July 10, 2024

Anime Expo 2024: Wrap

By omo

I didn’t blog about AX2023 because it was not a good con, despite the best we made of it. Thankfully, the 2024 version of Anime Expo was much improved.

The new layout meant that people are more spread out. Additional entrances meant people flowed into the con during peak hour quickly–it took me about 30 minutes on Thursday around 9 in the morning. The exhibit hall pushed more vendors into the AA hall (Kantia) and spaced things out more. The R18 vendors also moved downstairs. It was easier to get around the hall than ever.

The badge-required space at the LACC expanded to include all of the front yard along Figuroa. The cross street by the Crypto.com Arena also belonged to AX for the entire time, not just on the weekend. It added more food vendor, drift space, and they put more performers there.

The autograph system moved online, and even after the snafu on day one when the printers failed, going barcode and ID check has been way superior. It seems even day-of tickets were distributed using showclix and email. The gnashing of teeth that was the 4pm-8am camp of yesteryear is done. We still got nasties like this but I am so thankful of these improvements. That said I only got a Kawamori Shoji autograph out of all this, because I didn’t really try for the others. I probably could have snatched one from Arifureta though…

In terms of content, we are closer than ever to Anime Japan on the industry track side, and there were still room for fan panels and side content to flourish. I think this year AX really struck that balance really well with the street MJ gang. There were rave/concerts from day 0 to day 5 of AX. I particularly enjoyed the One Piece Orchestra where Kouhei Tanaka belted out We Are along with Kitadani Hiroshi while the audience also sang along. Moments of Anibash reminded me of Mogra so much seeing Mizushima in the back vibing lol. It was chill and fun mixing during Constellation vol 5 on Monday, which gave me an excuse to hang out with local homies during the day on Monday/Tuesday. Hamu is amazing as usual, along with Teddy (a good set from him!) and Kotono House (the set was too mainstream for me but technically impressive).

Uma EN was a huge thing for me on my list at AX so I hit that Cygames booth the first thing on Thursday. I took videos of the whole thing but I think there’s no need to put it up anywhere, you can find it fine on Youtube. Cygames also had the party game in demo so I tried that, which is fun enough. That said Umamuusme fans are great, especially when I know half of these goofs having a blast.

I was able to drop by the usual IM@S gathering and appreciate a Matsuri cosplayer. Is this the power of anime?

On the industry side, it was wild seeing Sumipe doing her oversea stuff. Numerous others crossed path at the Entertainment Hall (like the gang promoting HypMic or moments when Mamo and KENN crossed path)? Sumipe’s anniversary panel allowed for photos at the end. She also ran into the crowd to hi-five people along the aisle. It was unhinged and fun. She also lucked out into a signed t-shirt for a fan.

I was able to see Seto Asami in person for the first time at AX, that was great. I also went to a talk from Aviot featuring Hirose Yuya and Wakayama Shion, which is this brand shilling character-voice earphones and headphones. They sponsored Kawamori also, along with two of the Gridman voice actors, so I saw them talk about Gridman and the Gridman headsets you can buy.

Otherwise, it still take some prerequisite camp time for every panel so it was hard to drift to multiple panels. In addition the schedule just had a lot of conflicts, so I literally saw Kuwahara Yuuki for about 60 seconds and Kito Akari for about 30 minutes. My greatest regret was skipping the Bocchi the Rock panel to go see the Game.

I watch MLB games casually so it was always on my list to hit up Dodger Stadium once. I go to LA often enough as is (second trip this year). When the Hololive collab dropped on AX Friday it was a sensible choice. It clashed with Anibash but the DJs I wanted to see was late in the day anyway. Then Aniplex dropped the shoe with Yoppi… Anyways, I don’t really regret it, the game was fun–Will Smith solo-dinging the Dodgers back from a Brewers Grand Slam was fun, and the home crowd responded well to the comeback win. What was less, well, well, was the massive buppan line for the Hololive collab merch. The baseball cards you get from going to the game sold for thousands of dollars on JP Mercari. It was wild. My friends stayed in the line for hours to get some shirts, and seems like the line to sell those shirts and hat went from gates opening until gates closed and people were kicked out.

