POSTS IN THE SHELL

Show by Rock!! is the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

I am a sucker for iOS games. I have a dozen lined up, so when I run out of lives on one game, I can just open another and keep playing. My thirst for another music-based game, like Love Live! School Idol Festival, only grew over time.

Called SB69 by fans, (six being “roku”and nine being “ku” in Japanese), the game is exclusive to Japan’s iTunes store, and there is no sign of it coming to the U.S.

The premise is extremely similar to that of Love Live! School Idol Festival. You play songs and obtain currency to unlock better band members that earn more points. The band members you draw are random, which is all the fun. Will you get a boring normal rare card or will you get the special edition ultra rare?

The game was created and published by Geechs, in conjunction with Hello Kitty’s creators, Sanrio. All the characters are cute animals or yokai (Japanese spirits).

The game trumps LLSIF in the song department, as it has a variety of bands. The story mode forces you to play the same song multiple times, but the next time you play the song, it’ll be more difficult. Half the time, the song repeats happen so far from each other that I forget the song exists. No more grinding on the same annoying song, like in Love Live!

Each band has a unique sound. There’s a death metal pop girl band, a piano band, a band that plays songs that sound like anime openings from the early 90s — the list goes on. My favorite band is Tsurezurenaru Ayatsuri Mugenan, a folk-rock band with a cat dharma as a drummer.

Courtesy of Music Series Blog

The really fun thing about the bands is that a lot of them are based on real groups. They design the mascots to look like the band members.

Energy also generates twice as fast as it does in LLSIF, meaning you get to play more.

SB69 also had a short anime adaptation, following the story of the main two bands, Plasmagica and Shingan Crimsonz. While I found the anime hard to get through, the special songs made for it were phenomenal.

The game is incredibly addicting if you need a good time-waster, though you’ll have to make a Japanese iTunes account and cop it through there. If you need help getting started, and you don’t know Japanese, this blog is super helpful.

The anime ending also goes suspiciously well with the Double Dream Hands Guy’s dancing.