Video Game / Ensemble Stars!

And there are oh so many stars.

Ensemble Stars! is a touch-and-go, card-collecting game created by Happy Elements of Merc Storia fame, and the younger brother series to Happy Elements' earlier mobile game, Ensemble Girls!. Its main attraction is a Cast Full of Pretty Boys performing various idol activities, with a story involved as background to many of the cast. Despite its colorful art style and setting, the story is much darker than one would initially assume.

The player, a new female student (called Anzu as default, but the player can input their own name as well) in the second year transfers to Yumenosaki Academy, which used to be an all-boys school famous for creating popular performing units, until her transfer to start studying in the producer course. Facing the fact that the school is not what it seems to be, she decides to help a group unit who wanted to rebel against the school's Unit system.

Initially a josei demographic (with shounen elements) spin-off story to its now-defunct sister game Ensemble Girls!!, Ensemble Stars! sky-rocketed in popularity and received a number of notable adaptations, as listed under installments. It is currently one of the most popular male-centric idol franchises of The New '10s.

In 2019, Happy Elements announced a new direction for the mobile portion of the franchise: it would be retitled to Ensemble Stars!! and consist of two coexisting games. Along with the classic training game (retitled Ensemble Stars!! Basic in 2020), an additional rhythm spinoff/sequel titled Ensemble Stars!! Music was launched, featuring the boys signed to different talent agencies. Both apps have the same new events, gacha, stories, and characters, but different requirements for obtaining cards.

After years of No Export for You, an official English version of Music was released in June 2022.

Now has a Character page under construction. Please help by moving or adding character tropes there.

IMPORTANT NOTE: As Music has only been recently released in English, please mark spoilers accordingly.

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Ensemble Stars! And Its Adaptations

List Of Installments

• Ensemble Stars! (2015-2019): The original game touch-and-go card collector game. Largely focused on the idols in a competitive high-school setting. The game winded down in late 2019 through early 2020 as the developers prepared for the Ensemble Stars!! rebrand.
  • Ensemble Stars!!: The official rebranding of the franchise which shifted the franchise focus from being largely high-school centric to the idols being assigned to different offices of their choosing and navigating their way through the competitive industry. All of the idol units from the original game return. With this update, two new units were introduced: ALKALOID (the new main story protagonist unit) and Crazy:B respectively. A third unit consisting of MaM's Madara Mikejima and Crazy:B's Kohaku Oukawa debuted in July 2020. months after being teased in 2019.
    • Ensemble Stars!! Basic (2020-): Updated Re-release of the Ensemble Stars! app that remains relatively faithful to the originals touch-and-go gameplay with some cosmetic changes. "Ensemble Stars!"mode exists within in the app which can be freely switched to. The mode retains the old game's interface, mechanics, cards and stories. Revivals in this mode can still be started and played through in-between events, though cards from Stars!! mode cannot be used there, unlike Stars! cards that are able to used in Stars!! mode. Old scouts move in rotation weekly, by unit.
    • Ensemble Stars!! Music (2020-): Rhythm Game spin-off of the original game. Follows the same storyline as Basic, with the same scouts and events, but has a different method for obtaining cards and higher event point requirements. Unlike Basic, it does not have a Stars! mode, meaning that old stories are not viewable within the app and old cards cannot be obtained or ported over from Basic. Chibi motions are not viewable within Music. New features such as the Animated Music Video, SPP function and MV outfits are introduced within this app. The game also introduces an office function similar to THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls, a Work mini-game and four new attributes that are exclusive to Music: Glitter, Sparkle, Flash and Brilliant.
• Ensemble Stars! The Animation: The Anime of the Game adaptation of Ensemble Stars!. After a two year delay with no updates, the project was finally revealed to be premiering in 2019, spearheaded by David Production.
• Ensemble Stars! On Stage: A series of stage play adaptations for Ensemble Stars! produced by Marvelous!. It is separated into main story installments with Extra stages focusing on event stories.
  • Main Story Installments:
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Take Your Marks!~
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~To the Shining Future~
  • Extra Stage Series:
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Judge of Knights~
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Memory of Marionette~
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Destruction x Road~
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Night of Blossoming Stars~
    • Ensemble Stars! On Stage ~Meteor Lights~
• Ensemble Stars!: The first manga adaptation for Ensemble Stars! that focuses on the main story. Anzu does not appear in this adaptation.
• Ensemble Stars! Ready For Star: The second manga adaptation for Ensemble Stars! that focuses on various event and side stories. Treated as a more faithful adaptation.
• Ensemble Stars! Novel (2015-2016): The novel adaptation for Ensemble Stars! written by the games' main scenario writer Akira. The novel is currently complete.
• Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE: A series of concerts featuring holographic performances from the game's various units. Initially starting out with just the "main units", sans fine, more units from the game were introduced as the tours continued. In 2021, fine and MaM were be the last units from the original game to make their DREAM LIVE debuts, with Eden appearing as guest performers.
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 1st Tour "Morning Star!" (October 28, 2017 - December 31, 2017) ^note Units appearing: Trickstar, UNDEAD, Knights
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 2nd Tour "Bright Star!" (July 4, 2018 - July 23, 2018)^note Units appearing: Trickstar, UNDEAD, Knights, AKATSUKI, 2wink
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 3rd Tour "Double Star!" (March 29, 2019 - April 21, 2019)
    • ver. RISE ^note Units appearing: Trickstar, RYUSEITAI, Switch, UNDEAD, 2wink
    • ver. DEEP ^note Units appearing: Trickstar, RYUSEITAI, Switch, Knights, AKATSUKI
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 4th Tour "Prism Star!" (November 15, 2019 - December 15, 2019)
    • SCATTER ^note Units appearing: Trickstar, AKATSUKI, Knights, Switch, Ra*bits, Valkyrie
    • REFRACT ^note Units appearing: Trickstar, UNDEAD, RYUSEITAI, 2wink, Ra*bits, Valkyrie
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 5th Tour - "Stargazer" (April 2, 2021 - May 1, 2021) ^note Guest Unit: Eden
    • Ver. Alba ^note Units appearing: fine, MaM, Eden, Trickstar, AKATSUKI, UNDEAD, Ra*bits, Switch
    • Ver. Serata^note Units appearing: fine, MaM, Eden, Trickstar, Knights, RYUSEITAI, 2wink, Valkyrie
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - "BRAND NEW STARS!!" (September 3, 2021 - September 5, 2021) ^note Units appearing: ALKALOID and Crazy:B
  • Ensemble Stars! DREAM LIVE - 6th Tour - "Synchronic Spheres" (May 27, 2022 - June 26, 2022) ^note Units appearing: fine, Trickstar, Ryuseitai, ALKALOID, Knights, Switch, Double Face, MaM

