#amisbro

[amisbro]

Let's Discuss: Broccoli's new app

So if you haven't heard then allow me to give you the skinny

Utano☆Princesama Franchise Gets New Game App

New app will feature idols from Shining Agency, Raging Entertainment

This is an article that was posted a few days ago and it was about a "Game App" that Broccoli was working on...yes you heard that part right because this one ISN'T under the control (to the best we know) of KLab whom currently still runs the JP server for Shining Live. Now what is fascinating about this is we have only the one screenshot in the post (which is also on Broccoli's Press Release) with STARISH standing on a stage. I THINK (and I could be wrong) but I think these costumes come out of "Maji Love 2000%" which is INTERESTING if you know anything about "Start Dates" for the Anime seasons See the Date for "Maji Love 2000%" was April 8th of 2013 and this image was posted on April 14th of 2023...yes friends this is literally around the 10th Anniversary of that season! I find it fascinating that they are actively doing a callback to that season in their own way but then again when you also think about the fact that they are also going to be incorporation "Raging Entertainment" now its gonna be a lot of fun! Yes kids...HEAVENS makes their official game debut! Now we have to ask some questions 1. Visual Novel or Rhythm game? If you ask me I think this will be another Rhythm Game BUT I think they will take the approach that Happy Elements does when it comes to EnStars in that they are going to do long chapters with segments voice acted per usual. I also think however that the story will actually lead to something (The UtaPri Awards Showdown. SSS ,or maybe a new contest) so that the game doesn't feel "Aimless" which was a big criticism of mine 2. How would songs unlock? If this is a Rhythm game I think we are going to see more of the Happy Elements approach in that songs will be unlocked after events and that there maybe be other ways too (like the equivalent of a "Live Fes" from EnStars). so there is that also. 3. If It's not a Rhythm Game at first could we see "Idol Training game"? Oh sure! Like since we have Shining and Raging Entertainment its not out of the possibility to see that happen. Like literally in EnStars (Basic and Music) there is "Yumenosaki Academy" and "Reimei" so if we go the route of a game like "ES Basic"...sign me up! If you notice that I am using the "Happy Elements" approach its because of the fact that they OWN their games so they don't have to ask for permission to get songs from someone. I think that might have been a problem for Shining Live a little bit because KLab never owned the content for it. I imagine having to ask for permission a lot is quite the tab Now the big thing is this When does it release? We just really heard about this a few days ago so I suspect that we'll not hear about it again (at least in terms of a title) in June when the 13th Anniversary happens. At that time (if we do hear about it then) I suspect the name and game format to be explained and (POSSIBLY) the "Sunset" of SL for the JP server. I only say "Possible" because it still has a lot of players but again this is all speculation on my part. If you ask me about Dolce Vita...I still think that game could be announced also but then Broccoli would have to think about this: If you announce Dolce Vita that HAS to be the only game announcement for the year. You CAN announce the name of the new Game App but I wouldn't announce a release date because people might be more interested in Dolce Vita honestly. I also think that if they do announce that this new game is a Rhythm game and people don't get a proper update on Dolce Vita then there is gonna be a problem. We know about the "BackPri" issue and how that didn't go well with people so I could see that being a real PR issue if something isn't said about DV Anywho fam that is all I have for right now but I am curious to what you think about this because I am really hyped no matter WHAT it turns out to be...not gonna lie I'll be happy as hell if we get a new rhythm game but sad if that means getting rid of Shining Live altogether. Take care fam and talk to you again soon

[shiningliive]

Do you remember if it was a 30 day countdown last year or was it 28 days? I'm asking this because of the fact that we haven't heard anything about login bonus calendar thingy like last year I don't think and I wondered if it was done around the 30 day mark or was it when we got to the beginning of August in Japan? Just something I thought about and I was wondering if you remembered or not friend. Take it easy

There certainly was one last year. I’m really wondering whats going to happen with the anniversary this year. Hopefully we hear something soon since they’ve been so quiet on it. I wonder if we’ll have things the week leading up to it as opposed to the month. 

[yustrology]

Alright @amisbro challenged me to rank best Heavens boys in regards to who is best for Haruka so I’m just gonna type out my thoughts here.

