Yo my bros and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Gacha Rhythm Game Update, the weekly post where I talk about the gacha rhythm games I play!
For those who are new to these posts, the games I play are BanG Dream: Girls Band Party (Garupa) in the Japanese (JP) and Worldwide (WW or EN) server, Project Sekai: Colorful Stage feat. Hatsune Miku (PuroSeka), D4DJ Groovy Mix (GuruMiku), and Uma Musume: Pretty Derby. The latter three are Japanese only… for now.
We’re now into the fifth month of the year, which… wow, time flies. I’ll be getting my second shot of the Covid vaccine this week (we’ll see how bad the side effects get), but nothing else crazy has/will been happening otherwise. Hopefully.
With that said, let’s get into this week’s (possibly) long post starting with the classic:
Garupa (JP)
Event: An Analysis of Harmony & Change / Confused, Lost, Yet Held Tightly
So it turns out it’s Golden Week right now in Japan, which means free stuff in gacha game land. That includes Garupa, which is holding a DreamFes (in both JP and EN versions) to honor whatever Golden Week celebrates.
You may have seen the title of this week’s post and thought, “wow, how good are your pulls?” Well… it didn’t start here, that’s for sure. It helps that the newest DreamFes cards feature two characters I don’t really care for (CHU2 and Kaoru), but I still went ahead and pulled once because hey, double 4* chances.
I’m honestly not too disappointed with the results because I have so much 4* cards in my JP account anyway, but man I’d like some of those DreamFes exclusive cards. I’ve shown them in the past, but they really upgraded the art in the second DF set, honestly to the point of comparing to some of the best I’ve seen from games like Project Sekai.
Other than that, nothing else much in JP Garupa. The current event is a Roselia focused one — cards are decent, but not really worth pulling (though I guess I indirectly pulled via the DreamFes). Moving on!
Garupa (WW/EN)
Event: Play Act! Challenge Audition / VIVA LA LIVE!
As mentioned above, EN Garupa is also hosting a DreamFes, featuring cards for the characters Tae and Maya. First off, look at the card art:
I remember when these first came out a year ago, I thought they were from a different game. Definitely a huge step up from the regular card art.
I wasn’t expecting too much when pulling, but lo and behold, my luck from last week continued on (ignore JP Garupa). The funny thing is that I got this Tae when I pulled in JP, and now I got her counterpart in Maya.
As if that wasn’t enough, I tried again and got one of the best pulls I’ve done in a while. Multiple 3* and 4* cards! Yeah, one of those 4*s was a duplicate, but you can’t be too greedy. Plus, that new 4* card is a past DreamFes card! Really defying the odds here.
In other news, the current event is a special event with only 3* event cards (instead of the usual 3* and 2* cards), which IIRC was for Girls Band Party 2020, a real life event (Japan only, of course). In fact, if you look at the banner image, it references it in JP, but not in EN.
I thought it was kinda funny they still did the event here because, well, that event isn’t happening outside Japan (and also the pandemic’s still a thing). Still, it would be awkward to skip an event, so it makes sense they’re running it anyway.
That’s pretty much it, from what I remember. Next!
Project Sekai
Event: Resonate with You / STRAY BAD DOG
(No new pulls)
So the Leo/need event is over, which some people might be happy with (based on this post on the subreddit). I’m not gonna go on a tirade, but all I’ll say is that out of every rhythm game I’m playing, Project Sekai‘s been the fairest with the distribution of events/characters. I can prove that, too — I have spreadsheets. But I digress.
Anyway… the next event, funnily enough, is focused on Vivid Bad Squad. Good for them — it’s been a while since their last event. The good news is that my favorite character from the unit, Kohane, is the event 3* card, being featured with her… interesting fashion choices:
The better news is that the event is a Cheerful Live Event, which means more event points (maybe?) and teamwork.
