"Not Calm!" The Realistic Feel Supporting the Aikatsu! Boom That Has Elementary School Girls Obsessed

Young elementary school girls and their parents line up at card game machines installed in AEON Malls. Two years after "Aikatsu! -Idol Katsudou!-" debuted, total shipments of cards used in the game machines and Data Carddass surpassed 100 million (as of March 2014). Aikatsu! permeated young girls' lives through a media mix strategy encompassing games, anime, web content, and merchandise. Why did Aikatsu! become such a massive phenomenon? We spoke with Mr. Tsuyoshi Hirose, who oversees the Aikatsu! card game at Bandai; Ms. Kayoko Hashimoto, who handles merchandise development at the same company; and Mr. Takanori Ito, the anime producer at Sunrise, about how they crafted the worldview that captivates young girls and their branding strategy.

──What do you think made the card game so popular with young girls?

Hirose: Aikatsu! is a game playable for 100 yen that combines fashion coordination via cards with rhythm gameplay. Branded as the "Nationwide Idol Audition Game," its story revolves around aiming to become a top idol through gameplay.

Card games have traditionally been a boys' pastime. When targeting lower elementary school girls this time, our biggest focus was "realism." Compared to boys, girls tend to have a higher mental age and avoid so-called "pretend play" like hero themes, finding them childish. So, we aimed to let them enjoy the game world by creating the real-world profession of idols and the audition system.

Hashimoto: While "Pretty Cure" serves as role-play for girls, it's primarily for preschool-aged girls. When they enter elementary school, they "graduate" from it and start showing interest in more mature things like fashion. Pretty Cure is for kindergarten, and Aikatsu! for elementary school – that's how the market has segmented.

Hirose: The fact that idols have become such familiar figures is also significant. For Aikatsu!'s promotions, we've featured special collaboration partners like Tomomi Itano and Haruka Shimazaki. Girls have always admired idols, but the closer proximity to idols in this era has made them more realistic objects of aspiration.

──How about the anime?

Ito: The anime is set at Starlight Academy, where middle school girls strive to become idols. The first two years centered on Ichigo Hoshimiya, but the third year focuses on Akari Ozora.

Since the core target is first to third graders, the dialogue is easy to understand, while still offering a universal story that parents watching together can enjoy. Aikatsu! unifies its worldview so fans can enjoy either the game or anime seamlessly. I feel this younger elementary school girl demographic is the perfect age to genuinely enjoy all the media—anime, games, and merchandise—without reservation. Older girls might secretly watch the anime but feel embarrassed about the games or merchandise, or conversely, collect the goods but avoid the anime.

Hirose: Having middle schoolers as the main characters also gives them that just-right sense of aspiration for our target audience. If they were high schoolers, it would feel too far beyond the girls' imagination—like something for adults, too early for them—and they'd lose interest.

──The merchandise featured in the anime is also hugely popular with young girls.

Hashimoto: Within the anime, multiple fashion brands appear, each with distinct personalities like cute, pop, cool, or sexy. Characters also have signature brand coordinates, where fashion further accentuates their individuality.

Therefore, the fashion goods developed for Aikatsu! aren't character-themed clothes, but genuine fashion items from the brands appearing in the anime. In the story, the characters strive in Aikatsu! because they want dresses, so this worldview aligns with the children playing Aikatsu! in the game.

Ito: For non-fashion items, we also consciously develop goods based on items appearing at Starlight Academy. Coordinating the anime production schedule with the product development schedule is quite challenging since they're completely separate... We share information from the initial concept stage—what products we're planning, what's possible, what names we're considering—and incorporate that into the story. The ideal is for children to be able to get their hands on the same item the very next day after it appears in the anime, making them happy. We strive to link product development and the story as much as possible, maintaining close communication within the entire project team on a daily basis to ensure we don't miss the timing.

Hashimoto: Bandai often makes proposals, but sometimes the anime team suggests ideas they want to explore, and we incorporate those into the products too.

Ito: It's not just simple character merchandising where we introduce products in the anime to sell them. We communicate things like, "The story will develop this way in the future, so having this kind of item would make the program's direction easier," and we have them utilize that in product development.

Hirose: The game also updates every two months with new fashion and songs, linking directly with the anime. This level of rapid updates is unprecedented for arcade games.

What's truly appreciated is how the game, anime, and merchandise teams all go all out to pick up each other's proposals and interesting ideas, then deliver them in a fun way. It's a project with strong team cohesion, and because we can support each other, this kind of development becomes possible.

──Where was the breakthrough point for Aikatsu!?

Hirose: It launched in October 2012, and we started sensing signs of a boom around the end of that year. We saw kids walking around humming "Ai! Katsu! Ai! Katsu!" and within the project, we talked about how awareness had clearly grown. Once winter break started, kids who had been wanting to play the game probably all started playing it at once.

I felt it truly became a boom around early February 2013. The Data Carddass Aikatsu! series is divided into six waves per year, and it exploded during the third wave of its first year. That spring break, we held an event touring AEON Malls nationwide. We were overwhelmed by the turnout—around 16,000 people (total across 5 events)—so many that the malls couldn't contain them all.

By summer, products were selling out, and opening new shops meant huge lines—the passion for Aikatsu! was really heating up.

Ito: Regarding the character driving the boom, Yurika Todo, who debuted in the third wave, is hugely popular. She's known as "Yurika-sama." Also, more kids started mimicking the catchphrase "Not calm at all!" from the character Aoi Kiriyama.

Hashimoto: The gothic lolita fashion brand "LoLi GoThiC," which debuted alongside Yurika-sama, also became hugely popular. Children's fashion trends tend to follow adult trends by about 5-6 years, and gothic lolita perfectly hit that timing. What's become commonplace for adults—gothic lolita fashion—seemed novel and appealing to kids.

Ito: Yurika-sama is usually a reserved girl, but when she becomes an idol, she transforms into a vampire character with a Gothic Lolita look. That huge shift from her everyday life to being an idol is probably a big part of why it's so interesting and popular.

Next time (scheduled for update on 10/15), we'll also ask about strategies for successful media mixes and the intriguing future developments.