• Ensemble Stars! Starry Stage: A series of concerts for various units from the game performed by the characters' seiyuu.

Tropes Present In The Games Ensemble Stars! And Ensemble Stars!! Basic

Tropes A-G

• Absurdly Divided School: Enforced by the Absurdly Powerful Student Council during the war, as they scapegoated any other students they were unable to control (especially the 'five oddballs') and rewarded those who helped them. This created a massive power disparity as it was basically impossible for any idol unit not favoured by the student council to achieve top ranks in competitions, impacting not only their popularity at school but their later career prospects. Those who were attacked by the student council banded together, and, with their help, Trickstar was able to disrupt the system and massively curtail the student council's power. While the War period made the atmosphere at school very hostile between the various groups, this revolution eased that tension hugely. Afterwards, most characters are happy to make friends across old enemy lines.
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: A big part of the plot as the members of Student Council are set as main antagonists, even if not necessarily villains. The Student Council is powerful enough to interrupt and close any DreamFes not organized by the school, and are actually responsible for the problematic idol hierarchy going on Yumenosaki Academy in the beginning of the main story. Their authority is such that the idol events are pretty much rigged so that the units they're a part of will win.
• Actor Allusion: When Ogami is fighting with Kuro in the first episode of the anime, a "DORARARA" can be heard.
• Adam and/or Eve: The rival schools introduce Eden, a unit divided into two groups to pit against Yumenosaki; Eve, made of Hiyori Tomoe and Jun Sazanami, and Adam, consisting of Nagisa Ran and Ibara Saegusa. Both of them came from Reimei and Shuuetsu respectively.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The light novel gives expansion to what Anzu is thinking and also more about the character herself. It also gives more insight to characters such as Eichi.
  • The 4-Komas themselves also expand on the characters.
  • The Audio dramas which you can unlock by purchasing unit CDs also gives some highlights about the characters themselves.
  • The Anime itself is this along with Adaptation Distillation. While it does not include every single event story in the game, it does, however, elaborate a few scenes in the game.
• Adapted Out: Anzu doesn't appear in the manga to fulfill the In the Hood rule that Happy Elements had set up for her appearance. Hence making the Manga run differently from the game in terms of storyline. The anime and the new manga adaptation Ready for Star, however, follow the game and include Anzu, averting the In the Hood trope.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • On April Fools Day 2016, the adults, Akiomi Kunugi and Jin Sagami, temporarily took over the game. The title screen only had the two of them and the title was changed to "Ensemble Stardust". The main room was also changed to either both of them. They even had their backstory revealed in the mini event (which was fully voiced!), had their own cards and had their own outfits unlockable (although the cards cannot be used when producing).
  • In the same note, events and gacha also focus on a certain character and/or unit.
• Adults Are Useless: The Ensemble Stars! world would probably be a lot better off if the adults actually did their jobs.
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: Depending on your viewpoint, but not even the younger members of the cast are free from receiving fanservicey outfits and cards.
• Allegedly Free Game: Sure, it is a free game, but unless you actually buy diamonds, good luck getting the cards you actually want from the gacha. Getting event cards that are gained by ranking is also nearly impossible if you aren't willing to pay for more diamonds, especially when the ranking card's character is from one of the more popular units like Knights or UNDEAD. Event cards that are point rewarded are obtainable for free... but only if one has strong enough teams, which might take a long time if you don't scout in the gacha, making this come full circle.
  • Ensemble Stars!! seems to rectify this some way, as they remove the ability to get cards through ranking in both versions of the games' apps. Now, the player can get all cards in the newly introduced event types through points, but that comes with its own set of issues, as some cards are far higher than in points than others.
• Always in Class One: Roughly half of the cast are in Class A of their respective years, while the other half is assigned to Class B. There are no exceptions.
• Always Identical Twins: Yuta and Hinata from 2wink, who are only distinguishable by the color of their headphones.
• Ambiguously Bi: With how close and flirty the characters are towards each other, every member of the cast has this implication around them, with the sole exception being Anzu, most probably because she’s the only important female character in the cast. Even Kaoru doesn’t escape this.
• Ambiguous Situation: The exact circumstances of the fate the “evil producer” suffered in A Dark Nights Passing after Madara threw him into a crowd of his angry victims. The following event confirmed that GFK had successfully been wiped from the industry and all those involved in his attack had been arrested except Madara and Kohaku of course however, it’s unknown if GFK had simply suffered serious injuries or was outright killed by his victims.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can unlock special costumes of a character as you collect the cards. You can also unlock voice clips of characters if you continue rising the "Affection Rank". Low rarity Gacha cards do not come with outfits.