To start we gotta consider what Haruka would like in a man. I think she’d like a quiet boy since she’s not a very loud girl herself. Someone gentle and polite, but won’t put up with bullshit. Romantic. The more uplifting the better. I’m mostly going off of the traits she seemed to like in Hayato and by proxy Tokiya despite the CeciHaru shipper in me crying.

So with that in mind, my personal ranking of my favorite Heavens boys from least to most is Nagi, Yamato, Eiichi, Eiji, Shion, Kira, and Van is best. I love all of them, though, don’t get me wrong.

For Haruka, though, I think I would equally put Shion and Nagi at the bottom. Shion because he was cold to both Haru and Cecil for understandable reasons, but also there would probably be a lot of culture shock between the two. As for Nagi he’s like 14 you Nasties™ and Haruka is maybe 19 in season 4. Age of consent in Japan aside, Haruka’s probably not into shoutacon.

As much as it makes me want to cry, I’d put Kira next. I love him to death, but I just never saw much of a connection between him and Haruka outside of professional work relationships. Yamato doesn’t really seem to be interested in her either, unfortunately. He’s gotta get over his brobro issues first.

That leaves Van, Eiichi, and Eiji. I’ll put Van below the other two just because he’s already been rejected by Haruka, but he’s a good boi and when Haruka can stop thinking about only music, she might be willing to revisit the big goofball again. After all, he can make her happy so he says. I would then put Eiichi in second because when he did the chin tilt thing, they smiled at each other and that was cute. I think their personalities would contrast well and imagine him saying “IIIII~” and her repeating it in good humor. Dat’s cute. Finally that leaves our boy Eiji at first.

I think Eiji would be the best Heavens boy for Haruka because he’s quite gentle, probably very romantic, sweet, down to earth, and would compliment Haruka quite well. Plus, he boldly kissed her hand in front of his bandmates and brother?? That’s pretty cool. Plus his kindness and politeness is not weakness, I doubt he’s too much of a pushover and could keep his girl safe if push comes to shove.

So yeah. EijiHaru is probably best Heavens ship in my subjective opinion. This has been your daily dose of Finny Theory™ thanks for reading.

[tsukipro-en]

Hello friendly mods I have a question and I was wondering if you could help me out: Can you tell me whom the designated leader for SolidS and SOARA are? I'm trying to put the characters in their correct positions for tehe group but the only ones I know definite are the ones for Tsukiuta. If you can cool and if not I understand too

Ohara Sora is the leader for SOARA, and Takamura Shiki is the leader for SolidS. :)

[amisbro]

I always wanted to ask this Question

How many people that have been in the UtaPri fandom genuinely don't care about the character routes in the games? I'm actually serious about this question and let me tell you why Tomorrow is going to be January 7th and it will be my 9th year associated with UtaPri despite not being as connected to the fandom as I used to be and I remember how I got introduced to the series...it was literally a gif of Ren from the Anime and then that got me interested in the actual Anime part of the franchise. HOWEVER... What this didn't make me do is become as interested in the Otome/Visual Novel games as a lot of people might be in the fandom but that was more because the songs in the Anime actually got me interested in buying the songs and then also playing the Music games of which I own all 3 games. Like the idea of the Romance in the series (and yes I get it that it was an Otome first) wasn't a bad thing so...I get that but I also know that the biggest draw for me when I watched each episode was whatever song they were going to play in it. Why do you think that ,to this day, "Crystal Time" holds the record for the longest time I ever played a song on a loop (it was 3 weeks for anyone that doesn't know)? The other thing for me was always going to be this What characters did I see myself the most in and honestly...yeah we know already who that was right? The characters whom (currently) don't have any actual character routes in the games which sucks but eh...what can you do right? The best thing really is try to watch when they WERE in the Anime and see if you can figure out WHY you relate to them so much (which I did) and then you're good. Now does this mean that ,if/when HEAVENS get routes in a UtaPri game, I'm going to detach from them? NOPE! Here is what it WILL do for me It will either confirm or bust the ideas in my head about the backstories of the different members (of which...I had a lot of theories trust me) so there is that...but simultaneously I don't NEED or crave that content from them to love them more than I already do you know? I know that sounds odd but trust me my mind works in mysterious ways...hell ask me how much I love reading "deep dives" from twitter about characters in EnStars and the answer for that is A LOT but I'll try to explain that later down the line. So this brings me back to my original question If you were someone whom ,like me, came into the UtaPri fandom through the Anime and later the Music games then I have to ask you this: Did you ever feel like you needed the game routes to really embrace a character or were you satisfied enough with what you found out through the Anime series itself? Like I said for me it was more about the Music at times...well until Season 4 and then we know what changed and its been that way since 2016 (arguably even 2014 when I saw S2 for the first time). Let me know fam and I'll talk to you later :-)

