My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex, which is also Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Motokano datta, or Tsurekano for short, is exactly what it says it is. It’s a light novel about the main characters becoming step-siblings who were dating just half a year ago. The amusing thing about this series is that the anime adaptation had all the trappings, except not really.
It’s probably a better question as to what do people think of a story like this without first reading it, in anime form? What do they expect? It isn’t exactly surprising to find, 10 episodes or so in, that Tsurekano broached themes like “can you have truly platonic cis male-female friendships” and exploring the limits of intimacy between non-romantically involved couples. Or the more amusing framing that I like to take, which is what is the difference between best friends and lovers? Ever see those obnoxious Jared jewelry ads? But if you asked myself 3 months back, I would not have had guess this outcome from a series titled as such.
What’s really lovely about Tsurekano is how it’s really about two introverted bookworms who approach their romances very much in the same way, and while the same standard tropes are not exactly missing in action, the way they play up is basically exactly the opposite of what you typically see in this type of anime and manga. It captures a lot of the cuteness you imagine that could happen in this sort of setup, and turn it around and make it hostage for the romantic tension, or the lack thereof, the story tries to create.
I guess, it can be boring? There are no sticks to slap, as the term goes. I think the verbal humor can really get hefty, especially having to deal with a J->E translation in process. The female lead in the story goes through this development process from a timid middle schooler into this stereotypical popular honor student type as the characters enter high school and reunited by their parents’ situation. In all, it is almost mundane. The male lead goes through a similar process but they do not really explain his motivations, if anything, it’s the dull, smoldering heat that drives the whole engine. The mundane everyday that cloaks the story is almost is as good of an example of actual light novel culture as practiced by human beings as anything else, given how much both of them live and is surrounded by such things.
I did title this post and called Tsurekano “mid” and that is because this is the ultimate callout for blogs and writers like myself. In a recent episode Tsurekano named dropped I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, which is only too appropriate. Now that’s high light novel culture, the kind of writing that Tsurekano never wants to become, and also never can surpass. But that’s also the whole point. If you are tried of renting girlfriends, tutoring your future wives, or dating influencers, maybe give this a try.
Now that each branch’s streaming plans are set, it’s time to make public my big IDOLM@STER streaming music rec post. I had to update it to change some selections from 765Pro and CG because Columbia decides to not stream a lot of the catalog or not in full. I also removed some from Shiny because Lantis aren’t streaming the back catalog yet for some reason. And since it’s not quite 12/28 yet some of these may be subject to change. I probably won’t be updating this further though, when new stuff get added eventually from the back catalog. Anyways, for the ones I removed between when this was first written and mid-December 2022, I will try to add some other picks, which wasn’t hard at all.
For the ones not included in the streaming
Shout out to @AngryDaenjangny for goading this P into writing this and it was a great idea. I hope this was all useful to you in the end, and even if not, I found the exercise helpful.
IDOLM@STER music runs the gamut. On one hand you have the most standard fair otaku property image songs. On the other hand, you have literally K-POP. The large IP spans several sub-brands and two record companies. It employs whole hosts of musicians and creators, not to mention 100s of cast members. There are the music games in which we associate IDOLM@STER with in 2022, but to me it’s also about the big concerts and performances where the cast perform all the songs. Everything comes together for those moments and this franchise orbits around that idea.
765 Pro All Stars: I’ll keep the new stuff and the tangent stuff (radios etc) out to keep this short. That said, Puchimas music is now also streaming so I’ll fill in the excluded picks (strikethrough) with them.
自分REST@RT – one of my all time favorites and a hype song in the concert setting.
自転車 – It’s a simple little song but super powerful in the concert setting. I mean who does not like to yell “suki da yo” at the idol you like?
è¿·èµ°Mind – A classic from the first Master Artist series back when Koji Nakagawa still wrote character music for this series. Nakagawa is now the music producer for 765Pro and the IDOLM@STER franchise overall.
tear – Yes I am a Makoto P, can you not tell? Secretly this was one of my biggest FOMO when Hiromi Hirata performed this at 9th tour Osaka stop, and back then I wasn’t able to go…
THE IDOLM@STER åˆæ˜Ÿ-mix – a nice twist on a classic, the mix itself is getting on in years as well, from 2018, but I think it’s going to wear the years well. There is a long intro to the song that sets the mood well.