  • In Ensemble Stars!!, 5 star cards now come with SCR versions of the unlockable bloomed outfit, which are just palette swapped versions of the base bloomed outfit. The "Affection Rank" has also been changed to a "Idol Rank". Rank-ups are available upon reaching a certain amount of fans (depending on the cards you obtained from gacha and events). The SCR of the default idol outfit is unlockable at Rank B and a new "Bloom" outfit can be unlocked at Rank A.
• The Anime of the Game: One was originally planned for 2017, but was postponed until its release in mid-2019.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The course's events in the event producer course in the Marionette's memories event aren't from Anzu's point of view (As she has yet to transfer to Yumenosaki). Instead, they are from the point of view of different characters involved in that reminiscence event. This has become a recurring pattern starting from the Marionette's Memories event. Events where Anzu is not completely involved of in producing or helping will have them played from the point of view from the participating characters, while those that had Anzu involved will have the courses played in Anzu's point of view.
• Another Side, Another Story: Starting after the 2016 White Day event, there come the loop events featuring the backstory of the characters involving the one year before Anzu moved to Yumenosaki and the mentioned "War" between Eichi and the five oddballs. Like the events before, they take place after the main story, as hinted in the Marionette's Memories event's story epilogue, where Nazuna calls Anzu "Transfer student" and regards her experience as still being a newbie in being a producer.
• April Fools' Day:
  • In 2016, Kunugi and Sagami temporarily took over the game by showing their days as teenage Yumenosaki students. The gag was later repeated in 2017, only this time showing their time in the idol industry.
  • In 2018, the game brought up a Ryuusetai Shoot 'Em Up sentai arcade game, complete with fully voice acted cutscenes.
  • 2019 pitted Trickstar and the Four Weirdos against the boys of STARISH and Quartet Night in a fake "Dream Star Live".
  • In 2020, Ensemble Stars!! April Fools event features Kunugi and Sagami doing a cutesy live with Kohaku Oukawa and Jun Sazanami, with a very short event story to go along with it. More info for the event can be found on the wiki. Interestingly, according to Word of God, the event was originally planned to be Madara Mikejima focused with the theme being "Together With Mama!", however due to unexplained issues that this eventually lead to, this was changed to focus on the teachers instead.
  • In 2021 the Ensemble Stars!! April Fools event has an event story staring Hokuto, Eichi, Rinne, Tsukasa, Rei, and Shu, where ES has been transferred to a space colony and Dream-Fes matches are held as mecha robot matches. The event story is fully voiced and includes related outfits & locations from the event.
• Asshole Victim: The producers Double Face as a unit targets are this.
• Art Evolution: Despite the game's simplistic way of drawing the characters, the art style used has become more rounded. Anatomy and more complex poses have improved. The way colors are utilized, how things are colored, backgrounds, lighting and even the way water is drawn in certain cards have also improved significantly over the years.
• Art-Style Dissonance: For a game that touches on serious topics such as child abuse and alcoholism, the game's art style sure is bright and colorful.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • Subaru is attracted to money, not because of greed, but because of the metal used for the coins, since he likes things that shine bright. When Eichi revealed the idea of bribing Subaru with money (not metal coins, but actual money) in his plan to bring Trickstar to disband, it became a Berserk Button.
  • Mitsuru gets distracted easily.
• Audience Surrogate: Anzu, the player character. Though, she’s this in spades, as she has a backstory as well as characterization that progress with the story, regardless of the situational dialogue the player chooses for her. She even performs some actions without the players' involvement, such as making special clothes for the idols. As of Ensemble Stars!!, she seems to be more involved in the lives of all the idols associated with Ensemble Square, regardless of if the player personally has any interest in producing them outside of their own personal favorites.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Within quite a few groups:
  • Souma probably takes the cake despite being a second year: in both his unit and his club he is the only non third year. Within the Marine Bio Club it isn't really that obvious, but considering that Kuro and Keito compare him at one point to their child, he definitely fits this for Akatsuki.
  • Sora is the only first-year in Switch and is an important mediating force between the very difficult relationship between Natsume and Tsumugi.
  • Tori is the only first year of fine, and very much does try to take advantage of his resulting childish position, though he also does worry at times about being far less experienced than his seniors and concludes by the end of the year that he wants to be able to stand beside Eichi as an equal, not just a kid.
  • Tsukasa is the only 1st year in both Knights and the Archery Club. Regarding the former, this actually motivates him to try harder and prove himself, but in the Archery Club it's noted that Keito is pretty soft on him due to being a junior.
