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

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.

Pretty All Friends Episode 4 translation

Official site with original text

Episode 4: Sweets Party and Small Friends

PriPara’s successor Kiratto Pri☆Chan announced for April 2018

Official abbreviation is “Prichan”.

Crunchyroll’s article is pretty complete, like always Japanese sites ilke Animate had more details which I added though. I also included some staff reactions and some of the thoughts of my Pretty Rhythm Yakuzas comrades so it took me a while to go through everything, plus I had other things to do IRL, hence why the post is a bit late.

Saints’ Mia to appear in Idol Time PriPara

Source

It has been announced on August 19th that Mia, the legendary Kami idol and part of the group Saints, will appear at some point in Idol Time PriPara. Just like Mia in DMF, she will be voiced by Ookubo Rumi. I don’t know how her family name is read, but it’s 華園, different from Ageha.

They updated the official Idoltime PP anime site too with Mia. Her description doesn’t say anything different than above though.

Like the cool kids on the net say these days: ITS HAPPENING

MY GOD I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS

So, I remember back when the first PP movie was released, the one with the Pretty Rhythm routes. Back then, PR Director Hishida Masakazu said in a very long interview I translated that the Pretty Rhythm characters who appear in the movie aren’t real, that they’re just data made from the matrix thing existing and accumulating data from both Pretty Rhythm universes and PriPara universe. And so, the Saints aren’t real too. But he added that it’s just his own explanation, and that one day they might use Saints in the PriPara TV anime and give another explanation or say something competently different about them.

I’m extremely excited for this, but at the same time I’m not expecting anything, because PriPara already disappointed me so many times now. S1 was boring 90% of the time and felt like it was written on the clock(remember how Prism Voice was never ever mentioned again?) and S2 was much better but still had tons of wasted potential. So much that I still haven’t got around to watch season 3. (if you’re interested about what was wrong with S2 you can read my older posts like this one)
I don’t know what they’ll do with Mia, but I know it won’t be good enough. PriPara is wasted potential:the anime. At least I’m mature enough to not care, and won’t get angry or say stuff like they’re ruining the lore or retroactively ruining Mia if they write her in a real dumb way. I can expect this seeing what they already did for so many characters in PP so far.

IIRC in PP episode 1, they say Saints has been retired for 4 years. And IIRC at least two years have passed in PriPara since the beginning, which explains why she looks older. She slightly looks a bit like her future self shown at the end of Grateful Symphonia in DMF episode 50.

This probably means Saints version of Aira and Naru will appear soon as well. Now, I’m wondering if they’ll introduce more Pretty Rhythm characters or if it’ll only be those three. If they introduce more, it could be a good basis to make a full crossover. They already teased a tenth anniversary project for 2020 and 2021. 2020  will be the game’s 10th anniversary, and 2021 the anime’s( Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream to be exact). I wish they make a AD DMF RL Kinpri Idol Time PP all series crossover.

In any case, now I really need to watch PriPara season3 and catch up all the way to season 4/Idol Time.

Oh and they’re also adding a new girl called Shuuka.(probaly pun on shuukan/week and the characters all have time related names). And she has the same family name as Mia, 華園, so she’s probably her sister.

ディアマイフューチャーのとは別人なのかな？、 https://t.co/bwMtD6tONM

— 日下部美愛 (@Mia_Kusakabe39) August 19, 2017

IRL Mia wonders if it’ll be the same Mia as in DMF or will she be different. (Laughed at the first reply saying”I stopped watching PP but now I’ll restart watching it”)

http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv304789718?ref=sharetw

Speaking of Mia, I posted it on twitter but maybe you haven’t seen it: On August 20, 2000 JP time, there’s a show airing with Rizumu and So Min’s seiyuus, and the guests will be Mia and Karin’s seiyuus, and they’ll play the DMF board game.

Idol Time PriPara announced

You can read about it on ANN

As expected they’re only keeping Laala and removing the other characters, it was obvious since when they announced the new season on December that it would turn out this way. Not gonna translate other things that aren’t in the the ANN article because I’m not interested in this for now. Not that I won’t watch it when it’s out or that I think it’ll be bad, it’s just I still haven’t watched s3 anyway so It’s not in my priorities to use time to learn more about Idol Time PriPara/AiPara or translate stuff about it. I’m not in a hurry or hyped about it.

The reason why I made this post is because I saw something interesting, PR director tweeted a report about the press conference when the series was announced. Takara Tommy executive(or whatever his position is)Toshihiro Morioka said they’re planning to keep the franchise going for at least ten years, as it’s been 7 years since the Pretty Rhythm arcade launched, and 6 years since the anime launched.  So in 2020 it’s scheduled to be the arcade game 10th anniversary, and in 2021 the anime 10th anniversary.

So in my opinion this means:

AiPP is at least 3 years long like Pretty Rhythm and PP. Laala will probably stay all the seasons too. If they didn’t remove her it’s possible they won’t remove her when they possibly reboot AiPP as well in 2020-2021, and will keep Laala as long as PP is going.

If they ever do a ADMF x RLKinpri crossover or a ADMF + RLKinpri + PP + AiPP crossover, it’ll be then. I think Kinpri will be done by 2020. PR director said the storyboard for Kinpri 2 is three times bigger than the one for Kinpri 1, so it should finish Hijiri and Jin’s story. At most we’ll get the Kinpri TV anime they always wanted to do in 2018, but I don’t think they’ll milk Kinpri once the story is done.

EDIT: On Jan 25th they revealed the Iris voiced characters are returning as well. Seems the PriParapocalypse din’t happen, I was wrong. I wonder if the others will return as well or will they be put on a boat.
Because they redesign the dresses every season, and the ones in S3 were particularly ugly with their yellow tones, I used to joke on how S4 would be a reset because they can’t make the dresses any uglier. Turns out I was wrong on even that. Oh God just what did they did to Shion.