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.
They published an advertisement for the karaoke, ok to come cosplayed, etc screenings. I really wish I could go to one.
Kinpri hypothetical ratings:
Screens took 30th january 09:00 jp time.
The movie got in the top 100 of the month on Eiga.com. It’s 96th. Not sure what that ranking is though, it just says “access ranking”, so it’s probably how much the movie’s page got loaded on their site.
When it was released the 9th January 2016, the movie was shown in 14 theaters across Japan in total. (a bit more if you count the different rooms that show it inside each theater, though most theaters only show it once per day in one room.) As of the 30th, the movie is now shown in 9 theaters in total. For example, バルト11, the only theater showing it in Hiroshima prefecture, had it’s final screening the 29th, which is why there’s no pic of this theater in this daily update. But there’s also a theater in Fukui prefecture who started showing it starting the 30th, so it’s not like the number of screenings is only decreasing.
There’s other theaters which will start screening the movie in February, the full list with the starting dates is the last list on this page.
It’s the weekend so I can take screens during the day. Screens taken the 30th at 17:28 japanese time, just before the start of the screening at T・ジョイ博多 theater at 17:30. My initial assumptions in the previous post were wrong, the number of reservations of a screening do increase a lot the same day of the screening between early morning and afternoon. Between 09:00 and 17:28, T・ジョイ京都/T joy theater at Kyoto screening reserved seats increased from 16 to 36+, and T・ジョイ博多/T Joy theater at Hatake got full. Then again it’s the weekend.
At 10:00 the 30th there was also the エーデルローズ新入生の集い～アンコール～ talk event in United Cinema Toyosu at Tokyo. Fans on twitter posted what came out of it.
Source They revealed the 2nd temporary podium for the Prism King Cup fan election. According to twitter fans: Taiga is still first. Alexander became 2nd. Yukinojou is now 3rd.
Source They also revealed that Louis and Shin have the same birthday, 29th February. And their seiyuus Terashima Junta and Shouta Aoi also have the same birthday, 11th August.
Source Dramatic Love, the movie’s ending song, was supposed to be sang by Shin alone at first, but later decided to make all the new Edel Rose characters sing it.Because of that, they also have version of it with Shin singing alone.
Source Most of the votes for Leo in the Prism King Cup fan election are by older men.
Source When you vote, you can also include a comment. They read some of them at the event. One vote for Yukinojou said “I fell in love with Yuki sama after watching it the 12th time. Even though I didn’t feel anything for him the 11 times before”. Another vote commented on how he’s so manly.
Source When they made Terashima Junta record Dramatic Love, they also recorded him doing the koishita part in a whispering like voice for the “staff’s private use “
Source Terashima’s(Shin) personal entourage told him about Kinpri in summary “We don’t really understand the movie but we understand that it’s fun”.
Source they showed a video message by Shin, Yukinojou and Leo’s seiyuus at the start of the event. People cheered for Leo the most.
I’m pretty busy sadly so this is short. There’s a few new things I’d like to post about but can’t for now. For example I haven’t checked the 2ch thread again, or interviews and such. Thankfully they’re seiyuu interviews so they shouldn’t say interesting things. I left out the less important things, like how Komatsu Mikako currently have short wave hair like Ito in the movie.
I’m trying to update every day with pics of the reserved seats. It’s only 6 theaters/screenings rooms out of 14~ theaters in total in Japan where the movie is shown, but it can still give a vague idea on how the movie is doing.
Kinpri hypothetical ratings:
It’s been more than two weeks since King Of Prism has been released. In summary I think it’s not doing too well, but there’s still hope.
I’ve never been interested in movie screening ratings and such so it’s my first time searching for some, so I don’t really know where to look. So I just put in king of prism ランキング on google. There’s eiga.com that has ratings.
If I got it right, the rankings on this site are how much the movie got accessed on the site, not how many people went to see it. On the site, the movie isn’t even in the top 100 of this month’s rating. On Oricon, on the week it was released, it wasn’t in the top 10 either. I guess it’s a given as there’s huge things currently, like Star Wars, new James Bond, etc.
If you have some ranking stats please fill me in.
On most movie sites or info sites like Yahoo Japan etc, the movie got a really good score always close to 5/5, and nearly only positive reviews. For example, still on Yahoo Japan, the movie is first in the “user ratings”. However it doesn’t really mean anything as it’s mostly a handful of fans who rated 5/5 and posted positive reviews. Because the movie has the best score but with only around 300 votes, while there’s stuff like Girls Und Panzer movie who’s behind it in 2nd/3rd place, but with more than 2000 votes. The only negative review I spotted is by one guy who says the movie doesn’t feel like PR and is mad. He dares to say that while he’s a filthy peasant who only watched Rainbow Live.
