Category Archives: Idolmaster

June 30, 2020

My Shinography

By omo

My sleep-addled brain cried buckets of figurative tears last weekend listening to Sato Takafumi’s DJ set during the online EDM music event Asobinotes. Why? [Hit play below to hear the relevant part. Full set here]

That question “why” is literally the description of words on the canvas of the deep blue sky described in the song Shinography. It is the reason why I do the things I do. I quote the lyrics from the Shiny Colors 3rd year theme (TL):

精一杯の先へ
目一杯の未完成で
まだ上昇中の Gradation days
世界の彩りにハート開いて
透明から鮮明に
不可能から可能性に
この空をキャンバスにして
誰のでもない　瞬間を
新しく記してこう
光空記録(My shinography)

The IDOLM@STER is a series that lives and dies in the hands of a, to put it nicely, turbulent company during a time when the future is uncertain. I’ve made the analogy of that tree in the past as a personal metaphor, but it’s a metaphor that is shared between not just other fans, but the series itself as well as its creators.

Million Live’s theme songs since the start had been as follows: Thank You, Welcome, Dreaming, Brand New Theater, Union, Flyers, and Glow Map. Do you see where we are going? We will go into the space over the future. We’re looking for the place under the shining star. And I guess Jam Project is also Lantis, right. Shiny starts at the glowing part already. To paint the visual metaphor of the tree, the OG is the seed, CG and ML are the trunk and branches, and Shiny is some fruit. Maybe also, CG is also all of these.

But this “growing” vibe, this repeating theme from OG, CG, ML and Shiny literally is the type of music fans consumed and loved year to year. It describes the attitude of the content, the attitude of the producers–those who know where they are but they dream big. Shiny Colors especially is that daring fruit hanging from the IM@S tree, bucking core trends and practices for popular mobile games and franchises, eschewing easy and quick play for deep characterization and VN-style rewards.

The lead in to Sato’s set, going back to what I was saying, is the summary of where he is. Sato happens to be the music director for the IDOLM@STER series, so he has a hand in all of this after taking over the role from his seniors. It seems almost like biographic when RE@DY was the start for this portion.

In a lot of ways when you are creating media works for a series like this, you are creating some kind of future that you are building towards, and it’s always somewhat risky how things will play out or not. Granted the risk is pretty low sometimes, but with these big franchises the room for mistake is pretty small, or so it can seem.

This is Manabi-ism. We exist as fans inside the space the work’s creators made, but the difference isn’t building a world, but building a the mechanism that moves the world forward. The difference is similar to having a lot of money versus a machine that makes money. In the year of our Lord 2020, only the latter exists, and it is one derivative higher, more difficult, more uncertain.

It’s about our perception of where this world will go. It is about the perception of the creators, and the fans’, the cast, the execs, the committees, and everyone pushing forward our next software update, our next gacha banner, our next new song. This is the idol festival that never ends, and is never exactly the same year to year.

Because if it was, it probably will end soon.

Now imagine that, all the ideas and emotions I tried to describe, play through in your mind in the span of about 138 seconds, and then add the pandemic-induced issue about having missed ML7th and Shiny 2nd, where for one weekend each you can actually touch, smell, feel and see this world materialize in the physical festivals that marks the typical IM@S anniversary lives.

Buckets of tears. My life is carved into the lights of the sea and sky beyond your water bottle. Want a sip?

Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Idolmaster

March 24, 2020

CG7th Osaka Rocks

By omo

Rather than recap I just want jot down all the thoughts and feels from the live. This bid to try to get this post out ASAP didn’t really work, but I fear it would have been only worse otherwise. But first, the setlist can be had here:

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February 21, 2020

IDOLM@STER Concepts: Tantou vs. Favorite

By omo

In the age of Stan and Waifu, there has long been many different ways to say “love” in all sorts of contexts; forget about the Alaskan words for snow (it’s an urban legend of sorts anyway). The way the Greeks did it is what I was weaned on but in this day and age there are more ways to say the same things than ever. And it has been always the case as far as history went.