[amisbro]

Should Sentai OWN UtaPri

My short answer is "No" but let me explain this for y'all When Broccoli created the "Uta no Prince-Sama" series just in general back in 2010 (really in August of 2009 was the first Audition CD but I digress) I'm going to make a wager NO...they DIDN'T expect the series to take off or if they did they expected it to probably "die down" after a while. It's been almost 12 years and we are still seeing it around so if you had made the bet that it WOULD take off like it did then you would be probably rich as hell by now! They PROBABLY also wasn't expecting the series to be a success in DVD sales or even ratings given that the series would be in the 25:00 time slot in Japan (1 AM Sunday Morning) so the DVDs were going to be their driving force (WHOOPS!) Oh yeah and then there are the CD sales which ,when you look at the Billboard charts in Japan a # of the CDs hit #1 so they had something right? Now could they (or even SHOULD THEY) have expected the UtaPri series to take off outside of Japan? Hell no! (Let's be honest fam...we know that ,unless its Love Live, you PROBABLY weren't going to be popular outside of the home market because we were mostly dealing with LL in terms of localized games IIRC) Broccoli might have had their popular game series and CDs but games...nah we wouldn't get ANY games for a good while until 2018 when Shining Live was translated about 5 months after the game came out in Japan. Before that if you wanted to play the games you needed a guide and hoped that someone had made one to know what choice made what route happen for a character. It's wasn't like it is now because Otome/Visual Novel games are far more localized now even if the quality of the games has suffered at times in the most infuriating fashions. CollarXMalice at one point wanted to say hello and the less said about Taisho x Alice the better. But UtaPri was still (for the most part) confined to Japan and DID get its Anime (all 4 seasons) simulcast outside of Japan. All Seasons were broadcast first on Tokyo MX and then put on Crunchyroll later on. I discovered the series literally through a gif of Ren Jinguji back in 2013 and then ordered the first DVD collection (which I might be getting rid of soon) off Amazon and then proceeded to binge it. I immediately became immersed in the world and loved every second of the 13 episode first season and then later closer to Christmas I watched Season 2 on Crunchyroll (this site will be repeated a lot and for good reason so stick with me) and the reason I did it so close to then was because I wanted to watch the Christmas Special which ,was a nice and tidy 22-25 minutes vs. the hour special that will be airing in Japan soon, and I loved it! TO... THIS... DAY... "Shining Star Xmas" is the most watched episode/OVA for me ever when I watched it about 50 times between Christmas day to sometime in February! It's still one of my favorite things about the Anime and I will never forget how much it meant to me to be honest. The only thing that means more to me (outside of a group that will get its own post again later on) is the song "Crystal Time" which I listened to for no joke...about 3 weeks straight because it kicked that much ass! Now you will notice I mentioned that I got the DVD off Amazon well...who distributed it? That would be Sentai Filmworks! Now to be clear at this time I had no issue with them and honestly the amount of times they actually tweeted about the series was mindboggling because of the fact that I didn't think they cared THAT MUCH about the series (and to be clear I still don't but more on that in a minute) but it was interesting because they were tweeting about it constantly and there was a part of me that trusted them but another part of me that...well I AM a Gemini so "trust" is something I don't give up easily The thing is that ,for a good while, the series had a home in two places IIRC: HDIVE which is just a paywall site and Crunchyroll which had a free tier and a premium tier and yes I was a free user so I couldn't watch the episodes right away but I made

[amisbro]

Let's Talk: UtaPri and Information

Or I guess you could say "Broccoli and Information" but using UtaPri is easier I think... HERE'S THE POINT! I fully understand that UtaPri is a franchise based out of Japan and they typically want to stay there (in a way) because that is where a good # of fans live...no issue there. Here's the problem: The fandom is also WELL OUTSIDE OF THERE TOO!