I’ve talked about Cheerful Lives in the past, but for those who don’t remember, they’re basically like Splatoon‘s Splatfests — you get divided into two teams based on a prompt and you compete in Cheerful Lives, which are 5v5 Multi Lives. Highest score wins and gets slightly more event points, as well as 2 points into the overall pool (compared with 1 point for the losing team). Whichever team has the most points during the midpoints/end gets more rewards, but it’s a pretty negligible difference (the final reward is 200 gems vs 150 gems).
The prompt for this event is “If you were at a cafe, which cake would you order?”, with the options being cheesecake and pancakes (which are now apparently a type of cake).
I know people have their various answers/reasons, but for me, it’s a no-brainer: if you’re going to a cafe like the ones that were shown in Vivid Bad Squad’s Sekai (like a coffee place), you have to go with cheesecake. Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I don’t think cafes in my area even serve pancakes — I imagine them more as a brunch restaurant food.
Thus, I’m Team Cheesecake — we’ll see how that goes as the event continues on. Last time, I choose correctly as my team won all three checkpoints! Go Team Dango!
By the way, from the few lives I’ve played, it seems they fixed the Cheerful Lives. That’s good, because I remember the last event had multiple issues (so much that they had to do an emergency update). Last time, it took at least 20 seconds to get the live rolling, but I’ve had multiple lives now where it didn’t even take a second. Glad to see it.
D4DJ Groovy Mix (GuruMiku)
Event: Non S.T.O.P! Awe&Some / D4FES -Of Brilliance and Glory-
So… it’s finally happening! After months of nothing, we finally have a set date for the release of the English version of GuruMiku!
What I want to talk about, though, is an announcement that came a few days before that:
Basically, a few months ago, Bushimo said that the EN server would be held in the same app as the JP server. In other words, multiple servers for one app. It wasn’t clear if that meant that EN players would play alongside JP players or if there would be separate servers, but it was still something unheard of, at least for mobile gacha games.
Unfortunately, the above announcement basically says that they’re retracting that, making the JP and EN servers separate apps. Because they’re renegading from their previous statement, they state they’ll compensate those who believed they could transfer their JP progress to an EN server by allowing account transfers for one month after the EN release (read more on that in the announcement in the tweet).
A couple of things to unpack: first, it’s unfortunate but honestly not that unexpected. If you’ve been looking at the songs GuruMiku has been adding, it was gonna be a miracle getting them into an English version. I mean, they’ve added the Haruhi opening song, which Garupa fans know means trouble since God knows isn’t even in the WW server. That doesn’t even include the plethora of other original songs like the Hololive originals either.
As someone who worked in Content before (at Crunchyroll), I know how much of a pain in the butt licensing can be. I don’t blame Bushimo for trying and then realizing they bit off a bit more than they could chew.
That kinda brings me to my next point: there’s been a small controversy with this whole ordeal. Just go down the comment section of that Twitter post for some examples. Stuff like “well, then I guess I won’t play the game then.” Which… sure? I guess?
I don’t know, I feel like the issue is being overblown. Sure, it sucks that the EN server is not gonna be in the same app as the JP server, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter too much. Think about it this way — if they didn’t make the “same server” announcement in the first place, then nobody would be mad. It would be just like any other English port of a gacha game — separate app with a delay from the original Japanese version.
It’s frankly kind of stupid that this would be THE reason not to play the game. In my opinion, there’s plenty of legitimate reasons not to play — not liking rhythm games (which is totally valid!), the gacha system as a whole (also valid! Gacha sucks), the number of limited sets compared to permanent sets, etc.. But not being in the same app? What?
And besides, it’s SUPER generous that the game is offering an account transfer to the separate server in the first place– I can’t think of any other game that would do something like that (maybe Magia Record when they shut down their EN server, but I can’t confirm that). Plus, they’re compensating for the collaboration cards/items that won’t ever show up in EN like Monster Hunter and Hololive. Sure, it’s with gems and guaranteed gacha tickets (which is pretty lacking tbh), but it’s better than nothing!