  • Mitsuru is this for the Track and Field club, looking up to his seniors as older brothers (and sister), while they happily dote on him. He even seems to see himself as this in Ra*bits, too, despite being the same age as Tomoya and Hajime, as he says in one story that he sees them as like older siblings, too.
  • Kohaku, being the youngest member of Crazy:B and is treated as such by Niki and Rinne, much to his dismay. Madara also regards him as a child at times when they’re shown together as Double Face, but is otherwise fully aware of his competence.
• Big Brother Instinct: Some seniors have this sense to the younger ones. To note a few:
  • Kuro to the Player/Anzu. It helps that he has a little sister himself, though it also gives him a bit of a sister complex. To an extent, he also cares for Tetora as a junior as he suggested Tetora to Chiaki after he was rejected by Keito to join Akatsuki.
  • Chiaki to the first years in Ryuuseitai, and the younger basketball club members plus the Player/Anzu. But most of them find his way to show it smothering.
  • Nito to Ra*Bits and the protagonist, to the point that it's almost Invoked since he wants others to see him as a big brother and to call him such.
  • Madara to anyone he deems to be his " children " but particularly Leo, going as far as threatening to punch Eichi should he ever hurt Leo again. Though he sees himself as more of a Team Mom than an older brother figure. It’s eventually revealed that this is all a front, but his desire to protect his friends is genuine.
• Bland-Name Product: There are a few examples but one of them is the sports drink Sweat Star which is likely one for Pocari Sweat.
• Blithe Spirit: Anzu. At first most of the boys in Yumenosaki don't like or care about her, but over time she eventually gains the respect and affection of each of them one by one, thanks to her hard work and constant reaching out to them. Even with all the boys she encounters, she treats them equally, seeing herself as only their producer.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory : Diamonds are one of the currencies in the game, and you can use it to refill LP used to participate in lives, to refill AP used to do lessons, to enter revival events, or to roll in the gacha boxes. You can get them for free as rewards from the event and from completing lesson objectives, daily logins, and reading the stories from event rewards and gacha cards, but like it or not, you have to eventually buy some if you want to do well in ranking or getting the gacha cards you want if you're unlucky enough to not get them from rolling with the free diamonds you saved. Moreover, as mentioned above, getting the 1.1 million points card is manageable without buying diamonds only if you have strong teams... which requires you to scout a lot in the gacha.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Poor Tomoya is usually the butt of Wataru's antics in the Theater Club.
  • Midori. He just entered the school because it's close to home, only to accidentally enter the wrong course. And before he could even get to say no, he was recruited into Ryuuseitai, and immediately after, the Basketball Club because of his height. Even when he starts to enjoy being an idol and being friends with fellow first years Tetora and Shinobu, he'll always be roped in by Chiaki's antics. Ouch.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Leaving the boys idle on your home-screen for too long will have them acknowledge your absence with dialogue.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • How Tsukasa views Leo. He admired Leo for leading Knights, so to say that he is disappointed when he finally met Leo in person is an Understatement. Though it makes sense that the "War" left Leo quite broken.
  • Tomoya once admired Wataru for his acting, like Tsukasa, to say that he is irritated at Wataru is an Understatement.
  • Koga used to admire Rei a lot back when he wasn't broken, and even copied his speaking style because of it. Needless to say, he became dissapointed when Rei began to act like an old man after he was broken, and started to treat him the way he does now.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Explained more thoroughly on their character sections, but the five Oddballs fit as a group of this. They are all certified Cloudcuckoolanders who go at their own pace and have strange tics and personalities, as their nicknames imply. Still, they are all considered extremely talented. Even Eichi admits it.
• Call-Back: The gacha scout stories are going to be related in one way or another. For example:
  • Ritsu's desert entry in the sweets gacha scout story will later get a mention in Undead Tea House and Dark Night Halloween events respectively.
  • The Hero Show gacha scout and Supernova event are both related to each other. Supernova continues what is left from Hero Show and the fate of the Hero Show plan mentioned in Supernova.
  • The event courses will have things that will be mentioned as trivial but will be called back to. It also doubles as Call-Forward sometimes. In Ritsu's Band Ensemble course, for example, Ritsu's special course event has the choice of having Anzu sing a lullaby to him. This same choice was first brought up in Ritsu's Halloween course's special event (Which, event wise, chronologically occurred before Band Ensemble) where he asks Anzu to sing a lullaby for him.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Cast Herd: Due to the large cast, outside of the characters being split up into their standard unit(s)^note taking Adam, Eve and Double Face into account, the game has also taken to assign characters to different sub-groups such as school clubs, the 3/5 Oddballs, as well as sub-units. These characters will sometimes appear together in themed events or gacha based on their units.
