#enstars has had weird stuff in the game before

[thestarfishghost]

800 before the end of December is looking nearly impossible smh but eyyy! 777~

NGL, I'm movie and ova grinding so hard. I usually manage to watch 100 new things a year, but this year I instead rewatched nearly 40 things. It's been a big year for nostalgia for me, but also for getting a few people into different things with me! Vampy has personally watched so much stuff with me this year? Oh my God??? It's been a blast! I have never felt more human than when Vampy and Kimchi enjoyed Dragon Maid along side me, I swear. I also got Vampy into Enstars by starting the anime together and I am delighted >:3 Made this in celebration actually >:3 @shut-in-magical-girl

That said, I have actually watched some actual shows too, such as the first season of Oreimo and the first two seasons of Kami Nomi! Those were actually really fun. The first season of Oreimo has some of the most impassioned speeches I've ever heard about the more ""controversial"" sides of anime. I did admittedly have a love-hate relationship with Kirino at first, but honestly, it was just because of the more wildly exaggerated tsundere tropes. They became easier to laugh off after awhile. I really relate to the way she loves the hobby, and I think it really helped me warm up to her more quickly. How she enjoys collecting and getting excited over it... I relate to that in those same ways lol specifically to her Meruru shrine lol (ik no one asked, but aside from Krino, my best girl is actually Saori. I look forward to seeing more of her every time an episode comes on! :3) Also, Idk why I skipped Kami Nomi for so many years, but I legit just left it on my P2W list for a decade lol. I've only had one other person ever recommend it to me as well;; and that was like 4-5 years ago now lol;; I slowed down with playing eroge and bishoujo games around,,, 2015/2016(?), but I used to play them religiously. Keima should probably not be someone I relate to... but here I am. Relating to him. While nowadays my main passion lies in the animation side of things, I still really find relatability and comfort within this specific Reference Humor genre of anime, so I've really enjoyed this series so far. I finished up Irregular Witch too :( First show from the current airing block that I've actually completed. Bittersweet, but I had fun with that one too. I'm going to especially miss seeing Phoenix every week. I find that I usually watch whatever comedies are airing when I do tune into the blocks as they air, and this one was a really nice companion piece for the heavier stuff I've been keeping up with. I watched a few other full series, but this next one is the last I'm mentioning for now. I might make more posts another time; we'll see. Two of my favorites that I got around to during my sick week are these two next mentions; first up is Wotakoi. I am devastated that there isn't more Wotakoi. Help. They covered pretty much all of the manga according to other fans, so it's unlikely more will come out of it. It always hurts a bit when something is fully finished, though. especially when I enjoyed it so much. I might read it just for the sake of wanting more of it. It was really straight forward and was honestly a breath of fresh air. There weren't any real love rivals or anything; just nerds figuring themselves out and their dynamics out. I literally just watched six weirdos make friends and fall in love with fairly no complications involved. I'm thriving. (Or maybe I'm just a lonely, nerdy adult who is tired of drama in my life. Maybe that's the only takeaway here lmao /lh) And then,,,, finally,,, Magical Witch Punie-Chan. I have... No words. It was amazing. I loved it. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. 4 episode OVA with an additional 4 episode Omake after. Wonderful if you like darker gag-humor series and want a short little trip. This one was weird but delightful, truly. P.S. I kept "Lyrical Tolkarev~ Kill Them All!~" as my discord status for like 3 days lol That theme song is going to live in my head rent free for the rest of my days. As for what I'm most excited for in 2024, there's probably, like, A LOT. But off of the top of my head, I can name the next Given project (PLEASEEEEEEEEECOMEOUTALREADYYESSSSGIVEITTOMEEEE JANUARY27THCANNOT COME FAST ENOUGHHH) and the second season of Bokuyaba (one of the only manga I have bothered with in 15 years, going to be so real right now;; I cherish this story). When these things come out, I know for a fact that my blog is going to briefly implode. Apologies about it ahead of time lol!;; I'll probably be saying more as the currently airing series all come to an end over the coming weeks. There's quite a few I don't want to end TT~TT so talking about them might be nice!

[chiroptaro]

ok so. the cult explanation. actually wait. it would be funnier to tell you in the order ppl found out.