The other thing they’re compensating for, the time between JP and EN, is also being taken care of. Well, to an extent. Apparently, they’re starting the EN server on version 2.0 with a recent JP event. I’m honestly not a huge fan of this because that means skipping all of the beginning events (which they’re apparently saving for the future when JP gets collabs that EN won’t), but it does mean there’s only a two week gap between JP and EN. Whether or not that’s nice depends on your views, but it’s definitely something.
This does mean that I have to make a choice: either transfer my JP account to the EN server, or keep my JP account and start a new EN account. After reading more into it, it’s pretty clear what my decision would be. I’m lucky that I don’t have any collab cards/items that would be lost, but in the end, I think the risks of transferring my account outweigh the benefits, so I’ll be making a new account when the game comes to EN later this month.
So that’s all from that bombshell — what about the actual game itself? Well, the game’s been busy with collabs, giveaways, and new gachas.
First, the new event is the third part in the D4 FES storyline, this time featuring Rondo and Lyrical Lily. The bad news is that Tsubaki (best girl) is one of the 4* gacha cards, but the GREAT news is that the set is permanent like the other D4 FES sets. As you can see, I tried to pull for her and… yeah, didn’t get her.
What I did get, though, were two new cards, including the other 4* card from this set, Miyu. Told ya my gacha luck is still amazing!
Speaking of gacha, in a weird twist of events, the game has been releasing the previously released birthday cards in a series of one-day long banners. I guess they’re dividing it by month, so they’re grouping characters together. The first day, for example, had Rei’s, Kurumi’s, and Saori’s cards.
On the one hand, it’s nice they’re re-releasing the cards, but why now with such limited notice and on such a short schedule (one day per banner)? If I’d known about this sooner, I would’ve saved up more gems! I still ended up pulling on the first day for the Saori b-day card, but no success there. Can’t win them all.
Finally, the game has been doing a collab with… Godzilla vs Kong.
…What?
Yeah.
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s just been a new overworld (shown in the tweet below) as well as new hitsounds being monster noises (which I’m glad they didn’t turn on by default because no thank you).
Maybe they might release some songs as well, but I think there’s not too much else going on with the collab. I don’t think they’ve announced a collab event, but I could be wrong. Stay tuned for that if that happens.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby
Event: Legend Races / Golshi Week
Hoo boy, if you thought the GuruMiku section was long, get ready.
First, game stuff. In honor of Golden Week, the game is holding a special Golshi Week, honoring everybody’s favorite horse girl Gold Ship (Golshi)!
That means hella rewards for accomplishing various things and a new Gold Ship Mode in Training where you can get hella coins! This is great for me as someone who constantly runs out of coins — you can get up to 100,000 coins per training run, which has been a godsend.
In addition, the game is giving away 564 (GoRuShi) jewels per day for ten days for a total of 5,640 jewels. That’s… really goddamn generous. That’s three and a half pulls. That’s like Garupa giving away 6,500 gems, or GuruMiku/Project Sekai giving away 8,000 gems. Super duper generous.
In addition, the game is giving a free pull per day as well for the next few days (in both support gacha and character gacha). I’ve been only getting R support cards, but the good news is that I did get Kitasan Black, which means she’s in my Trainer Book! Hey, it may be minor, but it’s the small victories that keep me going.
This all reminds me that I haven’t really gotten into how generous the game is. I’ve mentioned last week that I spent all of my jewels in stupidity, but I already got half of them back in the last week (mostly thanks to Golshi Week, but still…). In addition, the game regularly gives out rewards every time a milestone is hit, like 6 million players (a free SSR ticket, which is the pull I put above) or 500,000 subscribers to the PakaTube channel (50,000 coins). They also give out rewards whenever a major race is happening, like the recent Spring Tennoushou. They even post a nice illustration on their Twitter page as well:
The game is still new, so there is that. Having said that, I’ve recently experienced new game releases like the two above rhythm games, and they were never this generous in giving out rewards. Hats off to CyGames for giving back to the players that give them their life savings.
