Love Live School Idol Festival Review and Guide

Now just a mere few days after my Love Live Speculation and Love Live Season 2 Full Season Review, I feel the need to drill even more Love Live into your heads.

So here’s my Love Live School Idol Festival Review and Guide!

First the Guide.

(Note: As I write this (September 2, 2014) I don’t know if I’ll be able to put any pictures in this other standard promo pics that come with app. Getting anything else would mean restarting my app…no way in hell.)

First part.

When you first get the app, you’ll go through the tutorial with Honoka, Umi, and Kotori on the basics on how to play. Since they teach you how to play I don’t really need to reexplain it. Do I?

Anyway after that, you need to go to your fridge and pick up a sandwich and soda because then the game will take a download. Now later I figured out what the game was downloading. At this first download the game’s downloading all the normal songs and all their versions.

Depending on your internet speed, it could take about 30 minutes or if you have a bad connection like me it could take up two hours.

After the game’s fully downloaded with all the songs, you’ll go through first parts of the story mode and learn about honor student recrutiting, normal recruiting, center position, and what I call Muse Abilities, and Leader abilities.

Now the game explains it their way but I’ll explain it in basic terms because that’s the way I wish they explained to me.

First off!

Love Gems:

Love Gems are like freaking gold. They are the be all and end all of the game. If you have a good few love gems you can really do anything. You can boost your LP, increase the amount of members you have, go Honor Student Scouting(more later) and even continue a song after you’ve run out of stamina.

However all these things are things you should never do! Why because unless you pay for them Love Gems are a bit hard to come by at the beginning of the game except for the first week where they give you three love gems each day for logining in.

There’s only so many ways to get Love Gems and they are:
-Getting a full bond on an Idolized Card
-Finishing any card’s side story
-Finishing any live 100 times on Hard Mode
-Achieving an Album bonus

Now there are some other ways that just don’t come up during the tutorial. For example, you can get a Love Gem after an update. I guess the Devs get sad because they make us wait and stuff. Also you automatically get five Love Gems on a member of Muse’s birthday. You can go on the Love Live Wiki to find out when each member’s birthday is. As of this writing(September 7, 2014), Kotori Minami’s birthday is next on September 12th.

Normal Recruiting:

Normal Recruiting to put simply is like the tutorial of a Pokemon game when you’re a long time player. It’s something you have to get through to get to the good stuff.

The Normal Cards are nearly worthless in the later parts of the game. What saves them from being totally useless is the fact that they can be easily idolized and get bond points so to get a love gem after finishing their side story.

Oh I forgot about Idolization and Bond Points.

Idolization is the act of fusing two of the same card together during Special Practice. This makes a more powerful card. It makes Normals somewhat more useable and Muse cards even more powerful.

However what clinches the game is Bond points. Bond points come around as you play Lives. Depending on how big of a combo you get during a Live(A combo is getting Great or Perfect in a series without getting a Good, Bad, or Miss).

Note:According to what I’ve heard, the 15 LP Hard Songs if you get a Perfect Combo{Do not miss one note} can net you a guaranteed 50 bond points.

Honor Student Recruiting:

Honor Student Recruiting is basically getting members of Muse’s cards for your team. These are the cards that you want the most because face it, the other cards suck. However to do an Honor Student Recruiting you must have at least 5 Love Gems. If you cash in the gems at this point, you can recruit one member of Muse.

However there are multiple types of cards. They are Cool, Pure, and Smile. And those cards come in Normal, Rare, Super Rare, and Ultra Rare. Members of Muse are guaranteed to be Rare and above.

Now you can be impatient at the beginning like me and just cash in the second you get 5 love gems but it’s the worst play you can make. Why? Because of two things. One if you cash in 50 love gems instead of getting 10 Muse cards you get 11, one free. Second, the game runs a few promos a month where if you cash in 50 love gems you have a higher chance of getting Super Rare and Ultra Rare cards. So waiting pays off.

Muse Abilities:

Muse Abilities is what makes Muse cards so much more useful than the Normal cards. Now I haven’t gotten any cards better than Rare for Muse so my info is only partial.

