Category Archives: Pretty Series

Everything You Should Know About KING OF PRISM And Pretty Series in 90 Seconds

Featured

Posted on by
4

Everyone and their cat knows how Shinkai Makoto’s Your Name revolutionized anime cinema in 2016, breaking through Spirited Away‘s records. What few know, however, is that another movie made anime history the same year: KING OF PRISM by PrettyRhythm.

As you may know, the KING OF PRISM movies are spin-offs of the Pretty Rhythm franchise. The first movie, KING OF PRISM by PrettyRhythm (shortened as Kinpri) was initially released in 14 theaters on January 9th 2016. Three weeks after release, it was only screening in 9 cinemas, and the staff was preparing for the worst. However, the movie ended up earning more than 800 million yen, and by May 2016 it was in over 100 cinemas across Japan. All thanks to dedicated fans’ word to mouth and the movie’s “Cheer Screenings” (応援上映 in Japanese), screenings where you can come in cosplay, use glowsticks, scream and sing along during the movie, or dub lines during subtitled scenes specifically made for it. The movie had a 9 months run in cinemas, and its final screening was at Shinjuku Wald 9, on September 2nd 2016, even though the movie was already out on DVD/BD since June 17th. KING OF PRISM was a huge success in South Korea as well. The first movie released there on August 11th 2016, and broke the record of longest screening period for an anime film, a record previously held by Love Live! The School Idol Movie!
The sequel movie, KING OF PRISM -PRIDE the HERO-, ended up releasing simultaneously in Japan and South Korea on June 10th 2017.

However, the Kinpri movies have a hidden history unrecorded even on Japanese anime sites. In the first place, how did a kids franchise spawn movies geared towards adults? Why are the movies gayer than actual Boys Love anime? Why does what seems to be a Yuri on Ice! ripoff with Shinji and Kaworu clones is a big enough deal to be screened at Los Angeles Anime Film Festival???

Note: While similar, I’ve added a lot of things compared to the French version of this article I published back in May 2018.  This is basically the XX+ Reloaded Definitive edition of the “Pretty Series History”.

Edit: I fixed the post’s layout, as it got screwed up after I changed the blog’s theme, even though it was fine beforehand during preview.

Continue reading →

Controversy on Pretty All Friends official “big cushion covers”, “Taisho Roman style” outfits

Posted on by
2

On August 3rd 2018, the official Prichan twitter RTed how there’s swimsuit dakimakura among the Pretty All Friends(PAF) official goods to be sold by Icrea at C94 (August 10-12 2018). It created a controversy among the Pretty Series fans. This is natural as the fan community is pretty massive now after PriPara and Kinpri’s successes, and includes people from different countries (mostly Japan and South Korea) so obviously everyone has different opinions and sensibilities. There’s people saying the dakimakuras are bad because they’re sexualizing underage characters from children oriented anime, and making hashtags protesting about it.

On August 3-4, the Japanese tags for PriPara and Pretty Series were trending.  The Korean tags for “dakimakura” , “children anime” and “pripara” were trending too. There’s also a currently trending tag with thousands of tweets used by people to protest against the goods: #プリティーシリーズ_女の子キャラクター_性商品化_もいい加減にしろ, meaning “Stop making official goods sexualizing the Pretty Series girls characters”
And a korean equivalent: #프리티_시리즈_여아캐릭터_성상품화_작작해라

I’m not making this post to repost some of the tweets in those tags, and write/translate things like
“look how low the Pretty Series franchise has fallen”
“wow Japan is so cool and redpilled, they NEVER PUT POLITICS IN ANIME, those Koreans complaining about the swimsuit dakis are just dumb SJW!!”
and get views like the crap Yaraon already did. (I’ll explain later why I mention Korea. Not linking the yaraon post on purpose to not give them views. And I hope ANN won’t write a post on this issue with yaraon as only source, because unlike what they said it’s not only Korean fans that are displeased about it)
I’m not interested either in trying to figure out if there’s a consensus, or counting the heads on each multiple sides of the argument. Rather, I wanna try to talk about the incident as a whole and explain what led to this. And in case it a becomes an even bigger controversy, it would be good to have a post for future reference to know what happened.

Also, I’m not going to voice my own opinion much. Which is that basically I don’t think the dakis are a good thing, but I don’t agree with 100% the arguments against it I’ve seen. Explaining my opinion would require me to write about things personal and I don’t feel like it nowadays. Usually, I always voice my opinion because I don’t believe 100% objectivity is a good thing. (Like how most people saying they’re apolitical or don’t care about politics and don’t want to see politics in cultural works pretty much means they voluntarily support the wrong politics by not caring, and has never been forced to care because they’re rich or white or never experienced stuff like racism)

Continue reading →

Kiratto Pri☆chan 3-4

Posted on by
Reply

Time goes too fast, we’re already at episode 4. Also I get the feeling I spent too much time on this, will try to make next posts shorter. Need to make choices to do other things too. Like that Pretty Series history thing that I started in September 2017 and still haven’t finished lol. Still haven’t translated anything related to Kinpri 2 too.

Continue reading →

Kiratto Pri☆chan 1-2

Posted on by
Reply

It’s the first episodes of a new series so there’s tons of new info and it’s really fun to write about it. Next posts will probably be shorter, unless the series turn out really good and there’s things to write about every week. If it becomes bad or better to watch in batches like PriPara, I’ll try to keep blogging it in batches of episodes.

