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foreigndistance · 9 months ago

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Jubilee, Rank #72 (a post-event reflection)

“Why would you post this on Nocturne’s 7th anniversary of its addition to Starlight Stage?” Because one, I like the song—especially the original duet. And two, screw it, we roll.

It has been a few weeks since the event ended, but I’ve been trying to write this reflection for weeks without trying to lose my mind over actually writing out several thoughts (both good and bad) over a collaboration event in a mobile rhythm/gacha game. Forgive me for the raw honest thoughts I’m about to say in there.

The Prologue

Hoshimachi Suisei is a virtual YouTuber (VTuber) affiliated with Hololive Production, one of the biggest virtual agencies for such talents. She is one of the earliest talents recruited by the agency, alongside other soloist VTubers like Tokino Sora, Roboco, Sakura Miko, and AZKi—together referred to as “Generation 0”. She is also someone striving to become an idol herself. Prior to becoming affiliated with her current agency, she had tried entering IRL idol agencies, to no avail. She tried joining Hololive Production, but got rejected. She got into INoNaKa Music, but would eventually get transferred into Hololive’s main JP branch in December 2019.

To briefly describe her activities: Suisei is a forever 18, multi-talented idol who has done (and sung) a lot of accomplishments over the years. She has interest in 2D idols as well, with her having interest in Ensemble Stars!! and THE IDOLM@STER, the latter of which being an inspiration that led her into her own idol journey. She would do covers alongside other Hololive talents with songs from those two series. “Honeycomb Summer”, “Melty♡Kitchen”, “Alive Factor”, “Hanamuke no Tori”… to name a few. There were also times where she would often be pulling in the respective games’ gacha, often spending a lot of money on them. Her favorite idols from Enstars!! and IM@S include Ritsu Sakuma, Natsume Sakasaki, Hayate Hisakawa, and Kaede Takagaki.

Six years after her debut, she would perform with her own tantou.

At Suisei’s 6th Anniversary 3D live, appropriately titled “SheenderellaDay”, a certain someone would perform with one of her fans.

The song? It was “Koi Kaze”.

Suisei shared the same stage with no one other than Kaede Takagaki, who was in her 1st SSR outfit. This was followed up by a small MC corner. Kaede switched into her 4th SSR outfit, and then a new song written by Suisei’s recurring composer, lyricist, and fellow Midnight Grand Orchestra member TAKU INOUE started playing on stage. As the concert was happening, I was merely saying “congrats” in my mind.

And thus, the grand “Jubilee” started.

The Event (and My Mixed Feelings)

It’s easy for me to say that among the people who wanted a Hololive collab with THE IDOLM@STER in-game, Suisei probably won the hardest. She got her own in-game event, original song, a commu, and even an SSR in the series she loves—ignoring the behind-the-scenes shenanigans we will probably never fully know about. There were previous Hololive collab events in other gacha games, with Tokyo 7th Sisters and Granblue Fantasy getting their collabs in the past few years, but when it came to Starlight Stage’s collaborations, this was the game’s most intense collab yet.

I… didn’t initially plan on running this event much. While I was initially excited by the intensity of the collab event upon its official announcement, there were lingering feelings of “what if this were to be my tantou idol’s last event” and a slight hint of disappointment. The “end” of Starlight Stage had become a recurring topic among English-speaking Ps ever since the so-called “content reduction” announcement was released before the end of 2023. The collaboration itself was teased in that same announcement, but I presumed that the things around the collab were already in production as the whole “content reduction” stuff was being decided. The thought of losing IM@S’ most profitable mobile game because of whatever Bandai Namco is up to is kinda scary. It’s a silly sentiment towards a live service mobile game that will shut down eventually, but the thought is also real.

Then, there’s Kaede herself. Her last token event (and unit from the original mobile game) in Deresute, “Pretty Liar”, was held back in 2018. There’s… things I could say about her content released after that, both things I liked, things I felt odd towards, and things I didn’t really like all that much. In a nutshell: I want to see Kaede as “herself” and not just as the “final boss” Cinderella Girl that she is. It’s complicated.

And yet, this event’s timing couldn’t have been even more perfect. Lately I’ve been finding March and April to have moments involving my tantous. The event’s duration overlapped with March 30 (one year since Cinderella FES Mizuki’s release and eventually sparking FES Kaede in that same banner) and April 2 (10th Anniversary Tour Final, aka the live that changed the trajectory of my producing life forever). And the whole thing took place during Holy Week break, no less. The only real issues I would’ve had were potential connection issues that may arise in a then-upcoming 3-day road trip.

Why did this event have to be 11 days long?

The Actual Grind

Day 1 of the event started with me messing around with all my early intense grinding. I managed to get around the top 20 within the first 30 minutes of the event. Trying to maintain a top 100 spot was hard during the first few days, but eventually things stabilized as the days went on.

For a short break during the first day, I pulled on the collab gacha. My Suisei gacha tickets didn’t give me too much and got me an off-rate SSR (Miyo1), so I resorted to using jewels. Here came Kaede’s collab limited SSR, fully animated. My jewel count went from 55k at the start of the event to 36k—which would eventually be thrown into event ranking hell instead of being saved for the Kaede7 reruns (which was its own story).

During day 2, I kept playing (actually sending my auto Grand team through EVERLASTING FORTE hell and back) while I was at a local convention for the whole afternoon. Not pictured: me showing fellow artists there that I was playing the event! I may have fallen out from my goal for a while, dammit, but I kept farming for tokens anyway.

In addition, I drank some coffee especially during the last few days, although sometimes I find myself feeling a bit sleepy…

Throughout days 6-8, I was stuck on the annual provincial road trip during Holy Week. I brought two phones through the whole thing: my main phone whose mobile data has been mostly spent on event grinding, and a side phone where I would often chat on Discord or play videos and music during the trip. During the second night, I did get to stay in the hotel room by myself (we had two hotel rooms) and took that opportunity to try staying awake.