The drone show was great, so was letting the fans go on the field. What does it take to have a Gindaco in Yankee Stadium! Seeing and hearing Suisei (and Inotac lol) at a MLB game was surreal. Thanks LA Dodgers, I hope you learned your lesson and have more than 8 cashiers next time you do a Hololive collab.

I made time to drop by the Akiba Maid Wars collab cafe at Asayoru Little Tokyo Sunday, because there was zero conflicts on Sunday–there was literally nothing to do but maybe gawk at the charity auction. In fact we went to karaoke with friends until pretty late after the con closed. Anyways, the collab cafe was impressive, and Asayoru did a good job. Shoutout to our maid, Nana. I enjoyed the extended cosplay skit as it were.

In conclusion, AX2024 actually became not terrible. I always ding AX being the worst anime con in the USA because it’s a safety hazard from crowding and heat. This year it did much better on the first and somewhat on the second–still EMS had to come in for the CDawgVA/Ironmouse line, and someone passed out at the Cygames booth on Thursday (probably from exhaustion entering the con). It’s a big con, stuff like this does happen. But it’s all the more important that AX gets the fundamentals right. This year it seems it has taken a major leap away from the designation of “worst con” but time will tell how much better it can get.

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture

June 13, 2024

Gakumas Impressions, The First Month

By omo

Barely one month in, there’s enough about the Gakuen IDOLM@STER game beyond the pre-release hype cycle to talk about the first new brand for the IDOLM@STER series in 6 years. It’s fun! Also I need some place to flaunt my gacha rolls?

On that note, I was able to pull every P SSR thus far, except for Kotone’s current banner (Big Bang) and the base Kotone SSR. (I farmed the base Kotone P SSR since.) I guess the game and I are just not into her? It was not immediately clear to me why you would roll for P SSRs, but they do have stronger items, higher starting stats, and generally stronger special skill cards. Maybe the “end” goal in this game is also just PVP where you assemble groups of 3 teams going head to head with other idol teams. I don’t know.

A key thing about the game is that much of the game is locked behind the P level progression. This includes many powerful SR and SSR skill cards, not to mention the “pro” produce mode. What you can do in this game is different than many prior IM@S games, so it’s worth spelling it out a bit before going forward.

Most IM@S games you gacha for characters and outfits, but in Gakumas you gacha for outfit, music, and SSR skills. It’s more like IDOLY PRIDE in that the cast of characters are limited and they are outright available to play with, or close to it. Having the SR and SSR P cards do help make getting a good produce run easier, and you can make stronger memories.

Memories are the output of each produce run. Each memory carries with it a skill card that can be used in a subsequent run, a set of skills to boost your run when you use that memory, and a deck+items for PVP. Oh, you can also take a photo from the final performance of each run to use as the icon for that memory. So yes, the game surrounds memories.

The gameplay, being a roguelike battle card game, the skill cards are important as a tool to carry over on each run. There are some strats here where you play normal mode to get a B or B+ memory with just 1 SSR+ so you have a 50/50 rate to obtain the same SSR+ (or SR+) in your deck in the output memory. Rather than whatever a higher scoring run requires, if you aim low, you can get by with just 1 SSR. It’s something worth trying once you get a special card that you think you really want to keep, because you also have to thin your deck with various tricks yet still get as much stat as possible.

Playing it more normally, you’d want to just play a lot and hope the inherited (lack of a better term) skill card is the one you want, and upgraded if possible. At higher score levels you can get more boosts for your subsequent runs, so ultimately you want memories that have both skills you want and as many highest tier of boosts you want (and of the right types).

The split between (P)roduce SSR and (S)upport SSR was introduced through Shiny Colors, so it’s nice to see they basically carry that idea into Gakumas. In Gakumas both P and S SSRs are the same banner too, so it’s already quite a bit less exploitative than either Shinymas game. There is so far the base banner and the new banner, which has a rate up on the new cards, and seems like the new cards are not in the base banner. The free roll tickets also seems to only work on the base banner so I wonder how often they would update it…or reset the rolls on that.

Support SSRs are basically like memories, except they only carry either an item or a skill card, and have much stronger boosts that maps to the support card’s level. You need to earn blue support tokens to spend to level them up, which you get from achievements and runs, and the plethora of stores/kuji pools in the game.

