#root: look at Itaru generating millions of cheers across three servers...

[a3tree]

1st Anniversary and Exclusive Cards

It’s been a few months since this announcement now!

What would the new original cards be and what would implementing them into the EN server look like? 🤔

I think we’re still a long few months away from getting these cards but I can’t say I’m not excited to see what we get! In order to think about how this will happen in EN server, let’s take a look at how the other servers implemented their own server exclusive cards!

For all of these servers, the cards were usually announced around or tied into the 1st Anniversary event, “3 Cheers for Mankai Company!” (as named in EN, the original name in JPN being “Let’s Bloom! Cheer MANKAI ☆”. As per rule on this blog, I will be referring to it by its EN name and shorten it to “3 Cheers” from here on.) The only server to not have “exclusive” cards from this event was the JPN server, being the main server and already having many cards that have not been distributed outside of Japan through events, collaborations, and album releases.

3 Cheers first ran in the JPN server from January 12th 2018 to January 22nd 2018 to celebrate the 1st Anniversary release of the game (January 27th 2017). This was the first (and only) “Cheer” event (“Support” in JPN), which was unique even to Anniversary events because of the exclusive voting, or “cheer” mechanic. During the event, alongside earning points, you could earn cheers to send to your favorite boys and unlock special badges for them. They also counted as votes towards the character, and the top 10 characters’ vote rankings were posted partway through the event on January 16th, and final rankings were announced February 4th following the event.

The top ten characters got special character goods and the top three characters got “Choice Scout SELECTION” gachas! A Choice Scout is a one time only paid scout with rate ups of previous gacha cards of the specified character! Along with the ten cards from the gacha, you would also receive a “Choice Medal” to exchange for any of these specified character cards at the Trading Post (ex. if you pulled from the Itaru Choice Scout Selection, you would be able to exchange your medal for SSR [Office Worker Santa] Itaru Chigasaki or SR [Don’t Jinx It] Itaru Chigasaki, among other Itaru cards).

In this case, the top 3 characters were Itaru in first, Banri in second, and Misumi in third, so all three of them got Choice Scouts! Itaru’s Choice Scout ran from March 1st to March 5th, Banri’s ran from April 2nd to April 6th, and Misumi’s ran from May 1st to May 4th.

Not only that, but the top ranking character from each troupe were added as the cast to A3!’s first ever Mixed Troupe event, “I Come with the Night.” with Itaru in the starring role, Banri as the co-lead, Misumi as supporting cast A, and Tsumugi as supporting cast B. With this being a performance event, Itaru and Banri also got SSRs drawn by Ryo Fujiwara! This event ran from October 17th 2018 to October 26th 2018.

(Side note: this Anniversary event seemed to be a bit stressful for fans since there were only rewards for half of the cast, and many were disappointed to let down the boys that did not win. This could be one of the reasons that following Anniversary events do not have this character ranking element.)

The next server that held 3 Cheers was the TN server, with the event running from August 15th 2019 to August 25th 2019 to celebrate the 1st Anniversary release of June 2018. (It possibly came a bit late due to other event/gacha scheduling conflicts.) The event ran virtually the same as it did in JPN with the ranking results announced on October 25th. Where this event differs from the JPN version is that it was announced that the top three characters got region exclusive cards to the TN server, with first place Itaru getting an SSR, second place Masumi getting an SR, and third place Misumi getting an R card!

(Funnily enough, the results mirror the midway results from the JPN server, with Itaru, Masumi, and Misumi being the top three.)

The TN exclusive cards were released in the same Choice Scout SELECTION gachas that the JPN version had. These were only obtainable through the Choice Medal at the Trading Post. Misumi’s Choice Scout ran from February 13th to February 18th 2020, Masumi’s ran from March 4th to March 8th, and Itaru’s ran from March 13th to March 17th.

The TN server also got the I Come with the Night event from April 7th to April 16th and all the cards that came with it, despite the featured characters being the winners from the JPN server’s ranking contest (If the winners were to match the TN server’s ranking, the cast would have been Itaru, Misumi, Tsumugi, and Sakyo). This of course makes complete sense as I imagine it would be difficult to implement a full exclusive event for each server, especially with how long it took to release the event story and play in the JPN server and with the differences in scheduling that each event has.

(Side note: the Masumi banner seems to be an error with the colors and flower motif being Itaru’s gerberas rather than Masumi’s violets.)