All the screenings with karaoke where you can sing along, come cosplayed, etc, like you can see in this vid, are always full. They’re much longer than regular screenings, because they show RL episodes fully before showing the movie, and there’s breaks for people to meet up and chat and make new friends etc. So you have at least all the regular long time fans going, plus a bunch of newbies.
For example there was two singing screening the 23rd January, titled “I won’t let you sleep until morning” (one of Hiro’s quotes) that lasted from around 23:45 to 29:05(5am) with almost all seats taken. They were simultaneous, both at Wald9/バルト9 Cinema, one at room 6 and one at room 9.
They showed RL episodes 6,8,18,31,39,45,51, route 4 with the boys from the PP&PR movie, and then the actual Kinpri movie.
Pics like these are from Kinezo.jp, where you can buy tickets in advance for movies. You can select a theater and check how much seats are already reserved for a particular screening.
I checked the current state of the seats for all the screenings of the 25th listed on Kinezo and took screenshots, and as you can see, sadly regular screenings currently have much less people. Some are even empty.
As I took these pictures, it’s already the 25th 5am in Japan, so it’s safe to assume no more seats will be reserved anymore. Of course there will be people who will buy tickets directly at the cinemas, but I think Japanese people usually plan things like this in advance and mostly buy advance tickets, so I don’t think it’ll increase by too much. Then again most of them are night screening around 20:00 so there’s still time for reservations to increase a bit more…
Edit the 25th: Took pics at around the same time(26th 6:51am) for the same theaters. So you can compare. For example there’s the 1st pic, the ブルク13 movie’s screening the 26th, there’s more people than the 25th. The two screenings at バルト9 are near full like the 25th, etc. I guess there’s theaters with people constantly going and some with less, just depends of the day. Hopefully it’ll keep up like that and some regular screenings will always be near full.
Edit the 26th. Screenshots took at 07:00 jp time. As you can see for バルト9 theater, you can’t even access the page with the seats because both screenings are full. It was the theater where the movie premiered and it seems it’s always full or near full. I hope it keeps it like that until the end of all the screenings at the end of March IIRC.
In order to see as accurately as possible how many seats are reserved, the best would be to take the screenshots just before the earliest screening starts(around 12:00 japanese time) but I’m sleeping then(it’s 03:00 my time), and for the night screenings at 19:00 Jp time, I’m at notwork, so can’t take screens.
Edit the 28th. Screens took at 29th January 07:30 JP time. Didn’t have internet the 27th so didn’t take pics. バルト9 screenings are full the 29th and the 30th. They even added one additional screening on each day which are also already full. One screening of the 31th is also already full. Keep it up PR fans we can do this!
Lastly there’s the fact the movie doesn’t have a lot of screenings, and isn’t screened at lots of theaters either. It’s been two weeks now so most theaters showing it only do one screening a day.
All the goods were sold out after the first few days, so they probably restocked them now. Maybe they’re sold out again, I don’t know.
In conclusion I don’t think things are bright. If they get ton of money with the goods, do tons of sing along events and people keep coming, and people buy the bluray when it’s out, in the long run they may get enough money to do the sequel.
I haven’t read every single of PR director’s tweets like I usually do, but I don’t think he or any staff person said anything about how well or not well the movie is doing for now.
If you’re really rich and got money to waste you should make a trip to Japan and go watch the movie. you could even just make an account on Kinezo, and just buy tickets online without actually going.
Masuda Toshiki/Kazuki: The EZ Do Dance scene was nice. Naru chan grown even more cute. Juné sama is cute.
Nagatsuka Takuma/Leo: It’s really exciting and unpredictable, like when rolling a gacha.
Some editor at Animage said it’s good and you can tell how much work was put into it. He’s happy Bell is doing fine. Was impressed how Hiro was pushed off from his happiness peak with what happens in the movie with you know what if you’ve read spoilers. Other magazines said it’s really good etc.
They’re doing talk events too. There was one the 24th, there’s another one the 30th. There should be more later. Too busy to post details sorry.
Temporary results of the Prism King fan election as of the 15th January. Remember that it’s new characters only that’s why OTR isn’t in.I’m happy Taiga is winning as he’s the new character I like the most design wise. Can’t really speak personality wise as I haven’t seen the movie. And even then, according to spoilers, the new characters don’t have that much screen time and you don’t learn a lot about them. Maybe we’ll never get to see them do a Prism Show if there’s no sequel…
Tiny size on purpose if you don’t want to be spoiled. Click to enlarge.