From a gameplay perspective, this is Slay the Spire, IDOLM@STER version. Stats play a big role on your midterm and final scores, but winning the training games efficiently is also how you can get big stats. Having to carry less slots for gameplay means you can carry more slots for stats, also. But that’s pretty much it for that–we are gatekept by level 60 SSRs being so hard to obtain right now (as you need up to 5+1 borrowed).

From the usual content delivery machine point of view, Gakumas is unlike previous entries in that it’s a lot more anime-like. Maybe that’s just QualiArt for you, but the main commu is basically shuraba-kei writing from the OreImo anime scriptwriter, played out as a video that you can stepwise skip line by line. Some would say this is “Iori-core” especially with Saki being the lead Red character. Temari is a big dork and Kotone is more the audience perspective. The drama ensues. The game postures the character-specific commu based on affection levels which are unlocked by specific achievements. During a produce run you can unlock them in the middle of the run and it presents a continuous story to you. It’s got this “anime as you play” vibe especially when you get the “ending” commu at affection level 10, complete with a ED sequence.

Part of what makes it more anime-like is that there is a lot of interaction between idol from the get go. We have the head-turning move of introducing us to the True Red character, Ume, who is more of the archetypical main IM@S red character, then to show us that Saki is actually the main Red. After reading the SSR+level 10 commu for both Saki and Ume it became really clear that until late in the production process, Ume was really the main character and Saki was the ultimate rival. They switched it partly because Ume herself is a bit countercultural in the way she is like Saki, and ultimately Saki would make more sense as the main character if things played out that way. So yes, things are playing out that way. This is not to mention the wide spectrum of cast members. China, Hiro and Temari are all quite eccentric and their interactions with everyone are amusing. Well, I guess so are Saki and Ume.

It’s hard to not praise Gakumas for sticking to being an IM@S game yet going against the grain in all the right ways. Maybe it’s not perfect, but overall it is doing everything right. I guess the gameplay itself is a bit of mixed bag because it is Slay the Spire, which is a popular genre-specific game. I guess it is part of the 2020 zeitgeist with board games being more popular in Japan as well as with indie games, but I suppose it works.

And in a similar vein, while I put in about 40 hours in Slay the Spire before taking a hiatus, you can also hit the content cap by getting to level 10 affection for every character in Gakumas. It probably will also take roughly 30-40 hours! Not bad for a free to play gacha game where none of this is gated per se, it just takes longer without stronger cards. The time-limited events thus far are kind of not in a set pattern, and it all seems to be the trivial “get stronger by playing the game more” kind of thing. I guess we will see what the future brings and if this franchise has the sauce for longevity.

For what it is worth, I’m still not 100% decided who to oshi–still leaning towards Rinami because it’s what I like, but the Ume is the riceball rolling straight into my heart. It is definitely a good problem to have.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Idolmaster

May 28, 2024

Gakuen Idolm@ster has Dropped

By omo

Everything that needs to be said about Gakuen Idolm@ster can be found on Twitter/X. There’s also this wonderful thin slice on the visual contents side from Sakugabooru–feeding us 9 proper music videos will do this. I personally enjoy the music, not only because “Hajime” is the most IM@S song I’ve heard since Starlit Season, but also because each of the 9 felt like some Asobinotes persons took each one and ran.

Between QualiArts lifting IDOLM@STER into the 2020s, that we are onboarding into an official Discord server, or that ultimately the game still isn’t available in another language besides Japanese, there’s a lot to be said of the game that is both a content delivery platform that Ps are familiar with, and idol-slay-the-spire strapped on top of a gacha game engine. The first banner and event already dropped, 1 week into launch. I spent a lot of Acen avoiding to play it, and a lot of Animazement playing it….which speaks more to which con is more laid back than the other and less about how compelling the game is.

I have not much else to say than, again, finally IM@S is a game that is new. It is so hard for Japan to create something new but still maintain what was great about the original, yet they are able to do it from time to time in spectacular fashion. I ate up the pre-launch promo like a child in a candy store, waking up early for each character reveal. The rivals, the Chokaigi streams, the daily video drops, it was a lot of fun. This doesn’t even mention the curve ball like Apple Music’s regular show. Or Chihaya.

So yes, the Famitsu in-depth interview confirms that the lead creatives are otaku influenced by works from the 00s, which explains why the vibe feels like the 00s. It answers many of the questions.