  • Ensemble Stars!! introduces more ways to hoard the cast into groups, those being offices that the units are assigned to, dorm rooms which don't consist of characters from the same unit, and circles, which are essentially the same as school clubs.
• Casting Gag: The Ensemble Stars! On Stage series had the Aoi twins be played by actual twin brothers Kenta and Shouta Yamanaka.
• Characterization Marches On: In cases of the Jerkass characters and those who didn't have much to say in the main story. For example, Koga who soon becomes Jerk with a Heart of Gold over the course of the main story and Tori, who begins to mellow to the rest of the students over time. This adds up with the courses, events, and gacha stories.
  • Also, some characters come across differently in the main story in a way that isn't so easily put down to deliberate Character Development: Mao is presented as The Ditherer, unsure who to favour between the Student Council and Trickstar, while in most later events Hokuto is treated as the disloyal one (admittedly Hokuto earned this treatment too, but it was emphasized far more with Mao in the main story despite rarely being brought up afterwards), Nazuna comes across as far more irritable and hot-tempered, and Hokuto describes Souma as 'never drawing attention to himself', which contradicts... basically anything he has ever done, even within the main story.
• Character Development: All of the cast goes through this via event and gacha stories. By Ensemble Stars!!, the original cast all retained the Character Development they had back in the original story and events during the start of Ensemble Stars!!'s main scenario.
• Childhood Friend: Quite a few examples.
  • Mao, Ritsu and Rei are neighbors, though Mao is actually closer to Ritsu than to the older brother, Rei.
  • Eichi and Keito have known each other due to close relationships within their families.
  • Yuzuru and Tori is a bit of an odd example in that they have a "Master and Slave" relationship (in Tori's point of view). Yuzuru's actually his butler. Tori also knew Tsukasa when they were children, though they weren't friends.
  • Shu and Kuro had known each other since they were kids due to being in the same school.
  • Madara is childhood friends with both Kanata and Anzu, although Anzu doesn't remember her past with him.
  • Kohaku Oukawa is both the cousin of Tsukasa Suou and his Childhood Friend.
• Circus Episode: This is the point of the fittingly-named event Circus, which involves fine and 2wink working together with a local circus to put on a concert. This allows the Aoi twins to show off their street-performing skills, and Eichi to monologue to an escaped lion about how difficult it is to be the king.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • The "Three Oddballs" (Rei, Kanata, and Wataru), all third years, are basically an acknowledged group of these. Later events reveals that they used to be five. Shu is confirmed to be inactive from Idol activities at least until now. Natsume created a new unit, Switch, that soon debuted after the main story.
  • Leo also qualifies, as explained in his character entry, although he isn't an oddball. This caused confusion with several fans.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The card types, which are divided into three: Performance (yellow), Dance (red), and Vocal (blue).
• Continuity Nod:
  • The mention of Leo's little sister Ruka is a likely nod to Ensemble Girls!, the earlier Distaff Counterpart that Happy Elements put out.
  • Likewise, the mention of the player/Anzu's little brother who is the protagonist of Ensemble Girls!. Kaoru Hakase of Girls! was also mentioned to have an unseen best friend named "Angie", which was revealed to be an old nickname of Anzu's. It was all but confirmed that both games take place in the same universe. It's just that Stars! and Ensemble Girls! are about a year apart. In Girls!, Leo was mentioned to have already been in college. This has become somewhat muddled now that Ensemble Stars!! has advanced a year and it's unknown if they're still following the same storyline.
  • The nod is strong enough that most of Anzu's backstory can be traced back to events in Ensemble Girls!, down to the very school she went to before she transferred to Yumenosaki.
  • Leo's greeting is implied to have been borrowed after meeting Girls' Ruri Amamiya, as the 2016 Opera event has him saying that it's actually "Daiuchuu", which is Ruri's catchphrase.
• Cosmic Motifs:
  • Trickstar is based on, naturally, stars - their outfits often feature star shapes, and one of its members (Subaru) has a strong love for anything that glitters. Their names also reference various star-related elements!
  • Ryuuseitai literally means 'Meteor Team' and naturally takes its inspiration from meteors. Due to the Japanese term also meaning something similar to 'shooting star', this leads to them also using a lot of star motifs. They also have a generally sci-fi aesthetic, being based on a Sentai team, meaning their outfits often have a Captain Space, Defender of Earth! feel - in the 2018 April Fool's event they were outright Space Opera protagonists.
  • Akatsuki means 'Scarlet Moon'. On a basic level, this represents the unit's Japanese, Autumnal theme, but it also has symbolic meaning: Akatsuki was created simply to reflect the power of fine, which has a heavenly theme and is sometimes associated with the sun. However, in Quarrel Fest they finally overcome this and begin to challenge fine outright, with Keito declaring that Akatsuki now represents a new dawn (as 'Akatsuki' literally can mean dawn in Japanese).
