Trivia / PriPara

• Acting for Two:
  • Yuu Serizawa voices Mirei Minami and Chuppe
  • Miyu Kubota voices Sophy Hojo, Powan and Hana
  • Saki Yamakita voices Sion Todo, Punikon and Shiko
  • Azuki Shibuya voices Dorothy West and Pitsuji
  • Yuki Wakai voices Reona West, Pakku and Suzu
  • Chinatsu Akasaki voices Falulu and Chanko Nabeshima
  • Azusa Sato voices Fuwari Midorikaze and Falala・A・Larm
  • Minami Tanaka voices Non Manaka, Junon, Pinon and Kanon Justified though since they're all the same person.
  • Reina Ueda voices Ajimi Kiki, Jewlie, Jewlulu and Mimiko Jigoku
  • Takuma Terashima voices Usagi and Rei Ando
  • Yoshino Nanjo voices Nao Ehime, Nene Tokuda and Nanami Shiroi
  • Urara Takano voices Gloria Ookanda and Barbaria Ookandagawa
• Actor-Shared Background: All SoLaMi Dressing members are voiced by the members of the jpop group i☆Ris.
• Adaptation First: The Idol Time PriPara anime series took four years to be released outside of Asia. The PriPara arcade game, on the other hand, has never been released outside of Asia.
• Baby Name Trend Starter: The year that Idol Time PriPara premiered, Yui, the name of the show's protagonist, topped baby name charts in Japan.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The main 6 characters are voiced by the idol group i★Ris, who notably originally did one of the ending themes for Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live.
  • Gloria's sister, Ploria from the third movie ^note  and episode 179 (Idol Time episode 39) of the main series is voiced by Japanese socialite, TV personality and former First Lady of Indonesia, Dewi Sukarno (more commonly known as "Dewi Fujin" ^note  "Madame Dewi in Japan).
• Cash-Cow Franchise: In Japan, to the point that it's actually more popular than the show it tried to Follow the Leader with, it's own predecessor and Pretty Cure.
• Cast the Expert: Most of the characters voice actors are professional singers, and several of the songs performed are done by the actual members of the groups.
• Content Leak: Following the release of episode 4 of The anime Idol Land, the remaining 8 episodes were leaked from the game's server on 4chan.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Reona is voiced by Yuki Wakai who is female.
• Development Hell: Idol Land PriPara has had one hell of a time - initially slated for a Spring 2021 release, the game ended up being delayed for a total of a whopping 5 times; to Summer 2021, then Spring 2022, then Summer/Fall 2022 but was delayed again in October 2022 to Spring 2023 and the final delay was announced in April 2023 to be in August 2023. And just when there was a Hope Spot for fans when the game finally released on August 18th, 2023... the servers crashed from way too many people entering and the game was put on a week-long maintenance that ended on August 23rd 2023. However, when the game came back crowd control was put in place to prevent another server crash, so good luck to everyone who wanted to enter Idol Land (especially overseas fans).
• Late Export for You: For Idol Time, at least. The anime premiered in Japan in 2017, yet wasn't exported to the West until 2021.
• Life Imitates Art: The show mentioned the board game Go as something Sion is particularly good at. Shortly after the show aired, the advent of Alphago and other Go-playing AI programs surprised professional Go players all over the world and soon brought about a revolution in the game, in a way strikingly similar to the stories of Falulu and Hibiki.
  • Alphago was Falulu herself.
    • Both came into existence in 2014, although Alphago became known to the public only in Jan 2016.
    • The famous first game of the Alphago vs. Lee Sedol match on Mar 9 2016 was reminiscent of Falulu's debut in episode 26. It took everyone by surprise, but many players believed that Lee Sedol lost due to carelessness and were still hopeful.
    • The second game was reminiscent of Falulu's second win in episode 30. Lee Sedol tried much harder, but still couldn't win, and many other players (like Ke Jie) were falling into despair. Alphago played many opening moves familiar to humans, but also modified some in curious ways, similar to how Falulu adapted the seven Making Dramas from the other teams for her solo use.
    • Unicorn's explanation in episode 30, of how Falulu learns from hundreds of idols and keeps improving herself for months, was essentially a children-friendly description of how that version of Alphago worked.
    • Human players quickly recognized AI programs as worthy opponents, just like Laala in episode 33.
    • And Alphago's loss of the 4th game was similar to Falulu's sudden collapse in episode 35. Falulu's weakness was her inability to exchange friend tickets, an act reminiscent of "ko" situations in Go games, which many Go-playing programs had problems handling and that version of Alphago appeared to be avoiding (if possible).
    • Falulu left for Europe at the end of season 1, had a brief visit in the summer, then came back to bring a bigger surprise in winter. So did the Alphago team, one year later.
  • Alphago Zero was Hibiki.
    • Alphago Zero, using a much improved algorithm, no longer learned from humans. Just like how Hibiki detested the human world, finding it full of lies. It was leaps and strides stronger than the first Alphago, as demonstrated by Hibiki's top-class idol rank.
    • Alphago itself was updated to make use of Alphago Zero's algorithm (without specifically avoiding human influence). The updated version, sometimes called "Alphago Master", became similarly strong, just like how Falulu jumped to top-class after that romantic night with Hibiki in episode 70.
    • Alphago Master had no problem handling ko situations. Falulu in episode 70 could hold a friend-ticket-exchanging party.
    • Alphago Master (and later Zero) played many revolutionary moves that dazzled human professionals. Just like how they dazzled Sion in episode 75. The most famous new move is the early-game 3-3 invasion...and Falulu was 33 weeks old when she met Hibiki, counting from her rebirth in episode 37.