Remember the week exclusive gifts? As of the 23rd, the third week started, so people going to watch the movie get a random bookmarks with a film like style, showing a scene from the movie frame by frame. With the help of other fans, twitter fan Canmaji made a collage of all 48 bookmarks. Note that’s it’s only one pic from the bookmark scene each time, not all the pics.Hijiri is so lucky. I also want to marry Juné and go to the mosque with her.
One of the fist screening booking at some theater. I think Someone on 2ch checked with his phone for buying a ticket before it started, so by the time it started it probably got even more full.
Goods sold at one of the theater the day of the movie’s release, 9th January. Photo from 2ch. Time and theater is unspecified.
Another photo by this twitter person. Was taken at 10:00 at the Baruto9 theater in Shinjuku. The earliest screenings were at 8:30. Unless my sleepiness and cold is making me retarded, it’s definitely not the same theater as the 1st photo. The sold out goods are different, regardless of whether you consider this photo was taken before or after.
Everyone has very good impressions about the movie, including posters who said there were initially scared because of all the new characters, or how it’s fujoshi oriented. The movie is also very funny. One poster said he never laughed that much at the movies before.
Jin’s scenes are all really funny. Some people would like the movie just by seeing him too, he’s really popular.
A lot of people liked Alexander.
One poster said he was the only guy at the screening he went at, but multiple posters said at their screenings it was always around half men half women.
A poster who hasn’t seen any PR season before said it was really good and funny and cool. He went to a Baruto 9 evening screening, it was half men half women. A lot of them were friends and he felt envious of people chatting about the movie. He said it was really funny, especially the Kazuki Vs Alec battle. He really wants to see the sequel, and is worried about whether the sequel will be made, so he’ll go see the movie again.
Another person who haven’t seen any PR before said he really liked it. He wants to watch Rainbow Live now, but is daunted by how it’s “4 times longer than midnight anime these days”. So for now he’ll just go watch the movie again. (Tch. Kids these days who can’t handle a 50 ep series.)
PR director Hishida Masakazu will direct Jewelpet’s successor Riruriru Fairilu. According to this person, Nabeshin directly said in a magazine recently that “Hishida Masakazu is the director”.
PR director is using the pen name 五城桜. Apparently it’s the name of a middle school in his hometown in Sendai. And Aoba Jo(Aoba Castle in sendai) is another of his pen names. So people on twitter and 2ch figured it out. I’m too lazy and have a cold so don’t wanna to double check if I got the explanation right, but yeah he’s Riruiru Fairyru director 100% sure.
Anyway, some posters on the 2ch thread are saying that since he’s gonna work on Rirurilu, the sequel movie really isn’t planned for now. if Kinpri sequel happens he’ll work on it and Riruriru at the same time.
Spoilers from the 2ch thread to be taken with a grain of salt:
I actually haven’t finished this post yet but I really wanted to post the Kinpri news asap, so I cut off the unfinished parts for now.
Edit: I added everything now. If new pvs or info gets released I’ll just edit this post and add them at top. Or make a new post.
In times like these I really wish Pretty Rhythm was more popular so ANN or something would actually do their job instead of me, so I don’t have the pressure of breaking the news to non japanese fans. Well, it’s not like someone died. But still.
Contains actual spoilers for the movie’s end, told by the director himself. I think even if you absolutely detest spoilers It’ll be better if you read it now instead of watchign the movie and getting disappointed.
The thing that hypes me the most on this picture are the skates.
Edit 2 (19 November): They revealed the designs and seiyuus for the Schwartz Rose new characters.
Jin’s new look. Hopefully he’ll also wear the mask again at some point in the movie, maybe it’ll be his stage outfit. Knowing Pretty Rhythm there will surely be an overdramatic hilarious scene with him using that baton. He’ll have some funny gimmick with it for sure. And then like Hiro’s glasses they’ll give out a reason for his obsession with roses, saying his mom would beat him up with roses or whatever. Still voiced by Shinichiro Miki of course.
Kisaragi Louis
Oh wow so his name is supposed to be Louis. This is more French than Russian, so maybe the thing about him being Russian is wrong. Or maybe Alexander is the Russian one. The earring he wears is a blue pearl like jewel, inside a golden ring.