As for the game… it is a card game roguelike, in terms of getting the performances/practices. You raise the idol by using P items and building the deck, and gaining stats (ViVoDa) by achieving a certain number of points during audition or practice. There’s the full uma inheritance thing with 4 cards you can bring with you each produce trip, plus stats/bonuses from those previous runs. Support and P gacha cards add more special cards or items (persistent artifacts/items) plus other bonuses to stat/health to your game.

It’s also a lot of fun. I know some might want to have a more long-form roguelike experience (closer to STS) but I like this shorter format where you can really grind in small chunks. Each run takes about 30 minutes. The SSRs gate the songs for each idol in this game which is an unusual trick versus the previous games. The idol performance, as you roguelike your way each time, improves until you get to the True End.

Gakumas is all clicking and firing on all cylinders. Shiny Colors anime or Miriani may be for “existing” fans, but so is Gakumas in a way. It’s so fun to see how this game came into existence and to me it isn’t how different it is as an imas game, but how much it took from the past and made it its own that seems amazing to me.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Idolmaster

May 21, 2024

Anime Central 2024: Wrap

By omo

Acen 2024 came and went. It was a lot of fun and I’m home now enjoying that post-con glow. Just want to jot down all the key take-aways before I have to deal with the dozens of to-dos for next week’s con trip to Animazement.

For one, a big 30,000-ft view topic is that we are so back. I will need to bring back the blog post sticky of my events for 2024. Granted I still did a lot in 2023 that probably warranted it, but I am enjoying cons with other friends who also go to cons now that it just feels more right than last year to do it. I went to Acen 2022, 2023 and 2024 since the pandemic and it’s a good slice of what happened for the US con scene for each of those years.

Second, of course, it’s HiroMaya. Hiromi Hirata plays Makoto and I have been a MakotoP for ages now. That said, in a way I think it doesn’t excite me as much as seeing Mayako Nigo because to me Nigo is one of the cast members that makes 765Pro Allstars special, especially when you compare it with other similar groups. Either way, the two young moms felt quite at home on their new-ish radio show (about a year old now?) and they brought some of that healing atmosphere to Acen. The discussion and the manzai-but-not chemistry between the two is just wonderfully charming to me. Various Ps got their long-wish goods signed and dreams came true. I brought a life-size cardboard cutout of Makoto, and with the major help of friends able to bring it to Chicago and got one signed. I saw 2 other POPs there as well which is great. (BTW, Q&A panel notes here.)

Knowing a bunch of other Ps in the US meant I also saw a lot of them at Acen, which is always a good time to catch up since I haven’t seen many in a long time. It’s also fun to see those people see each after, after so long. We were able to do a big group dinner at Fogo de Chao (mainly because they can host large groups easily), and that was a blast (of meat eating). Three JP Ps also came to visit and it was their first time at a churrasco steakhouse. They are fellow P-friends from abroad that I’ve met several times already and they got the local greeting (even if most of us weren’t from the area).

Acen’s other seiyuu guests are also impressive. Tomo Sakurai is kind of rebooting her seiyuu-idol career after being invited to the con. She’s even doing some other event later this week? It’s nice to finally meet this showa-era seiyuu idol who voiced most notably, Mylene of Macross 7. I went to one of her panels and she did a karaoke performance to Friends. That was a surprise. (As an aside, Dan, who was interpreting for Tomo, also ran a booth at the artist alley which I failed to drop by because I only found out later.) I got my Shayla-Shayla fix when she signed my El-Hazard DVDs.

The most impressive seiyuu on the list was Sora Tokui, who hopefully helped all of us get the “nico nico nii” thing out of the collective attendee’s systems. The love for her was bountiful, from flower stands (the Midwestern Liver/idol group folks knew better so everyone got a stand, leaving no seiyuu behind) to a big banner. The people were out in force here. Meltdowns and other stuff that comes with the territory, stories about getting into and out of the scene thanks to the OG Love Live school idol herself.

Which leads to the last but hardly the least seiyuu guest, Sally Amaki. This present-day idol seiyuu’s story is well-rehearsed via her popular Trash Taste interview, but Sally is more than the sum of her parts. Or the number of RTs for her various tweets. It’s just like the other dreams-come-true stories in a way, but this time our 21st century Japanese idol in her prime is also a socal shitlord turned josei seiyuu, which is a word spaghetti that means also more than the sum of their collective meanings.