• Costume Porn: Every event introduces new outfits to wear for whichever unit is featured.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Well, they don't date, but Makoto is having this reaction to any guy getting close to the player/Anzu. Often Played for Laughs. Tsukasa is this as well.
• Crossover:
  • One with Welcome to the Ballroom as a promotion for its anime in 2017.
  • They also had crossovers with Yume 100: 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams, and received one with fellow Happy Elements game Merc Storia.
  • 2017 also saw a crossover with fictional comedian Blouson Chiemi, with both the game and the On Stage cast.
  • In 2018, they had a crossover with Last Period, another Happy Elements game.
  • Sanrio Puroland hosted the cast for a crossover event in 2018.
  • In 2019, Trickstar and fine collaborated with Uta No Prince-sama Shining Live's STARISH and QUARTET NIGHT.
  • A Yowamushi Pedal crossover had Onoda Sakamichi appear as an idol in the game.
  • In 2019, the game had a crossover with King of Prism Shiny Seven Stars.
  • In August 2022, it was announced that the famous Virtual Idol Hatsune Miku would appear in Ensemble Stars as a part of the third installment of the game COVER SONG SERIES. Kagamine Rin and Len also accompany her and appear in the COVER version of "Tell Your World".
• Dark Is Not Evil: UNDEAD may have a dark theme, but none of them are bad people. In fact, in the main story, they are on the protagonists' side.
• Darker and Edgier/Lighter and Softer: The stories in the events and gacha tend to switch between this, in order to balance out the story's tone. Usually, when there is a filler event, the gacha story will have a more serious tone, and vice versa for more serious events and light-hearted gacha stories. As of December 2016, the darkest story had been Starlight Festival due to it having a Wham Line right at the very first chapter.
• Dating Sim: Averted. Despite the Ship Tease between the protagonist and some of the boys (which pales compared to the amount of ship tease they get with each other) the player is not given the option to romance any of the boys, nor does the protagonist show any indication of reciprocating their feelings. The dialogue she can have with them that the player chooses is rather neutral or snarky, and if having flirty undertones, which it rarely does, it doesn't actually affect anything nor does it raise or lower the relationship with the character in question. This is taken even further in Ensemble Stars!! as Affection Ranks are gone, meaning there's no "Sweet Words" lines (which sound like a borderline love confessions) the player can unlock for the characters.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Tsukasa. Hilariously, he doesn't seem to realize it so much.
  • Anzu grows to become one over the course of the events and the story.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Anzu's personality depends on which of the two scenario writer's, Yuki and Akira, wrote the Event/Gacha story. Anzu is akin to a gentle girl if the story is written by Yuki (This gets downplayed in future events/gacha stories), while if written by Akira, she will have a stronger personality. It's later explained that Anzu is genuinely snarky, but she became more quiet and meek as a result of the trauma of the failed rebellion at her old school.
  • Similarly, Akira's written Event/Gacha stories have more drama and stronger plots, while the ones written by Yuki are Lighter and Softer. Though Yuki is also shown to be capable of writing a stronger plot as evident in the "Flutter! Chick and Emperor's triumphant return" event.
  • Now that Ensemble Stars!! has more writers, the characterization is more divided, but overall tries to stay consistent. Usually. Unfortunately, some conflicting writing has lead to very confusing Retcons.
• Deconstructed Trope: Implied in the story, but this is more apparent in the novels where Anzu, who had been completely new and had no knowledge or skill of singing and dancing, is forced to perform like an idol, having her realize that being an idol isn't all sunshine and rainbows and you don't become one overnight. This is also coincidentally Truth in Television as several idol industries in Japan have a strict regiment for idol trainees before they can get to officially debut in the entertainment world.
  Anzu: That said, my dancing is unpresentable if compared to all the professional idols in here. Of course, it’s impossible for me to sing while I dance. I can’t catch the breath for that. How do idols manage that like it’s normal? — I know it must be because they take lessons and work hard, but still. I realize anew how amazing they actually are. Aah, being an idol is… Making people smile and happy is such a hard work. I feel my body getting smashed as I dance and my singing voice refusing to come out of my throat. I can slice my soul and smash the life in me and it won’t be enough. Idols aren’t toys that move when you stream electricity to them. They’re human beings with flesh; children who are the same age as me. And they’re doing this very harsh job. While I spend my mediocre daily life in indifference, they’re straining their desperate effort and fighting in the same world, same reality as I am. I’ve just been forced to realize that. I’m ashamed of myself, for not noticing such simple truth. All the people in this Yumenosaki Academy are superhuman doing things you can’t even normally think of — they’re all heroes, chosen, or perhaps ones who have fought and emerged victorious to attain that title — like characters from a shounen manga. Romance and other fun, happy things that people their age abide by so naturally… they’ve cast, shaken them away, sold them off as they all now offer the entirety of their youth to hard work. They shed and exhaust their blood and sweat and tears until those all crystalize into sparkling jewels.
