So the new event landed yesterday afternoon and from what we were initially teased with, it would be the 4th story that integrates into Stan’s and Aliza’s storyline but to my surprise, while they did play an important part, most of the event were focused on new characters named Attiyah and Tabina.
At start, it looked like your typical casual event but when the event finally got to the part where the two are reunited, IT WAS CLEAR, IT WAS BOLLYWOOD (but seriously, my normie first impressions was that of a Disney movie), the couple sing and dance and mind you, THE SING AND DANCE SCENES ARE ABSOLUTELY UNSKIPPABLE unless you completely skip the entire chapter; the singing and dancing are not just in 1 chapter either, it had scenes in other chapters too and in order for the crew to actually beat the primal beast, Stan and Aliza had to join in the couple in the singing and dancing as, apparently, “Love” can quell the uncontrolled hatred that has affected the event’s featured beast.
Anyway, enough of the summary and let’s get down to my thoughts in the event. Generally, it’s a pretty fun event albeit a bit too cliche IMO, one of the strong points of the event for me was the fact that Tabina was voiced by Kaede Hondo, who also voiced Sakura Minamoto who is the main protagonist in another cygames property, the zombie idol anime “Zombieland Saga”, during the first bits of the event, she was absolutely killing with over the top hilarious and unconventional dialogue but when the event finally came to the singing and dancing, BOI, YOU ALREADY KNOW YOU’RE IN FOR A TREAT!
Another strong point of the event is actually branching out to another possible entire series of events which will now focus on Attiya and Tabina as things definitely have not settled down with the family grudge as seen in the ending; Tabina is also teased to be one of the new playable characters based from the ending (AND SHE’S A BOW PROF! THIS GAME NEEDS MORE BOW PROF!), it’s definitely a plus for me whenever GBF introduces new characters that have the potential to become your crewmates mainly because this allows them to expand the roster further and lessen the release of character variants especially for characters who already has a ton of variants already.
Now, as for Stan and Aliza, this event finally allows Stan to go back to your crew so we can definitely expect a new Stan unit in the upcoming part 2 of legfes; I like the Stan we see in this event as he seems to be a mix of how he was during Boots & Blades and the Hero & Princess event, a bit matured but still having some of the traits of the old Stan but he really needs to get a haircut though. Aliza, on the other hand, now has developed her martial arts as well as it was something she was struggling from during “A Thousand Reasons” so, in a sense, she has grown as a character thanks to this event. Hopefully, this also means that Aliza will be getting an FLB soon now that she has reached new heights. (But please give us Zeta FLB first)
I guess the disappointing part is that we never really see if they’re finally going to fight now that Stan is back in the crew and that both of them have grown as characters; not to mention, Stan chickens out on handing the flower from Boots & Blades at the very last minute but who knows, maybe more will be supplemented on their gacha units? But yeah, as an event that initially teased that it was bound to be a StanLiza event, I definitely had more expectations on how they will be developed but, in the end, nothing much has changed between the two and the event was mainly focused on molding Aliza than their actual relationship more than anything.
Recalling The Events of Aqours Sky High and the Aqours 2nd Years 5* Uncap Fate Episodes
Why is this necessary? Well, it’s because the Sunshine event is directly tied into the current Love Live event in more ways than you think it is. If you want to skip directly to my thoughts on the Love Live event, then please skip to this part.
Anyway, I’m recounting this based on how I remember the story so sorry if I miss a few details or get some of them wrong but basically… Aqours somehow got transported to the world of GBF and lands in a town called Tenacie whose residents are currently experiencing a severe case of having lost the will to do anything (basically even the will to actually live); your crew arrives to investigate and meets up with Chika and co and then later on, the negativity also latches into your main character and Io mainly who has now forgotten how to use their sword and magic respectively. This is later on revealed to be the influence of the Primal Beast of Nihility called Nihilith.
One thing, however, is clear, her influence doesn’t affect Aqours and so like any other good hearted people, they wanted to help the town and your crew and the only way they can do so is, of course, via putting on a Live performance; with the help of their songs, the town’s status has slightly improved but as they looked into using the particularly built stage in the town, Nihilith tries to stop them in their tracks, but during this time, the crew finally manages to snap out of Nihilith’s influence and manages to temporarily defeat her and thus the crew proceeds to helping Aqours set the stage up for their upcoming town live.
As the concert was finally near, it was then that Nihilith finally brings her all into stopping Aqours even as far as finally having a slightest bit of influence on them but, of course, Chika fights this off as she, of all people, knows how it feels to be nothing (probably the best point of the event) as that is what Aqours, as a group, had done in general, a jump from zero to one.
Throughout the event, you are somewhat absorbed to know more about Nihilith and would lead you thinking she would have some really beefy backstory but after beating her and Lyria absorbs her, it was finally revealed that she volunteered to become a primal because she was just a nobody, an ordinary girl; this for me was a slap in the face, as the event generally was already your average story (and the collab before it, Persona 5, was really good IMO), I really was expecting more from Nihilith because she does seem to be one of the main focuses of the event but when they presented that way, it definitely left a bad taste in me. But anyway, after this, Chika tells her that there’s nothing wrong with being an ordinary girl and the event finally gets resolved with Chika saying she wants to perform with Nihilith one day. The event also ends with Aqours hearing Start Dash from the townsfolk and it was then revealed that μ’s actually came to Tenacie way before they did and that it was them who introduced the concept of school idols into the town, to no one’s surprise, the anniversary stream earlier this year announced a collab of the original Love Live.