I got lucky and was able to attend her “autograph session” substitute given that she doesn’t do that kind of event anymore, but the meet & greet event was just so, so good. I hope other anime cons in America can replicate this whole thing Acen has made with SME and 22/7’s management to make Sally available, because she is the bringer of a busload of hilarious idol fun.

In some ways the four seiyuu guests at Acen this year paints sort of a past-present-future look at how things are in the seiyuu idol side of the biz. That sums up how powerful the draw this year was for me personally.

The nuts and bolts of the con this year are pretty similar to the past few years, although we are ever inching closer to 2019 Acen again. What’s different is Win Morisaki, who is mostly a Toku music guest, and Lotus Juice, who’s here to suffer the Knicks getting knocked off of the playoffs. It’s a bit too bad that I barely got any time to watch their stuff due to event conflicts, but these bros don’t bring down the house by themselves. Acen needed to give them a bit more help, for no fault of their own.

Industry/production side, the one that caught my eyes the most was PILI, or the Taiwanese production group that made the Thunderbolt Fantasy puppet show. Some of their puppeteers came, and they messed around with the doll with the fans. I couldn’t find time to see the Colorido guests doing their premiere or the Kinema Citrus guests, but I did pick up the Colorido shirt from their new Netflix movie.

I couldn’t get any tasting for the Saburomaru whisky tasting because Acen booth’s lines were super long and they couldn’t process transactions fast enough, so I came back when everything was sold out to pick up the shirt and the Sally cheki thing. On that note, the biggest public enemy at Acen this year had to be the security theater. It was not very well organized and during peak morning hours people had to wait quite a while, up over 30 minutes? There were 6-7 scanners at the main con entrance and one at the hotel overpass. I’m not sure if there’s one also over the Embassy Suites side though. Anyways, for the most part it wasn’t an issue for me, but I did hear some problems over internet chatter and others I talked to, while most didn’t have much of an issue.

The autograph situation was somewhat better for me this year than the last, and some people really got it figured out. Turns out to get all the sessions you wanted you will need to create new accounts as sessions conflicted with each other. On the flip side it sucked if you didn’t get any, and some folks I know basically struck out. The system is merciless and not well-documented beyond this tweet, I think. One of the JP Ps was able to get FOUR sessions across all 3 days right away and none of the Sally oshis who flew here got hers. It’s rough. Our GR dude Sujay even translated the procedure into Japanese with pics for the 22/7 fanbase…I wish the non-Japanese even got that lol. I mean, I suppose it only tells you to install Guidebook and sign up for an account, which gets you just half way there.

The setup from last year mostly translated to this year, with most folks hanging out by the back tables at the street level of the Hyatt and the lineup going around it. It was chill and a good time to trade P cards? It was old timers reunion and good time to meet new people.

I personally was able to get both Hiromaya sessions (they were together) after coming off the waitlist, a Tomo Sakurai session, a PILI session, and one with Soramaru on Sunday. All of this is punctuated by that aforementioned lucky Sally M&G pickup. Man that was a great session. Normally this level of programming is reserved for the rare “VIP” panels that you pay $$$ for, but because Sally can’t do the normal signkai stuff, she gets to hang out with 60 of us for about an hour and a half as a compromise. It was so wonderful and it was as if her dreams are coming true and we’re all in it, and I guess we were?

One more thing to add: fan projects. It seems the con is finally set up for flower stands, so if you want to make Acen smell better, that’s one way…I jest. Hopefully we will get some kind of written method to hook those up. This year everyone got flowerstands as mentioned. Soramaru also got a banner and some other stuff. I made two business card binders with message boards from people in line as usual.

I’ll end with this. If you want to see your favorite imas or LL seiyuu (or Sally) come back, request it in the feedback form.

PS. Fooding at Chicago was so good this time, but also in general. I stayed for almost a week on this trip so I got some decent options, basically ate pizza everyday but Sunday and Monday (when I landed at 10pm). Pizza (deep, normal and tavern style), italian beef, the Chicago dog, cake shake, and others were consumed. One night I was theorygaming Vancouver vs Edmonton with friends at “the” Uno Pizzaria bar and that was an one of a kind experience. One of the JP Ps also brought me a visiting gift, his favorite butter “sando” from Hokkaido, and it was heavenly too. At the con I ate out with friends and hit up Gibson’s and the aforementioned Fogo also, which both hit the spot after long, long days at the con.