So basically in ! era (there are several eras, ! era was the first phase of the game, !! is the current phase, which takes place a year later, war era takes place before ! era, and pre-war era is anything before that) Kanata was a 3rd year and part of a unit called Ryuseitai. (One of my two faves) Ryuseitai's theme is heroes, specifically the power ranger type, because the leader Chiaki is obsessed with being a hero and Ryst had a history of being a unit of heroes. Anyways Kanata and Chiaki are 3rd years and Kanata has this. weird way of speaking? Where certain words are in parentheses and he pronounces some words wrong or doesnt seem to know what they mean. Anyways Ryst has no 2nd years, but they manage to get 3 1st years in the beginning of the ! era, and absolutely none of them wanted to be there, so basically they got the leftovers, but they were really desperate because they were gonna graduate. Anyways. Kanata is a weird guy who likes to swim in the school fountain, calls Chiaki his hero, speaks weirdly, doesnt refer to himself as a human, but like. maybe hes just kinda like that.

And then Meteor Impact comes out.

Some perspective. Enstars came out in 2015. Meteor Impact, aka the Kanata backstory story, came out in. 2019.

And oh boy!!! It sure is a story!!! one of the only es stories ive read and. jesus. head in hands. its something <will never be over meteor impact

ANYWAYS.

Youve known for a while at this point of the existence in the war era of a group called "The Five Eccentrics", which were a group of five students who were interesting characters who were really good. Eichi used them to wage his war and get Wataru to fall in love with him but thats beside the point. What is the point is that Kanata was one of them (So were Rei and Wataru, vampire guy and the clown in the images i sent you)

Anyways Kanata is part of the five eccentrics. i realized this might not be that important to the cult backstory stuff im trying to tell. whatever

ANYWAYS ANYWAYS.

Chiaki and Kanata are 2nd years during this time. Chiaki is part of Ryuseitai, and Kanata is unaffiliated. Chiaki does a lot of volunteer work bc ryst are heroes, and one of those jobs is to clean the old school pool, which is completely dilapidated. There he meets Kanata, and Kanata asks if he wished the pool would be clean, and he says yes. Next day he returns to clean it and the pool is spotless. He and Kanata start becoming friends even though Chiaki's kinda put off by Kanata's behavior. Kanata keeps saying he'll grant any wish Chiaki wants, Chiaki keeps saying he doesnt have anythimg to wish for. anyways stuff happens. Chiaki keeps hearing rumors about shady peoplearound the school. At some point his friend who is an ex thug gets beat up by his old friends and Chiaki tells Kanata about it. The friend gets mad because his old friends got super scared bc the police came and threatened them. Chiaki wishes for ryst, which has become lazy and lost reputation, to be more motivated, and they do.

He finds out that theres actually a cult doing everything Kanata "wishes", but Kanata believes hes a god who grants wishes for people. he doesnt see himself as human, and only thinks hes worth soemthign when hes serving others by granting their wishes. Also the cult was formed because a meteor fell like a bajillion years ago and it had some sickness on it so people started sacrificing ppl to try to get rid of the sickness and that didnt work so then they ate a guy and that worked and that was Kanata's ancestor so basically theyve kept his lineage alive incase another meteor comes so then they could eat him. He is aware of this. Anyways Chiaki's trying to save him from the cult, at one point Kanata wants to return "home" (the ocean) so he just.walks into it and Chiaki dives in to save him because hes literally about to drown himself and Kanata gets upset because he cant breathe under water because he thought he could but everyone was jsut gaslighting him around him and then Chiaki;s like "ill save you, i want to be your friend" and Kanata's like "well if thats what you wish" and Chiaki's like "no, its my dream" and then he goes with Kanata to his public execution

Oh yeah uh. so like Eichi is going around "defeating" all the five eccentrics in idol battles to motivate the rest of the school but Chiaki is there with Kanata which automatically disqualifies them but then kanata joins ryst and everyone else leaves because theyre freaked out by him and then they adopt three lovely children the end <3

okay wow okay okay oka

ok so the order is pre-war, war, !, !!

wait okay so the cult is only keeping his lineage alive so they can eat him just in case. but then why are they granting wishes for him? is it bc he's seen as like, sacred? or is it just himself who sees himself as a god?

