Category Archives: Franchises

December 17, 2018

Illumination Festa

By omo
https://twitter.com/rogyun_game/status/1074332416200761349

I dump thoughts on this blog, usually in a hard-to-understand way. This is not that hard to understand, I hope.

Question: How many hours of continuous illumination can all my IDOLM@STER penlights provide?

Background: THE IDOLM@STER has a line of merch for their events in which button-cell (LR44) penlights are available for purchase. Each character gets her own penlight (fixed color). There are also penlights for groups (SideM, Shiny, Cute/Cool/Passion, Princess/Fairy/Angel). Here’s a link for example. In short: there are a lot of them.

Assumptions: Assuming 3 hours per light, and all my lights are running for 3 hours. It’s probably a fair assumption given most of my lights are hardly used, and the 3-cell ones probably run closer to 4 hours. Newer IDOLM@STER character lights are 2-cell but most of mine are the older, 3-cell types. I’m also generally assuming I can use one for light, and use another once that one runs out, so the total hours here is just the total number of lights times 3.

It would be obtuse (but rigorous) for me to dig out all my lights and count them. Instead I will do it from memory. No big deal if I miss a few I guess.

Series 1 CG Cu/Co/Pa: 3
Series 2 CG Cu/Co/Pa: 3
ML Pri/Fa/An: 3
765Pro series 2: 14
765Pro series 3: 14
765Pro 10th: 14
CG 10th: 13
ML 10th: 13
ML 1st day 2 box: 5
ML 2nd (all 3 boxes): 21 
CG 4th SSA – one for every idol (not sets, minus 10th ones): 34
ML 3rd – One for each one that I didn’t have before (estimate): 19
Miscellaneous CGs: 7
Duplicates: 6 Matsuri ML 4th, 6 Matsuri Hotchpotch, 1 Makoto Hotchpotch, 1 Makoto Hatsuboshi Enbu

Total: 177
Times 3 hours for each light: 531 hours, or 22 days and 3 hours.

Assuming I only need light 8 hours a day, it’ll keep me lit during a power outage situation for 66 days and 3 hours. Not long enough for some Puerto Ricans. But definitely enough for 12 days of Christmas.

This light merch is all a racket and I’ve already had my fill years ago. Now I only buy lights to replace old ones as they start to have problems, or because I broke them at the live. I guess I still do for new idols that I don’t have lights for. I guess this is also why it won’t end anytime soon, if ever.

In a few months, Million 6th tour will begin. I will have to rely on penlights that I got like 4 years ago (if I get to go). Hope they still work, LOL.

Leave a comment | posted in Idolmaster

October 23, 2018

Million Kanshasai Tea-Leaf Reading

By omo

One thing about long-running franchises is that they are cyclic and have patterns. You can read into it and figure out what’s going to happen next to an extent. For IDOLM@STER, they’ve even started an official schedule list of events, as of 2016 onward (the event-only history goes from 2013). It makes a lot of sense as something fans need to keep track of the dozens of stuff that happens every month. Unfortunately it is not that forward-looking, so it is more useful as an archive.

The biggest news for prognosticators I think, that came out last weekend’s Million Live event, was that the next Theater election program will include the 765Pros. It’s pretty obvious that Million Live plays with the inclusion of the 765Pros both ways. It was first a booster, but now the Millions are also dragging their senpai team into the next decade. Not even mentioning the successor aspect, being a mobile game allows the Millions to do stuff all year long, where as the core 765Pro AllStars run on yearly cycles for the current gen of PS4 games, which might be coming to an end with a pattern change.

In the past, the Million elections could not have had included the 13 revered figures of 765Pro due to the need for all 37(+2) of them to get a footing in fandom by themselves. Five years in, this is no longer a necessity, and I agree.

The other thing this addresses is the fact that Million stopped having 765Pro AllStar music. The SP@RKLE line, or the latest line of character solo songs, only featured the Million Stars 39 and not the other 13 that LTP and LTH has had. I think this makes a lot of sense, for one, those early solo songs almost never gets performed. Sometimes it’s performed at 765Pro events! What would Million Ps have to do to see those performances? It’s kind of a mess.

This also means we might get a lull during which the 765Pros might not get a lot of solo activities. We know 2020 is the 15th anniversary of the franchise, so if we expect MOIW 2020 (hopefully featuring all 5 (6?) branches) then a chill 2019 makes sense. I think there will be more of a flurry of activity next year from the production side to support a MOIW level thing in 2020. Considering if the next Million election occurs towards November/December and we get the CDs released 9-12 months out, that would time things well into the 2020 hype cycle as such a big live will have a long lead-in.

The other nuggets of info I thought relevant were:

  • ML6th tour is once a month and broken out by type-teams (Angel, Princess, Fairy). No Tokyo regional stop.
  • Generations series is ongoing.