UtaPri's reach is well past Japan at this point and they (the twitter handlers) need to figure out a way to convey information BETTER to those fans overseas (in my opinion). What caused this thought process? Let's talk

First and foremost let me state again that I am fully aware its bigger base is in Japan...got that and I'm good with that so no issues. The problem comes that ,when there is information to be shared (officially and not through leaks), we run into this issue of we need a twitter to translate information from the twitter or we need someone to fansub the stages. THIS ,in my opinion, is a big problem and has been since at least 7th Anniversary (you'll see why I picked that one in a second) The main twitter I think everyone and their brother follows in this fandom for information is the official UtaPri twitter which is where we get a lot of our news. The problem is that there are now 2 major twitters (that one and the HEAVENS twitter) that you have to follow because you see all the "Shining Agency" information is on the UtaPri twitter and the HEAVENS info is on the other one...rest assured the UtaPri one gets updated more but I'm sure if you headcanon a reason as to why it could make sense. Now I would have no issue with this...IF you didn't have to follow a THIRD account to read the translations of the news (if you didn't read the machine translations from Google). Its almost like Broccoli doesn't know how to convey the information proper to International fans so they literally rely on translators in the West to do it. And that's to say nothing about the Stages! Stages and Anniversaries are usually where we get the most amount of news from. The problem is we have to wait usually an obscene amount of time to get the news because ,no joke, if no one does the report on here (and someone used to I think) then you have to wait for the DVD/BDs to come out (because Broccoli doesn't know how to stream these things for fans outside of Japan still) and God help us with the fact that the DVDs are bloody expensive! Now you might be saying to yourself "Bro its not that deep" Alright...then tell me why ever since 5th Anniversary (Minimum) they tweet in English for western fans if they didn't want to include us...seems counterproductive don't it? UtaPri has a history of going "Dark" a lot and usually when they do you feel like they are setting up for something BIG and usually when they do drop the info we all get hyped to hell about it because we kind of know WHAT it is and we can sort of piece together how its going to go. I haven't started losing my mind about this upcoming project because ,despite the report from Anime News Network about it...I still don't understand WHAT is going to be done so I can't get "hype" for it until somehow I get better information which hopefully will be at either this Anniversary or 7th Stage Now let me back up to 7th Anniversary...why did I pick that? I picked that because ,before the platform change, the last bit of intel we got about the game "Dolce Vita" was HEAVENS was gonna be in it and I told you how I felt the reaction was on here about that and it wasn't "great" (or at least to me). Since the Platform change over from VITA to Switch we haven't heard much about it. Hell we finished the Debut port and I expected them to announce either All-Star or Dolce Vita was next but they didn't and that baffled me. Like I genuinely am concerned about that game project now since we hadn't heard anything about it! This past April Fools was interesting because of the fact that Broccoli went the route of doing a "Game" based on HEAVENS (and it was MESSED UP MAN) but I hope I am not reading too much into it that they are going to work on a Visual Novel game for them or ,at the very least, make a new Music series of games based off of HEAVENS Music because remember that in Music 3 we got the Mini game that was from an April Fools prank! Again though this is where they (Broccoli) don't communicate what is next for either side and rather go "If you know...then you know" And its like "No...no I really don't because I am waiting for you to spell it out!" Like at the very least HEAVENS needs the following Their own VN games Their own Music games Their own Anime Series Or their own stage Any of

