Over the last four days of the Tokyo Game Show, KLab has had a jam-packed schedule of events and on-air specials (with English translations). Thankfully, Utano☆Princesama Shining Live fans were not forgotten. On the event’s final day, a one-hour special event was held with host Kenichi Ono and voice actor Takuma Terashima celebrating all things UtaPri. Terashima voices Ittoki Otoya, the redhead, happy-go-lucky singer from ST☆RISH.

It wouldn’t be an UtaPri event without testing Terashima’s rhythm game skills. Terashima challenged two songs – Shining ☆ Romance and Trust ☆ My Dream on pro. He may have gotten a little over-confident after his first go with Shining ☆ Romance, promising fans prisms if he full comboed Otoya’s solo Trust ☆ My Dream. His confidence was definitely well-placed, for a moment it seemed like we would all be gifted a crazy amount of prisms or free photoshoots. However, around the 400 tap mark (out of ~450), he faltered. Nevertheless, he still promised fans some prizes, and honestly I can’t fault him for missing a beat. I can’t even play pro when I’m relaxing in my room, let alone in front of a crowd of hundreds!

Update: On Monday September 23, it was announced through the Shining Live Twitter page that, as Terashima accomplished a 400 combo, everyone will receive a free 11-shot photoshoot for four days! This is going on now in the game.

It was actually really exciting to see Terashima talk about his love for the franchise outside of his professional links with it. He discussed how he regularly ranks in events, coming in the top 2% for the first ever Otoya event (Phantom Thief Otoyan’s Activity Records). You could also see his genuine excitement as the host presented some fan-favorite event pictures like Renarty or Valentine’s Natsuki. He had some really insightful comments about the designs of different event cards. For example, how many event cards are quite ‘sexy’ despite the boys mostly remaining clothed. He used the Renarty event card as an example, describing how his pose and smile looked very inviting.

Year in Review!

It’s been over a year since Utano☆Princesama Shining Live was released in Japan. Ono and Terashima took time to muse over how much content has been added to the game over the last year and a bit. So far the game has:

Over 10,000 voice clips

369 photos

89 songs

25 events

18 photo shoots

Of the 89 songs the top two most played were Rainbow ☆ Dream with 16,724,808 plays and Gamushara Roman☆Tic with 16,008,933 plays. Over the last week or so, the Japanese Shining Live Twitter account surveyed fans on their favorite Otoya lines, and Terashima read out the top 5. It was no surprise that many of the ones that made the cut were quite romantic like ‘I’ll always be right beside you’. Those lines definitely got the audience screaming!

News, News, News!

Following on from all the fun and games, Terashima and Ono had some very exciting announcements for Shining Live fans worldwide.

The second big announcement was about birthday boxes. For those who haven’t encountered a birthday box before, they used to be a single pull you could do with one SR card guaranteed of the birthday boy. Previously, I had ignored these boxes as they did not offer much, but following this announcement I’m sure they’ll be my next favorite thing about the game. From Ranmaru’s birthday onwards (29 September), birthday boxes will take on a step-up mechanism. At your third step-up, essentially your third pull, you are guaranteed a UR card of the birthday boy! Even better? The birthday boxes will now contain all the cards from photoshoots before the sports festival photo shoot, and will only feature cards of the birthday boy.

Final Thoughts

The livestream was so much fun, and I’m really glad that KLab thought of its international fans by including English translations. I would really love to see more events with the voice actors as it’s a side to the game I rarely see, yet puts such an interesting and different perspective into how the game is constructed for fans. I’m really excited about the announcements we got and I’m looking forward the next year of Utano☆Princesama Shining Live, I can’t wait to see what other fun and innovative things KLab does with the game!

Utano Princesama Shining Live

Available on the App Store and Google Play

App store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1284790977

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.klab.utapri.shininglive.global