Kosmos, Cosmos – For YukihoPs over a certain age I think this song means a whole, whole lot, but personally it’s just a great hit from IDOLM@STER SP, in 2009.
Little Match Girl – My first full blown introduction to IDOLM@STER was around the animas/IDOLM@STER, and this one stuck the landing the hardest. It doesn’t hurt that so many years since, it’s still a massive banger both on recording and in live shows.
Colorful Days – This kind of idol songs is what 765Pro sounds to me, and I’m glad things hasn’t really changed all these years? I mean the music has evolved–most successful major artist pull this off, and maybe things are easier for a totally produced group like IDOLM@STER. Still, it’s good to go back to the OG vibes and hear the same sound.
エージェント夜を往 – Agent Yoru wo Yuku is the classic Nico medley content. NicoNicoDouga and IDOLM@STER go a long way back and that sure was late Aughts on the Japanese internet.
LOST – There’s something about a certain trilogy. I will just say that these are music from the past that still resonate with me. What is even more shocking to me is how it becomes doubly so when Million Live hijacks such things to make it work for that series.
DREAM – There’s something about a certain trilogy, but again this sound is what mainline IM@S sounded in the late 00s and early 2010s.
arcadia – I always liked this song over its subsequent variants (lol), but it does get a bit overplayed maybe. Perhaps in 2022 we can listen to this 2009 hit again?
隣ã«ãƒ»ãƒ»ãƒ» – If you are familiar with Kaede Takagaki’s Koikaze, you might find Chiaki Takahashi (Azusa) putting on a big deal for Tonari ni… in the same way. This was always memorable to me because there used to be a thing called Eminence Symphony Orchestra, who produced a concert with IDOLM@STER, in Australia, and this was the big epic song for that show. At least, my FOMO of such a thing keeps it memorable…
Pon de Beach – This one is from M@STER Artist 3…and it’s 7 years old as of 2022. Time flies. The joke goes that during the Master of Idol World 2015 concert, Manami Numakura went on stage with her backup dancers for this song, all armed with super soakers, and sprayed the crowd. That split the world in two: those who were sprayed, and those who weren’t.
全力アイドル – A 2010s throwback to maybe the late 80s? I’m not sure anymore. Iori sure is cute.
トリプルAngel – I was one who never took up the earlier whacky Ami/Mami songs, but Triple Angel is so good.
SMOKY THRILL – Aside from the actual jazz remixes, old school 765Pro music can be kinda hybrid like this. The controversial IM@S2 unit is my jam though, so here we are.
99 Nights – Another Inotak contribution, for me this is about the bass and drum track. It’s an OFA DLC song, and OFA being a game I racked up the hours in, I don’t associate any singer with the song particularly.
ãƒã‚¢ãƒªãƒ³ã‚°ãƒ¬ã‚¿ãƒ¼ – Songs like Cheering Letter are like amber with a mosquito from the past, it’s magic to a fantastic time for a boomer like me.
choco fondue – You want some Chihaya music that’s not serious or depressing? Here it is. It’s fun and catchy just like its source material.
Princess Snow White – Similar to above but more upbeat. If Takane was a magical girl, maybe this is it.
ããŒã„ã²ã¨ã¤ – Yukiho is a Christmas idol after all, and it continues in this series.
“HELLO!!” – The Dearly Stars tune makes it to streaming in full under the 765PRO GRE@TEST+BEST series, so I’m including the one song from that series here. It’s the series main theme and still stands the test of time.
Cinderella Girls – a good bet for total newbies into this series is to listen to the set lists from 10th tour. It’s all great. I’m not really into Deremas much these days but the bangers of Cinderella never stop. What is disappointing is that outside of the main songs from the Cinderella Girls TV anime, all the solo and game songs are the short/game versions. About 4% of the total Deremas discography are in full. Thankfully, a huge percentage of them are available as short versions, including almost all the Deremas songs from the game.
S(mile)ING! – Having lived through Cinderella Girls circa all that leads to the TV anime and years after, this song is just full of emotion for me.
純情Midnightä¼èª¬ – When you want a “big band finish” there is none better than this from IDOLM@STER.
Fascinate – Idols often go well with metal. The two new cast members in the unit VelvetRose also come across oddly spot on for a metal song.
ガールズ・イン・ザ・フãƒãƒ³ãƒ†ã‚£ã‚¢ – Girls in the Frontier is a test: which proposition makes the most sense? (Isn’t it “on”?) It’s also a declaration that Starlight Stage and Cinderella Girls in general is here to fight for a space for itself in the post-idol-war era, in the mobile gaming space, and in the greater cultural context of anime, comics and gaming. Despite being the massive franchise that holds concerts in baseball stadiums nowadays, it was always about, well, people who are Cinderellas.
Love∞Destiny – Probably my favorite “early” era Deresute song. I am probably biased in that the M@STER version (which is the recorded version for CD release) has Mayu and Miho in it.
メッセージ – Really like the melody of this song. It’s also an old song with a unique flavor which succinctly is connect with a certain feel, a certain franchise in a particular space and time.
Romantic Now – Not only I had a great memory with this song at MOIW 2015, it’s also just a totally fun song from a series that doesn’t take itself that seriously. Tomoyo Kurosawa plays the best kids yeah?
Twilight Sky – Lowkey one of the best Cinderella Girls solo songs, it’s also very emotional to see over the years in the live shows.
Trancing Pulse – It’s a unique sound that is an endangered species these days.
Hotel Moonside – “The Hotel” is the one first big Taku Inoue song that made this “subgenre” of Cinderella Girls songs popping, if a thing at all. Have to say while the follow-ups are great, nothing beats the OG.
Sayonara Andromeda – Probably the tail end of this great thing but also my favorite out of all of that.
Trust me – Yuyoyuppe brings a bit of hip-hop to an anniversary rock piece is always welcomed.
ã‚らã‹ãã®å™¨ – The “Chihaya power ballad” guy writes this song for Hajime and it sure is out there.
毒茸ä¼èª¬ – This is the other metal x idol deremas song that completes the spectrum.
è–„ç´… – It’s on this list because it’s a great song, and I fell in love with it because of this guy’s cover.
always – The Deremas ballad of choice in the COVID era.
Million Live – Nowadays, my main jam. This brand is known for being all over the place musically. 765Pro members also sometimes have songs under this brand, and that leads to some fun collaborations. I mean, there’s a song about Costco (not licensed). Everything goes in this series. For songs up to 2016 I have separately posted before, which overlaps with many below. At start, 490 songs are available with exception of a handful not yet available or omitted for unknown reasons. A few of the songs attached to the Gessan manga serialization are also available!
Sentimental Venus – Legendary song from Million 2nd live, but always memorable to me because it really a baton song from Kugimiya to the Million kids (at the time).
Super Duper – During Theater Days, the series have some twist and turns, and this is one of them. Yes, it’s K-POP influenced if even that–they went and got a Korean to write the music.
ジレるãƒãƒ¼ãƒˆã«ç«ã‚’ã¤ã‘㦠– To me this is a slow burn that really comes together on stage. Maybe not so hot by itself, but Million Live always frequently tapped to the west for its beats.
Bigãƒãƒ«ãƒ¼ãƒ³â—Ž – The composition of this song was just so good. It makes me want to learn to play the guitar.
UNION!! – Of all the anniversary songs, this is it.
絵羽模様 – Emily’s solo songs are always great but her latest solo takes it up to the next level.
真å¤ã®ãƒ€ã‚¤ãƒ¤â˜† – I love this summertime banger, even if it’s not much to write home about. The great mix of singing and “voicing” lines in the song brings out everyone’s uniqueness.