On day 9, I hit the 99,999,999 money cap for the first time. Nothing too significant about it other than me having to spend a lot on stuff from the limited money shop. (That’s why gold bars exist in-game!)

The final two nights had me trying my damn best to stay up for as much as possible past 1 or 2 AM. If you really value your sleep and sanity over a dumb number for a popular idol’s event, I do not recommend this.

The last day of the event was quite a stressful trip. Within the final 24 hours, I wanted to try reaching the maximum amount of tokens you could hold (99,999 tokens) but I feared that there would not be enough time for me to reach the target. I ended up stopping the EVERLASTING FORTE grind as soon as I got to 90k.

I wanted to park at certain numbers related to my tantous (Ray Distance’s Mobamas debut date, the day CG 4th LIVE’s performance of Nocturne happened, etc.) but I wouldn’t have enough time and/nor tokens to actually reach those numbers. Near the end I tried getting 1,591,715 (Mizuki and Kaede’s respective heights) but in the end, I only managed to reach the 1.59 million point mark with the last tokens I grinded and spent.

The hardest part of the event was actually trying to keep that high amount of uptime, and it was more apparent when I would get knocked out as I was trying to stay awake. I have a terrible sleep schedule (or lack thereof) but my sleepy butt wouldn’t keep me awake for too long. The loop of pressing buttons every 2 minutes felt monotonous for 11 days straight, minus the part where I actually played the event song for either jewels or to get a high score.

My complicated feelings towards Kaede’s latest event song being a collab with a popular VTuber was stuck in my mind, and I first thought I would try to settle for Top 500 early on; but previous sentiments and “final event” anxiety, combined with some encouragement from friends and other Producers (who ranked with me) kept telling me to keep going.

I ultimately finished the event at rank #72, which is… certainly a number associated with ChihayaPs. With a total of 1,590,435 points. I saw the numbers on Haruka’s birthday (April 3), send help.

I also made it to SSS rankings for the first time. It’s something I never really cared for, usually, but apparently ranking very high in a token event would let you in the top 1000. I never saw my actual SSS rank at the end of March (since I was too busy grinding), but I probably made it in the top 500 in the 91st SSS ranking that month.

The Tantou Unit Revenge

There’s one last thing I want to talk about, something I’ve been preparing for almost a year by that point. Long story short: I wanted to tier for the units I produce, and for the idols that are closest to me. I wanted to do that with S.E.M (my first tantou unit), but over the last few years my chances kept fading with each SideM game that got killed. By the time Growing Stars leaked announced its shutdown, I ended up starting to ask for a Kaede and Mizuki event (as Ray Distance) for me to tier in for me to have some form of “revenge” and (hopefully) closure on that front.

Of course that dream event didn’t happen (yet), knowing how much Bandai Namco and Cygames likes putting that After20 duo (who also have some of the busiest VAs in the series) together sometimes.

Over 2023, I did get some top 2000s here and there, in both token and groove events. The last event with my actual tantous in it happened over a year ago (Heartboiled Wars with Tomoe). Every event I’ve tiered in has had an idol I like: Aki, Sanae, Airi, Kanade, and Koharu.

And yet, I didn’t tier in this event because I like Suisei… I tiered in this event because I like Kaede. So much that I ended up producing her.

As weird as I feel about the collaboration as a whole, giving up on this chance would’ve left me with intense regret for several reasons. Future me would be really disappointed if this is to be Kaede’s final Starlight Stage event. (So I hope she gets one more event after this…)

The possibility of me failing a chance of tiering one of my closest tantou’s events again scared me. I lost my chances more than once, and it would probably hurt if I give up that chance. It wasn’t the ideal event I wanted to try in, but the timing was too perfect not to ignore either. There were many thoughts swirling in my head throughout the whole thing, but then again… it’s a tantou event in the end.

I’m awaiting Mizuki’s next event (especially since she hasn’t gotten a new song for nearly 3 years now), but I need to recover first.

Despite everything…

In the end, I do not regret being Kaede’s producer.

The Stats

PLv: 347 → 501. The 2x fan campaign combined with a bit of the EXP Produce perk boosts may have helped a lot.

Jewel count: 55k (pre-gacha) → 36k (post-gacha) → 7k. Thank goodness I didn’t have to spark Kaede in that limited banner.

Idols made past 15 million fans: Uzuki, Takumi, Nanami, and Tomoe. Three of my tantous & an excessive use of Nanami’s FES SSR.

Idols made past 10 million fans: Seira, Yui, and Koharu. Sanae, Miku, Nana, Ranko, and Karen also got a significant boost in fans due to all of this.

SSS songs cleared: Gaze and Gaze. Been wanting to save getting that clear for a special event.

Stamina drinks spent: everything.

Total no of EVERLASTING FORTE plays at the end: 2,947.

SSRs obtained from collab gacha: 5 (two Kaedes, one Rin4, a Makino1 dupe, and a Miyo1.) I’d eventually gain another 2 SSRs after the event (neither of them were Suisei though. I had to resist pulling further because a Kaede7 rerun was coming…)

The Special Thanks

The KaigaiPs that ranked with me in the top 100 (Zhu and Shiina especially—those two are on a different league of their own) for helping me survive this tiresome first Deresute T100 attempt.

My fellow online friends from the various Discord servers and on Twitter, for supporting me. I’ve been keeping that whole thing under wraps from my main account out of embarrassment, but yeah.

The Hololive Fan Wiki, Virtual YouTuber Wiki, and the JP Hololive Unofficial Wiki for Suisei research.