Last month, the anime series ‘Shine Post‘ finished airing and I shared my impressions of it on this blog. While doing so, I couldn’t help but wonder when the last time I watched, read or played anything idoly was.
It was very convenient when, at that same time, a new album was announced to remind me of the last idol thing I engaged with.
As you can probably tell, I’m not an idol fan. Anyone who knows my opinion of the genre would struggle to believe I’d even attempt to play an idol game, much less praise one. I’m not the type to idolize, and I don’t want to inspire others either, so while I understand the appeal of idols, I don’t empathize with either side of the stadium.
Despite all that negative bias, there’s something truly incredible to uncover deep in the mines of idol mobile games.
The last time I went through any idol-themed media was almost a year ago, and it was a short thing, a quiet thing that no one seemed to talk about. As niche as Shine Post may be, it was far easier to find friends who were watching it than it was to find anyone who had read this sleeper masterpiece from a far more popular franchise:
The iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors
SHHis’ Fan Appreciation
“Appreciation…” – Aketa Mikoto
Okay, bear with me; this one relies on some preamble to set the stage. The technique used to tell this story is best highlighted retroactively, so I’ll take some time to detail the bullet points of the short story, but if you’d rather watch these points for yourself, there’s a handy English translation on Youtube that I may have shamelessly used to get some screenshots. Aside from some of the small references at the start and end of the story that rely on a whole bunch of spread-out Shiny Colors lore that’d take forever to go through, it’s mostly a standalone text.
Shiny Colors is one of the many gacha games that the Idolmaster franchise has produced over the years, and it stands out from the pack of mobile games by having a unique management-simulator approach that disregards rhythm gameplay. It’s more long-form than you’d probably want from a mobile game, closer to the console entries than anything; you basically go through the seasons managing an idol from behind the scenes to overcome some kind of tournament determined by whatever game mode you choose to play.
Along the way you’ll unlock these individual Visual Novel-style scenes that portray the events of your journey, giving you a glimpse into the lives of the chibi models you raise in this weird management simulator.
Unlike the other game modes that focus on individual debuts or big flashy tournaments, the Fan Appreciation mode is all about thanking the fans. The end goal is a relatively low-stakes event with little on the line. It’s a celebration of challenges passed, not a gauntlet of challenges to come, so it’s bound to be a cheery stress-free celebration, right?
Frankly, even if I describe this story, it won’t sound particularly special. The two members of SHHis fill typical roles; one is a forgotten veteran, the other is a rising upstart. One has more talent, and the other has more popularity. It’s a classic scenario that we’ve all seen in one genre or another. It’s every sports movie, every buddy cop film, and every anime that involves competitive gaming. Generic.
But what makes this story special is that, despite being 50 minutes of low-stakes performance-prepping with very little progression on display… it’s presented like a horror film. Every little moment, no matter how pretty and positive, feels tense and unsettling. To paraphrase some reactionary Japanese Twitter users… it’s a cruel interpretation of idols.
Aketa Mikoto wants to be an idol. At 14 she moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo in order to pursue her dreams. 10 years of tireless training later, she’s no closer to achieving that dream. She doesn’t remember much about school. She hasn’t spoken to her family in a decade. She has no friends and lost most of her acquaintances after switching companies. The last ten years of her life have been spent practising in a small room with large mirrors and squeaky floors. It’s not where she wants to be, but she’s learned to accept what life throws at her.
Nanakusa Nichika wants to be an idol. She’s 16, and already her reputation as the noob of the industry precedes her. She’s not talented at anything, she lacks experience, and maybe she was just lucky to debut at all, but the fans endearingly call her their little sister and poke fun at how cute her lack of talent is.
More important than being an idol, Nichika loves idols. When she looks at an industry veteran like Mikoto—a lady capable of any performance, no matter how difficult—she can’t help but want to support her.