these would be fine for them so we know where HEAVENS actually is in the pecking order of Broccoli's vision for UtaPri. I generally see Agematsu tweet about QN/STARISH but rarely see a tweet from Elements Garden in support of HEAVENS. I've no joke seen ONE in the past few years but that was just recently Again though this goes back to the whole "Information" flow that International fans don't get Either someone needs to set up a dedicated account that literally translates all the tweets from the UtaPri/HEAVENS twitters or Broccoli needs to hire someone to freaking translate the tweets for us so we can understand the next step without relying on translators and reports. That "flow" doesn't work because all it tends to do is create anxiety for the International base and its a problem but I don't know how to fixit *Cough*Streamthestagesoverseas*cough* Okay but for real I know that that can be a bit of a financial issue and the margin might not work considering there are those in the International fandom that run adblockers so I get that...I think though that there has to be a way by now for the fandom to get the show and enjoy it. A viewing scheduled to go off when everyone is awake would be nice instead of like 6 AM and then you take it down for reasons...shit GENESIS and Mamo kept shows up longer than that for God Sakes! Mamo showed Loving which was like a concert (at the time) that was only like 3 years old! Hell the first concert are out of print so there HAS to be a way to show those to Overseas fans now right?! Alright Alright I'll get off that but my point stands for Heaven sakes! UtaPri ,Broccoli ,King and whoever else involved in the running of the series needs to find a way to communicate with the International fans better. Hell KLab HAD the Game Station show but they axed that temporarily (and I couldn't understand Alex for the life of me to understand why...she needs to learn to speak up or get a mike on her or something) so we don't have any proper communication with KLab anymore which is weird and its just a problem. Maybe I'm the only one though. What do you all think? Does the twitters for UtaPri need to find ways to communicate with International fans better or are you okay with the flow of information we get now? Let me know what you think and I shall talk to you later

[amisbro]

If UtaPri had/gets a 5th season...

What would it look like? So this is a question I have thought about for a while because of the fact that I think a lot of people (Myself included) believe there is more of a story to tell in the world of UtaPri.  I think with enough time we could get a very interesting idea for a season and honestly I think WHATEVER this project we got coming up actually IS could be an interesting testing ground for something. Let me explain