The CN server was released November 14th 2019 and celebrated its anniversary July 22nd 2020 to August 1st. (It seemed to celebrate the anniversary early in order to preserve story chronologic order because they’re going through events much quicker than the JPN server did.) The ranking of the top ten characters was announced August 3rd 2020. Like the TN server, the top three characters in their rankings got CN server exclusive cards made by the Japanese dev team! The top three were once again Itaru in first place getting an SSR, Masumi in second place getting an SR, and Misumi in third place getting an R card!

The CN server also got a special illustration drawn by Ryo Fujiwara and an exclusive special event PV written by story writer Tom was released online!

The exclusive cards were announced February 8th 2021, as part of their Chinese New Year/Spring Festival campaign! They were once again released in the Choice Scout SELECTION gachas, with Itaru’s, Masumi’s, and Misumi’s Choice Scouts all running February 12th to February 18th. Just like the TN server, these cards were obtainable through Choice Medals exchanged at the Trading Post!

So far, the I Come with the Night event has not dropped in the CN server but it seems likely that it will proceed as a normal event with the JPN ranking cast.

So... what does that mean for the EN server?

The EN server was released October 23rd 2019 and celebrated its Anniversary with the 3 Cheers event running from October 15th to October 25th 2020. The event was nearly identical to every others’ server with the notable distinction of there not being a cheer ranking component to the event. It is unclear why this part was not included into the Anniversary event, (maybe Cybird had difficulty working under COVID restrictions or they wanted to avoid the popularity vote?) so many fans cheered for as many characters as they could rather than pouring all their cheers into their favorite. Around this time, Cybird also released a survey in-game asking fans how they felt about certain elements of the game. Some questions in particular asked what were your top three characters from the game.

Towards the end of the event, Cybird revealed the above announcement that Ryo Fujiwara would be designing “new original cards for the English version scheduled for a 2021 release!” on October 23rd. Since then, there have been no announcements on what these cards will be like, who they are of, how they will be released, etc. But, based on what we know of the other three servers, we can make some educated guesses:

(These guesses are just for fun, please do not believe anything I say to be absolutely true)

So, who will the cards be of?

Since there was no voting announced in the Anniversary event for EN version, I don’t think they will use the Cheer points to determine who gets exclusive cards. This is probably for the best because the cards won’t be determined only by the players who spend the most in-game. However, because the survey asked for players’ top favorite characters, I believe they would use these results to determine the characters who get exclusive cards. This is a much more fair way to “vote” for characters because even F2P players and players who do not use social media were able to vote for their favs, and avoided mass voting because it was accessed through the players’ game.

Another option would be for Cybird or Liber themselves to decide who gets the cards. This doesn’t involve the players so I don’t know if they would actually do this but it’s still a possibility.

The last option would be for them to give new cards for all the characters. This would be the most fair and would probably generate the most money for them if all of them were available for paid gems, but it would definitely be a lot of work for a server that isn’t the main JPN one.

Of these all, using the survey results makes the most sense to me because they specifically asked for your top three characters (I wish I still had screenshots O|￣|_). Once again, it would make sense to eliminate the problems with the cheer rankings. Deciding on their own does not seem like something they would do and as much as I’d love every character to get a pretty new card, I don’t see why the EN server should get special treatment over the CN or the TN ones that only has three each for this event. It’s still a possibility though because the EN server is available across more countries, but I don’t think it reaches more players than the CN or the JPN server. So for now, let’s assume the new cards would go to the most voted characters of the survey.

The hitch to this idea though is mentioning Ryo Fujiwara, the lead character designer of A3! I think they did not draw any of the other exclusive cards, and only contributed to the CN server’s commemorative art. Their art is also only used in SR and SSR cards, I believe. They’ve done album covers that have been redeemed as SR cards in-game and does all of the performance event cards, which are all SSRs. If Cybird are having them draw these cards, these cards would definitely be very special and would most likely not include any R cards. This would mean that these exclusive cards will already be very different from the other servers’ cards.

How will these cards be implemented?