Louis is voiced by Aoi Shouta, a relatively new seiyuu, though not as new as most of the new characters’. He’s one of the guys in Utapri, and he’s also an actor, he plays the MC in the Persona 3 stage plays.
Yamato Alexander
Gotta admit he doesn’t look bad. It’s not written in the picture itself, but the description on the official site adds that he’s in 1st year of high school, meaning Alexanderis younger than Hiro Kazuki and Kouji. I guess it ramps up the chances that he and Louis will be Shin and co rivals, while Jin will be OTR’s rival. Hopefully yes, I want Jin to do a Prism Show.They really did a good job with the new characters designs. Now wait&see for how the actual movie will turn out.
Alexander is voiced by Takeuchi Shunsuke. Just like Shouta Aoi he’s very popular but relatively new, though not as most as the other’ new characters’ seiyuus, and already did main roles before like the producer in Idolxm@s Cinderella Girls,the anime adaptation of the popular wota money mobage milking machine.
Notice that you can see the emblem of Schwartz Rose in the background and on Alec’s uniform: a black rose with wings and thorns.
Cover for the ROAD to Over The Rainbow ～デビュー2周年記念DVD～. Details related to it are in the post. Notice how they’re holding hands. You couldn’t see it in the poster for the movie.
Cover for the Over The Rainbow Special Fan Disc. Details related to it are in the post. Embarrassed Kazuki is fun.
They also launched a twitter campaign called 【次世代のスターは私だ！プリズム☆フォトコンテスト】 which can be translated as “I’m the next generation’s Prism Star! Prism Photo Contest”. You need to take a picture of the advance tickets for the movie you bought, or other things I think, and post it on twitter using the #キンプリフォト hashtag. The picture needs to “show the feelings of Pretty Rhythm as much as possible”. They’ll choose 3 winning pictures, and the persons who posted them will each get the illustrations used for the tickets in full. (as in like if you got 5 tickets with each of the characters and glued them together)
Campaign starts today the 19th, ends December 20 midnight Japanese time.
They published a new 3minute trailer with nothing new except the narration by Hiro. It’s for newcomers who haven’t seen PR before. They summarize the story of the boys in RL, without spoiling much, so it makes you want to watch the show. The joke with Hiro freaking out at the end is how the video is titled “get everything about OTR in 90 seconds”, and Hiro realizes he went well over that time limit.
The official twitter also tweeted the links to buy the PRRL DVDs after that. I think they want to sell as much dvd as they can before they announce the BD boxes.
Lastly, the magazine MY★STAR vol.4 released 19 November 2015 has Kinpri stuff in it. The same info for the Schwartz Rose character they published on the main site the 19th, with a bit more details.
Hiro and Kouji do the space train totally not Galaxy Express 999 jump together in the 4th route/boys version of the Pretty Rhythm part in the PriPara movie. That pic is from the official site. Maybe I could find horrible quality photos of it on twitter if I searched hard. I don’t have the time though.
tfw you will never watch Hiro and Kouji’s xmas performance on a giant screen with thousands of other fans.
EDIT updated news part with PRAD bd box 2 covers revealed the 21st
Fanart poster made by artists fans of Pretty Rhythm. It was displayed at the event along other fan creations.
Pretty Rhythm’s anime is over. Arcade game machines too will start to be replaced by Pri Para machines this July. It’s way more abrupt than I predicted. When they announced Pri Para in March I thought they would remove them progressively. Like the article says, some Prism Stone shops will keep the game though, but they’ll stop selling memory passes, (so if I ever go back to Japan and want to play it I’ll probably have to buy one from someone)
Pretty Rhythm is done, completed, dead. So there was this event to commemorate it’s three years of service (four if you count from when the arcade game was launched)
I’m not living in Japan, so I didn’t attend. I really wanted to go though, and am really interested about what happened there, so just like with the xmas event, I looked around 2ch about it. Someone nice wrote a report of the talk show part, and they also published something about the event on Animate.
Been a while I wrote a long post like that. I read it because I’m interested in it myself and I know no one gonna translate it anytime soon. As it takes me some time to translate, writing things down is easier, so posts like these just come in naturally sorta. I’m reading and writing this first for myself. And more importantly, it’s fun.
Needless to say there’s spoilers for all three seasons so I wouldn’t recommend reading if you haven’t seen them all. It doesn’t spoil things too major, so I guess it’s still safe to read even if you haven’t seen Dear My Future as it’s not fully subbed yet. (Besides the horrible quality ones on youtube. I wonder if they’re still online)
Nekketsu Nikki 