Pure Muse cards at least at the Rare level boost your stamina(you lose stamina if you miss notes in a song) after getting certain length combo. Really helpful if you’re a beginner.

Smile Muse cards boost your numerical scores. Not really super useful ability.

Cool Muse cards boost your numerical scores. Same thing.

However I’ve heard of cards that can boost stamina by two and three points, turn your goods into greats and greats into perfects.

Leader Abilities:

Leader Abilities are something only a member of Muse can have and they are some of the best parts of their cards.

See your rank in a song is based on how high your specific number in pure, smile, or cool. What I mean is if your cool number is high while you’re playing a cool song then you’ll get a higher number.

And members of Muse have abilities as their leader abilities that can boost your numbers.

So far I’ve only seen Cool, Smile, and Pure Power and Cool, Smile, Pure Heart. Power boosts your stat slightly while Heart boosts it a bit more than that.

However leader abilities are the hardest to level up. Because you must feed a Muse card that has the same ability at the same level to guarantee that the ability will rise.

So now that you know all the stuff that the game didn’t tell you. Here’s the real stuff.

So you start playing the game and you’re trying to hold the phone/tablet(I recommend a tablet. They have bigger buttons to hit than a phone) there’s a few ways to hold it.

You can go handheld video game style using your thumbs. It’s very natural but unless you have fast reflexes or know the song well you’ll get outpaced by level 18 or so.

You can go one hand while the other hand supports your device but unless you quick reflexes and can stretch your fingers far then you’ll fail.

The best way to hold it is not at all. Put your device if you have a tablet on the holder or on a tablet flat and use both hands. If you can get the timing down for the double hits then you’ll be fine.

I think that’s it…

Oh wait! Events!

Every month the games runs two events, one in the beginning of the month around the first week until end of the second. And the other at the end of the third week to the beginning of the next month.

As long as I’ve been playing I’ve seen three events, the Weary Princess(Eli Event), My First Tune(Hanayo Event), and Can You Shine?(Nozomi Event)

In events, you can get a guaranteed Ultra Rare card if you hit the event point mininum.

However when you’re first starting out it’s impossible to get so you’re better off using the event for its second use, leveling up.

During an event you get some type of event marker. During the Weary Princess event, they were diamonds. During the My First Tune, they were leaves, and during the Can You Shine event, they were seal spirit tags. While you’re playing the normal songs, the various event markers will appear and you’ll get them.

Once you have either 15(easy), 30(Normal), or 45(hard), you can play the event song for a higher amount of event points. There’s no real point to getting your hopes up for getting the Event card at the early stages of the game because scores and levels are calulated by how high the level of your cards are, their rarity, and if they’re idolized or not.

So at the beginning of the game, unless you’re a lucky genius with blinding reflexes you won’t have a lot of Muse cards until around level 20 if you follow this advice.

However that’s not important at this point. The point is leveling up because with your event markers you can push out that extra song to get you over the top. For example, you can do 3 songs with your LP amount but you need 5 to level up. However you have 30 event markers so you can push out those extra 2 songs.

Add to the fact there are a lot of extra things on the way to getting the Event Card like extra friend points, love gems, and exclusive normal cards.

So in short Events are your best friend no matter what level you’re at.

And this is the best part! The Love Live Doujin about Love Live School Idol Festival!

So turns out there’s a doujin about the Love Live game and all the members of Muse are playing. Eli and Nico are addicted. Kotori has nothing but Honoka cards and Umi takes it too seriously.

Maki’s a badass at the game but then again what do you expect she wrote the songs all of them!

I’ll leave a link below for you to download it yourselves.

Now for the review part, let’s just say that before my internet blew out, I was like Eli playing the game! I’d play until I dropped then my LP returned then I’d play until I dropped again.

It’s highly addicted and you can even hear Muse songs that you’ve never heard before. One bad part is while you’re grinding you’ll hear a lot of the same songs over and over again. So you can either turn off the sound to keep the love of the song or keep it on and learn to hate it. I can’t listen to Bokura no Life, Kimi no Live anymore.

Despite that little part and the difficulties of getting a good team together, it’s still an awesome game.