Once the FLB of Aqours 2nd Years came out, it tolds us of an event where Aqours is summoned back into the skies sometime after the high sky event, it was then a bit of a saving grace as more on Nihilith was revealed like with the relation as to why she uses blades as a primal, it was your typical jealous girl who tried everything to have the hero notice her but failed miserably; while cliche as it gets, it does give a better background for Nihilith than what was presented for her during the event proper; this also made a huge connection for Nihilith to Aqours especially after seeing how much effort Chika was exerting to transform Nihilith’s past feelings into that of a song as this plays an important role into shaping a certain character in the current Love Live event. Anyway, that’s the end of the recap, sorry for making it so lengthy but I had to cover the important bits of the past event.
The event is a prequel! or so I thought…
When it was announced earlier this year, I wasn’t hyped at all considering how much of a disappointment Sky High was, we (me and a good friend) even did a self-made bingo for the collab before it began.
The only thing I was really concerned for was if it was the prequel event or by some twist of fate, it might end up a prequel-sequel by having μ’s be recalled to the sky world and have them recount their first journey on Tenacie. Months passed and we finally neared the day of the collab and from the preview, it definitely sounded like a prequel and I was very convinced it was really a prequel.
When the event finally rolled its part 1, it definitely had the makings of a prequel and like any curious people who actually find time to read the stories, how will they fix the discontinuity established in the Aqours event that the crew didn’t know the members of μ’s? Simple, cygames adjusted portions of the Sky High story so that it will branch out if you have the units of μ’s.
Particularly the entire chapter 1, chapter 2 episodes 2 and 3 and the ending now have branched storylines making it so that your crew knows μ’s and that they confirm it with Chika that they’ve met them.
IT WAS A PREQUEL-SEQUEL AFTERALL!?
During the course of Door to the Skies part 1, we are introduced to a character summoned by the yet-to-be-revealed-primal beast, she introduces herself to the crew as Aina. She definitely seems to know a lot, about μ’s and school idols, she was definitely someone you’d define as fishy throughout part 1 as there was one part where Honoka’s questioned her like “so there are school idols in this world?” and Aina promptly responded with “no, not yet, just you.” and even shows to have the ability to sense/identify primal beasts.
This definitely cause some stir among discussions if whether she was post-Nihilith because of that one answer, but I was in disbelief at that time because this was obviously a prequel story and that’s just nonsense and impossible! They even branched the sky high story to fix the continuity errors! Little did I know that my own conclusion was gonna get shot down later on.
Part 2 finally came and BOY, DID IT COME WITH A RIDICULOUS TWIST! During the climax of the event, when the crew got separated from μ’s in the fake Akiba zone, it was Aina who maintained a way to find them by finding a projection of a school idol to which she comments as someone who μ’s had a huge impact on as that someone had the eyes like that of someone Aina knew; her actions definitely made her suspicious to Medusa because of the mystery around her, in the end, she shrugs it off and pleads for the crew to just trust her because she just want what’s good for both μ’s and the still unnamed Primal Beast.
When μ’s was finally about to get hit by the Unworldly Eidolon (the event’s main boss), suddenly familiar shadowy figures jump to help them out and familiar blades started spawning out and make their way towards the Eidolon.
It was at that moment that I realized that Cygames had done it, they pulled off a valkyrie profile 2! I was really surprised yet grinning about the whole thing as in that epic moment, the Love Live event had just became a prequel/sequel story to its predecessor event as this moment finally confirms the theory that Aina is in fact who people called “post-Nihilith” or at the very least, she’s a future version of Nihilith after the events of Aqours 2nd Years FLB story.
How Door To The Skies fixed up the mess that is Sky High
Sky High was definitely one of the blandest stories to hit GBF collabs in the recent years (Conan was fun, Persona 5 was GBF-lore heavy, Precure had so much respect to its franchise and Code Geass presented a very good what-if situation aside from giving justice to its featured characters), it never felt significant and it even had the balls to tease players about μ’s. Little did I know that it was all gonna make sense one year later. With the revelation of Aina’s true identity, it was then that I understood why Sky High had to happen first and why there was a need to mention μ’s, both Love Live events were made to develop a certain key character and it’s not anyone among Aqours nor is it anyone from μ’s, it was Nihilith all along. Imagine having the shock that FINALLY, the girl you referred to as “garbage tier boss backstory” in your joke of a bingo has now have some worth that you are happy with, she now has evolved from just an ordinary girl wanting to be special to someone who fights to make sure a certain event happens in the future so that it can ensure that the girl who once had nothing will eventually learn to shine just like how Aina currently is doing.
This definitely gave depth to why an event as bland as Sky High had to happen and while many things happened off screen, we definitely now know how much influence Aqours had on the primal beast of Nihility giving it more significance as an event due to her meeting with Aqours and how without it happening, μ’s probably would’ve been goners in the sky realm already. To add this, Aqours’ influence was confirmed by Aina herself during her parting words with the crew and μ’s.
Her parting words had so much gratitude and I felt that it definitely gave much respect to Aqours in general more than how their own event originally treated them. The Love Live collab was definitely something worthy of being a 9th anniversary collab story not just because of how much better they made μ’s interact with the people of the skies but also by expanding on the aftermath of a previous event and how much supplemental it is to know the events from Sky High to fully experience the main beef that Door to the Skies had to offer.
I’d like to go on with how much stuff I can discuss with Door to the Skies because it really is an interesting event as it also has contributions to GBF-side’s lore by developing Athena and showing a post-regular-Dirt-SSR-Medusa in the flesh and my favorite topic, the concept of TIME TRAVEL! But those are tales for another time I guess. Oh and btw, here’s our final bingo record hahaha
A Certain Skyfarer's Ramblings & Musings 