    • The second game of the Alphago vs. Ke Jie match on May 25 2017 was so similar to episode 77. Ke Jie played so perfectly (for a human), and for a while looked so hopeful in the fierce fight. Many felt that a miracle must be happening. But then the fight turned out to be unfavorable to Ke Jie at the crucial moment. The hope, like the disappearing wings on Mirei's team, had never been there.
    • And the third game on May 27 2017 was full of despair, just like episode 79. Ke Jie made some bad choices in the early game and was soon so far behind that it was difficult to continue. After Alphago answered correctly, again and again, his moves attempting to complicate the situation, Ke Jie was in tears. The lyrics of the ending song in episode 79 fit the mood perfectly.
  • Fine Arts, Tencent's Go AI program based on the published Alphago algorithm, was probably Jewlie and Janis.
    • Fine Arts began development in Jan 2016 (though it wasn't well known until November). Jewlie/Jewlulu was announced around that time.
    • Once Fine Arts reached professional strength in Nov 2016, professional players tested it with a fondness reminiscent of how Laala's friends took turns taking care of Jewlulu.
    • When the Alphago Zero algorithm was published in Oct 2017, Fine Arts was likewise upgraded and became similarly strong. The new version debuted on Nov 15, Chili's birthday. And it did not need much testing by human players, but quickly became their teacher instead, like Janis.
    • Despite their strength, the Jewlie version of Fine Arts makes mistakes from time to time and loses about 10% of the games against top humans. The Janice version is much more reliable, but even it tends to make crazy moves when very far behind, suddenly turning into little babies.
    • By 2018, Fine Arts (the Janice version of course) had become a diligent commentator of top professional games (often accompanied by humans), and was even officially adopted by the Chinese Weiqi (aka Go) Association as the AI used for training. Just like how Janis became the Pri Para goddess at the end of season 3.
  • And DeepZenGo was Gaaruru after she joined Aroma and Mikan.
    • The project was announced in early 2016, around the time Gaarumageddon unofficially formed in episode 82.
    • Deep (deep learning) means hell. Zen (Zenith, the base program before the introduction of deep learning techniques) means heaven. Enough said.
    • DeepZenGo's family did not have the kind of money Google/Tencent were able to spend, so it had fewer developers and fewer servers for training. Just like Gaarumageddon's dilapidated home. But they worked hard and managed to snatch a win from Fine Arts in an AI competition.
  • There are also similarities to well-known humans in the Go world. The names "So La Mi Smile" and "Kiki Ajimi" look particularly suspicious.
  • The show acknowledged the similarities in episode 128, aired on Dec 27 2016, by including a screenshot of the first Alphago vs. Lee Sedol game, purportedly played by Sion, with her commenting "zero wins and 100 million losses". In that long-anticipated episode about rabbit meat cuisine, the segment looked suspiciously like an advertisement. Several days later, top players all over the world knew what "zero wins & 100 million losses" meant.
• Release Date Change: The day before its' intended air date, MBS, the Korean broadcaster of the show, announced that their premiere of the 127th episode, in which NonSugar participates in the Kami Idol Grandprix, would be delayed for coverage of the September 2018 inter-Korean summit.
• Science Marches On: One of the movies had the cast land on Pluto, saying it's another planet. Pluto, by the time the movie was released, had been declared a dwarf planet for years. The color is spot on though.
• Screwed by the Network: The show ending was a result of Takara Tomy's "four years and done" rule for their arcade-based IPs that are successful and not any ratings or sales-based issues. Notably, years later, they revived PriPara with a new mobile game and a tie-in anime.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Azusa Sato played the role of Fuwari Midorikaze because her two-year-old niece was a huge fan of the series.
  • Same goes for Yo Taichi taking on the role of Nino, she had already been ''PriPara'' with her younger sister who was a huge fan.
• What Could Have Been: Early in development, Dressing Pafe was a group consisting of four girls◊ named Nanami, Nagisa, Nodoka and Nina. These characters were reduced to cameos in the show (notably a scene where they become Laala's first fans) and also appeared on merchandising (mainly friend tickets and cards from the Millefeui Collection).
  • All three SoLaMi Smile girls were originally going to have their hair down◊ when outside of PriPara. Laala's would have been long and down to her shoulders with a cowlick on top, while Mirei's was going to be semi-short. Also, Kuma didn't have wings, pompoms or a bowtie on him in this draft.
  • The Cyalume Jewel Mic, a toy known for reading the collectible jewels incorrectly, revealed some ideas proposed for season 3 that didn't make it into the show:
    • The ultimate dress for the final Kami Idol Grandprix, the Kami Dress Coord, was originally named the Jewel Wedding Coord.
    • There was supposed to be a character named Shichimi added later on in the season.
    • Special jewels were supposed to be given away in Shogaku Ichinensei and Shogaku Ninensei magazines, but never did because of the latter magazine got discontinued because of low sales and a new replacement magazine, Shogaku Hachinensei. McDonald's was also supposed to give away jewels with Happy Meals, but they decided to give away Dream Tickets at the last minute.
    • Reina Ueda originally wasn't supposed to voice Ajimi, but she got a copy of the script, sent in an audition tape without authorization and ended up getting the role anyway. One can imagine how different things would've been had this not happened.
• You Sound Familiar:
  • Yuu Serizawa previously voiced Ann Fukuhara in Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live before voicing Mirei, and the other i★Ris members voiced bit parts in Rainbow Live prior to voicing their main roles here.
  • Riho Iida voiced Hoshi-née in the follow up series, Kiratto Pri☆Chan before voicing Amari in Idol Land.
  • Coco Hayashi voiced Kiratto Pri☆Chan's main character, Mirai Momoyama before voicing Pololo.