Ikaruga Luca is a god… or at least, that’s what her fans call her. Once partnered with the more-talented Aketa Mikoto, Luca rose to popularity in the media and was pressured by management into leaving Mikoto behind. Now, years later, her popularity in the media has declined, her regrets over losing Mikoto have grown, and her fandom has been reduced to a cultish dreg of those who empathise with her depressive Instagram posts. While Mikoto wasted her youth chasing a failing dream, Luca spent hers running from a growing nightmare.
That’s the status quo when the story begins. In total, we have four characters here: Mikoto, Nichika, Luca, and the traditional first-person protagonist known only as the Producer. You, of course, play as the Producer throughout the story.
Narratively, your attempts to fix the status quo never seem to work quite right. Everything you try feels… wrong. Upon proposing the Fan Appreciation event to the SHHis duo, Mikoto happily agrees; she has a lot to be thankful for, and she wants the fans to know that. Nichika on the other hand… has nothing to be thankful for.
Their perspectives don’t align at all, and communicating that kind of divide to an audience effectively (without being obnoxious about it) is difficult enough for a full-length movie, never mind a short script like this.
Furthermore, the characters are rarely ever in the same scene together.
Mikoto spends as much time training in the practice room as she always has, never deviating from the lifestyle she’s always known.
Nichika’s practice time grows shorter and shorter as her growing popularity pushes her to adopt more responsibilities, participating in comedy shows and doing magazine interviews. She seems like more of a comedy act than an idol.
Luca watches from afar as the events of the past repeat themselves once more. Will Nichika be the next Luca?
The story unfolds through these four mostly-isolated character perspectives—the Producer, Mikoto, Nichika, and Luca.
Nichika’s schedule becomes busier every week, making practice impossible, but despite that, you adopt a crazy strategy of having Mikoto perform like usual while Nichika sings an acoustic accompaniment designed to make Mikoto shine. Mikoto gets to show her appreciation and Nichika gets to support an idol she adores. The performance goes off without a hitch! A miraculous happy ending, right?
The fans are certainly happy, and both SHHis members are glad to have performed, but somehow it doesn’t feel like a success. Something is missing. At the end of the day, Mikoto’s obsessive lifestyle hasn’t changed at all. Nichika’s priorities haven’t improved. The two don’t understand each other any better, and they didn’t even get to perform together like a normal duo…
On social media, Mikoto’s well-practised presence is quickly overshadowed by Nichika’s comically cute uselessness. Nichika stood at the back, didn’t even dance, and people love her for it… not as an idol, but as their silly little sister. She’s a comedy act, but a popular one.
Once again, Mikoto was eclipsed by her partner, and another year has passed without her success. Once again, Nichika failed to support an idol she loved and failed to become a respectable idol in her own right.
From afar, Mikoto’s old partner Luca watches as Nichika takes her place. In her eyes, the past is repeating, but her role in the story has been filled by another.
In her social media posts, Luca claims that she’s going to disappear. Her cultish fans cry for her and blame an unfair world…
After all is said and done, the story is just a long series of mistakes that miraculously don’t blow up into bigger problems, and it never feels like you help things improve. It seems to end with a successful performance, and if the scenes had different music and directing, you might even believe that this is a positive story… but it’s not a happy ending. You fail to achieve anything. No one is any happier.
With only 50 minutes to tell this story, the prospect of using four main characters to tell a satisfying story about failure and stagnation in a bubbly idol property sounds difficult. And yet, they handle it expertly. Here’s how…
From the very beginning, the story feels slightly unconventional. It’s packed with creepy ambient sounds, intimidating visuals and imposing dialogue… and that’s before the typical pressure of a to-the-top idol story begins to build.
The plot beats are all the conventional idol story beats, but the sinister lens capturing everything taints the whole vibe. It darts from character to character, showcasing the disjointed perspectives of a cast that never seems to unite. The feeling of unease comes from a place of trust: the writers silently encourage the audience to infer the details.
By constantly subtly highlighting the similarities and differences between the three idols, it lets our natural empathy tell the story for us, and in doing so, we connect with the cast on a very personal level.