I give Love Live School Idol Festival an 11 out of 10. Yeah that’s right I did it! I gave it an 11 on a ten point scale!

So that’s all for this little guide/review I hope you like it and it helps you out a bit.

Until next time,

Later Days

You can ask me as many questions as you want on Ask.fm and you can follow me on Twitter to know when my new reviews are coming out. You’ll also be update on what’s happening.

Love Live Concert: Endless Parade Review

I can’t stop the Love Live posts! One because I love it and two there’s so much stuff I can do with it. Music reviews, OVA reviews, Game guides, News about the recently released Love Live School Festival Parade game, Full Season reviews! I can’t stop! Too much to love!

Honoka Kosaka is a girl who loves her school, Otonokizaka Academy. When the school is planned to be closed down due to a lack of applicants, Honoka becomes determined to save it. Learning that school idols are popular, Honoka and her friends start up a school idol group called U’s (pronounced muse) in order to attract new students. Once they successfully prevent Otonokizaka Academy from closing, the girls from U’s aim for higher grounds and participate in “Love Live”, the ultimate school idol competition featuring the best groups in the country.

Even though I said these were OVAs they technically aren’t. These are Omakes. OVAs are called Original Video Animation which denotes something unique. Omakes are basically side stories to a manga, anime, or whatever.

I definitely love Weekly Shonen because they have a lot more Omakes in their manga than Jump does.

Anyway…this review is going to be more words and explanation than pictures because Lantis kinda skipped on the animating, they’re just heads talking. You expect it since this is a Omake shown before a concert so they can’t really overshine the concert can they?

Anyway we open Muse at a theme park and Eli and Honoka explain that they’re there to figure out the theme for their next live. Nico pitches a theme about her epic rise to sucess but no one listens and then Maki asks where’s Umi. Eli comments that she went over with Nozomi and Rin to check out the roller coaster.

Now I know this next part is going to get a little spoilerish but bare with me.

Now Muse seperates into three groups of three to look at the part and here’s how they look:

1. Umi, Nozomi, and Rin
2. Eli, Maki, and Nico
3. Honoka, Kotori, and Hanayo

Hmmm these groups look familar. Oh wait maybe you’ll know them as Lily White, BiBi, and the Primtemps.

That’s right!

They seperated into the three mini-idol units in Muse. This in my opinion gives us a hint about what songs were sung at this concert if they seperated this way. I’m guessing that Bibi sung Diamond Princess no Yuutsu and Primtemps sung Love Marginal and Lily White sung Anone Ganbare. Sounds like epic concert…then it’s Muse so automatically epic so there’s only higher to go.

So just wanted to let you know that. Back to the review.

Also while watching this episode, I learned that apparently the Japanese call a roller coaster a jet coaster.

Now back to the review seriously!

So we shift over to the girls of Lily White first.

So Nozomi and Rin try to get Umi because she’s never gone but their real plan is so they can see her be all scared and take a picture of it. I have to admit it would be funny because Umi’s so serious all the time.

Umi doesn’t get the appeal of riding a roller coaster. Rin explains how exciting by describing all the sounds and screams. Yeah…Umi doesn’t get that. So Nozomi takes over by saying that even though people are scared they get on for the thrill and that thrill is just like a Live.

However Umi flips it around and scares the crap out of them by thanking them so gracitiously. Nozomi and Rin get really scared while Umi jumps right on the coaster without an ounce of fear.

The next episode we switch over to the girls of BiBi next.

We have Nico trying to get Eli to go into the house of horrors but Eli’s really scared. Eli Ayase scared? The legendary school council president? Voiced by Yoshino Nanjo who voiced Nio Hashiri who scared the crap out of Manami Numakura(as Otoya Takechi) so much that developed a freaking fear about her is scared.

Hahahahah oh God my ribs! It hurts to laugh this hard! Ahahahaha.

This went on, me laughing for several minutes until I regained my composure

I apologize. Let’s continue with the review.

So Nico is trying the same ‘I want to see the cool beautiful girl scared’ thing that Nozomi and Rin tried to do. Difference is that Nico ain’t all that smart…come on. If you’ve seen it her logic ain’t really all that good.

