Rather than the usual newsletter I just want to throw this out there to organize some thoughts and info. It’s also an update on my personal leisure time as whatever they’re called, for however much left that I have spent not on family or work-related things. Or watching anime–I guess I am in the middle of a Made in Abyss marathon.
To segue from that, I’m trying to catch a glimpse of Mariya Ise at Otakon 2022, down at o’ Washington DC. Consider this an open jiao if you catch me. Maybe try me at the “official” off-venue rave? Since Aniparty is there.
Otakon is throwing a big k-pop show on Friday and a music affair on Sunday, with Kaoru Wada back in town with his musician friends like Yuki Hayashi (who was at AnimeNYC last November). There’s also a rock act Saturday. The busy weekend probably got a lot going on that I’m not even aware of. I looked at their Guidebook just now and there is conflict city all Saturday. It is terrible honestly.
I am also trying to figure out how to go to Japan, now that it’s open to some tourists, plus people who can apply and get an entry certificate to get a visa. Everybody needs a visa to go to Japan now, besides people who can “re-entry” and other citizen-types. Yes, it makes going to Japan a lot more expensive and a lot more difficult, if just the fact that going as a tourist means registration and monitoring, plus nobody knows what happens if you actually catch COVID (or rather, besides mandatory quarantine and tour cancellation). For people going to concerts this is a brand new world. It’s possibly also a fleeting situation since you never know if another variant will occur and rewrite the rules like how Omicron did during Delta’s reign last winter.
The answer that I figured out thus far is that you can do a private tour. It’s doable, it isn’t cheap, but it’s feasible. So I’m going to try to do one and see how it is and let you guys know. I can say for sure it’s “not the answer” anyone is looking for already, but it is a solution to some problems one person may have. If you have a lot of money that you want to burn, this may be it if you can also physically endure the “tourist in Japan” part as that’s mandatory. For people who just want to go to a lot of lives and stay nerdy in between concerts, this is not it, because again, you need to do tours. If you want to just hole in your hotel room, this is not it. If you want to enjoy Japan frugally, this is not it. If you want to meet friends, this probably is not it unless your friends are not picky about you being a part of a monitored tour and can adopt to your schedule. Furthermore, I’m not even sure if this is kosher by the terms of the tourist agreement set by the Japanese government. Sort of just going based on what I was told here.
There are a lot of risky “downsides” as well given that the high level of operational standard required for foreign tourists in Japan. It’s got extra chance of tour cancellation and forced quarantine, for example. It’s not really “fun” and really the tourist program Japan put in place is just to save face as a G7 country still practicing its xenophobic isolation policies in the name of COVID prevention.
This is really for people who absolutely need to go to Japan for that One Thing. Like, to segue nicely into the next topic, the next “Master of Idol World” or as the announce has it, a five-brand concert next February at Tokyo Dome. On the bright side it is for sure they will stream it and probably even do theatrical live viewings overseas (in HK/TW/KR). But, yeah, I really want to go. I also really want to go to the Million Live show next January. This is gonna be rough.
So yeah, it is suboptimal, to use a nice word, but such is the state of things. As the latest variant of Omicron rages, cons are back. It’s timely and it’s got various levels of risk, but it is what we got in this post-COVID world.
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.
Actress and singer Sayaka Kanda was found dead on Dec. 18 at the hotel she was staying at in Sapporo. The circumstances as far as I am aware of come down to these twoarticles. Since it is an ongoing investigation, I’ll refrain from inferring from the fairly well-known set of circumstances surrounding her. It’s kind of on brand that ANN just namedrops Sayaka’s parents without any footnote–Seiko Matsuda is one of the most popular Japanese idol ever, and Sayaka’s relationship with her star-lit parents had been turbulent (and public). But first, I want to extend my condolences to her family and all her friends, colleagues, and fans…especially the fans of her characters. Well, as one of those, I’m writing this to cope, partly.
