Entry: Cherry / yui

Presentation - 10 / 20

The first thing I noticed when checking this file was that weird samplestart-- it had no energy at all, and was located in one of the verses. Well, the fade-in and fade-out were okay, but I think you could have located that right at the chorus, as seriously, it can make for a good first impression. The banner was great, and had a nice style to it that fit the style of the song itself, although the background that complimented it was... strange, to say the least. I don't see why you had to complete change your image style here, as you already had a good number going in the banner. I also don't see why you added Pokemon there, as although I know that these are the "cherry pokemon" (re-checks Pokemon Diamond/Pearl), the way they were used just makes them feel out of place. Just be more consistent next time.

Steps (no Oni)

Light Chart - 1.5 / 5

Although those turns and jumps add a little bit of pizzazz to the chart, it still feels very flat somehow. The steps lack energy, and in most cases, felt like a long march. I liked how you used some of the freezes to vary the patterns somehow, and with those, you could have been in the right direction, but considering the patterns you used (and the way you used them), you wandered around and lost it. A good way to improve this chart would be to take advantage of the fact that this is a slow song-- a few 8th-notes wouldn't hurt, given the speed; some hold patterns would be nice as well. The song may be rather calm (and you didn't exactly show that-- it was a tightly-packed chart that followed the sounds too much), but you should still try to do some nifty things with your patterns-- hold patterns would be a good idea.

Standard Chart - 6 / 10

Okay, now you're somewhere in the right direction here-- the steps felt less like a march, and more like a DDR chart. First of all, this is more a 5-- although the step density can be packed at times, with all those 8th-note patterns, the difficulty is balanced by the slow speed of the song, as one is given breathing room. That aside, you did manage to make the steps go well with the song here-- there's a nice balance of tight and loose patterns here, coinciding with the build-ups and breakdowns in the song, while keeping fairly controlled (considering the song itself isn't intense-- its quite controlled over-all). There are some flow issues here-- there are some doublesteps here that end up making the chart rightist in orientation if one does not turn, and that says volumes about how rough the flow can be. Please try to balance out your patterns some more-- you were getting somewhere, now get there!

Heavy Chart - 5 / 15

Quite uninteresting-- although the patterns get more complex here, they felt flat for some reason-- maybe its the fact that you followed the sounds a bit too much here-- down to that 12th-note hold, although I would probably attribute this issue to the inconsistency in patterns-- I noticed a completely different pattern set for the first guitar portion and the last guitar portion-- you could have been more consistent and developed a pattern set that would incorporate the energy of the song (at times, it was okay, right at these guitar parts, but not in the middle) that could work well even when used multiple times. The flow was okay-- it was pretty smooth for most of the song. Still needs some work though. Try to experiment with the patterns a little bit, and be more consistent.