The fact that it’s constrained to such a small script and is stuck with so few assets is honestly what forces the production to rise above standard approaches. Rather than plod out a long discussion like the usual VN, this story frequently uses perspective switches and match cuts to skip from one scene to an equally relevant one.
So, let’s see some examples!
At the very start of the story, Luca’s frustration comes through with a bottled-up groan of frustration and the image of a dark, lonely spotlight.
With a cut of TV static, she’s watching Nichika’s TV broadcast. She shouts at Nichika’s image on the TV, telling her to shut up, and then TV static floods the screen. From that, we immediately cut to Nichika saying the “touch the dial” part of the phrase “don’t touch that dial!” This transitions us into Nichika’s perspective and cleverly closes out Luca’s scene by telling us that she changed the station.
After an age-gap joke about Nichika not understanding what a TV dial is, the crowd begin laughing. From the uproar, we cut to an almost silent scene of Mikoto signing a few CDs in a store’s storage room to the audience of a supervising staff member. They talk about how few CDs there are to sign…
Aaaand we’re back to Nichika doing her fun comedy segment on TV! Laughing crowd, applause, and high-energy music!
In the quiet storage room, the staff member explains that since Nichika was too busy to show up for a signing, the shop settled on 50 signed CD sales. The staff gushes a bit over Mikoto however, claiming to be an old fan of hers, and very politely, Mikoto offers to sign a personal demo copy as thanks.
This dynamic of Nichika’s popularity as a comedy star and Mikoto’s quieter more graceful idol activities is highlighted with one final comparison, and then we finally see what the producer is up to. Mikoto has gone off ahead of schedule and Nichika is lingering at the TV studio, leaving the producer floundering to organize them both.
As Nichika politely dresses up some complaints to her fellow comedy star, the camera pans to the floor…
Rather than the cuts of contrasts the story had been making prior, this time we get a visual match-cut. Mikoto is checking the concert hall they’ll be performing in. She sings a single note to test the acoustics: “Aaaah~”
From the same floorboards, we cut back to Nichika, and then the TV static returns, cutting us to black. Luca turns the TV off, plunging into the darkness, holding back a scream: “aa…….”
Finally finished with her work for the day, Nichika sighs: “Ah-ah…”
Mikoto sings to an empty hall: “Aaaah~”
You may have noticed I called the prior match-cutting a “visual match-cut” but… that’s a redundancy, right? Match-cuts are obviously visual! Well, here we see an example of an auditory match-cut. Mikoto singing, Luca grumbling and Nichika sighing are all making use of the same single vowel: A.
As an aside, in Japanese, these three lines are 「ぁぁ――」,「あーあー」, and「ア――」, three different characters for the same vowel, which is kinda fun.
However they’re all very different sounds due to the emotions behind them and the emphasis put on pronouncing them. They’re similar but they’re different.
These audio match-cuts, the visual match-cut from earlier and the cuts of contrast to compare Mikoto and Nichika’s popularity all serve the same purpose: to highlight how these characters are similar but different.
Four perspectives, four detached people who aren’t on the same page, and one story.
That’s the end of the first chapter, but the technique continues to evolve throughout.
Returning to the visual of a lonely spotlight from before, a quote of the past from Mikoto plays. She talks about how, as an idol, you’ll obviously feel appreciation for fans. A cute jingle then brings us to a taxi, where the radio is tuned to an interview with Mikoto. Sitting in the car, Nichika is stuck in traffic.
As she waits, Nichika reflects on an earlier conversation Mikoto and the Producer had when they first decided on doing the performance. Comparing that day 1 preparation to their current form, Nichika comments that they haven’t progressed at all… (almost like the taxi she’s stuck in.)
On the radio, Mikoto talks about preparing for the performance.
In the flashback, the producer talks about preparing for the performance.
In the taxi, Nichika is stuck.
Reflecting once again, it really seems like Mikoto and the Producer were on the same page in that planning conversation. The Producer talks about how, rather than pushing for a grand performance, they should focus on showing their appreciation to others… but Nichika doesn’t feel thankful towards her fans.
