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shivalriesEnsemble Stars!! Production Team Special Interview
A full interview with main scenario writer Akira and Happy Elements staff working on Enstars!! Here, we’ll be looking behind the scenes of Enstars!! development with the people who bring to life one of the main appeals of Enstars!!, its massive and in-depth story.
T/N: This interview was included in the summer edition 5th anniversary magazine, released in summer 2020 during the first year of !!.
Disclaimer: All word choices and expressions in the following unofficial translation belong to the translator, and may not be representative of the real thoughts and opinions of the participants in this interview.
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Members
Akira
Main scenario writer for the Enstars series. Along with the game stories, has also written the novels and edited the script for the TV anime series.
K.K.
Team leader for the Enstars series. Responsible for decision-making and overseeing the entire project.
M.T.
Happy Elements employee and content director for the Enstars series. Oversees setting, scenario, outfits, and other creative elements.
Kino Seitarou
Happy Elements employee and scenario writer for the Enstars series. In charge of themed scout stories, etc.
Nishioka Maiko
Happy Elements employee and scenario writer for the Enstars series. In charge of themed scout stories, etc.
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—As the series reaches its fifth anniversary, we'd like to hear your honest feelings.
Akira: Tired, is all I can say right now.
K.K.: Akira-sensei only just recently finished writing the main story [for !!], after all. Not to mention, we wanted the event "Partake / Night Club", featuring Crazy:B and 2wink, to be released after the final release of the main story, which had him working very hard. On top of that, we had some very specific instructions for him, as we wanted every character to appear [in the main story], and we wanted it to be written from the point of view of new characters so it would be easier for new players to follow. Plus, while he was writing all that, Akira-sensei was also still writing stories for "!" and editing the script for the anime. Add on new idol stories for every character, including the new additions to the cast, and it was an extremely tight writing schedule for him. I'm really glad that we managed to release the game and complete the main story to the end.
Akira: Gosh, so am I! The original "!" main story was already 134 chapters, but the "!!" one ended up almost double that at 226 chapters. It was such an ordeal to bring it to life that I don't ever want to do it again, to be honest. (laughs) Back when I was writing "!" main story, we started from nothing, but that meant we could do anything with it; the "!!" main story, on the other hand, has 5 years of content behind it, so the story had the added difficulty of needing to both appeal to existing fans and be easy for new players to follow as a new title in the series...
—Back in the early development of Enstars!, what kinds of discussions did you have between the development team and Akira-sensei?
Akira: Did we actually discuss anything...? I get the feeling I was just told one day that we were going to make a boy version of Engirls and I was like, "Oh, okay then!"
K.K.: At first, we were going to call it "Ensemble Boys!" We wanted Akira-sensei to write for it since it's based on Engirls, but we were worried that it might be difficult to write for both apps at the same time. So we tentatively asked, "...Would you be willing to discuss it with us?" and were met with enthusiastic approval.
Akira: Yeah, I actually said, "Yes, I wanna write that!" Now that I think about it, maybe that wasn't something I should've agreed to so quickly. (laughs) And that’s how I started writing a josei-muke title... I did a whole lot of thinking after that. I asked every woman I met what kinds of media they're into, and then I read them all myself. Essentially, I started writing only after I did my research.
However, once I got into it, the parts I wrote that I perceived to be important aspects of josei-muke just didn't work like they were supposed to. (laughs) For example, there were instances where I thought it'd be better to compliment the protagonist (player), yet they didn't land with the audience. I was like, "I-I thought it was good, though..." (laughs wryly) It was around the time of "Farewell! Festival of Memories and Quarrels" that I concluded it'd be best to just write like I normally do.
Also, at first I thought Enstars! was going to be a school story, so when I was told it was going to be about idols, I was like, "Whoa, what?!" What was that all about, anyway?
K.K.: Well, we realized that one of our failings with Engirls was that it was difficult to promote a story about normal students living out their youth, so we wanted a catchy gimmick that would draw in new players. After much consideration, we finally decided on the orthodox route of idols.
Akira: A while after our first discussions, suddenly they were like, "It's going to be an idol game! It'll be called Ensemble Stars!" Like, back up and explain yourselves first! (laughs)
K.K.: Even then, we didn't think this was enough to make it appealing, so we started adding special powers to the characters and things like that. Some elements from that planning stage remain in canon, like the Sakuma brothers being vampires...
Akira: Kanata was also a robot at first, huh. Robots would short-circuit if they touched water, so that was why he couldn't swim. I think Chiaki also had some kind of painful superpower, like being able to transfer other people's wounds onto himself.
M.T.: The character prototypes we created were all based on archetypes you often see in josei-muke content, so we were just trying to think of ways to expand on those to hook in players' interest. It would’ve easily gotten out of hand if we actually put all that supernatural stuff into the story, so we mostly used those ideas only to help flesh out the characters.
—Akira-sensei, what was your impression of idols at the time?
