Atelier Shiori

Operation Black March and Reasons I will not participate

February 22, 2012 by chikorita157

Early this month, there is a new movement by the hacktivist organization called Anonymous that calls for everyone to boycott all forms of media in response to acts such as SOPA/PIPA/ACTA being supported by media companies. It seems ambitious, but I feel it’s not going to work and its counter intuitive. For boycotts to be effective, everyone have to do it in order to become effective. For recent examples, people moving away from Godaddy in response of SOPA and Bank Transfer Day over ridiculous bank fees on debit cards.

However, boycotting all forms of media for one month and delaying it to April will just defeat the whole purpose similarly to the supposed gas boycotts of last year. Believe me, it won’t hurt the big media companies since they have other ways of making money. They will only boast about the profit increases in April when the boycotts end. Instead, it will hurt independent creators and small businesses who most likely won’t support these legislation. Second of all, media is all over the place and is hard to ignore. Unless you stay inside an empty room all day without internet and television, chances of you getting bombarded with media is rather high.

If you want to fight against this legislation, you should be doing the following instead

Selectively Boycott companies that still support SOPA/PIPA and write a letter to them as Maddox suggested on his site. Instead of hurting companies that don’t support this legislation, just punish those who still support it and tell them that you won’t buy any of their products until they change their mind.
Contact and meet your Congressman/woman in person. If they still support this legislation, arrange a meeting or call them so you can voice your opposition against these acts.If you in the EU, contact your country’s officials.
If the above fails, just vote them out of office in the next election.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m against these acts like everyone else because it undermines freedom of speech and employs censorship. However, I feel that this isn’t the effective way to get your voice heard.

Azusa Run Complete!

February 19, 2012 by chikorita157

Haven’t played Idolmaster 2 for a month and when I started a new Extra Episode run, I ended up epically failing. It’s mostly because I’m using a different TV and doesn’t seem to pick up my hits correctly. Secondly, all that skills that I gained kind of deteriorated throughout the weeks of not playing. Still, I’m surprised that I managed to get a high score over the first run I did with Ritsuko.

Oh well, next week is Ami… if I have the time to play after finishing my homework and such.

The Despair Continues… (Update)

February 16, 2012 by chikorita157

Dear James,

We are very sorry for the delay in shipping out your package. As we are
still in waiting for the ordered stocks of Idolm@ster SP: Wandering Star
(PSP the Best) (Sony PSP™ Japan, No Region Protection) from our
suppliers. Please be informed that we are only depending on their
availability. Once they deliver it in our warehouse, we will definitely
ship out your order on the same day. We kindly ask for your patience.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Ann
Play-Asia.com

Lied about the ETA and not notify me of this… It seems like they don’t want my money. Either way, I won’t buy anything from them again if this keeps it up. but yeah, waiting another week and a half to see how it goes.

Update: after a few more days, I finally got my order shipped out. It should be here by Spring Break.

This Resemblance Just Blows my Mind…

February 1, 2012 by chikorita157

Don’t these lovely women look awfully familiar? This kind of caught my attention when I was lurking the Project iM@S forums a while back after becoming really interested in Idolmaster in general after watching the Anime and then playing the PS3 game. However, I didn’t notice this resemblance because I didn’t know about the series when watching Neko Overrun, which I dropped shortly after. Apparently, Otome Tsuzuki, who has an older sister personality has a strong resemblance of Azusa Miura. Given that Idolmaster came long before the mentioned series got created just blow my mind… Probably this was one of the reasons behind Azusa cutting her hair to a short bob in Idolmaster 2… The conspiracy theories continues, I suppose.

Winter Came Back… and Left Again!

January 24, 2012 by chikorita157

It seems that there is a huge lack of snow ever since Winter started back in late December of last year or even since the October snow storm. Since then, we had abnormally warm weather that it’s crazy. Thankfully, it snowed a little last weekend before disappearing completely, leaving us snowless yet again.

Climate Change is causing this? Most certainly yes or otherwise we wouldn’t have this weather.

Fourth Produce Success 元気な少女 (Lit. Cheerful Girls)

January 12, 2012 by chikorita157

This is probably the last play through before spring semester starts, but boy this was a wild ride. Although I didn’t manage to get all the Area awards since I messed up the fan count somewhere in the game, I decided to sacrifice one reward to get the ultimate amulet so I don’t have to rely on the Ryuuguu one and use the girls’ bust appeals instead. I got to use it for the last festival in the game before the ceremony and Hibiki smashed Jupiter into pieces. I’m pretty sure the score was around 40,000 once it got done and over…

But yes, one of her major achievements is getting #1 position on the Dotop Rankings… Hell yes, I was aiming for that and luckily, I got a break for the last song in the end. Everyone was simply amazed that she managed to got up there. Not only that, I got an A in every category, even though the grade got pulled down due to the missing two area awards, but it was worth it.

As for getting to the top 20 early, it made things easier in the end. Had to do all the training in the beginning since the difficulty shot up so quickly, but it worked out in the end. Got to Image Level 15, shy of 16.

If I decide to do another play through before college starts, I may as well redo 花姫, the failed unit I never completed with the same people.