• Dialogue Tree: The player sometimes has the option to choose what the protagonist will say to the boys, with there usually being up to 3 options. This feature is especially prevalent in mini-talks and D.L.F.S. courses, and the options often lead to two different types of responses from the boys depending on what you choose. However, it doesn’t actually affect the overall flow of the story and in the original game it was mainly used as a means to raise affection points for more dialogue. As the updated game lacks affection point ranks, however, it’s just another means of maybe learning something new about the protagonist or the boy she’s speaking to. Usually the latter.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Narukami uses the feminine pronoun " atashi " and feminine sentences while talking as well as talks about having the 'heart of a woman', all while wanting the player/Anzu and the members of Knights (Especially the younger ones) to refer to Arashi as a sister instead of a brother. Despite this, he still refers to himself as a boy at times and his gender is canonly stated to be " male ". Arashi also is said to become irritated if treated too much like a girl, leaving much up in the air on what he identifies as.
• Dysfunction Junction: Wouldn't you believe it. As the story goes on, you'd learn that some of the cast are subjected to Dark and Troubled Past's in varying ways (Either from having Abusive Parents, facing the harsh reality of the modeling industry as a young child, etc.) and that's not counting the psychological trauma that some of the 2nd and 3rd years suffer from the "War" added onto that. Even Anzu, if you count the Continuity Nod, is not excluded from this. The few well-adjusted ones can be counted by one hand.
• Early Game Hell: In the original Ensemble Stars! and Basic version of Ensemble Stars!!, newer players are unable to gain as many scores or clear as many lives that come their way unless they gain stronger cards. Basic!! Players have the benefit of being able to use Ensemble Stars! cards, however, Ensemble Stars! cards are notably weaker than the Ensemble Stars!! cards.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Nazuna's initial cards mostly feature him looking angry, presumably because it was expected that his irritation at being treated like a kid would be a major part of his personality. However, even in his first appearance in the main story, he establishes himself as a genuinely capable older brother figure to Ra*bits, and it's this reliability which ended up becoming his most notable trait (both in terms of his how he cares for his juniors and in his common role as an Only Sane Man) so very few of his later cards have him looking so hostile, instead favouring happy and calm expressions.
• Engrish: Averted with Tsukasa who is capable of speaking fluent English, to the point that the fact that his pronunciation is so smooth makes it hard for others to understand it. Played straight with Wataru who shouts his Catchphrase "Amazing!!" most of the time.
• Ensemble Cast: In Ensemble Stars!, the main story followed Trickstar, the main character unit. However, events gave focus to other members of the cast, some more often than others, allowing all the characters to have their day in the limelight for a time, particularly if they were the event's highest rarity character. Ensemble Stars!! also brings back this formula, though it makes it more fair as events move in rotation and no unit receives a second event before every other unit gets one first. Through this, it's also ensured that every character will receive an equal amount of cards and focus outside of the main story.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The player/Anzu is called "Transfer Student" by many of the students at first until the fourth event where most of them started to call her by name. The only exception had been Tori who calls the player/Anzu by their first name sometime after their first official meeting in his side-story, Leo, who joined to the game months after the game's release, Tsumugi who immediately called her by name, and Mika who is introduced much later, but calls Anzu by her name mainly out of being comfortable with girls. Though other characters are noted to call the player/Anzu by a nickname. Tsukasa calls her Onee-sama, Kuro calls her Little miss, Shu calls her Little girl and Natsume calls her Little kitten (Koneko-chan in game). By Ensemble Stars!!, most of the cast refer to her as "Producer".
• Failed a Spot Check: When Eichi plans to disband Trickstar to keep the unit system hierarchy intact, he failed to account for Anzu/The Player, who had been in the producer course, helping Trickstar to get into shape and made them capable of standing at the same level as Akatsuki, and later, fine in the main story. All of these brought him fine's defeat at the hands of Trickstar.
• Fictional Social Network: WholeHands is this for the Ensemble Stars universe as it’s a type of network used for idols to communicate.
• Fanservice: Some cards are quite pleasing to the eyes of the players.
• Fanservice Model: As the idols take on various jobs, one of the types of jobs they take on are this. They also take on gravure modeling shoots. Izumi and Makoto are notable examples of characters who focus on modeling work.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • For those who joined the game on a later date, players will know, from playing the events, that Trickstar will defeat fine and come out victorious. Not that it stops them from reading the story.
  • Those playing the events centering the past of Yumenosaki Academy one year before Anzu's transfer will also know that the five oddballs lost the "War" with Eichi, turning the unit system of Yumenosaki Academy to the way it is today. And Leo leaves tired of the "War".