Akira: Well, I didn't have a personal interest in idols, so instead of trying too hard to stick to the idol idea, I looked for other ways to make the characters pop. People who like idols will naturally be drawn to the idol part, while people who aren't interested in idols will likely latch on to the other parts—at least, that's how I’ve always interpreted it. But because the characters are idols, the live performances have to be the most exciting parts in a story. That’s how they started talking so much onstage. I was bullied so much for that, but what was I supposed to do...?! (laughs) Now that "!!" is out, you can view the live performances in MVs instead, which is really great news for me.
—What were your approaches during Enstars' early development?
Akira: I think everybody just wanted to try our hardest to incorporate everything we wanted to do.
M.T.: Live performance scenes are a must, and we’re steering clear of fantasy elements... I think that’s about it.
K.K.: I wanted to make sure we could have Akira-sensei write the story in the best environment possible, since I think that benefits both players and staff. The development team almost never asks Akira-sensei to make huge fixes to his scenarios. When we ran into the age rating issue recently, we really didn’t want to have to change too much, though there were, in the end, some things we had to let go of.
—Are there any rules among the scenario writers?
Nishioka: Characterization is always checked by Akira-sensei, but also, all company writers try to study his writing style. It's not easy to mimic his literary style, sure, but what's even harder for me is memorizing the inherent rules in the way he writes his sentences. We all tend to have our own little writing quirks, after all, but if I forget to clean up those quirks in my writing, I'll get feedback like, "This expression has never been used like this before." So I've tried hard to memorize everything! Also, we have an in-house system tool that lets us check past dialogue. So if I’m wondering if an expression I want to use has been used before, I can just enter it into the tool and search it up. If it turns out that it hasn’t, then I'll think of a different way to write it.
We also have a tool that can search up whether or not two characters have interacted before. This is also super useful—"!" story repeated the same year over and over again, so character relationships are important to know before you even start writing. I'm careful not to write things like "nice to meet you" if the characters have already met, for example.
—In the five years Enstars has been running, when did you feel the most "in a pinch"?
K.K.: Well... It kind of feels like we're always in one. (laughs) We're always very busy on the day an event starts, and it feels like we're always pressed for time every day. But on the other hand, we don't usually set any particular profit goals and we're not really trying to compete with other games. In a business sense, then, you could say we've never been in a pinch.
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—What was the hardest part of developing the new app?
M.T.: Making the initial character settings for the new units ALKALOID and Crazy:B was pretty difficult. The existing characters all have their own backgrounds and characteristics already, so we had to come up with profiles that would fit in...
Akira: It was tough! We pondered over it for practically forever.
M.T.: It really took a while before it started coming together. It wasn't easy to create characters with novelty. They would either stray too close to existing characters, or end up feeling too cliche because we focused too hard on making them easy for players to love.
Kino: Finally we landed on the thought that we don't have an antihero.
Akira: I was like, "We have Eichi, don't we?!" We really have a character for every archetype...
M.T.: When building the concept for the protagonist unit of !!, we didn't want them to be too much like Trickstar. So we thought it would feel more fresh if we went in the opposite direction...
Akira: That's how ALKALOID and Crazy:B's relationship became the direct opposite of Trickstar and fine. Now, the fine-type unit is the protagonist, and the Trickstar-type unit is their enemy.
Kino: I'm glad the main story ended with such a satisfying finale. It wrapped everything up well.
Akira: We needed to make Crazy:B's "poison" really strong, otherwise they wouldn't be seen as the bad guys. They were created to be antagonists—dark heroes who would attack the protagonists from a different angle than Eichi would have. Because the leaders of ALKALOID and Crazy:B are brothers, we were able to create that tension without it seeming too unnatural.
M.T.: Originally, they weren't going to be brothers. We started by trying to figure out a way to make 8 new characters clash with each other like Trickstar and fine did, and that's when the sibling idea came up. Around the time we told Akira-sensei about this, the team was still going back and forth on the character settings.
Akira: At the end of the main story, Hiiro saves Rinne. I think that his reason being "because we are brothers" could easily resonate with people.
—There are over 50 characters in the game now. Are there any that changed a lot from their initial concept?
M.T.: When we first conceptualized Mika and Kohaku, they didn't have accents. Dialects paint a very particular image of characters, after all. After Mika, I never thought we'd have a second character like that.
Akira: If I recall correctly, we started from wanting to give Kohaku a personalized first-person pronoun.* But there aren't that many choices. After thinking it over, we added orecchi, washi and HiMERU first-person pronouns to the new characters. (laughs) When we thought of "HiMERU", even I was like, "oh, he's a moe character, huh?!"**
*The "I/me" pronoun, of which there are many choices in Japanese. Some pronouns are more commonly used in certain dialects than others.
**Using one's name in place of "I/me" is often done by children in Japanese, so it can sound childish and cutesy.
Kino: HiMERU ends his sentences with "na no desu", too. *
*Often used by cute anime characters, especially young girls (think Himari from Engirls).
Akira: Right? Isn't he so cute?
K.K.: The team was divided on Tatsumi's "desu na" as well.
