Happy Birthday, Mizuki Kawashima!!
“I choose who I produce.”
This has been a mantra that has been stuck in my head for a while ever since I’ve decided on a main tantou in Cinderella Girls. And that phrase popped up again when I decided on another CG tantou. For a long time since I got into the franchise in 2018, I didn’t have a no. 1 favorite idol in CG I was fully comfortable with, especially compared with how I found my main favorites in other branches.
I thought I could produce one type or be split between producing who I want… until I fell in love with a certain woman’s charm. This is a story of how I got to that point.
For a bit of background: I have been stuck in IM@S hell since 2018, as I started peeking into 765Pro and Cinderella Girls for a little bit but ended up focusing more on the latter’s shenanigans (and Million Live!, by extension) for a long while. I eventually started looking into more stuff outside of 765Pro in 2019 and gained some favorites from CG, SideM, and Shiny Colors by then. Entering early 2020, I had strong interest towards SideM and Million Live! so much that I focused heavily on these two branches for a good amount of time, but also got further into Shiny Colors and CG up to the point when I even tried all the active mobile games at the time. Alongside that, I started following Cinderella Girls more closely starting with getting into Deresute in April 2020, but I still looked at it from a mostly semi-casual perspective despite considering myself as a multi-branch producer. At some point I wondered if I would ever find a 20+ idol (outside of SideM) that I would gain strong interest in very strongly, in a similar way to what I felt about my main tantou (SideM’s Michio, in that case) by that point.
Here’s the first starting point: it was January 2021, I was peeking at parts of a conversation with some people on Discord. The guys were talking about CG at that time and one of the members posted a then-ongoing thread about her. I couldn’t fully remember what happened after but I looked into the thread and I just… understood. The more I read about her, the more she started to stand out among the idols I’ve been interested in so far.
Messages sent before disaster.
It was later within that month when I decided to just… simply produce her.
Since that conversation, I had been casually producing her alongside the rest of my CG favorites. My tantou lineup kept fluctuating over that year until I eventually stuck with a tantou trio of my no. 1 favorite per attribute: Uzuki for Cute, Mizuki for Cool, and Takumi for Passion.
My memories from that era feel like a blur today, but I remembered listening to her second solo, “Dreaming of you” and it resonated with me quite a lot. A thing I noted to myself was that if a character’s solo gets me interested in an idol in IM@S, this is a warning sign. That had only happened once to me before with SideM’s Michio… and it had happened again there in CG, of all places.
Another point that happened was that I waited for her bridal SSR to come home partially because I wanted to have at least one SSR of my top five CG girls at the time, and I got her after two 10-pulls when her rerun banner finally dropped. It was the first SSR I animated via the Premium Cut Film and I would often see the pink petals flying with the wind and her lovely blue dress flowing in the awakened card illustration. I also vaguely remembered even looking into her Memorial Commus in Deresute at some point later on.
My producing activities in CG were a more casual experience compared to how I treated my tantous in other branches, and I still couldn’t make up my mind on a true no. 1 favorite in CG by then.
Over a year passed by, and the day that could potentially ruin my life came: April 2, 2022, the first day of the CG 10th Anniversary tour's final leg. No one knew who was coming there when the cast list was a surprise until the day itself. I had the chance to watch the whole 4-hour long performance with some friends on another server and saw each voice actress of our favorite idols show up one by one. I watched Ayaka Ohashi (Uzuki) and Yuko Hara (Takumi) appearing excitedly during their respective first appearances.
Then she came on stage. “Orgel no Kobako” started playing. We had already seen the other performer (Chiyo Ousaki, Koume’s VA) earlier, but beside her was the woman behind Mizuki's voice: Nao Toyama.
I was tagged in that server while the other members talked about her during the show. Funnily enough, I didn’t initially know how much of an impact that performance would leave on me, but I did see so much of that brilliance in her stage presence and vocals that I wrote this to the chat and onto Twitter: “I have simply passed away.”
She may have only shown up on the first day but it didn’t matter too much. Both days of those performances went well and everything reaffirmed that I just grew to love the branch even more than before… especially Day 1’s performance.
As the following days passed, things began to sink in. I knew Mizuki had been peeking for a while – both as a character I didn’t look into at first and as a tantou early on – and Naobou’s performance was the final nail in the coffin. Looking back on the past few years up to that point, I just kept hearing people talk about Mizuki and the voice actress behind her in various places, but didn’t see people that truly consider her as a “tantou” among my circles. The days following that night had me constantly pondering why I was mesmerized by her in the first place, even up to the point where I jokingly said that I would be a Mizuki main temporarily due to the brain rot having a strong grip on me. By April 15, 2022, I finally found my no. 1 favorite CG idol and truly called myself a MizukiP.
Over the next several months, I thought of this phrase, “I choose who I produce,” when I reflected back on my tantou choices as I finally brought Kaede from just a regular favorite to a proper tantou. I chose who I produce not just because they appeal to me on the fly or serve, but because enough time was spent for them to grow on me as well, and over time they've left hints and signs that I think that some of them have grown on me over time. At that time, it applied to not just Kaede, but to all of my tantous as well… even Mizuki herself. There were some fleeting aspects and hints that I failed to mention – like how I started playing Deresute 1-2 months after her last event (Gaze and Gaze) happened, how the game’s 5th Anniversary (in which she was included in the lineup) was the first Deresute anniversary I partook in, and a few other things. I finally became a KaedeP and fully considered Tomoe as a fukutan – two idols associated with her that I’ve known since 2018 – partly because of her. (8/4/2024 edit: and later, also a tantou!)
I often looked back at that live performance and thought a lot about not only finding a proper main tantou, but also how much it left an impact on me as a Producer and somehow finding a new favorite voice actress in the franchise (which is another story of its own). Of course, I did have my regrets over not starting things a little earlier, but I am just relieved that I now have a clearer direction in where I want to go with the game and this branch… and with her. More than ever before.
So yeah, I ended up loving and appreciating her more over the past several months up to the point where she could rival my other main tantou, Michio, in many ways. I started out not fully knowing who my true favorite in CG was but now my tantou lineup in this branch has never felt this comfy.
I did finally find my own Cinderella… and I understand, truly. Happy birthday, Mizuki.