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Second Produce Success – 桜姫 (lit. Cherry Blossom Princesses)

January 5, 2012 by chikorita157

In the second play through, I named this unit 桜姫 that consisted of Makoto (Leader), Miki and Yukiho. Compared to the first play through, it was a huge improvement as I didn’t make the same mistakes as before and used an amulet that focuses on two stats. Also, I primarily focused on dance and visual stats and leaving the vocal one alone. In the end, it resulted in a higher score and I managed to bring two singles into the top 5, which are “Kosmos Cosmos” and “Little Match Girl.”

For most of the game, I had Yukiho as the center singer (without changing the leader) as it blended in nicely compared to having Makoto there, since it sounded a bit too deep. However, I did like this arrangement for Seven Colored Button (unlocked through my first play through of the extra episode), it blended quite nicely. It’s easily one of my favorite songs in the game.

As for the Area awards, it seems that the Kyoto/Osaka area (上万) is the most difficult region to do an 歌姫 festival in since it’s difficulty level is 9 on normal. Of course, I easily obtained the Ocean Blue reward without any effort since I let my rival do a bust after doing mine and then hammer them with a memory drive, making it impossible for them to get a second bust appeal.

Aside from that, I’m happy with the results and planning to do a third play through, which will get recorded as a Let’s Play.

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First Produce Success – はなさく少女 (lit. Blooming Girls) – Final Thoughts

January 2, 2012 by chikorita157

You might be wondering what I was doing for the past week and so. It’s quite obvious that I’m playing Idolmaster 2 I got for Christmas. After rage quitting on 花姫 (Flower Princess) for messing up the whole fans count and getting a negative report as a result of JUPITER, I decided to just screw it and use what I have to make another unit. I named this unit はなさく少女 (Lit. Blooming Girls) that consisted of Haruka as the leader with Chihaya and Yayoi as the unit members. Out of this unit, I produced Little Match Girl, キラメキラリ, 目が逢う瞬間(とき）, my song and Ready. Surprisingly, I managed a successful revival of Chihaya’s favorite song and it ended up in 6th place on the charts. “Ready” also got on the top 10, sandwiching Jupiter’s second song, “恋をはじめよう.” Still, I wasn’t able to muster a higher score than 37839 points, thus I ended up with a freaking D for that category. Thankfully, through my money spurge at the BK shop, I was able to score a few good costumes to use in the next production. Hopefully, I can muster a single into the top 20 without having to do a mandatory “Hell Training” again, but at least I got the trophy for it.

Ah yes, I pounded Project Jupiter on my first try through the help of strategically firing my memory appeals and an amulet that drains a lot of voltage from the rival’s meter. Good riddance, they deserve it for what they did to Chihaya in the Anime.

Short Observations:

Although the PS3 version fixed the balancing issues from the original 360 version, Idolmaster 2 still have a big learning curve. It took me several restarts and reverting to backed up save files just to get it right. So, if you decide to play the game for the first time, prepare to get a bad ending the first time, unless you rage quit and start another unit.
Memory Appeals are great live savers if used correctly. You should probably switch the person for appeals when firing one to get higher multiplier rates.
Out of the three lessons, Vocal and Dance was the easiest (although it took a while to get used to the latter) with Visual being a pain in the butt. This is the main reason the visual image stat was lower than the rest.
This is probably true only for the PS3 version, but you can retry events if you end up failing without penalty and take advantage of it. You probably won’t get this luxury if you do a Hyper play through.
If you have enough money, go for the paid promotions. It will allow you to gather a lot of fans, making it easier to unlock the 歌姫 festival in that area. However, I don’t recommend doing this in your first play through.
Although my Japanese skills are still pretty limited, Haruka’s story is emotional. Probably as much compared to Episode 23 & 24 in the Anime, but still sad when she cries.
With limited Japanese skills, the game is still playable from the guides made on the Project iM@S forums, the Japanese wiki for the communications and the WIP game play wiki. When I finally finish Genki II, hopefully I can enjoy the game a bit more and figure out what the girls said (and yes, I will replay through every girl’s arc again just to get the story).

So, this pretty much finishes everything I have to say about my first play through. I guess I should work on another, first I need to do the short extra episode before everything else.

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One Reason why everyone hates Jupiter…

December 27, 2011 by chikorita157

They are mean to my girls… dammit! I can’t wait to kick their butts with my awesomeness (as long I don’t suck as a Producer).

Idolmaster Animation Master 5 – Impressions

December 4, 2011 by chikorita157

This is in fact my first legal CD I brought from Japan (namely off CDJapan) and of course, it’s more Idolmaster music. Since this was a first press release, it came with a post card and a cardboard cover. I like Miki’s expression, she sure love her sweets.

As for the songs itself, aside a few rehashed songs from other albums, there is a good number of new tracks. The main attractions of course is Heart of Marionette (マリオネットの心) and Myself Rest@rt (自分REST@RT). In addition to that, there is the BGM thats played for previews, piano version of Blue Bird (青い鳥) and GO MY WAY in addition to updated versions of MEGARE, Colorful Days and i. I’m planning to get the next CD when they release the track list for it, but yes… I enjoy the songs on this release and I’ll plan on buying some more CDs for shows I enjoy the songs for, providing that I have the money.

(Kind of bummed out that the Fate/zero soundtrack isn’t sold separately.)

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