PPS. I didn’t forget Kawaiikon! But Raleigh awaits…

Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

May 4, 2024

Girls Want to Be Yellow: Gakumas Prelude

By omo

As the new IDOLM@STER brand, Gakuen IDOLM@STER, slow-drips its hype juice leading up to the mobile game launch later this Quarter (or whenever Spring 2024 is), I have thoughts about not only Gakumas (the official abbrev) and the franchise in general. More specifically, context is important and also kind of amusing to think through, how one thing may lead to another or vice versa, and the joy of learning from the past.

Around 2020, we got Asobi Notes, which is kind of a new music brand from Bannam that included some of the up and coming track makers and DJs with a slant towards trending EDM and pop music. I only know this because they pulled a bunch of composers and DJs that worked on IM@S into their first online stream/concert (COVID era memories). Along side that was the launch of the Denonbu brand, which is uhh, character-based rave music I guess? Turns out Denonbu’s strategy and Asobi Notes form the music side of the Gakumas system. So far Gakumas has followed a similar plan between the idols and their music producers…I suppose around 2018-2019 the link between the music maker and the IM@S tracks has been more in the foreground in the marketing material, so this is the next step.

When IM@S hands off an idol to a music producer to make songs for, it reminded me when people like Inotac always wanted to produce Kaede songs, or when Jun Sasaki talked about Julia back when being asked about Airu. Now with 3 of the solo songs available, it seems a bit like that, but more so. I was rather taken by minami’s song for Temari, both that it is very minami, but also very good for an IM@S Blue solo, IYKWIM. Taken together with Giga’s and HoneyWork’s songs we can say that this is unlike any IM@S, and more like a group of good creators getting to create what they want based on the character concepts presented to them.

Which is just to say, based on the released commu, if Shiny Colors was a visual novel from the 00s, Gakumas is just OreImo (to no surprise–the PR material proudly boasts that the same scenario writer from OreImo is on staff). It is the same energy that warps around the same idol production story that has been grinded down like a raging river on smooth stones along the shore. Saki (Red), Temari (Blue) and Kotone (Yellow) may be signal lights, but I don’t see any Miki anywhere. The enigmatic and emblematic idol idea now lives between … Red and Yellow? It feels like the opposite-of-normal has happened with the cute but timid pink/red idol now being a confident and spicy brat who will tsun her way into your heart, while Yellow Is Just Trying To Make It with everything she got. And in traditional IM@S fashion, Blue didn’t change much in Gakumas. Is this what kids call “on brand?”

With the promo material slowly being released since the Gakumas announcement from KominoP (and his teammates…) the hype has been slowly building. Weekly release streams showing off the main cast along with their characters felt like both common-sense and uniquely new for the franchise. When a new IM@S seiyuu drops once a week it’s like getting a Christmas present once a week. The story of Shiny Colors playing off their yearly unit-add really shines through with this strat. The tech upgrade (thanks QualiArts) also are appreciated. IM@S official 4k videos are great and welcomed for something made in this decade. The hype continues to build.

I’m okay with my Aipura plus Oreimo plus Denonbu concept game so far. It’s got everything I want except the engaging gameplay part. I think as a raising game, the crown still belongs to Umamusume, being several furlongs ahead of the pack. It’s easy to forget the mess that was the first SideM app game which copied the gameplay loop from Hachinai, and only if they did more of it…

Which is all just to say, like the Ps who polled ML producers on Gakumas before even all the idol characters were unveiled, my prognostications are just that, premature. But what is clear as day is not just Giga dropping the name 15 seconds in Saki’s solo, but the direction of this franchise is going. It is thoroughly modern. It leans on famous and popular contractors. It is an ensemble work. It is aware (and its creators also are) of the past and hopefully, clear where it wants to go in the future.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see the rivals becoming idols themselves, but what we’re looking forward to Gakumas cook is how it will happen. The wonderous but a bit underplayed story of Luka Ikaruga, will she get a nod in Gakumas? Only time will tell.

PS. I wrote this before Rinami’s solo dropped, but I think it just continues the trend. Watanabe Sho’s entry reminds me of Pinky Hook lol, but maybe that’s because I am Mocho-Pilled a bit.

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture