Trivia / THE iDOLM@STER: SideM

• Actor Allusion: Shoma's voice actor, Yutaka Balleta, likes going to maid cafes as much as his character does.
• Ascended Fanon: Ken's clumsiness. At first, it was a joke about the game's hiccups being blamed on Ken, but eventually later installments gave him the capacity to make mistakes.
• Blooper: Episode of Jupiter features a staff member with his whole lower body from the arms down gone during the Saitou montage.
• Breakup Breakout: For Ryo, obviously, given that he remains the most well known member of Dearly Stars after moving to 315.
• Development Gag: Amehiko's starring role in Onmyouji Wars ~The Two Ordained by Fate~, as Abe-no-Seimei, is an out of universe nod to his character being based off of the historical figure.
• No Export for You: The vanilla game, Live on Stage!, and GROWING STARS are not available in other languages (aside from South Korea, obviously) outside of Japan. You can still easily play them on a non-Japanese phone however, and unlike Cinderella Girls you don't need a Japanese phone number to play the mobage game. The only restriction you have is not being able to send or receive gifts with other players (for understandable reasons), otherwise the entire game can easily be enjoyed by a non-Japanese player.
• The Other Darrin: With Kazuki's seiyuu Tatsuya Tokutake retiring from all of his voice roles at the end of December 2019, Shun'ya Hiruma took over as his seiyuu from 2020 onwards.
• Role Reprise: Despite having been years since the character has had new voice clips as well as SideM otherwise having an all-male voice cast, Yuko Sanpei reprises her role as Ryo from Dearly Stars.
• Screwed by the Network: It's not the first iM@S title that went through it, but this side of the franchise gets some harsh treatment. While SideM does well in its collaborations and concerts, it's been in the gaming realm where trouble followed. Live on St@ge! was terminated in 2021, but left GROWING STARS as a replacement. January 2023 would similarly terminate the original game, but at least left an archive website of key events and illustrations. Despite early fears, GROWING STARS was doing well for a title of its demographic and genre, but by the time April 2023 hit, the executive producers on-stream admitted that the game was shutting down come July, leaving SideM the only main branch without a title game. At least they're featured in the Milestone Celebration games, right? Not exactly—they only appear as rivals in Starlit Season, while in Tours they were left out of the testing phase entirely despite being in the key visual.
• What Could Have Been: The New Idol Discovery Project members were supposed to be chosen as members of Legenders by poll. After Amehiko, Sora, and Chris were chosen, the remaining members were stuck in limbo, having no voices or sprites beyond their initial introductory ones.

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