MUSIC JOURNEY – IM@S always copped music genres from the west, and while it’s hardly unique to the brand, it’s a core identity. I am glad we finally got the Mary Poppin song in one of these series. And really, Million Live is precisely that, a journey through music.
little trip around the world – The Costco song featuring Iori and Emily. The lyricist Youhei Matsui is a brainiac from Kansai and writes all kind of wild stuff!
SideM – I don’t really know SideM. Going to be looking for other people’s recs once streaming is available. Like Million, most of the catalog is on streaming at full size.
DRIVE A LIVE – Still remember it coming on the speakers during MOIW 2015 intermission but wanted to see it in person by then already.
Shiny Colors – Compared to other brands, there aren’t as many songs. Makes this job no less easy perhaps. It also doesn’t help that I’ve fallen off this bandwagon a little. About a quarter of the songs are on streaming, which is mostly the latest series of group songs and one of the character solo albums. They have already announced that more old songs will be released over time. I’ll just cross out the affected ones for now, because it’s the majority of these and there isn’t much I can make up for; I’ll also add something streaming in the cases where it applies.
OH MY GOD – Yep, it’s time for an all new era. Shinymas has the ability to flip the page on the entire music meta every so often by dropping a new group, and we still haven’t recovered from the first SHHiis reveal back in 2021.
Shinography – Hige Driver’s masterpiece contribution to the franchise makes it its best group song I think. Just as good is the c/w, Dye the sky.
太陽ã‚ッス – Still one of the best all around songs from this series to me. It’s also a towel song, and a lot of fun.
Alstroemeria – Alstroemeria (the unit) also started with a nice punchy song from the get go to set up the image of the group. Since I love cheeky pop love songs, I enjoyed all their songs, but still this one stands out the most to me.
Wandering Dream Chaser – Let’s goooooo. Also Straylight unveil was just one of the overall most epic marketing thing the series has done and this song is front and center for that.
Destined Rival – Let’s go, but harderrrr.Tracing Defender is an equally worthy alternative if you want something streaming.
Black Reverie – It isn’t l’Antica without the double bass drums, but I think this one has everything come together musically the best. Maybe try 浮動性イノセンス for something streaming?
幻惑SILHOUETTE – This is one of the songs that made me really curious about the creators of Shiny Colors. Yeah let’s write a song based on Plato’s Cave? Okay… The other thing you can try is 愚者ã®ç‹¬ç™½ which has a nice chorus too!
相åˆå¦èˆŽ – School units are the strongest together
神様ã¯æ»ã‚“ã ã€ã£ã¦ – Luca’s digital single dropped during Shiny Color’s Christmas concert in 2021 as a surprise encore. Killing god on his birthday became a legendary present from the game to all the producers out there, and it remains a banger a year later.
Love Addiction – Also see above. Also hmm I wonder which unit I produce…
ã„ã¤ã ã£ã¦åƒ•ã‚‰ã¯ – As a unit that debuted during COVID, noctchill had a rough time. Itsudatte Bokura wa is the main unit song, and their first public performance of this song was a bit of that mixed-feel tear-jerker that really hits home the restless and depressing ennui of the early 2021s.
Fashionable – Imitation is flattery but it’s oddly appropriate in a song about being fashionable from a seiyuu-idol project catching today’s trends.
Others & Covers – crossed out if they’re not being streamed.
ãƒãƒƒãƒ”ース – It’s a fun song from the Dearly Stars DS game unit.
VOY@GER – One of the latest entry at year 16, but it’s a new type of song for 765Pro. The all-unit version is great, but the individual units all have their take of the “rapping part” which results in all kinds of fun. The unit-based versions of the songs are available from each branch’s streaming library except Cinderella Girls (game size only) and 765PRO All Stars.
Dance Dance Dance – This is from the recent console game Starlit Seasons, which features not only all 765Pro idols, but select ones from Shiny Colors, Million Live and Cinderella Girls. Pairs well with Kaede. Inotak makes a return here.