Each of the Million tour stops is 2-days over the weekend. None lands on this year’s longer-than-usual Golden Week. But the progression is obvious even before the announcement because Shiny 1st was announced to be mid March, so we know Million tour had to be after March. Here is the Lantis-M@S live scheduling like from now on out (ignoring release events):

  • October: Million Kanshasai
  • November: Anisong Premium (SideM)
  • December: Lisani TW (Million)
  • January ’19: Lisani (SideM and Million)
  • Feb: ??? (HK?)
  • March: Shiny 1st, 315Pro Promeet
  • April: Million 6th Sendai
  • May: Million 6th Kobe
  • June: Million 6th Fukuoka
  • July: ??? (AWM?)
  • August: ??? (Anisama? AWM?)

Assuming the Generations line resumes its release cadence of 1 Generations CD per month, we have D/Zeal in December, and 3 more by April–probably including April’s release makes 5 Generations CDs. It’s hard to say what this means for the release events in April though, but the release event is unlikely still going to be once a month or so, give or take.

Last year we have the SP@RKLE series during the same time as Generations series, so this might mean after Theat@r Boost 3 (due out 11/28) we will get a new run of something. This could probably play into what goes into ML6th. New LTDs? That would be swell.

Leave a comment | posted in Idolmaster

October 18, 2018

Nerd-Factual Accuracy in Fiction

By omo

Last season there was this anime called Cells at Work. It was a fun(?) story about how different cells in a human’s body can be personified into the usual anime characters and interact somewhat based on their perceived biological functions. Swallowing foreign substances and breaking them down become the equivalent of hacking at a monster with a knife, for example.

Cutting to the chase, I dropped the show because of its depiction of the digestive system as a volcanic pit of acids. There are no good bacterias the show, ever (at least at where I dropped the show half way through). And frankly that’s just not how it actually works. The way bacteria is depicted in Cells at Work suggests a particular view about the body that is a little too germaphobic for me. Plus, isn’t it just a really “derpy” way to detail, say, House? We are seeing some common human illnesses depicted in epic proportions. Maybe it’s kind of nice to see a message about cellular mutation happening dozens of times a day inside the body of an adult but, I don’t know if I dig this worldview. It puts too much emphasis on “us” versus “them”; when at the microscopic level, we’re all just a bunch of biochemical mechanisms. Mutations always will happen, and humans evolve because of it–it’s such a cartoony black & white take in Cells.

It’s a lot more offensive to my senses than, say, how in Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai’s (Senshun Butayarou (the series) henceforth) description of the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat. Like, okay, you are 90% there but you miss the big fat quantum quality to it. It is the crux of countless FTL theory talk or why giant robots could be made as spoken by countless middle schoolers. I don’t really mind it that much, other than I wish mass media would at least get the science right. If the idea was observation affects the experiment, then that point was made, which is why I’d give Senshun Butayarou at least a passing grade.

For a high school romantic comedy revolving around supernatural mysteries, though, framing the inquiry with a thought experiment is a classy take. I always liked those X-Files episodes. The wiggle space of a different, unexplained phenomenon makes using a thought experiment to explain how the protagonists figure things out makes a lot of sense as long as they don’t rely on it too much. One could say Senshun Butayarou crossed that line, but maybe not far enough.

PS. Slowly unpacking new anime of Q42018, but I’m getting there. I left a lot of Q3 shows in the dust because of my trip to Taiwan and Hokkaido in late September. I’m not sure I’ve recovered from that yet (thus a 30+day gap on blogging). I only learned about “Thunder Thigh Takarada” the other day but I did not know canon fetishism baked into the design could spur this kind of outpouring. Gridman is coincidentally good, so maybe that contributes.

Leave a comment | posted in Hataraku Saibou, Modern Visual Culture, Seishun Buta Yarou

October 17, 2018

IM@S MUSIC ON THE RADIO & The End of IDOLM@STER STATION

By omo

The long running IDOLM@STER mainline seiyuu radio program, IDOLM@STER STATION, has ended this week with a farewell live stream on Nico. To be very technical and fair, it never ran that long, as the weekly program would change cast periodically and rebrand itself slightly (like, IDOLM@STER STATION!!+). It was originally the IDOLM@STER Radio which morphed into this program as other weekly streams started, in 2009. Today, there are 5 weekly broadcasts for the franchise, covering the different sections. The name perhaps more so refers to the program concept that spawned a series of its own spinoff media products, such as all the radio cover songs, the radio original music, and the handful of live shows they put on. The Aisute weeklies would feature some segments that involved characters acting out viewer-submitted scenarios often (a characteristic in other IM@S radios today as well) and other more seiyuu radio-style segments. But if you were just counting the brand, the show falls a bit short of its 10th year! That’s very long for a tie-in seiyuu radio.