And Maki’s just standing off to the side, snarking all the way and pointing out all the holes in Nico’s logic.

So through some insane logic and apparently Eli not even listening Maki, Nico tricks Eli into going to the haunted house. Eli runs into the haunted house with all types of Japanese exorcising gear and then comes out about 10 seconds later. Turns out a lot of Muse fans are working as monsters in the haunted house so Eli signed some autographs and gave a few handshakes.

EEEH?

And now I laugh. Hahahaahha Nico wa Baka! Baka!

So we end with that and head over to the third episode with the Primtemps.

So the Primptemps are on the Ferris Wheel, having fun and enjoying the view. Until Kotori reminds Honoka that they came there to figure what their next live’s theme. Honoka just freezes and does the Japanese equal to ‘Oh Crap’.

There’s a bit of part where Kotori and Hanayo shoot all ideas Honoka’s ideas and Honoka starts to shake the car but Kotori kinda goes off her. Well as ‘going off’ as a polite kind Japanese teenage girl can be. She explains the rules and reasons why they can’t shake the car as the fireworks come on.

Hanayo comments on how much she loves fireworks.

Note: Honoka comments that Hanayo would love fireworks because they both have ‘Hana’ in them. Now just with my experience in Japanese just because something sounds right doesn’t mean is right.

Anyway Kotori and Hanayo eventually get into a conversation about why they love fireworks and riding the Ferris Wheel and how they wish they’d never end. That gives Honoka an idea and as they met up with everyone else Honoka tells them what their theme will be, Endless Parade!

And that’s the end of the Endless Parade OVA!

I have to say that I’ve done a lot of Love Live Post lately. My Love Live Season 2 Full Season Review, Snow Halation Anaylsis, and the Love Live Endless Parade Review, and the next one coming up will be Love Live School Idol Festival Guide and Review!

So please keep your eyes out for it!

Also I give the Love Live Endless Parade OVAs a 9.5/10. The only reason it doesn’t get those last .5 points is because it was too short and I couldn’t find the full concert!

Update: I’ve found the full concert. Well I’ve found it and I’ve not found it. The whole concert was done in Saitama Super Arena on February 8th and 9th 2014. The DVD/Blu-ray set for the concert was cut up and separated into four parts. Day One was separated into three parts, being released on July 25th, September 24th, and an currently unknown date in November. The Second Day was released in its entirety on July 23rd. 

So as a result it is impossible to get the whole concert right now but that doesn’t mean you can get the parts that are out now.  Click the link in the picture below to be taken to NyaaTorrents where they’ve got it. Be careful. It’s 15 Gigs.

Also check out this link to know what songs were sung. I have a personal love for Garasu no Hanazono(Garden of Glass). It’s filled with so much Eli x Nozomi stuff!

So until the Love Live SIF Guide and Review,
Later Days!

Love Live School Idol Project Snow Halation Comparison

I can’t stop doing Love Live Posts! Don’t help me! Don’t save me!

Hey everyone. It’s Deven coming at you once more with a…I don’t really know what to call it. It’s not a Speculation. I guess it’d be more of an anaylsis. Okay we’ll call it that. I’m coming at you with a Love Live Song Analysis of Snow Halation! One of Muse’s best songs.

Now if you don’t know Lantis which is the company that owns Love Live and produces all their songs and merchandise makes Love Live CDs. What makes them really awesome and you really got to love the voice actresses for this, they make both group CDs and solo CDs. So you can have your favorite girl singing your favorite song! Isn’t that great!

Now Snow Halation is one of the few songs that has every member of Muse sing it. So I’ll be doing an anaylsis of how each member of Muse sings the song.

Note: The order is no particular order. This is the order that my iTunes gave me when I looked up the songs.

First up is Honoka Kousaka!

Honoka(voiced by Emi Nitta) sings with a medium sounding voice and not the usual perkiness that you see her with in the anime. It’s more soothing. It reminds me of a flowing river, her words just flow out naturally.

Next is Umi Sonoda!