This post is really more about me, but I think there’s something to take away for anyone. In short, I’m getting less and less happy about playing Princess Connect! Re:Dive (Priconne for short) Global, and a big part of it is that I also play JP and I also play several other mobile/gacha games out there. You might too, or not. Anyways, in 2022 what is going on in Priconne Global is just irking me, and I’m writing this to get it out of my system.
For background, I played the Japanese version of Princess Connect! AND I am an active player of Japanese version of Princess Connect! Re:Dive, in addition to the Global version. The company managing and developing the game, Cygames, manages its own release in Japan. Cygames also licenses the game for local distribution. Notably, the mainland China release became very popular a few years back (how time flies…). There are also Korean, Taiwan/HK, and Thai releases until the Global/English release about a year ago. Crunchyroll Games handles the Global release.
I really enjoy the game! Enough to play the same game twice. In a nutshell, Priconne is very much a “content” driven RPG where regularly the game updates with events, main story quests, and new characters, all which builds on previous revealed content to tell a story to describe its kind-of mysterious world. Being a player of the OG Priconne game, that predated Re:Dive, it’s pretty natural for me to get drawn in to the setting and the layers of mysterious things around it. I also had more time to take to the wide cast of characters so everything was mostly familiar to me from the get go for Re:Dive. You can read more in my earlier posts.
The various regional localizations of Priconne has to also follow this content release strategy where everything is slow-dripped at a certain pace. Some “down time” that the original release had was cut, but most of that was in the first year and things don’t really slow down after that. For reference, we celebrated Priconne JP’s 4th anniversary just earlier in the month. [You can buy this sandwich press lol.]
Being a popular Japanese game is fine, but it isn’t a chart-topper–more like Priconne’s niche is being easy to play, deep if you want to dig deep, and a lot of top notch QOL-ness come with the game. In a way the best comparison I can make is that Priconne is the Everquest-to-WoW leap from all those painful Asian farm-for-everything-based-off-a-guide mobile games. Even later entries (like, say, Konosuba, which is quite new! Or Kirara Fantasia, etc.) are significantly more painful to play. Priconne remains a standard bearer to make mobile games less of a menu hell, that the UX has to be a key deliverable to keep a game relevant in the 21st century. It is the kind of game that can allow players to play other games, because it takes so little time comparatively.
That said, nobody says you can’t play Priconne based on spreadsheets and spend hours to farm everything–many people do precisely that. When China opened up to the game (noteworthy for having local-only releases of characters based on lol Hashimoto Kanna) this only intensified. In fact it’s probably safe to say the CN player base is larger than the JP player base at this point, especially from an oversea perspective.
I am quite thankful for all the Chinese players who sank their love, hard work, time and money into Priconne! Overall they have enriched the experience with things like the currently-best Arena database and other guides. Some are outright better than pro sites like Gamewith when it comes to meta and dealing with fast-moving or player-based changes.
Unfortunately this also means by the time Global gets its latest content, that stuff has been juiced by every other release that started before Global. Unless you go out of your way to not look up anything, there’s nothing about the “meta” (as opposed to “being what’s popular” but the game on top of the game) that hasn’t been spoiled from start to finish. This is the unfortunate thing about Priconne–it was a game where almost all the hints you need to be successful are in the game by default. There are tons of ways to experiment on your own to figure out the game, and now in English you can read and experience that yourself…but few probably will.
That isn’t really a big problem by itself, if one at all. As someone who plays JP Priconne, I still enjoy playing Global despite having first-person knowledge of everything that’s going to happen in the game. It’s as if I know what the FAQ says, but I didn’t have to follow one. Instead, what I miss is all the things in a game that was constantly honed over 4 years that isn’t in a drip-release game that is the same game 3 years behind. Many of the QOL changes in Priconne JP would be so great in Global, as I am feeling exactly those pains now. Funny thing is, by the same token Priconne JP has evolved on top of those QOL changes that the meta-meta is about different things, so a different pain is setting in.