So if we think about how Season 4 ended it seemed rather definitive.  Like the way that message was wrote made you believe ,to a degree, that the series had ended as far as an Anime project.  Then we got the end card AFTER that and that kind of made things turn on its head cos no one knew what that was supposed to be until 6th stage happened right? One thing that always stands out to me is the fact that Season 4 was a bit of a mess and I say that in the most objective and neutral way possible because...when you have an Anime that is based on a Manga we typically get a story based around that in some fashion.  It might not be panel for panel and word for word but we get one and that is always fun to see how certain scenes get animated for sure.  When you do an Anime based on an Otome game you almost always do whomever is considered the “true route” or just leave it open ended so people will want to play the games (which is what I think DiaLovers did when it had its run). UtaPri has a very interesting situation because the series DOES have an idol component (and the Anime made sure to really focus on that mostly) but it is also an Otome game so the studio (A-1 Pictures) had that to work off of for the most part.  The problem is that when they were done with the material they DID USE it created a problem because Season 4 was a mess if I am being as objective as possible about it. So here was the problem You had 3 groups in play here STARISH QUARTET NIGHT HEAVENS Forget whom your group was for a second...this was going to be a problem because 2 of the 3 groups had content that was used in the first 3 seasons but Season 4 was going to be a problem.  How this would have been remedied I have no fucking idea!  Like if Broccoli knew they were going to do this season they needed to get something out BEFORE IT so people would have had something to go off of for HEAVENS so we could have had 7 episodes that made sense instead of episodes where it felt like they didn’t know how to have the HEAVENS member that was being featured in it not look like a complete ass!  If we are honest this is what happened and its frustrating to remember One of the biggest issues with the season was that you had a group that HAD been Antags during Season 2.  I said HAD because I genuinely believe that the marching orders for A-1 was to write a season where STARISH was still THE focus but HEAVENS could be rehabbed into a group that was more “likable/marketable” so when the time came to sell CDs and merch that they would fly off the shelves and could be a contender to at least QN if not both them and STARISH.  As we saw during the Oricon charts it was a puzzling time because the duet CDs sold like garbage in the sense that only TWO our the 7 actually charted in the top 10 Ren/Van - Lovely Eyes Syo/Yamato - Justice Impulse This was the most puzzling thing I ever dealt with because I tried to figure out WHY and to this day the best thing I could come up with is the fact that the CD releases were slated to come 10 days after the episode aired which seemed like the dumbest thing to do (IMHO) because when I looked at Season 3 all of the releases charted in the top 10 and a big reason for that was the gap between CD/Episode was only 4 days...well we got to QN and HEAVENS’ CDs they did VERY WELL in Season 4 and its because of how close they released them (I think) to the episodes...funny how that works! What was really weird also was during the “Duet Project” episodes the writers didn’t know WHO to make the focus of the episodes and that was weird BUT ,looking back on it, this whole season was gonna be weird because of how quickly the season was coming in the turnaround vs. its normal time for a season.  Typically a UtaPri season gets a 2 year window and this time they were going under that...about a year and 4 months so this was going to cause a crunch and also a mess of a message as to what the writers wanted to do!  I personally believe that the writers wanted to make HEAVENS all the more sympathetic and they were able to get SOME of the backstories in that they could for certain characters but a few others (Nagi and Eiichi for example) “kind of” tried to show you the “why they were acting the way they were” but it felt (at least Internationally) that the episodes didn’t register or if they did not as well as they hoped.  I do wonder if a big reason that the content is as out of sorts in terms of balance for HEAVENS vs. the other two groups is because of how jacked up that season got.  I genuinely wish I could sit down and discuss that season with someone that was in the room when they were given the orders on how that season was supposed to go vs. what actually happened after the fact! So this brings me back to the “What would a 5th Season look like if we got/get one in the future?” The weird thing is I think A-1 already knows but they have to get the reference materials FIRST before they start writing it.  I genuinely think they saw/heard about what happened Internationally when it came to the “NEXT DOOR” saga and they didn’t want to see that happen again so NOW they want to work on these projects to get the idea other there right now that all the groups are separated as first we have STARISH and then no doubt QN but the big question of course is HEAVENS...can they do a concert with them at some point with hopefully more songs under their belt OR will Broccoli start to really consider them a lost cause and that the fandom just doesn’t want them.  You can only go with the “Round peg/Square Hole” philosophy so much before people get mad and don’t want to deal with the series (or at the very least HEAVENS) anymore. The other big issue is HEAVENS’ role in Dolce Vita because, As of this writing, we still don’t know ANYTHING about that game...like we don’t know if its a straight up VN or is there going to be something similar to the original La Corda back in the day which ,fun fact time, had Kishou and Mamo in it.  Like if anyone would know how a game like that worked it would be them (And they ARE in the new game “Starlight Orchestra” btw) so they HAVE to have had given some input about how the mechanics worked and all that...right?! (Oh and unrelated but Kishou’s original character in Len Tsukimori is a special character in that game.  He was unlocked through a campaign we had in that fandom a bit ago) So again...what would Season 5 look like? Well my guess is that it would have to be a STARISH/HEAVENS season again but with new duets unlike last time.  The other possibility (And I think they were teasing this at the end of Season 4) is that it would somehow be a HEAVENS/QN season which could be interesting especially if they did something like how Season 2 was probably supposed to go...and in a way didn’t because of how the story worked. The thing is its been almost 5 years since we had a proper season...FIVE! Let’s assume that the “Anime Project” as we know it is over alright?  STARISH and QN’s brand is already established so what do you use to help HEAVENS’ get on the same level?  That’s a big reason why I don’t think they could/should end the “Anime Proper” because to do that you literally would be cutting off a way to properly market a group that actually needs it vs. the groups that clearly don’t.  I won’t go so far as to say that the STARISH/QN Animated concerts are going to be “Vanity Projects” because they aren’t.  They are clearly something that Broccoli believed in as far as a project to do for the series BUT I will say that having 7th Stage so close to this project is a bit...weird?! Like okay to be fair this probably was planned well in advance and the Pandemic fucked everything up because it was supposed to be announced at 7th stage in 2020...okay cool fine but let’s say it was right?  What stopped them from revealing it at 10th Anniversary when it would have been a bigger “Holy Shit” moment?  What was really so important that they had to do EVERYTHING ELSE and not that?  Just seemed weird to me. But anyways HOLY SHIT did we go around the block here...I need to stop If you were going to script out a proper 5th season when would you do it and how?  The thing to remember is we have a 3 group scenario and now HEAVENS is trying to become an even better group to finally beat STARISH and QN so do you have QN and HEAVENS do a thing together or do you do a 3 cour season where each is dedicated to a particular group? Love to hear your answers on this and take care