So, Famitsu revealed over the last few days that the iM@S Hatsune Miku cross-over Bamco announced at TGS is more than just a costume for your idols. Rather, it’s something of a suspiciously cheap Miku megapack. Well, suspiciously cheap compared to vanilla iM@S costume DLC.

So, aside from the Miku costume for your idol unit, the pack will add Miku to your game… kind of. The main part of what it will do is add a Miku performance of World in Mine, based on the SEGA Project Diva routines, presumably, to the S4U (Stage for You) mode. This means you’ll be able to pop into that mode, watch Miku sing and dance, and presumably exert the same basic level of camera control over the performance as you can with other performances (though the fact that’s actually more limited than what was presented in iM@S1 and L4U was something of a matter of contention with the 360 release of the game – curious to see if it’ll have been tweaked for PS3). I’d imagine you’ll be able to choose the stage as well, I guess.

This is presumably the same thing that they’re doing by including Jupiter in the games S4U mode, as came out of the TGS PV. I guess this means that they’ve added functionality to allow unique character performances into S4U, most importantly via DLC. Most tellingly, the production staff mention that they’d like to get Macross Frontiers Ranka and Sheryl into the game somehow.

It’s interesting, though I do wonder how much scope beyond those Macross characters there actually is for cameos. I mean, iM@S, engine-wise, is geared up for idols, so the current go-tos for anime groups, like Hokago Tea-Time or Girls Dead Monster, are kind of ruled out with them actually being bands with instruments and all that. What’s that leave us with – Starish? Of course, part of the reason why Miku was easy to put in the game is because all the performance data actually already exists in digital form. From that point of view, the options become even more limited, though I guess a series of DreamClub cameos would be hilarious given how much that game riffed on the iM@S character designs.

Actually, Miku will be integrated into the main game as well, admittedly in a limited fashion. In the most limited sense, she’ll appear as a ranked artist in the weekly charts. In a less limited sense, one of the screenshots in the Famitsu article shows Miku doing a Burst Appeal against the player. This suggests that you’ll be able to go up against Miku at a Festival event at some point. In what sense, I’m not entirely clear – it could be an additional Miku-specific Festival added to the Scheduling screen (though that may be balance-breaking a little). I’d wager that it’s more likely that Miku will just randomly show up as an opponent as you are doing Performance events. As the game stands, the opponent units at non-special Festivals (as in, anything which isn’t versus Ryuuguu Komachi or Jupiter) will just appear as random 765 girls who you didn’t select. That’s kind of odd in it’s own sense, I guess, so having an additional pool of character models to pull from would be nice.

Overall, I’m just curious to see how far they choose to take this new cameo functionality. Though Rin/Len costuming would be amusing to a certain degree because of the Ami/Mami thing, it’d be nice to see this go beyond just Vocaloids, though not necessarily for my wallet at those current exchange rates…

(I really must endeavour to not become an iM@S news blog…)

The Tokyo Game Show was something which happened a couple of weeks ago, which aside from meaning that this was something that I really should have posted two weeks ago, meant that Bamco released a new PS3 iM@S2 PV to coincide with the various promotional events they held over the weekend.

There’s a bunch of new announcements in there, but what does strike one as being rather odd is that they lead off with news about Jupiter, the boy band whose inclusion in the 360 version of the game resulted in what could only be described as an “interesting” reaction in portions of the fanbase. Well, okay, there’s other ways to describe it, but they aren’t ways that I’d care to use.
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Continuing the trend of spotting these things in shows which I wouldn’t expect, this one comes from the fifth episode of Highschool of the Dead. One of the few shots in the show which isn’t saturated with anything remotely resembling egregious service too, which is just as well given the standards to which I hold contents posted to this very blog.

(Yeah, I know I should stop procrastinating and post a bit more regularly, but there’s really not been much I’ve felt like posting about recently…)

From Volume 3 of the Yen Press print of K-On!, though I guess I may be being a little presumptuous here. It’s not the first time I’ve noted such things being translated, but on this occasion I don’t own a Japanese copy to refer back to in order to ensure I’m correct.

Honestly, I do kind of wonder what the thought process behind translating such things is – it’s not like it’s significant in terms of establishing the setting, rather it’s entirely inconsequential as to what is going on. Are there really people so allergic to the appearance of Japanese text that publishers feel the need to remove every trace of moon-runes from sight? It just serves to make my work more difficult, as entirely pointless as it actually is.

This one comes from Calaggie (who gets bonus Waffle points for sporting a Ritsuko icon) on the Twitters, taken from episode 6 of Mawaru Penguindrum. Seizon Senryaku and all that.

Speaking of Ikuhara, I’ve been watching Utena recently, thanks to the Rightstuf/Nozomi re-release that’s presently ongoing. I’ve seen Utena before – I’ve had all the less-than-ideal CPM disks since they put them out, but calling that release staccato would be being generous. It wasn’t exactly the ideal circumstance under which to watch such a dense show.

Though, honestly, I’m not entirely sure I can really blame the release pattern for me not entirely getting Utena (in a comprehension sense – I love it as a show). It’s a show that simply makes me feel dense, painfully aware of the limitations of my own intelligence. Actually, it’s the people write about Utena who make me feel dense – I just can’t comprehend media at the kind of level some of these people can. I read an explanation of the Nanami cowbell episode once that blew my mind.

(Also I’m pretty sure that people who can not only fully comprehend the Utena movie, but also explain it to other people in a manner that makes sense, are actually Newtypes, or maybe JAM).