The best example I can provide is the Clan Battle. Basically clans are guilds, and you and your clanmates have a certain numbers of tries to beat up NPC bosses to rack up the highest cumulative score. A game-wide ranking battle among all clans ensues, once a month. It requires a lot of individual coordination and a fair amount of teamwork to compete in the top 10%. That said, for the rest of us, it still can be gleamed by spreadsheets, but Priconne has this “recommend” feature that builds in the teams you can use right in the game, basically bypassing the need for them for most players. This once-a-month event is really the main reason why a lot of people are hard in, as it is also one of the biggest draw from the OG Princess Connect game (clan versus PVP). One thing you need to do a lot in CB is trying out various teams. In JP, we can use 4x speed. But in JP the game is about finding teams that don’t all use the same meta (in the slang sense) characters, so there’s a lot of jigsaw-puzzle-type sort of matching going on. In Global right now it’s dur-derp given the much fewer combination of characters available to work with, but Global doesn’t have 4x… It doesn’t even have “recommend to select” as a feature yet–it’s not even about knowing who to use (derp), it’s having to pick it out of your character list. Again, trying out teams is arguably the most time-consuming part of CB, and it can be tedious. Why not make this easy already?
Basically, not only Priconne Global is a pre-COVID mobile game showing its age compared to Priconne JP, it’s a pre-COVID mobile game showing its age compared to its contemporaries. I tried Blue Archive JP when it launched and I liked it, but it clearly had a lot of launch problems (and I stopped). A year later now I am playing the Global release, and I am having a blast. In a lot of ways BA is a step down for me compared to Priconne (long story here), but it has a façade that is clearly built in this decade. I don’t know, that should count for something–a whole lot, probably, especially for an gacha galge. And to heap on top of that, Priconne Global has nothing truly new to look forward to, unless you count hand-me-down UX improvements that Global could have had much sooner rather than later? Or having all of its meta and meta-meta game juices squeezed out by millions of Japanese and Chinese players before I can enjoy it in English? I am waiting patiently for my New York Carl memes. Maybe Crunchyroll can self-insert its mascot like Hashimoto Kanna’s characters in Priconne CN, lol.
[That said, BA meta is a PITA too and unlike Priconne, not knowing that meta is almost killer. There are hints to what to do to play the game well, but the gameplay depth just doesn’t get served by the game’s façade, so you really have to engage a community and do external research to get somewhere. Also, BA PVP is utter trash, coming from Priconne. You can tell the creators of Shadowverse at least knows how to apply basic rock-paper-scissors balance tricks to a gacha game architecture. I can go on, but BA is basically superior despite its many shortcomings–largely due to that façade.]
As I said, this is more a “me” problem than a general problem. If I bothered to love Priconne’s commu (ugh) I probably would play Global to enjoy its fun translations alone. And they are fun. I just can’t stand how Priconne dialog UX insists to animate no matter how fast you click on it, so it’s really slow (relatively) to scroll through a bunch of one-liners, sound effects, or one-worders. I still have countless reasons to love the game–this is why I play it in Japanese despite being unable to navigate it well in a foreign language in the very first place. It also happens to turns out that, the reason to not play Priconne Global is because a superior version exists, and that’s the Japanese release.
Maybe this is also reflective of an information asymmetry. Maybe unlike AAA vidya discourse, there isn’t something like this holding together all the Asian gacha mobile games in English. Or rather, people (often self-professed “gamers” lol) are too busy complaining about censorship and lootboxes to talk about things that are actually important to players? If Priconne JP is not available to you or you refuse to deal with its barriers, so be it. Knowing the forbidden knowledge in this way may worsen your experience if you only play Global. But in a way these gacha games live in ghettos, and that’s messed up. Most players don’t engage in a whole lot of it. Maybe people in the QooApp community (or similar) can speak to this, but that audience is really skewed a certain way due to race and geography (and not available on IOS). If people came away with a bad impression of Priconne Global because it’s not as good as its contemporaries, I understand it, but it is also a form of injustice because Priconne is a much better game than Priconne Global.
There, I’ve had my say. Maybe it’s finally time to hang it up and reclaim my average of 15-20 minutes a day of playtime.