One theory I saw come up is that maybe EN server will have an exclusive performance event like how I Come with the Night was created as a result of the 1st Anniversary. While the fact that Fujiwara-sensei is drawing these cards support that idea because both the gacha and event SSRs would be drawn by them, I don’t know if Cybird has the liberty or capability to add something as major as a whole in-game event. The CN server had an interactive PV hosted on bilibili even though the scenario was written by Tom, the main story writer of A3!, which shows that even semi-canon events in other servers are not usually added to the game outside of the backstage stories of said exclusive cards. It would also be put in the middle of the timeline which would make formatting the server weird (already there have been some oddities from the timeline being off from the release dates of the JPN server) and would have to not further the characters’ development in a way that contradicts whats farther ahead in the timeline. What I love about A3! is that a lot of the interactions and conversations are remembered and referred back to in other cards and event stories so to have a whole event and not furthering the characters and have it not affect the three years the JPN server has on the EN server seems difficult to me. Plus, performance events in particular usually end up voiced and have play songs which I think would be a hassle to have to record for in a server the actors themselves don’t even play. I’d love it if they did and it would explain the wait time for these cards (plus it wouldn’t be too hard to skim over character development anyways since the I-Chu and PSYCHO PASS events were exclusive and I think the I-Chu event at least isn’t even canon?) and maybe it doesn’t even have to be a performance event but I do not think it will go this way.

Until we get more information, I assume that the exclusive cards will be released in the same way that the TN and the CN exclusive cards were by trading in a Choice Medal obtained from the Choice Scout SELECTION gachas. I also assume that the previous survey will decide which characters will get these exclusive cards. If anything, I hope the only difference the EN server gets is that since the cards are designed by Fujiwara-sensei, the cards will all be SRs and SSRs. I’m still unsure completely about the number of cards, but hopefully there will be more of them.

When will we hear more about these cards?

The JPN server concluded 3 Cheers on January 22nd 2018, announced rankings on February 4th, and had character Choice Scouts starting with Itaru in March. The highest voted character from each troupe were featured in I Come with the Night which ran in October. So ranking was announced under two weeks, Scout gachas started the month after, and the Mixed Troupe event ran nine months after the Anniversary.

The TN server concluded 3 Cheers on August 25th 2019, announced rankings on October 25th, and had character Choice Scouts starting with Misumi in February. I Come with the Night ran in April. So ranking was announced two months later, Scout gachas started four months after this announcement, and the Mixed Troupe event ran eight months after the Anniversary.

The CN server concluded 3 Cheers on August 1st 2020, announced rankings on August 3rd, and had character Choice Scouts all starting Febuary 2021. So ranking was announced two days later and Scout gacha started six months after this announcement.

The EN server concluded 3 Cheers on October 25th 2020. It has no rankings as of now (February 20th 2021, four month later) and therefore does not have Choice Scouts yet.

JPN had the shortest amount of time between the end of the Anniversary event and the beginning of Choice Scouts with only about a month in between. However, JPN did not need exclusive cards and did not implement the winners until I Come with the Night nine months later. Meanwhile, even though it took TN server two months to announce ranking results, both TN and CN servers started Choice Scouts six months after the Anniversary event. There’s no ranking in EN, so I can only count from when the event ended and the cards were announced at the end of October. If it were just exclusive cards, I would assume it would take six months like it had the TN and CN servers, which would mean sometime in April. But if they are doing something special with Fujiwara-sensei designing the cards, it would take some time, but not nearly as long as it did for them to come up with a whole new event scenario, so unless the EN version is getting an exclusive event, it should not take nine months which was as long as it took JPN server to get I Come with the Night. So before July.

So, based on all that and assuming scheduling is about the same as it is for all the other servers, we might be seeing these cards sometime between April and July.

What will these cards look like?

The JPN winners were cast members for the I Come with the Night play event, with the play being school themed. The TN cards were boba themed to reflect how boba has nearly become the national icon of Taiwan. The CN cards were Chinese themed with Shanghai and pandas included in the designs, fitting for Chinese New Year.

Basically my answer is I have no idea what EN exclusive cards would look like. The EN server isn’t exclusive to one specific region like the others are. Many different countries are encompassed in the EN server, so it’s difficult to say. But they will definitely be gorgeous with Fujiwara-sensei designing them.

SO WHAT IS THE TLDR???

LONG story short, I’m guessing the EN cards will be added sometime between April and July, via the character Choice Scout SELECTION gachas. They will not be determined by cheers but instead will be cards of the highest voted characters from the survey released around the 1st Anniversary. The number of cards, the rarities, the design motifs, and the characters are still unknown as of now.

I don’t know a lot so this was a pretty long winded way to say “I don’t know” and give the most basic of guesses but seeing the history and predicting based on the data was super fun. I feel that having an approximate date guessed is better than nothing but unfortunately that is about all I can surmise.

Hopefully we’ll hear more about these cards soon! I’ll be keeping my eye out for them in April 😉 Thanks for reading!