Akira: Oh right, I was so shocked when they told me to change it because it apparently made him sound like an otaku! (laughs)
M.T.: There was a lot of pressure to make sure our players would accept the new characters, so of course it would start sounding that way to us. (laughs wryly)
Akira: As an otaku myself, I felt kind of defensive. I was like, "I'll protect Tatsumi."*
*Said in the same way Adonis says his "I'll protect the weak" line. lmao
M.T.: It eventually came to light that Akira-sensei had a different interpretation of "desu na" from the rest of us. Upon reading over it later, we came to understand Tatsumi's gentle "desu na" delivery.
Akira: See, I always thought it had a mature butler-type or John Travolta-type feel to it. So when they told me it sounded like an otaku, I was like "AHHH!"
Everyone: (laughs)
—It seems hard to keep all the speech styles and dialects consistent in the story.
Kino: The characters' dialects aren't true to life—some elements have been purposefully changed so that they're not pointing to any region in particular. The job never ends when it comes to fixing their speech styles.
Akira: Plus, if we're too strict about it, meanings can get lost.
Nishioka: I'm from Kansai, so whenever I write Mika or Kohaku, their accent gets stronger. It's really often that I review what their speech styles are supposed to look like and go, "Wait, they say that in standard dialect!"
Akira: I think it's actually harder for someone from Kansai to write them.
Nishioka: Yeah, I’m always making fixes to my writing. (laughs)
—So, there have been a lot of internal changes and new challenges and issues that came up during the transition from ! to !!. What kinds of things did you discuss when creating the new setting?
Akira: We all thought for a really long time before settling on this setting. Unlike "!", we didn't have much of a starting point for "!!". I remember asking the team to come up with flaws, goals, and idol dreams for each character. Whenever they came back with a stock answer like, "I want to make everyone smile~", I'd go, "This isn't a job interview!" and ask for a more dramatic setting.
Nishioka: After that, we started passing a survey around the company asking for honest opinions, or even just keywords or elements. I just wrote down things I thought would excite me. (laughs)
Akira: I remember getting one that said, "I want to see Chiaki turn evil" and thinking, "I would feel bad doing that to him..." (laughs)
K.K.: Since "!!" started, I moved from just offering basic ideas to taking more of an editorial role. Picking and choosing ideas is one thing, but I mostly thought it'd help with inspiration. Lately, we've been meeting and brainstorming together to figure out how to bring out Akira-sensei's various ideas.
Akira: It helps me more to have feedback.
K.K.: "Become a real idol" was a slogan the team came up with together.
Akira: That was pretty sudden, too~ I was kinda shocked when I heard it, like, "so they weren't real idols before?!" (laughs)
K.K.: It was a little unreasonable, I agree. (laughs) I thought it’d be nice, for example, if we'd take a character like Koga, then we'd brainstorm together on what it would mean for him to be a "real idol" and try to create good content from that. The slogan is meant for all characters, not just for ALKALOID and Crazy:B.
Akira: I spent a whole 200-plus chapters exploring what "real" and "fake" mean in the main story, but I still haven't reached an answer to what being a real idol means.
Kino: That's how Akira-sensei tends to write—he starts with a thesis statement, then writes about it from various viewpoints. Different characters will approach this overarching theme in different ways. For example, "Partake / Night Club" is an interesting read because everyone has different opinions that overlap with one another. I often refer to this theme-centered writing style when I write, too—using the same basic approach as Akira-sensei, I think about how each character would think in a given situation. If I only focused on mimicking his style, my writing would come out more superficial.
—Please share your thoughts on the first half of Enstars' fifth year, and what you're looking forward to in the second half.
K.K.: While other writers will handle the shuffle event stories and scout stories, Akira-sensei will be writing all the song event and tour event stories. We have new songs for every unit lined up and will release them throughout the year, so I think that'll be exciting.
Akira: I've already submitted plot ideas for all the new song events.
K.K.: Right. We receive plot outlines before making the MVs, then we have the lyrics written.
Akira: The song lyrics always come out perfect before I finish writing the stories. It’s so scary—they’re like prophecies! The people working on our songs are geniuses. By the way, the most terrifying song so far has been Deadmanz' "Death Game Holic". I hadn't finished the story when they were written, so I think those lyrics were created from next to nothing. When I first read them, I was like, “This is scaring me!”
K.K.: Now we have a regular workflow, starting from plot submission, then going to song writing, then writing the story while looking at the MV. I wonder if you've gotten any inspiration from the songs while writing?
Akira: ALKALOID and Crazy:B's songs were finished early on, so there was a lot I took from those songs and expanded on. It's like the songs and story are performing in an "ensemble".
—Is there anything you can share with us about where Enstars!! is going from here?
K.K.: It's been tough lately after Ensemble Stars! Starry Stage 3rd and the Ensemble Stars! TV Anime Fan Meeting Tour got canceled. It's really a shame, since we had so much planned. I think the Music app will be okay, though, since we have the motion capture recorded for MVs at least half a year before the actual in-game release.
Kino: As for the story, the characters' general progression has been planned until 2021. The main story's been released now, so we can have Akira-sensei come up with more developments.
Akira: You need to tell me as soon as possible, okay? Don't just lay it on me like that. (laughs)
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More interview parts in progress... When I have time to do them...
Memories of the 1st year
Memories of the 2nd year
Memories of the 3rd year
Memories of the 4th year
Memories of the 5th year