^ and how do they grant them in the first place??

why is kanata's home the ocean??? why does he think he can breathe underwater?? wjat??

wdym by they were gaslighting him when he was retunring to the ocean were they like "no ya u def can breathe in water i saw u do it like a few months ago" or what

also can't believe gay people are real?? "no, it's my dream." hot diggity dog

WHY IS KANATA BEING PUBLICLY EXECUTED IS IT JUST FOR FUNSIES

[unrelated to the cult q's]

how do the units work? it sounds. kinda like themed clubs is that what they are?

you said there's the vampire guy right. so is there just magic people? what's the dealio in the case of fantasy races in enstars

WHO THE HELL IS EICHI AND WHY DID HE START A WAR OVER HIS GAY CRUSH HOLY MOLY

i want 2 know more about the 5 eccentrics they sound like a delight

[kalmeria]

hey kori! how's your cold? are you feeling any better?

soo if you're in the mood to answer... what about 4, 5, 11, 14 and 21 from the enstars asks? sorry for asking so many, but i'm curious, haha ^^'

hello!! i’m feeling better, thank you for asking. still a bit sick but the brain fog is mostly gone at least~

answering these is fun so i might ramble on a bit haha

okay i ended up talking a lot a lot. so much that i’m putting a readmore here lmao

link to the secret codes that enable me to ramble about ensemble stars (aka the ask game)

4. what got you into enstars?

short answer is: wanted to play a new rhythm game!

long answer (i have a whole timeline lmaoo): my first encounter with enstars was watching the first episode of the anime when it came out (summer 2019). but honestly i didn’t enjoy it. the fact that anzu, who is such a central character, felt like a prop the others talked at… it was weird! i get that it’s because of her being the player character so to speak, but it still bothers me, and i find stories where she shows up a lot difficult to read.

fast forward to early 2021 when i followed a person on here who later turned out to be a big enstarrie. through them i was exposed to some wataei edits that made me go “wait this is gay?” but i mostly tuned it out as stuff on my dash i’m not that interested in. one mention of vampires did get my attention, and i ended up reading the tv tropes pages for a bunch of characters? the oddballs, valkyrie, switch, alkaloid. i could not understand what this “war” thing was.

then last autumn i got tired of the power creep in starira, my previous gacha game, and decided to try bandori garupa. found out i really enjoy rhythm games, so then i started playing d4dj and project sekai as well.

and then, around new years i think, i was sick and lying in bed, and ran into some enstars music related videos. notably one that was rating different rhythm games. and then there was a video of a bandori fan playing enstars for the first time that really sold it to me because of the shared point of reference.

i was still fighting my curiosity because enstars fans scared me, and i knew the immense amount of lore could easily suck me in and i didn’t really want that. so i decided to just watch the anime and see what the whole deal is… and then i did binge the whole thing and soon after downloaded the game (there was a minor setback of figuring out how to get an app that isn’t available in my region). i read the main story in like a week in february, and now i’m here!

(btw enstars replaced bandori in my mobile gaming, which i had kind of lost interest in at that time, and had just had the worst gacha luck trying to get a 4* moca card)

tl;dr (which is totally fair): wanted a new rhythm game to play, have heard about enstars and seen people be really into it, watched the anime -> it captured my interest

5. what's your favorite headcanon about the character you produce?

umm well this is not a fun one but it’s kind of an important one to me. i see tatsumi as someone who has dealt with being suicidal in the past, especially during his hiatus after the reimei incident, but before that as well. i think he processed it through his faith and through devoting himself to others, but it is also wrapped up in feelings of guilt about not respecting the value of a human life (his own) properly.

11. do you have a least favorite character?

i don’t really actively dislike any of the idols. the ones i like less than others are the ones i don’t really know well because i haven’t really read their stories. either because they didn’t manage to capture my interest, or in the aois case, i’ve just found that a lot of the ways identity and self comes up in their stories makes me uncomfortable, so i kind of don’t like reading them.

but i love seeing people who love these characters i’m not too focused on talk about them and why they love them. it’s really nice how everyone has their devoted fans!

that said, no one has managed to make me care about the two teachers.

14. what card are you currently saving for?

funny story!!!!!! (it’s not)

i am. saving for getto spectacle tatsumi.

and fs1 kohaku.

which will happen at the same time.

(pained smile) i know there is months to go until then, but in the meantime we’ll have fs mayoi, aira and hiiro, as well as ibara event scout. so i will have to make some decisions. oh and ariadne is right around the corner too….)

21. do you have a favorite story?

well. obbligato might be an obvious answer. and it is very high up there.

but i think in general i prefer the shorter stories? because the pacing of the long ones can be absolutely all over the place!

i quite like princess kaguya and ariadne. they do both have that typical enstars thing of having a central conflict that gets dragged out for quite a while and then very suddenly solved in a previously unforeseeable manner. but i’m giving these a free pass for having that conflict be interesting, as well as the character dynamics they explore.

oh and shoutouts to feather touch! i hadn’t considered it before as a favorite but as i was thinking about this question i realized that it’s a pretty solid story.

and i do just really love reading idol stories! they have a lot of fun casual interactions in them! (jun kohaku hiyori teatime, rinne praying to kanata, the runrun calamity, the ones where tatsumi and koga hang out, hiyori giving idol advice to kohaku, etc!)