Umi(voiced by Suzuko Mimori) is what I call Elegance against Adversity. She makes every song she sings sound so sensual and beautiful. It reminds me of a nice cool night where the snowflakes are falling slowly. It’s so relaxing.

Next is Maki Nishikino!

Maki(voiced by Pile) is another example of Elegance against Adversity but with a little edge. When Maki sings Snow Halation, it sounds more lovely like she’s singing right to you. It reminds me a lot of a serenade. So Maki cute!

Next is Nico Yazawa!

Nico(voiced by Sora Takui) well sounds kinda like my little sister when she was about five(she’s about 16 now). Her voice is quite high more in that place where Nozomi, Hanayo, and Kotori’s voices are. Despite that it sounds very cute. It reminds me of playing around in the snow with my little sister.

She’s actually my godsister and a lot taller than me but we’ve been raised like family

Next is ironically Kotori Minami!

Kotori(voiced by Aya Uchida) has a very high voice but it works for her especially in this song. In the PV Kotori’s grouped with alongside Maki and Rin. Rin has a medium pitched voice and Maki has a more edgy lower voice so they harmonize well. Kotori’s performance reminds me of those good days making snow angels with my godsister.

Next up is Rin Hoshizora!

Rin(voiced by Riho Iida) is not particularly my favorite member of Muse in the anime. However when she sings she’s one of my favorites alongside Hanayo, Eli, Umi, and Nozomi in that order. Why? Because she clearly changes her pitch in the anime for Rin’s voice but while she sings I’m guessing she’s using her normal voic e and it sounds so much better. It sounds like a casual and nice conversation. I rate Rin’s singing voice like Umi’s, very sensual.

Next up is Hanayo Koizumi!

Hanayo(voiced by Yurika Kubo) has a very high voice. Probably the only member of Muse with a higher voice is Kotori but it works for her. It’s one of the main reasons that Kokuhaku Biyori, Desu! is one of my favorite Muse songs. Hanayo’s Snow Halation version just has one of those cuteness levels that makes you want to hug her. I love it so much. She’s one of my favorites on Muse because of this voice!

Next up is Nozomi Tojou!

Nozomi(voiced by Aina Kusada) has a voice similar to but not the same as Hanayo and Kotori but it’s a inch lower. However it doesn’t make her less awesome. I think that Nozomi puts the most emotion into this song and makes it a song you want to dance to.

Last but not least is Eli Ayase!

Eli(voiced by Yoshino Nanjo) has a such a beautiful voice. It sounds so mature and soft yet filled with energy. I can’t just listen to an Eli sung song once. It must be listened to at least five times.

Now that I’ve looked at the girls solo. Let’s look at things as a whole.

Now I’m an absolute idiot with Music Theory but my younger cousin who’s a bass singer taught me one thing. You have the soprano, the alto, and the tenor in group based songs. Then again he sings in church but I think that it still applies.

However in this case we’re dealing with girls so it’s more of the highest, the medium, and the mature low.

Now the group’s divided(at least in my eyes) into three groups during this song which I think work that dynamic well.

One group is Eli, Hanayo, and Nico acting as the center. I think that Eli takes the mature, Hanayo the medium, and Nico the highest.

The next group is Kotori, Maki, and Rin acting as the center. Maki takes the mature, Rin the medium, and Kotori the highest.

The final group is Umi, Nozomi, and Honoka acting as the center for the group and the entire song as a whole. Umi takes the mature, Honoka the medium, and Nozomi the highest.

And it all comes together to make one of Muse’s best songs in my opinion.

Now I’m going to be super nice here. Since you listened, or in this case read me, ramble about music. I’m giving you my copies of the nine versions of Snow Halation for free as well as my copy of the Snow Halation PV(the original not the 2014 anime version).

Just click on the two Snow Halation pics below and download them from my Dropbox.

And that’s all for this review…hmmm…I think I can push out one more Love Live Post. I’ll let it be a surprise though.

Until the next one(you won’t have long to wait)
Later Days.

You can ask me as many questions as you want onAsk.fmand you can follow me onTwitterto know when my new reviews are coming out. You’ll also be update on what’s happening.