Then we get to see the previous quote from Mikoto about appreciation in full. She explains that every performance she gives is a way of thanking the people who support her.
With memories of “appreciation” in her mind, Nichika steps out of the taxi and begins to run. From an image of a crimson sky representing the ‘aka’ in ‘Aketa Mikoto’, to a train crossing, to a cracked road, to the room where she and Mikoto had always practised, Nichika runs…
This time, the transitions from scene to scene not only continue to highlight the differences in the cast’s perspectives but they’re also used to tell us what exactly those perspectives are.
In later chapters, we get these same techniques used to show Mikoto and Nichika’s training schedule alongside flashbacks of the unravelling tragedy that led to Mikoto and Luca’s split.
In one particular moment, Mikoto speaks to a smiling Luca, and with a flash to white, Nichika thinks… “she’s incredible.”
This voiced comment from present-day Nichika allows us to infer the thoughts of Luca in the flashback, and all of a sudden, the comparisons begin to flood our minds. With this one cut, we subconsciously understand that Nichika is a repeat of Luca… and understanding that, we know that the events of the present are the second iteration of this tragedy in Mikoto’s long career.
By relating two characters together, we begin to feel for the third character.
This is the magic of SHHis. The characters are so interwoven in how they’re presented—compared so frequently and so well—that any development to one cast member inevitably progresses the others. Basically, they’ve established three-in-one character development.
Suddenly the prospect of introducing and developing four characters in a short timeframe seems very achievable.
There are so many other examples of transitions that deliver information to us wordlessly. This is a story that starts with a yell of frustration, “Aaaah!”, and ends with a singer’s “Ah~”. That same sound is littered throughout, as a way of testing a room’s acoustics, as an exclamation of surprise, as a representation of dissonance or resonance in the cast’s voices (and consequently their relationships) and so much more.
In one scene, a character responds to a bad joke with “Eeeeh?”. It soon cuts to another scene where a disappointed “Eh…?” is heard. In the latter of these two scenes a happy moment turns sour… so what does that imply for the first scene? A bad turn for one is a bad turn for both, and so, the tension mounts.
In truth, these aren’t separate scenes with frequent transitions; they’ve joined together to exist as one scene across multiple times and places. These four characters aren’t just four individuals, they’ve joined together to exist as one story.
Nichika’s television appearances are used to cut to the TV in Luca’s home and consequently to Luca, but the type of cuts and the images they ultimately rest on tell us how Luca feels and what she thinks upon seeing Nichika on TV.
A scene in which a fully-booked Nichika frantically attempts some outdoor practice is cut mid-action to a training room where she stumbles and falls. The actions of the first scene (barely fitting suboptimal practice into her schedule) lead directly and thematically into her tumble in the training room. It’s both a way of getting us from scene A to scene B without interruption and a way of showing us how poorly practised Nichika is.
Even in the small things, this philosophy remains true. When one character looks to the floor with exhaustion, we jump to another character looking down in shame.
It’s this matching of thematics and physicality that gives the novel such a distinct pace, and it spans cleverly beyond the individual scenes. Since your mind naturally connects the dots between the parallel plot points, it allows the tension and unease to continue even in times of comedy. It’s so incredibly cohesive, but not in a way that feels repetitive or on the nose. Most people probably won’t even notice these techniques in action, but they’ll feel the effects for sure. It’s suspenseful, it’s endearing, and it makes you want to support these troubled idols.
The SHHis girls may not fit into the idyllic story format that brings the rest of Idolmaster’s cast their popularity, but man do they incentivize some cool directing. The way scenes are paced and programmed is stellar, outdoing most of the hardcore PC Visual Novels I’ve read. With such little time in the script to let plot points build and rest, the writers elegantly set the right mood for this unique-yet-common story, and elevate some otherwise generic material to greatness.
Even if most people never hear about this story, and even if those who do read it fail to appreciate how much thought has gone into every detail… at least to me, this will probably always be the height of idol media.
So I suppose this post is my way of showing my appreciation, but maybe that was already obvious enough. After all…
Please, no hate. 
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