It just dawned on me on a practical difference between what IM@S Ps say “tantou” versus which idols a producer may simply like. To some Ps, there are no differences between the two. To others, they are entirely different things. And from where I stand there are no wrong ways to go about it.

(“Tantou” here means “in charge of.” A producer is someone in a position of responsibility over a project. In this case, it’s an artist or idol. It is not unusual for IDOLM@STER content to put the producer in charge of a project in which artists of the agency is then selected to participate under said project. If you talk to Japanese producers, the proper way to refer to your cartoon waifu is tantou, and while you may or may not be a wretched twitter critter, we all know what you mean.)

There are however technical differences. One is the basic understanding that IDOLM@STER is a game franchise in which the player is the producer, and the idols the player selects to literally produce, well, are the idols the player produces. Sometimes this is literally every idol in the game, sometimes this is even more (not all idols are really in the games if you think about it), and sometimes it’s just whatever the P wants.

If we extrapolate it from selecting an idol in games to engagement in general, the idols I produce are just the ones I will go out of my way to learn more, to read up on, to research, to think about, and to create content for. After all, it is all we can do to literally “produce” a fictional character. This is pretty much the same way anyone stans anyone else, but maybe there are some differences. Maybe there will be another post for that.

The idols from IDOLM@STER that I like, however, I don’t necessarily produce. Maybe for those characters, I just enjoy the content and call it a day.

This is most evident when you participate in IDOLM@STER content like a big live event. Your favorite or tantou characters, odds are, will only take up a fraction of the full show. The rest of the time you probably are still engaged in the content, even if it isn’t your favorite or it has little relationship to the idols you produce. Sometimes this does mean you might take a seat. But also, a concert is a concert, a show is a show–it’s enjoyable to watch and be a part of.

So while I don’t produce Syoko, I still have a lot of respect for the Matsuda twins and an affinity to the brand of rock that is X Japan. This is why the Kurenai cover during CG7th Osaka was a really special experience personally, especially given the venue, the setup, and the way things played out. These kinds of considerations were the reasons why I was even there in the first place.

I have been following Cinderella Girls since my initial baptism by MOIW 2014. What struck me as odd now is that while many idols from 346P are appealing to me personally, I don’t want to produce any of them. It’s a big reason why I gave up playing Starlight Stage, and also it made the franchise easier to deal with when I treat it like this bag of content that pops out hit beats once in a while, at arm’s length.

I try to go to a show every year still, because I do enjoy this branch of IM@S and I still know something about them. Plus, I never stopped being a seiyuu otaku and IDOLM@STER content is still some of the best kind of seiyuu content out there. An IM@S show (and this applies even to all the other branches) are often elaborate productions. Cinderella Girls lives are the most elaborate of them all, both because of the success (popularity and commercially) of the franchise and the style of the content that is conducive of big, bright, shiny productions at a large scale. That the franchise shows have been dome-sized the past couple years actually plays to the strength of the content and the material. That is contrary to my normal preferences; to me, domes are a negative otherwise–you are far from the action, it’s very crowded, the acoustics and view often sucks, and the seats suck too usually.

On paper, maybe I can call myself, at best, a Miho/PCS producer, because at least I roll for them. I also find myself leaning towards Tsuda and Tanezaki a lot, at least as far as seiyuu affinities go among 346P cast members. It is a production of conveniences. But I produces way more back home in 765Pro, which hopefully my actions speak for themselves.

Leave a comment | posted in Idolmaster, Modern Visual Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

December 12, 2019

Million Live 6th SSA

By omo

The final stop of the 6th Live Tour for THE IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE was in good ol’ Saitama Super Arena, in September. Unlike Million 3rd, this whole tour dragged on from April into late September. It crossed from Spring to Summer and ended on the second day of Autumn. That is a really long stretch.

I was only able to go to the Fukuoka stop in June prior to SSA. But that made a big difference. I guess it’s fair to assume even if people did not go to all the stops, many have live viewed at least some of them, if not all. It’s a big commitment to go to SSA for the live, in terms both of obtaining the tickets through one of the lotteries or by other means, and the effort of doing so. Producers across the country attended the biggest stop of them all, even if many traveled less as I did. It is still quite the effort to travel from the edges of Japan. I remember seeing tweets of the guy from Okinawa, trying to bribe tickets with local delicacies.