Sayaka Kanda was a geinokai royalty, who most recently got on my radar from her work in Idoly Pride. Recently she was on a live stream to celebrate Mana’s birthday–the “ghost” character who were later on implemented into the mobile game. It’s not the first time I’ve seen or known her, but as I don’t follow Sayaka’s musical roles, it’s the first time I’ve seen her perform in character as such. Well, yes, also Idoly Pride staff put her name on the little chocolate name plaque on Mana’s birthday cake, because she was Sayaka Kanda, she was somebody?
It turns out Sayaka played a lot of roles in other pop culture notables even before 2021. Her biggest role might had been Frozen’s Anna in the Japanese dub, but she nerded out in Danganronpa, who she provided a character voice to as well as sang a song for as TRUSTRICK. Like others of her age, she was into vocaloids, which you can see her covers on her Youtube channel. Her music career went along these routes, probably because she had an affinity to it?
Needless to say, Sayaka was a talented, multi-role sort of a performer. But, the reality is, does it matter? Personally, I am emotionally hit by waking up to this news today–a tragedy that a popular 35-year-old dying is bad enough, but that she played a character I like in Idoly Pride means this character fundamentally will now also be impacted. It’s a reminder when people passes away, it creates a figurative hole in the world bigger than the size of that person’s direct impact. All of this hit on me is for an IP that’s almost a year old. It only took a year for me to attach so strongly to someone who plays a character I like. It’s really about the distance in your head, and there are few ways to shrink that faster than doing that idol routine.
I’m not sure if I can still play or look at Idoly Pride the same way. I don’t know how the cast feel about Sayaka’s passing, but I hope the best for them. As a fan and player I just hope the management of the game do her contribution justice and do so respectfully.
Me? I’ll probably continue to put off that newsletter, LOL. I have some post ideas lined up and I just want to throw them up as soon as I can.
The mobile game IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Theater Days (MLTD) is enjoying its 5th year in 2021. For those who are totally unfamiliar, this Japanese-region based game on iOS and Android (its Korean and TW/HK releases are being shut down later in October) is an offshoot of the bigger IDOLM@STER (IM@S) franchise. What this Japanese media-mix franchise–which started as arcade games but branched into console games, anime TV show and films, comics, and many other things–is known for is mixing its vast array of characters in its raising games with live performances of their voice actors on stage events. To keep the franchise moving, each of the sub-brands put out regularly, new singles, albums and performances (in-game and in-person). There are currently 4 active all-female sub-brands (765Pro All Stars, Cinderella Girls, Million Live, and Shiny Colors) and one all-male sub-brand (SideM)
I’m just whining about one specific part of one specific game for one specific sub-branch of a big brand here, although the same probably can be said of most of current games (except the Popm@s game, which is bejeweled; and to an extent also the Shiny Color game which has an entirely different bag of problems as a F2P visual novel)–they are glorified content delivery platforms, with gameplay being secondary to the idea that you are playing a raising game, producing the idols you are in charge of, and watching them perform their work and reach for success.
Given games like these are F2P platform/services, they have to evolve over time. Five years is a relatively long time. The IM@S franchise also is a sizeable thing that’s been around for 16 years. It costs a lot of money to field a large cast and put on extravagant shows. The Cinderella Girls (CG) series is probably the best example, as it has grown from two successful mobile games and build a large and loyal audience, with concerts in baseball domes, with its 10th anniversary coming up this winter.
While CG can rely on its huge, 200-plus-member cast and a regular, top 20 revenue game in the app marketplaces to keep things going fresh, others are more in a bind. In MLTD’s case, the developers have tried spinning the presentation differently–doing an “anime” type sequence using the in-game engine for example. Or, in this case, a new event type called “Platinum Star Leisure” which caps off a new series of an existing event type “Platinum Star Tale” which is just a repurposed “Platinum Star Tour” event with different rewards.
I appreciate the new try, but, this is not a good look.
The double dog days of august–I mean, this is the second news letter this month, maybe I regressed back to normal blogging for a bit.
Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-08-23
To be honest, COVID is still on the top of the list in Anime Land right now, and not like this please. I hope things are well with the rest of you though. Certainly whatever this current state of the world is, has more lasting power than the Konosuba mobile game (KonoFan), which I tried for about a day and gave up.
