Trivia / Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE

• Acclaimed Flop: Despite good to stellar reviews in both Japan and the US by critics and players alike, the game sold poorly due to poor marketing and bitter fandoms which were exacerbated by the Audience-Alienating Premise and Contested Sequel nature of the game. It also came out near the end of the Wii U's troubled life when few people were interested in it anymore. It sold only around 33,000 units in Japan and 50,000 units in the U.S. For reference, Shin Megami Tensei IV sold 188,562 in its first week, Fire Emblem Fates ended up selling 303,666 in the same amount of time, and Persona 5 debuted with 337,767 on the PS4 / PS3.
  • The Switch port did mildly better, selling just short of 40,000 copies in its launch month, though it then dropped off the sales chart in the following month.
• Actor Allusion:
  • This wouldn't be the first time Tiki was an idol, she was even an idol manager at one point and later became an idol AI navigator.
  • This isn't the first time Maiko drank and partied hard; remember the infamous club visit back in Iwatodai when all of the girls were partying like it was the end of the world?
  • An Idol Singer voiced by Yoshino Nanjo...are we talking about Kiria, or Eli Ayase?
    • Her Mirage, Tharja, also shares Shirabe Tsukuyomi's penchant for vocalizing "staaaaares".
• Actor-Shared Background: Ellie's dub actor for Fire Emblem Heroes, Jenny Yokobori, is also half-Japanese.
• The Cast Show Off: A challenge of casting (and localization), as said during the Treehouse stream, was that many of the voice actors NEEDED to be this. Due to the central theme being the entertainment industry, which includes music, many of the actors involved had to be capable of singing. This is likely part of the reason why the game lacks an English dub.
• Dawson Casting: Most of the teenage/young adult main characters are voiced by actors in their early thirties. The most egregious example is 29-year-old Kaori Fukuhara as eleven-year-old Mamori Minamoto.
• Development Gag: Encore allows players to give Tsubasa a pair of glasses. Glasses were part of her original design concept, which didn't make it to her final design in the original release.
• Fake American: Yuichi Nakamura as Barry Goodman.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While all other DLC survive in the Switch port, the Japan-only Hot Springs DLC and its rewards remain Wii U exclusive due to all versions of the Switch port being based on the international release of the original game instead. Because the Wii U eShop shuttered on March 27th, 2023, it cannot be bought anymore.
• Meaningful Release Date: Possibly unintentional, but the date of the game's Australian release (June 25) is the one-year anniversary of the release of Fire Emblem Fates in Japan.
• No Dub for You: The international releases don't have localized audio tracks and instead keep the Japanese audio. This was partially due to Atlus wanting to keep up the Japanese atmosphere and setting, but they also mentioned that the game's focus on music meant hiring the right voice actors and changing all the songs would increase the workload considerably and push the international release back a year.
• No Export for You: The "Hotsprings DLC" - which unlocked bathing suit alternate costumes for the characters - was deemed too inappropriate to localize for the NA release.
• Role Reprise:
  • Tomokazu Sugita returns as Chrom.
  • Kana Akutsu is back as Tharja.
  • Hiromichi Kogami reprises his role as Virion.
  • Voice acting chameleon Takehito Koyasu returns as Navarre, almost twenty years after he voiced him in the OVA, as well as Lon'qu.
• Stillborn Franchise: According to the game's producer, this game was meant to kickstart a series of Shin Megami Tensei-inspired franchise crossovers with different IPs, with ♯FE being the first one. Due to the low sales mentioned above, the Audience-Alienating Premise, or maybe even both, another game with this premise might not be seen anytime soon.
• The Other Darrin:
  • From the 1990s OVA, Caeda, Jagen, Cain, Draug, Abel, Gordin, and Gharnef all have new voice actors. In the case of Jagen and Gharnef, their original voice actors died before the game was even released.
  • Tiki is voiced by Sumire Morohoshi in this game rather than Ikue Otani.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Nintendo initially wanted Fire Emblem to cross over with Pokemon. However, TPCI already had a crossover planned which would become Pokémon Conquest.
  • The E3 trailer for the game suggested that the game was going to get a "M" rating. It ultimately got a "T" rating instead.
  • A concert for ♯FE Encore was meant to take place, but was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and unfortunately never rescheduled. However, as compensation, remastered versions of some of the game's songs were released.
• Working Title: Stainless. The original name for the entertainment agency appears to be 'Stainless Entertainment', so it is connected in some way. A few placeholder graphics also call the game Fire Emblem Tensei ~A1 version~. Likewise, as everyone knows, this was originally announced as Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem.

General

• The risque content and mature humor (such as references to erotic modeling in the Gravure industry and the female characters's skimpy show outfits) caused the game to get a M rating from the ESRB when it was officially revealed. This led to the game being highly censored for the overseas market. Despite the coming of the Switch era, when Nintendo lessens up the censorship standards, the Switch re-release would be based on the censored overseas version for all regions.
• The dance numbers were choreographed by professional dancers.
• A lot of the original music was produced by Avex Group with professional song writers writing the lyrics.

---