Because I like to reuse panels!
Picup, not to be confused with Picu Producer (shorten to PicuP; Picup’s hot shot Producer of 765 in the iDOLM@STER series!), is the crazy fangirl who runs the quiet space of justice to believe. She likes to believe she is a hero, but she just likes to call people ‘a hero’ if they do something awesome, or just awesome (like Chihaya!), but in actuality she’s a full-time University student, part-time electronics associate for a store no one probably has heard of, iDOLM@STER MAD enthusiastic, gamer, and much more…
She lives in the icy, cold, hockey-filled land of Canada, spending her entire life here, although she wishes to venture outside the cold land one day. She dreams of studying in Nagoya, Japan on a business exchange, and will eventually make it (or she hopes so). Perhaps the career she pursues will lead her to outside the cold land… (or so she would like).
Picup spends her time being a hero! studying, playing games (mostly computer games at the moment while she neglects her consoles), rummaging through her stacks of iM@S manga in poor attempts to translate and improve her Japanese, working, and doing other random stuff. Other than having a successful career, she wants to become a great MAD-er and continues to watch MADs when she has time in order to go down this path.
Picup’s Favorites:
Anime: Steins;Gate, Fate/Zero, Busou Renkin, Ga-rei Zero, Macross Frontier, S.A. Special A
Manga: Eureka 7, Busou Renkin, Shakugan no Shana, Gurren Lagann
Games: Fatal Frame Series, Final Fantasy IV, The iDOLM@STER, Assassins Creed Series, tales of Series, Valkyria Chronicles, Trauma Center Series, Wild Arms Series, Sakura Wars Series
Music: (All Jpop) Perfume, flumpool, Bump of Chicken, Nishino Kana, AAA, Ikimonogakari, LAST ALLIANCE
Male Character: Welkin Gunther from Valkyria Chronicles
(Runner Up: Rintaro Okabe from Steins;Gate)
Female Character: Chihaya Kisaragi from The iDOLM@STER series
(Runner Up: Irisviel von Einzbern from Fate/Zero)
More to be added, but do suggest some if you can think of any!
justice to believe:
justice to believe started way back as a livejournal account Picup use to tend to for years. Due to livejournal’s buggy nature, somewhat distant community (hard to interact with others unless from somewhere else, or you were a very frequent community member), and the fact it was getting too clogged up, she closed shop and started out a wordpress blog.
justice to believe, if you don’t recognize it, is a Mizuki Nana song, which is also the opening to PS2 RPG, Wild Arms 5. Picup enjoyed the name, ‘justice to believe’ so much, she started to use it as a name for her blogging needs.
While it looks super quiet at the moment, Picup is slowly getting back into the momentum of blogging. She likes to run segments/daily posts such as The iDOLM@STER Sunday MAD watching, and Spinning! series and will be diving back into those when she stops being lazy (which is almost never…).
now for a special sections for a name that’s been popping up frequently….
The iDOLM@STER:
What is the iDOLM@STER?
In a nut shell, the iDOLM@STER is originally a game released in the arcades by Namco Bandai Games. It featured nine girls who wanted to become idols in the music industry, and you starred as the newbie Producer, whose job was it to make these girls number one. It gained some monetum, and was ported to the Xbox 360. The iDOLM@STER’s popularity was vast, as it made registrations for Xbox Live shoot through the roof in Japan (supposedly). The sequels that follow The iDOLM@STER is: The iDOLM@STER Live For You! (360), The iDOLM@STER SP (PSP, although split into three different games), The iDOLM@STER Dearly Stars (DS), The iDOLM@STER 2 (360/PS3), and the iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls (iOS?).
From the original 9 you could produce, the cast has expanded to 13 (although, technically in 2 you only can produce 9 of them). Dearly Stars has it’s own set of characters, and Cinderella Girls has over 100!
How did you get into iDOLM@STER?
