AnimeJapan is an incredible two-day convention that celebrates all things anime and pop culture. The show is in its sixth year and this year has the theme ‘Rock’. Last year’s event saw over 150,000 guests over its running. This year, the event was held on 23 and 24 March at Tokyo Big Sight.

KLabGames hosted a series of stage events for its popular mobile games, including Love Live! School Idol Festival Series, Bleach: Brave Souls and, of course, Utano☆Princesama Shining Live. The UtaPri event was first up and was hosted by the wonderful MC Kenichi Ono, and Takuma Terashima, voice actor for Shining Productions’ angel Ittoki Otoya.

The People’s Hero – Takuma Terashima!

Just as he did at TOKYO GAME SHOW, Terashima kicked the event off with his tapping skills. The first song, Ultra Blast, is brand new and set to be released in the upcoming film. Terashima played a test beat map and wow, those sliders were insane! He did his best and managed a 113 combo. Next up was Nijiiro ☆ Over Drive!, where Terashima and Ono announced that for every 100 combos Terashima achieved, players would get one free 11-Shot Photo Shoot! Nijiiro ☆ Over Drive! has a max combo of 698, which would mean six days of free pulls. Terashima managed to get a 362 combo, resulting in three free pulls.

Ever keen to help out the players, Terashima later completed three challenges to get more presents for us. One challenge cleared would give an additional day of free Photo Shoots. Each challenge tested Terashima’s knowledge and memory of different aspects of the game. In the first test, CGs from the game were shown with certain parts blanked out. Terashima had to remember what was originally there. Questions went from quite easy to incredibly difficult. Some examples of harder questions included:

• What sweet is on Ai’s brooch in his Sweets Cafe UR?
• How many water balloons does Syo hold in his post-Another Shot Glittering Summer Festival Night photo?
• What is written on the Daruma in Reiji’s New Year Performance idolised UR?

Terashima did great with these questions, only getting Syo’s one wrong. Technically, he did get another one wrong. The question was about what animal was hanging off Ren’s arm in his Charming Conductor idolised event UR. Terashima said a cat, but he needed to specify what kind of cat!

The next game was charades. Terashima listened to the chorus of a song and had to act it out for the audience to guess. The audience was quick to say it was Tenka Muteki no Shinobi Michi. Two down, one to go.

The final game was a memory card-matching game. A number of cards were facedown, and Terashima had to match each card to its pair. That is, match the normal card to its idolised version. However, rather than just flipping the cards up one by one, there was an extra twist. Terashima could only flip over two cards per turn, and before even touching the cards he had to correctly say the title of the song playing. Even then, before saying the song title, he had to skip over the stage and press a button. Terashima was such a good sport, and it was so funny to watch. In the end he managed to match both sides to Masato’s newest Easter UR together!

When all was said and done, Terashima managed to win players six days of free 11-Shots pulls: three from playing Nijiiro ☆ Over Drive! and another three from the challenges. The pulls will be available once a day for six days and would begin the following week. To celebrate his hard work, KLabGames then presented Terasahima with a box of macarons with the URs printed on their tops. I hope they start selling those in stores. I need a box!

Currents News

Over the last five months since TOKYO GAME SHOW, nearly 100 new photos have been added to the game. At the time of TOKYO GAME SHOW, there were 369 photos available in Shining Live. As of AnimeJapan, there are 461! To help us get all those photos, over the AnimeJapan weekend players could receive 30 prisms each day they log in. Additionally, a special step-up photoshoot was announced, with the third step a guaranteed UR. They also reminded audiences to make sure to look at the current Dancing Petals Easter Parade photo banner with a Cecil UR and the Camus & Cecil set list event Happy Hearts ☆ My Dear Doctor.

Terashima then went over the results of a survey that was released to Japanese players. Results indicated that players want more ways to change note speed, changing how event rankings are done (from percentage to order ranking), non-prism photoshoots, and one guaranteed banner card. As many of you will have noticed, most of these features have since been implemented into Shining Live. Number brackets have been added to events, the previous rewards for the top 10% are now for those who achieve within the 751-1500 rank bracket. In January, point photoshoots were added; points can be gathered by completing monthly missions (added in February) or through event rewards. However, my favorite recent change has been to the photo banners. Now, in your first 11-Pull under a banner, you are guaranteed one photo from the banner.

To the Shining Future!

On top of the survey above, there was also a second one conducted for both Japanese and global players. The results of this survey included requests for past events, better birthday events, more friend slots, harder songs, and more collaborations. Outside of in-game mechanics, there were also suggestions for drama CDs, a game fan club, and an Uta☆Pri theme park! At the end of the show, Terashima and Ono announced that some of these requests are currently being worked on. While they kept it quite cryptic, they could confirm the following:

• The next Photo Shoot would be called Cool & Pop Animals; the first half will feature an Otoya UR.
• They are currently working on a Setsugetsuka photoshoot which will be called Setsugetsuka I Remember You
• A big update is coming to the game at the end of April; more information on what changes will be made will be announced mid-April
• Fans can expect a number of special events happening in June following the film’s release

Final Thoughts

Yet another fun Shining Live livestream with Terashima! While the TOKYO GAME SHOW show was more focused on discussing the game itself, at AnimeJapan it was a bit more light-hearted and fun. I definitely enjoyed both of them; Terashima is very charismatic and you can tell how much he loves the Shining Live community. I’m really excited to see what updates we’ll be seeing in the next month; Terashima himself seemed very keen to bring back past events for players, so fingers crossed for that. On the other hand, an Uta☆Pri theme park would be amazing! A girl can dream!

Let us know in the comments what you’re most excited to see in Shining Live this year.