My crusty, jaded mentality aside, I thought 6th SSA was a lot of fun. Like what I tweeted for day 2, it left me with this sweet aftertaste as Tokugawa Matsuri in the form of Suwa Ayaka came up from the elevated stage and ended this illumination festival.

Day one and day two both followed the format where each subunit came out and do a part of their Angel/Princess/Fairy stop sets, with the collab/guest songs thrown in there and mixed with covers. During the 3 non-Kanto stops, each unit had more time to themselves, and the last 1/3 of the live each day was dedicated to covers and solos. So for SSA, they cut basically almost all the solos. For new content, we got the TB songs and some new covers.

Overall I thought this was fine, purely in terms of going to a live and looking for the songs we like. But this format does not flow very well, since we know what is coming, and the units have to do their key songs. Like, you knew EScape had to do LOST because of the way the song fits their group concept. Or that baller mix of Art Needs Heart Beats has to go with Jelly Pop Beans. It was more a toss up for, say, Charlotte Charlotte and D/Zeal and their covers (which both were new for SSA). But it also felt like day one’s groups were kind of a bore as a result.

In some sense, the overall limp malaise-y feel I get from SSA has to do with the way the approached the tour. It felt less like a live tour, and more like just 4 different shows, for some reason, that had to take place inorganically and in far reaches of Japan, so they had to get the tokyoites to move out by holding back the 4th one until the end. During 3rd it was almost the opposite–you didn’t get to go to the remote one because it was hard to get in those smaller venues; the small venues also made the lives a bit more intimate and different than the big shows Millions do. Tokyo types who want to camp out for the Makuhari stop are free to do so, that one felt fine because you knew it was its own thing, and not a summary like 6th SSA. Maybe that’s why it took me months to finish this recap, lol.

In terms of practical things on the ground, I was able to squeeze in a Kayafesh event on Saturday. That’s basically a really bad costpa sake festival with seiyuu content. I liked it because I can be a lush at times and it’s my first sake fest in Japan. Plus, you can’t go wrong drinking with seiyuu. I also stayed one extra day to enjoy Takagi Miyu’s birthday event, as things turned out to be. It was nice to stay that extra day and hang out with some local friends. Rest of the time, it was business as usual.

As of the latest update, the splash screen for Theater Days changed over to a new quintet, so maybe this post is apropos. For this flower project, we utilized the same shop we did for 5th’s flower stand, and it was a bit more on the cuff with Miri helping out big time. Funding-wise, we basically broke even like last time, but we needed a bit more of a push since the suggested donation is lower this time around, and everything cost more. No pin badges… Again, I cannot thank y’all enough.

It’s a weird feeling, thinking about the live again. In a way the hype was way less than 5th, but the live itself was way better than 5th. I liked how the tap dancers, at least, came back for a nice encore performance from Sendai. It does make me want to look forward to both that and the SSA version, which is a slightly bigger presentation. There are other touches that was nice for 6th. The streams of small videos promoting the live, the goods, and now the blurays, is appreciated but not too sure if it added much. Well, they did a good job promoting that costume book at least?

I mean, they could just say it smells good and I’m sure it will sell oodles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeCBbwmBLE

Set list here: day 1 and day 2.

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Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Idolmaster, Modern Visual Culture

October 24, 2019

Bandai Namco Festival 2019

By omo

It was a thing.

In a bid to stave off jet lag and fatigue, and partly motivated by procrastination, I want to tackle the two-day festival taken place last weekend at Tokyo Dome now rather than later. I tweeted it enough, but in summary:

  • Bannam has a lot of stuff! But IM@s is where it’s at, for this show.
  • All the idols in under one roof is all one.
  • While it was short on the collab department, there were still some great ones.
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Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Gundam, Idolmaster, Love Live, Modern Visual Culture