Aisute ending means the main 765Pro franchise no longer has a seiyuu-focused radio. In its stead, IDOLM@STER MUSIC ON THE RADIO takes its airing spot (really, it’s produced by the same Nippon Columbia crew that produced Aisute, and it takes over Aisute’s Nico channel) and is going to be a music-oriented program. Its main host is Numakura Manami, with a co-host rotating probably every 4 weeks. The first co-host is Takahashi Rie. For sanity’s sake I’ll call the program MOR for short (based on the official hashtag #アイマスMOR).

Over the long 9 years of Aisute, there were a pretty overt effort to interview Columbia composers who worked on the music, especially the stuff that graced the later Playstation games. And it makes a lot of sense–music is arguably the most noteworthy and radio-worthy thing that IDOLM@STER generally offers. Cinderella Girls, Million Live, SideM and even Shiny Colors are churning out many songs every year. A lot of it is from Lantis, which naturally doesn’t get as much coverage on a Columbia program focused on the original 765Pro, but Aisute always had crossover coverage with guests from the other branches (at least more than a few Million and Cinderella guests).

What has been left behind with the departure of Aisute is still pretty regrettable–it was almost its own thing during the peak years, and maybe MOR can get its own live show. It certainly will be more cross-franchise than before, so we will see how things swing on a month-to-month basis.

Overall, it is probably overall a good thing that there is now a show to highlight the stories and personalities behind the music. MOR should be a good time and generally this is a positive vibe going forward. Hosted by two cast members, MOR should also remain fun and neta-heavy enough for the usual and core listener types into seiyuu radio-type programs. Two-personality shows dominate this landscape anyway.

PS. Wish they’ll cover some Aisute music down the road!

Leave a comment | posted in Idolmaster, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

August 13, 2018

Release the Spyce Preview @ Otakon 2018

By omo

I was still working on my Otakuthon post before I went to Otakon, so uh, here’s the timely nugget first.

Otakon 2018 featured two premieres, High Score Girl and Release the Spyce. The latter seemed more feasible schedule-wise so I attended it. That said, I was a couple minutes late so I walked into the opening action set piece.

I wanted to write about it because this show is really up my alley. It’s a fun spy/ninja piece about a bunch of young women who gain superhuman powers after biting on special spice. Spice, as in stuff you put in food, not the drug from Dune. The main character is a 11th grader who stumbled upon the secret organization in her town, Tsukikage, after her 99.99% percentile perception powers let her spot some shadowy figures flying around rooftops one night.

The lead character, Momo, who is voiced by Anzai Yukari, is a “shopping street kid” type character who seemed to lost her father to something. I won’t go too much into it but a truck ton of foreshadowing was laid down during the 2-episode pilot. And yes, it is a 2-episode sort of thing, which is why they showed 2 episodes at the con I assume.

If you have been following the marketing of Spyce over in Japan, which I have in a very casual way, you would know they have had some live stages featuring the voice cast. The main gang of the story is the Tsukikage group of ninjas Momo becomes in association with, and they’re joined in pairs by master-student setups, where the girl each have to train a successor since once they get too old, the spice super power gimmick stops working. This is partly how Spyce features a really solid of current-day voice actresses. Only a handful has been credited online, but after seeing the full credit after ep2 I can say that this is a show that scores well on that front. Well, it’s a Pony Canyon thing I guess.

The other non-spoiler-ish info I can share about the plot, I guess, is that there is an enemy group opposing Tsukikage. And it seems they’re full of female voice overs, too. That seems like the initial main conflict for now.

There are a lot of pieces of the setting that tickled my fancy–the use of curry for example. There are a lot of spice-themed things in Release the Spyce. There are also some actual spy kind of things, like manipulative interpersonal skills and 007-esqe gadgets. There are some solid parkour animation here and there, and the action leans on movement more than clashing of weapons. The 2-part pilot even ended with a car chase. It’s also the feeling you get when you witness the two sides of a pun moving in slow collision in the form of a TV anime. It’s like when galaxies swallow each other up in the course of millennia, despite being an exciting astronomical event. Or maybe a super slow-mo video of a vehicle test crash. I like it when a pun takes on a life of its own I guess.

Momo and her shishou Yuki (CV: Numakura Manami) use a stick of cinnamon-like thing as their power trigger. One of the other girl uses a bay leaf I think. There are a total of 6 active ninjas in Tsukikage as far as episode 2, and each of the student-teacher pair use the same spice, for up to 3 different spices. The media-mix property is already getting a novelization and manga adaptation since earlier this year, so it’s probably written in there.

I’ll leave the big spoiler on twitter. Well, big on impact, very small on substance. Anyways, the series is slated to air in Japan in October. No word on international streaming yet, but I’m guessing whoever typically Pony Canyon works with being the good bet (HiDive?). The full credit roll of the two-part screening was translated into English, so I’m guessing that’s the case.

Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Modern Visual Culture, Release the Spyce