Back in 2009, the very first iDOLM@STER related contact I had, was a Perfume x iDOLM@STER MAD to the song Ceramic Girl. I was linked there from youtube related suggestions since I was looking up similar bands to Capsule (which I use to like way back when lol). I soon got kinda interested in what it was, and found out it had a spin-off anime. I decided to give iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia a go… Although I watched one episode and then stopped it after. After school ended that year, I picked it up again, and… got really addicted to it. You probably felt the pain I did after watching the last episode (haha, I bet you didn’t because Xenoglossia is hated by most iM@S fans), and I got curious on what iDOLM@STER really was.
That’s when I discovered the original Danketsu video (that was bundled with LE versions of L4U), and… well, the rest is kind of history from there.
Favorites in iM@S? (songs, characters, etc.)
I think it was pretty obvious if you snoop around enough, but my favorite character is Kisaragi Chihaya. While going into iM@S, it was honestly Kikuchi Makoto, I got into a Chihaya craze, and it’s settled down to just having her as my favorite. I enjoy Chihaya’s character and story the most throughout the series, and Asami Imai (her voice actor) isn’t that bad of a singer, and fits Chihaya very well.
Because of iM@S vast library of songs, it’s really hard to pick out one that I really love. Each character has a favorite tune from me, but there isn’t one I could really pin point as my favorite. But I suppose, if I were to really, really, really, really, really, choose, it would be Chihaya’s Nemurihime from Master Artist 2. Not just because it’s brilliantly sung, but it’s brilliantly composed. Go Shiina is my favorite Video Game composer of all time, and he deserves a lot of credit for doing such a masterpiece. I think Namco Bandai should let him do more compositions for their games, but alas, I don’t see it often ):
My Favorite iM@S “spin off” (basically, outside of the games), is both, the iDOLM@STER Puchimasu! manga, and the relations manga. You can probably see by the recent pictures of puchimasu around, it’s… just one of my favorites. The art is really well drawn (really cute!), the puchidorus are just adorable, and the insanity that faces Ritsuko and all the other idols is amazingly funny. The second manga I adore to death, is the relations manga. Set way back around the time of the iDOLM@STER 360 port, it’s a two volume manga that revolves around Miki, Chihaya, and Producer.
And last, but not least, my favorite pair of iDOLM@STER.
Chihaya and Producer, hands down. I don’t care what you haters gonna say, there’s something about Chihaya and Producer’s relationship that is super compelling and so… addictive.
What exactly do you own that’s iDOLM@STER?
I own most of the games, I think the only one I am missing is the Wondering Star version of The iDOLM@STER SP. I also own all of the manga that’s come out for The iDOLM@STER and The iDOLM@STER 2, the only series I don’t have is Break! (OUGOSEILFJSE), and Dearly Stars. I have the whole Dearly Stars CDs (all bought when I was still a new fan), Master Special 05, Master Piece 02, and the iDOLM@STER ANIM@TION series (the only good thing that’s come from that anime grumble grumble). I have a few other pieces of merchandise, including a Beach Queen Chihaya figurine and a casual Chihaya nendoroid.
Please don’t ask me how much this all cost me ._.;
Even after these years, what keeps you still in the series?
Funny question, because I fandom hop frequently. The iDOLM@STER, because it’s very Japanese-y and will never reach the shores of North America (or at least I hope it doesn’t, I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear it hearing it in English…), is for the most part, a very “unknown” series to a majority of people. There’s a lot to explore in the series and in the characters themselves, that I enjoy the depth that there is. I could sit here and probably argue with a majority of people who think Chihaya is a one-sided emo girl, or how Iori is just a tsundere b—-, but it’s honestly neither the time nor place to do it.
And if it’s not the idols themselves I’m finding more about, it’s their voice actors. I use to be a seiyuu nut back in the days, but now, it just seems like I follow only the iM@S seiyuus. A lot of them are pretty talented, but they don’t get a lot of jobs because they’re just not as popular as the big names. And you know, if they don’t do a lot of roles, that’s fine, because they seem to get caught up in random projects anyway…
All in all, there’s just a lot of things in this series that you can get into and fall in love with if you look hard enough. It’s honestly the catalyst for me to really really pursue my Japanese studies, funny enough.
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