Cleaner

"Cleaner" arrived as a new song in Pump It Up 2011 FIESTA EX and shares its DNA with "Vacuum": the two belong to the same sonic world, and the wordplay is intentional, since Vacuum plus Cleaner spells out a vacuum cleaner. According to Doin himself, the track was written before "Vacuum," even though players met it afterward. The title can be read several ways (a cleaning machine, a janitor, even a hitman's codename), but the composer settled the debate by leaning on the vacuum-cleaner reading across the sister chart and the remix. The BGA, created by LWS just like "Vacuum's," continues that story: it weaves new shots of an enemy between familiar scenes and ends with the hero's victory, making clear the two videos are linked.

At launch the charts were S18, S22, D20 and D24. The S18 and D20 were seen as padded ratings, but the D24 already stood comparison with "Vacuum's" Double 25 and carried a years-long reputation as a perennial boss. The decisive leap came with the 1.30 patch and the Double 26, which crowned "Cleaner" the arcade boss above Chimera. The D25 (a WINDFORCE chart, co-credited with SANDSTORM) was designed as a level 25, but ended up labeled 24 due to flawed reasoning that a boss should sit two levels clear of the rest; XX finally corrected it to 25. The D26 is a textbook late-kill breakdown: it opens calmly, then erupts into stairs and 24-beat double-note runs. Its first break on landed on September 16, 2012, achieved by FEFEMZ*, then still a middle-school student.

The 1.50 patch added easy charts (S4, S7, S13), widening the difficulty spread, a move that split opinion since it clashed with the boss-song image. In Short Cut, the S21 is notorious for its tremor played while holding a freeze note, and the D22 ruled the top of the Double 20 tier until XX bumped it to 22. There are also unreleased charts: an arcade D22 that was meant to ship alongside the D24 in FIESTA EX but was shelved, and a D13 exclusive to Infinity. PHOENIX reworked several charts: the D26 lost the deadly point on the stairs leading into the finale, and the S21 no longer triggers sudden death when its closing note set is missed, softening its brutal ending.