As you should already know, Prichan is the new thing succeeding Pripara, so you don’t need to have seen Pretty Rhythm or PriPara to watch Prichan.

Continue reading →

Pretty Series movie, “Gekijouban PriPara&Kiratto Pri☆Chan ～Kirakira Memorial Live～” announced for May 5th 2018

Posted on by
Reply

PriPara official twitter announced on February 27 a new movie: Gekijouban PriPara&Kiratto Pri☆Chan ～Kirakira Memorial Live～. This will be last PP focused movie before Prichan takes over. It’s interesting they call it a “Pretty Series” movie and not just a “PriPara movie”, I guess it’s to show that similar to the 1st PP movie, it’ll also have Pretty Rhythm characters in it, but also Kiratto Pri☆Chan characters. I think even if PriPara ends, it’s possible future Prichan movies that are CG compilations with no real story will still have PR and PP characters in them.

They published a 1st teaser which is just PP scenes so nothing new. Maybe some of this won’t even be in the actual movie too since it’s just a teaser. Prichan would already have 5 episodes aired by the movie’s release, so the movie will probably focus on Prichan stuff and then feature PP and some bits of PR,  so you shouldn’t get your hopes up too much if you want more of the PR or PP girls.

There will surely be stage greetings events with i☆Ris. Their lastest song is titled Memorial too and its MV is like a farewell to PP with all the PP costumes they used in the past appearing in it. There might be events with the seiyuu too. And there will definitely be Cheer Screenings . Even before Kinpri revolutionized Japanese cinemas and made Cheer Screening ultra popular, they already did them in 2014 with the final screenings of the Pretty Rhythm movie for example, so there’s no reason they wouldn’t do it for this too.
They haven’t announced it yet, but similar to past movies there will definitely be a part that changes depending of the screening too. It would be funny if they do multiple routes like the 1st PP movie and include a boys route with WITH and PR males.

I’m not sure if this movie is supposed to be the Pretty All Friends project. What’s really weird is that for the PAF key visual, they bothered making new clothes and art, but for this PPxPrichan movie, the key visual just recycles art from each seasons’ key visual. Canamaji san also pointed out how the source code for the official site doesn’t mention “Pretty All friends” at all, and the summary seems to point out Prichan will be the main focus of the movie, so it’s still possible PAF will turn out to be yet another thing announced at a later date. In any case I was expecting PAF to be a CG compilation movie anyway, so if it’s indeed this, I’m not really surprised or disappointed. But I still hope Pretty All Friends will be something and an actual crossover with plot.

This movie will be directed by Nobutaka Yoda, who did Tobidasu PriPara ~Miina de Mezase! Idol Grand Prix(the 2nd PP movie which used 3D and afaik doesn’t have a DVD/Bluray release, so no one outside Japan has actually seen it). Script is by Fukuda Hiroko. It seems it’ll just be a compilation of CG scenes with no particular story like all the movies except the 3rd PP movie(the PriParis one which was the only “real” movie). There will probably be a baton touch like scene at the end with Aira Mia Naru Laala Yui Mirai Emo doing a live together.

They also announced the name of the OP for Prichan.

Lastly the fact that this movie exists confirms what we all already knew anyway, Prichan will still use CG for its live scenes.

Edit: They also revealed Prichan starts airing on April 8 at 1000JP time, first time Pretty Series uses this timeslot, and info about two more characters, Anna and Sara.
Akagi Anna(red hair one): Middle school 1st year at Kirari, a popular Pri☆Chan Idol. She looks like an oujou sama and her self produced channel reeks of celebrity, but she’s actually very childish and selfish. She doesn’t get along well with Mirai and Emo.
Midorikawa Sara: (green hair one.lol as expected someone called Midorikawa) Same year same school. She’s Anna’s best friend. She’s cool and has a rock and boyish fashion style. She refers to herself with “boku”.She follows Anna like her shadow, often restraining her when she goes out of control.

And it seems the Prism Jump/Making Drama equivalent in Prichan is called “Yatte Mitta”.

In other news in case you haven’t seen it on Twitter, PR director Hishida Masakazu storyboarded episode 8 of Hugtto Purikyua. He posted about it on Insta. He said it’s the first time he worked with Tsubota Fumi since Rainbow Live ended and it was tons of fun, and he didn’t think he’d get to work on a Toei show one day so he’s really happy. I’d like to watch the show but don’t really have the time, I’m trying to catch up on PriPara so I’m  using all my anime time on it and not watching anything else. I want to watch IPP before Prichan starts and do episodic blogging for it.
I still haven’t watched Kinpri2, maybe next weekend. It seems besides the new Yanpri goods each month, and Prichan’s launch with more info a tAnimeJapan2018, there won’t be any big news these next months. Kinpri will probably get a new thing announced at the June 10 2018 concert event. Until then, I’d like to finish translating the interviews in the PR All Star Selection guidebook, and then start the Kinpri books and bonus material like the stuff in the kinpri 2 Hiro special edition(stage greetings, events, etc), plus all the fan reports and other interviews on the net I have saved.  Honestly there’s so much stuff I’m not sure when I’ll ever finish translating everything though.