the term BMS is widely used to describe the whole Beatmania simulating the game system.

The acronym has been confirmed by Urao Yane to be Be-Music Source in the official BMS format specification.^[2]

MAD Videos / YTPMVs

BEMANI songs are usually less than 2 minutes for game use, and in its short lengths, each of them has high-density musical movements and catchy melody lines. Since these characteristics fit well with MAD video/YouTube Poop Music Video (YTPMV) productions, which depend most of its rendition on musical resources, BEMANI songs had been frequently utilized in those video parodies from late 2000s to early 2010s.

In the earliest days of the MAD video phenomena in the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND), "Xepher" and "Second Heaven" were one of the popular musical resources for MADs ranking with Tohou remixes. And its popularity exploded in January 2009 by the smash hit of "RED ZONE" videos. An online MAD video event dedicated to BEMANI songs had been held at a regular intervals from that year to late 2011. Some of songs, such as "Evans" and "Can-Can", became to new popular musical resources among MAD video editors throughout the event.

However, after entering the 2010s, BEMANI songs have been colored with dirty and negative impressions on that Japanese video sharing service since after Sakura series songs including "Sakura Reflection" and "I'm so Happy" forced to be deeply associated with A Midsummer Night's Lewd Dream, the largest Japanese gay porn meme usually dubbed as "Inmu".

On the other hand, the presence of BEMANI songs in YTPMV started increasing when YTPMV community began to be affected with NND's MAD video style via several imported songs such as "(K)night of (K)nights" and "RED ZONE" in late 2008 or early 2009. Most of popular BEMANI songs in YTPMV are common to those of MADs on NND, but "Ageha", "Blooming Feeling" and "KIMONO PRINCESS" became to the fad in YTPMVs only.

Search Interest

External References