PS. If you’ve been enjoying S2 of the anime in the past couple weeks, this is basically the heart of the setting that carried me from OG to Re:Dive, early on. I hope they explore also more the OG universe, but I doubt the anime will get anywhere close even if 4 more cours were added. The whole lead up to the end of “Act 1” of the main story is a lot of fun. Possibly magic they may not fully recapture ever again…speaking as someone who wasn’t too allured by Act 2.
I write this just as after Aimi announced that she will take a roughly 2-month break from work activity to treat a chronic health condition, so let me start this by wishing her a speedy and complete recovery. During the final MC segment on day two, Aimi jokingly gave us her æ„› as she is christened, so the rest of us (including those also on stage at the time) joked that she is now just 美 (her stage name is 愛美 as written in Japanese). She said we can return it on White Day (or something). But, now, I wonder what she was thinking when she said that! I guess there’s the archive stream I can review.
So despite the gasp of hope we had late last year, the Omicron variant shut down Japan’s borders yet again and inside the country cases has exploded to new heights just late last week. None of that means anything compared to the power of æ„›, as in Japan’s take on Valentine’s Day. Million Live has its big number live as a Valentine’s Day event, a first, which is really just a regular concert with a Valentine Day’s theme.
So, here are thoughts about Million Live 8th. You can still watch it until the end of the week here (paid stream).
Just want to talk about the now-ongoing voting for the next round of outfit SR cards for Theater Days. Happy Christmas, New Years, and cheers to another day commemorating the late civil rights leader.
For background and recap, the mobile-rhythm-idol-gacha game IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Theater Days (MLTD hence) has an election where players can earn ballots and vote for one of the 5 choices of outfits to be available (in gacha, but at least it’s not impossible to get for free) to be implemented in game later on. The second election has started today featuring the same 5 outfit choices from last election in 2019. Like last time, the voting is separated by each idol, but the choices are the same: a spring “one-piece” dress, a “china outfit” dress, some kind of swimsuit, a waitress or “maid” outfit, and whatever “sexy spy” meant. Spirited debate between players did occur in 2019 and will occur again, although every character now only as 4 choices as 1 of them have been implemented. Overall it took about a year for everyone’s Closet SR to be added to the game, although some were faster than others. It took about another year for the Closet cards to be added to the medal pool (free to play pool). There has been like 3 support tickets since in which you could have picked it up, so I don’t think it’s particularly egregious, given that the voting itself is part of the fun.
Unlike 2019’s election, we now actually know what the outfits look like and what the card art looks like, as well as the gist of the commu you get from pulling the card. This has further lowered the stakes of the Closet voting “game,” but the long wait time since 2019 means there’s still some significant incentive for Producers to rally up behind their ideal outfits. To me, a core aspect of IDOLM@STER game series is collecting the various outfits, so this event keeps being relevant to many players, yet still in a way that is “gloves on” versus, say, the annual Cinderella Elections. No P loses out on anything important in the end.
Thanks to Fleur from one of the MLTD discords I can read some tea leaves after the initial hours of voting, and give my own opinions on all of them. I will also highlight some meta undercurrents, as they say. This is super early impressions, so things will change!
For one, there were some close battles from the first election that will leave the losing team seek re-election. I think most of them will end up winning, especially the second place outfits that were, as I put it, “on the right side of history.” Not every character’s Spring Dress or China Outfit looked good, I think that’s the big lesson learned. Only two idols selected the swimsuit, and waitress was significantly under-elected given people didn’t know what it really was. Both of those outfit categories can run a wide range, but now we know what they are. That being said, I’m still not sure if anyone else would look as good in that specific swimsuit as Karen.
To sum it up, though, the overall trend this year will be Maid versus One Piece. This would be the default template to break out of, whatever the P-hiveminds decide for each idol. Part of it is the aforementioned dynamics from 2019, but part of it is just math, as the possible choices are reduced.
I will walk the rest through one by one, with my favorite pick for each, plus what I project the eventual winner is using the very limited, unreliable, current data. Disclaimer: this is extremely preliminary data from less than a day’s worth of voting. Things will definitely change for some of these, especially ones projecting for One Piece dress.