Anyway, since Golshi Week is happening, there isn’t really an event going on. That means we’re at the weird point in the game where there’s nothing really going on, so I don’t have much else to talk about.
Before I end this week’s post, though, I do want to address something that’s been becoming an issue in the community.
Y’all know that these characters are based on real life racing horses. Well, in order to create them, CyGames needed permission from the horse owners to make their children into cute anime girls. Most of them obliged, but there are a few notable horses who aren’t included in the game. One of them is Deep Impact, who some argue is the greatest Japanese racing horse in history. Fun fact, she’s in the original trailer for the franchise:
Well, I’m not gonna put words in peoples’ mouths, but I’d bet that one big reason why they didn’t give permission is the inevitable lewds. You know how the internet is — if it exists, there is porn of it. Rule 34.
It got so bad that they made an official announcement for people to stop lewding the horse girls. This was a few years ago, after season one aired but long before the game’s release. At the time, I remember seeing that and thinking “well what the heck were they expecting.” Basically the same opinion as the people in that thread.
Well now that I’m fully engrossed in the franchise, I have a bit of a different opinion. On the one hand, I still agree that just making an announcement like that won’t do much to stop people. If anything, the Streisand effect kicks in and people are more inclined to lewd. Defying the authority, so to speak.
Having said that, I really wish people would respect the horse owners’ wishes and just stop fucking drawing lewds. For the most part, the community’s been pretty respectful to the franchise’s wishes because they know what would happen if they don’t — hint, it’s similar to the fate of Deep Impact. People have been going so far as to harass those who post horse girl lewds, which I’m not entirely for or against (harassment bad, but lewd horse girls also bad).
Unfortunately, there are still a few bad eggs who don’t give a shit. I bring all of this up because I was browsing Twitter when I came across this interaction between one of the moderators of the English Uma Musume Discord server and an artist who draws lewds (follow their timeline for more on this):
Just… sigh. No words. This was the first time I blocked people on Twitter because holy moly that’s some peak stupidity right there (doesn’t help they draw lewd lolis, but I’m not gonna get into that).
Look, you have the freedom to draw whatever you want. That’s on you. But when you actively go against an authority’s wishes just so that you can have your lewd horse girls, that’s pushing the line. It’s not about “offending the yakuza” (which is all just one big meme anyway), it’s about making sure the horses can still be in the game. Because at this rate, horse owners will see these posts and ban their horses from being in the game, or worse: RIP game.
They could also generalize this behavior to the entire western audience and ban the game from the west entirely. That would mean Uma Musume turns into Idolmaster where there’s no hope of any official western content to the point where they ban western IP addresses from playing their games. Do you want that happening to Uma Musume? All for your lewd drawings??
Okay, deep breaths… I didn’t really want to get into this because of how angry this make me, but it’s unfortunately inevitable that I talk about it at some point with how popular the franchise is becoming. It’s not a new topic, and not entirely limited to the west, as shown here in this thread explaining another controversy.
The thing about this, though, is that people have been good with the “no lewds” rule, as I said before. If you go into Danbooru or Pixiv and search “Uma Musume,” it’s really hard to find any lewd pictures (amazing especially for Danbooru).
In fact, looking at the search results for “umamusume” on Danbooru right now (as of the time of writing), it took me until the 3rd page to get to something lewd, and the 7th page until I got to straight up nudity.
So honestly, there might be some hope in the world. It’s not all bad — just don’t look too deep into Twitter. That’s the lesson for today.
[Side note, this is why I keep a strict following list on Reddit (sports and anime only, no front page subs) and Twitter (only friends, artists, and official accounts of franchises I follow)]
And that’s all for this week’s update! Whoo boy, that was a long one. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see y’all in the next edition of the Weekly Rhythm Game Update! Until then, stay safe out there!
Fractals and Recursion 