[thrilling-oneway]

Okay I wanted to make a post about my thoughts on the SIF 2 announcement yesterday. Might be quite long we'll see.

1. SIF 2 was pretty inevitable. I saw this announced coming a mile away. I started playing SIF at the beginning of the end, or at least for the EN server (read: August 25th 2020). Iirc the first event after I started was the Aqours flower crown one with Dance with Minotaurus as the song. So after the old format of 2 SRs, but before the 1 UR + 1 SSR + old event SR format. That weird period where they ran 7 SRs and then a party card (that wasn't released until months later bc EN sucked ass). I've seen Step Up boxes get removed, I've watched unidolised cards disappear, I've watched the UR rarity become a joke. I gave up waiting for new songs to be permanently implemented and I gave up waiting for new Master charts. I was there when EN got shut down. I was there for the Niji sprite R/SRs and the Liella screenshot cards. And most recently when the new schedule has massively slowed the release of content so that we're only now getting stuff that should've been released months ago. This game has been dying for so long and I can tell why now. While I haven't heard any news yet about the server being closed permanently, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens shortly after the release of SIF 2. Tbh I'm surprised the game lasted this long; when the EN server shutdown was announced me and a friend joked about how it wouldn't even make it to 9 years.

2. Is it really SIF 2 if we've had All Stars, 3 After School Activity games and Paradise (if you really want to count Paradise)?

3. On a more positive note: SIF 2!! As much as I love SIF and owe so much to it, the game has really been wearing me out. This seems like such a refreshing change of pace! Obviously we don't really know much yet but I'm looking forward to it. I hope this revives the popularity of SIF too, since I would like to not get bots in an event lobby for once in a while.

4. The card art is definitely catching my attention. We've only been shown a preview of what I'm assuming is Honoka's initial unidolised card, but the art is so pretty! SIFAS has gorgeous card art and old SIF art also slaps so the art for this game shouldn't disappoint. I'm gonna miss the actual card shaped cards that SIF has but I don't mind the bigger landscape cards.

5. EVERY SONG. EVERY FUCKING SONG. IS IN THIS GAME. Oh my days they did it they fucking did it. Finally. Also the remix and solos during events has really caught my eye. I'm assuming solos is just using the preexisting solo mixes for all μ's and some of Aqours songs, but remixes has got me curious. Do they mean like the Paradise remixes that were on that one compilation album? Or the ones from Aqours lives? Or completely new ones?

6. As for gameplay I hope they keep the 9 icon charts from SIF. Not only does the 9 member thing work but also it's such a fun style that not many other games use. I mean I wouldn't mind overly if they changed it to the bandori/pjsekai play style, but I will miss the SIF style. Also I have muscle memory for almost every chart so I just don't want them tp change. And I think it would be funny to watch bandori/pjsekai players suffer at the hands of Hajimari Road, Nico Puri Joushi Dou and Binetsu Kara Mystery etc etc. If they keep the same charts I hope there's a way to transfer data. Also if they change the play style I'll reinstall enstars because I need to be good at something.

7. I don't really have anything to say about the story it mostly likely won't be canon so does it really matter?

8. In terms of events I hope they keep something similar to the original. Especially Companion Match and Challenge Festival. Those are good. Token Collection can die in a fire. I mean something similar to bandori would be fine too. But if it's just like pjsekai marathon events then I don't want it.

9. Boy do I have something to say about team building. Team building and strat has always been a big part of SIF, and I hope they keep it in this game. And preferably closer to how SIF handles it because I still Do Not Understand SIFAS team building. SIF strat is very easily accessible too, you just build attribute based teams and use the right one for the song you are playing. Obviously if attribute merely became an event gimmick I won't be too fussed - that's how it is in all the other games I play - but I would definitely miss team building. ALSO IF THEY USE THE SAME SKILLS AS SIF HAS CURRENTLY I'LL BAIL GO BACK TO FAIR RATES.

[mainposts]

people send me an enstars thing and im like "oh! someone is starting a discussion about my special interest so i dont have to be the one mentioning it first all the time!" and theyre just telling me how they think the new mv is silly and crazy:b is "ugly"