pop'n music Lapistoria's new art style. Some enjoy it, others feel it's just not the same as the same style used in previous games.
Whether to refer to songs by their name or their "genre". The latter seems to be falling out of style as Lapistoria onwards no longer assigns genres to new songs.
Is playing with Beat-Pop (a note style that replicates the bichromic note style of beatmania rather than pop'n's four-color note style) cheating? Or it an acceptable way to play, especially given that it doesn't disqualify or reduce scores?
Die for Our Ship: Timer is canonically dating Nyami, despite her being in a One True Pairing with best friend Mimi (and to a much lesser extent, MZD, where Mimi and Nyami often gets shipped with). Expect him to get screwed over in fanfics because of this.
Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Although rare, you should NOT confuse Usanuko with UsaNeko, Usanuko is a Sunny Park character, while UsaNeko is the shortened variant of Usagi to ;;Neko to Shounen no Yume''.
The Pop'n shoutouts in Himouto! Umaru-chan. Few months later, the anime OP shows up in éclale as an actual license featuring Umaru herself as the song's character.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: When the scoring system was made easier for Lapistorianote previously, the Cool-Great-Good-Bad scoring ratio was 10:5:1:0; as of Lapistoria it is now 10:7:4:0, players were very, very unhappy, although part of the complaints stem from the fact that pre-Lapistoria songs are nearly impossible to convert to the current scoring scale without having the accompanying judgement counts on hand.
For many players, pop'n is an extremely daunting rhythm game series, right up there with beatmania IIDX. It's only saved due to having a visual style that appeals to a wider audience as well as a number of recognizable licenses, two factors that help draw in players in spite of the game's notoriously hard boss charts; IIDX meanwhile comes off as looking more "technical" due to its interface designs as well as having mostly in-house and comissioned songs that the average arcadegoer will most likely not recognize.
Beginning with pop'n music 20 fantasia, the COOL judgement is forced in Normal mode. This has led to even higher-end players complaining, as having COOL enabled means that a performance that otherwise nets a near-perfect score with COOL off can become a measly 50,000-60,000 pointsnote The max score is 100,000 play when COOL is enabled. Even after Lapistoria made the scoring scale more lenient, players still long to be able to use just the three lowest judgements.
Les Yay: Mimi and Nyami have quite a few Les Yay moments, such as the two of them holding hands and looking each other in the eyes near the end of the intro animation of Lapistoria (plus the two hugging like a couple in one of the animations in the said game), the two blushing in a win animation where they held a trophy, and Mimi kissing a Nyami doll in her Hajimete No Chuu animation.
Nightmare Fuel: ?'s miss animation is a zoom into their eye, suddenly showing a flowery eye.
Older Than They Think: UsaNeko is the first main version to have hold notes, but pop'n music MICKEY TUNES, released 16 years prior in 2000, was actually the first pop'n game to have them.
POE-Tan (created by Mamom Star 761), she's not exactly popular per se, but compared to other Pop'n Music OCs and fan characters, she has way more influence and has a lot more works featuring her, usually, the furthest Pop'n Music OCs got is just one artwork, and that's it, POE-Tan however, got somewhat far enough to get a fewfanmade redesigns of her along with a decent amount of fanarts. (No infringement intended)
Dingomi Sasaki (by Star Shine Sarah Jones) has potential into becoming this, as there's an increasing amount of fanart of her (especially that the character being given more exposure by Travis4205).
Scrappy Mechanic: Almost nobody uses the Random modifier (shuffles notes on a per-column basis) simply because of the "impossible" chords that can result; chords are always designed to be hittable with only the hands and a chord like white-red-white, which can be the result of a bad randomization, requires using the player's elbow to successfully hit. This is in contrast to beatmania IIDX, where most at the highest levels of play never play without Random.
Nyami and Mimi are frequently coupled with other Pop'n characters, the most common ships being those with MZD, or each-other.
Some fans may consider shipping Poet with Yuli.
Defied with Zizz and ALT, where fans would throw a fit with you, see Base-Breaking Character above.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: Lapistoria still has COOLs, but makes GREAT and GOOD judgements worth more points.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: fantasia forces the COOL judgement in all non-Easy modes, forcing players to use the more difficult scoring system that was originally exclusive to Cho-Challenge mode.
Soundtrack Dissonance: The game's overall design is bright and cheery, but the amount of provocative songs that have made their way into the game is astounding (see Tearjerker below for examples). On the flipside, playing as Zizz, the darkest character in the game and the only one that is clearly evil, and selecting over the top lighthearted songs like Dschengis Khan's Moskau, or the extremely romantic Hajimete no Chuu from Kiteretsu Daihyakka、also invokes this trope.
"Stop Having Fun" Guys: Some higher-end players will berate you if you don't use Cho-Challenge mode pre-fantasia, or if you use Beat-Pop.
Not convinced that a cute and cheerful game can be Nintendo Hard? Here you go. There's a reason why on Wikipedia, the article states that pop'n music has some of the hardest songs in any rhythm game.
Pop'n Music Peace has the song Bad Apple from Touhou Project. If you know anything about the song lyrics, you'll realize that it's a song about depression and having an existential crisis that the protagonist is facing.
The unveiling of Welcome to Wonderland! in 2020 was divisive (especially among international fans) due to its changes to the game itself, with its new cabinet using smaller buttons to fit in a Project Diva Arcade-esque touch strip for slide notes. Some of gone as far as hoping the game is treated as a Spin-Off alongside the "original" games rather than a replacement (with the theming of Peace, much like DDR Extreme, implicating the possibility that it was the final version), assessing it as skewing towards a more casual audience due to there not being hard charts on the JAEPO preview version, and its addition of Revenue-Enhancing Devices in the form of acrylic NFC charms of characters that could be used in-game. While some have argued that COVID-19 may have been a factor in why Welcome to Wonderland! and a rebooted jubeat (also shown at the convention) had been quietly shelved and not seen since JAEPO, the divisive reaction to the former didn't exactly help matters much either. Konami did eventually release a new, main pop'n game in December 2020.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Being a series with a ton of characters, a lot of characters only have one appearance. More recently, if the characters ever reappear, they would just reuse one of their previous animations. Kurumi is an example of a one-appearance character that almost got another appearance in Usaneko, reusing her pop'n 9 animations, but she got replaced with Cherumin in the final.
A number of fans have had to ask whether Timer is a guy or a girl, to the point where it even comes up in his Popper's Lounge interview. His detached sleeves, Zettai Ryouiki, and Cross Playing certainly doesn't help.
Toa. He is Nia's brother but dresses in an outfit almost identical to hers, with detached sleeves and Zettai Ryouiki just like Timer. This shows up in his story mode, where Nia has to correct the others when he's referred to as her sister.
Navi-kun in UsaNeko Is a robot boy who looks rather effeminate in a lot of his different appearances.
(created by Mamom Star 761), she's not exactly popular per se, but compared to other Pop'n Music OCs and fan characters, she has way more influence and has a lot more works featuring her, usually, the furthest Pop'n Music OCs got is just one artwork, and that's it, POE-Tan however, got somewhat far enough to get a few