Hinatabi Chikuwa Hime Ketteisen - Who Shall Be The Chikuwa Princess?
Desheng Chen
As of Feb 24, 2016 a new Bemani event “Hinatabi Chikuwa Hime Ketteisen” has started. This is the very first Hinabitter-themed event held simultaneously on several Bemani games, and will also serve as the first popularity poll conducted for the Hinabitter girls.
The participating games are : Jubeat Prop, Gitadora Tri-boost, Museca, Pop’n Music Eclale, and Reflec Beat Volzza. The event’s main purpose is for fans to show their support for their favourite members of Hinabitter in the form of chikuwa votes. The winner will be the first ever Chikuwa Hime (Chikuwa Princess).
Why chikuwa? For a start, chikuwa is a Japanese fish paste food product. Chikuwa is a running joke in the Hinabitter saga, stemming from the song “Chikuwa parfait dayo ☆CKP”. In the song, Meu and Marika sings about how wonderful a chikuwa parfait (chikupa) is. In fact a parfait and chikuwa is not supposed to go together, one being a fish paste product and the other being a western dessert. The song became Hinabitter’s most well-known song and the chikupa became part of their identity.
Some cafés actually made and put chikupa on their menu thanks to this song.
In the event, five solo songs by each of the five girls can be unlocked. At the end of the event, the winning girl will have her second solo song unlocked as well. Also, through the official website of the event, fans can request costumes and poses for new illustrations to be drawn of the Hinabitter girls.
<How to play>
The very first step of the event is to become a fanclub member. This can be done in one of two ways.
1) Unlock any of the five solo songs to become a fanclub member of that girl.
2) Buy any one of the Five Drops albums to obtain a serial code. Input the serial code to become a fanclub member.
These are the five songs that can be unlocked to obtain the fanclub membership.
1) Pokapoka retorodo
2) Kanzen muketsu no mujuryoku
3) 3 a.m. detective game
4) Exciting!! Mochacha☆
5) Tobikkiri no fuwaffuwa
To unlock these songs, you must fill up the chikuwa gauge for the five different games. All of them can be done separately. so If you only play Jubeat, all you need to to do is unlock the songs on Jubeat to become a fanclub member. To fill up the chikuwa gauge, you have to play Hinabitter songs. A solo song fills up ⅔ of the gauge. A duet song fills up ⅓ of the gauge for both girls in the duet. A full band song fills up ⅛ of the gauge for all five girls.
To make life easier for you, here’s a table of solos, duets, and band songs for easy reference.
Once a gauge is filled up, the song will automatically be unlocked. Here’s a screenshot from my own account.
You can see that I have unlocked “Pokapoka retorodo” on all games except Jubeat.
Once you have obtained the fanclub membership of the girls, you can now start voting for them by playing their songs. Suppose you obtained the fanclub membership for Marika and Meu, playing any Hinabitter song will give each of the two girls one vote and the other three girls none. If that song happens to be a solo song by Marika, Marika will gain an additional vote as the “vocalist bonus”. Playing a duet song will give 0.5 votes to both girls in the duet. Playing a full band song will give all five girls 0.2 votes.
In short, for those seriously aiming to push a particular girl to victory, they should obtain only the fanclub membership of that one girl. Being a fanclub member of all five girls means that every song you play will vote once for all five girls, which will make it harder to widen the gap between the girl you want to win and the rest.
Playing on different days of the week will give bonus votes to the girls.
Monday - Meu
Tuesday – Ibu
Wednesday – Rin
Thursday - Marika
Friday – Sakiko
<Other ways to vote>
Downloading the five new solo songs from this website will also help. The girl whose song has the highest download count will get 500 votes, and the runner-up will get 300 votes.
Another way is to go to here and vote. Each e-amusement account is limited to one vote for each girl per day. This is also where you can see your vote count.
The event will end on March 16, 2016 so there is still a lot of time to vote. I look forward to seeing who will become the first Chikuwa Princess, and I’m sure all Hinabitter fans all over the world feel the same way.