  • The third years graduating is also always an inevitability, as some stories even focus on them already having graduated. However, this ends up not being as big a deal as the Repayment Festival events made them out to be, as they're all still in their respective units in the Ensemble Stars!! update.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the 2015 Christmas event, it was mentioned that the Christmas stage was originally a stage for two but the original performers cancelled performing due to the bad weather and one of them complaining about the crowd, making Ryuseitai, with 2Wink, perform instead. The description fit the recently announced unit at the time, Valkyrie, who just so happened to be a duo.
  • Kanata mentions the Oddballs in the Supernova event, and included a 'Magician-san' along with the other Oddballs' name. Months later, the game revealed Switch, with their leader being Natsume, the last Oddball who does sorcery.
  • Baton Pass! Repayment Festival of Tears and Bonds implied Madara Mikejima’s arrival in the epilogue, with Chiaki stating that he helped him out with work so that he could make it to the performance in time. It also marks the first time Kanata refers to him as a “rogue”. A few months later, Madara had shown up in his own event.
• Friendly Enemy: Quite a few in the main story.
  • Kuro of Akatsuki. He's cordial to the protagonist and had a soft spot for the player/Anzu (Out of Big Brother Instinct).
  • Eichi, despite the rules he placed in the academy's unit system (possibly, see A Lighter Shade of Gray), is quite friendly.
  • Madara and Kuro were initially this, but over time, they genuinely had grown to just become friends despite Kuro’s denial of their closeness.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In the Office mode of Music, each character starts with unique base stats reflecting their personalities - e.g., Tomoya has medium stats in everything, while Souma has an extremely high Unique stat. Madara who is stated to be good at just about about everything is a Jack of All Stats.
  • In the 2020 Summer shaved ice minigame, characters' preferred foods reflect their real likes and dislikes - Shu and Mitsuru love croissants and bread, Arashi doesn't like anything too fattening, Tsukasa loves everything sweet, Hajime is happy to get any kind of free food at all, Madara tends to like traditional foods so his favorite topping would be anmitsu and Niki loves everything.
• Gatling Good: During the "Setsubun Festival" event, Ritsu uses a "Fukumame Gatling Gun" to spray Rei with. He then mentions that the staff only said the beans only had to hit the target, not how they should hit them.
• Genre Deconstruction: Plot wise, despite being firmly a part of the Idol Singer genre, the game deconstructs the images of people's imaginations of teen idols by having the story focused on their individual growths as teenagers and the thought that for all that is worth, idols are humans. This one line from Anzu in the novel says it clear.
  Anzu: But I didn’t know. That these idols I met in Yumenosaki Academy, are no doll-like figures to be stood up prettily and worshiped… but real boys living their youth, who can cry and laugh and get angry like everyone else. Neither did I know just how much tears they must shed in order for them to grant their dreams—-
• Genre Mashup: Initially conceived to be a Josei story that averts most of the standard Josei romance tropes according Word of God, but has very clear Shounen elements, especially in the main story. There's also very subtle Otome-game elements (Mostly absent now that the Ensemble Stars!! lacks affection ranks) and Boys' Love genre tropes mainly conveyed through the relationships between the male characters. This is all on top of being a deconstruction of the Idol Singer genre.
  • This also occasionally happens with unit songs as well. For example, Akatsuki will mix Jazz with their traditional sound.
• Genre Motif: Each unit is assigned a different one by default that fits their unit theme overall (Knights usually focuses on Pop to fit their Boy Band image, UNDEAD on Rock, Ra*bits with cutesy music, et cetera.) though they will occasionally have songs that fall outside of their usual sound. For example, UNDEAD has the jazzy sounding Valentine’s Eve Nightmare.

Tropes H-M

• Halloween Episode: Every year there's a Halloween themed event and scout that runs alongside it. Ensemble Stars!! takes it a step further by dedicating October to multiple Halloween themed player activities to go along with the yearly event.
• Hair Style Inertia: The characters rarely, if ever, change their hair styles and this generally carries on to the younger versions of the characters shown in the Reminiscence sequences.
• Have a Gay Old Time: "Spy THE Mission" features a cross-cultural version - someone steals one of Keito's doujinshi, but because he's a Closet Geek he's too embarrassed to openly speak of it in public. So instead, he decides to refer to it in code, as 'my D.' In Japanese that's just some harmless Gratuitous English, but in English...
  Hold it! Don't you dare run away! You truly are the root of all evil! I told you to stop playing around with my D like that!
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player's default name in the story is Anzu, but it can be interchangeable.
• Hero of Another Story: The new main scenario in Ensemble Stars!! heavily focuses on ALKALOID and Crazy B's story and struggles as the original Ensemble Stars! cast are delegated as Supporting Protagonist. The event stories and gacha still give different units focus, including the old game's main story protagonists, Trickstar.
• Heroic Mime: The player/Anzu, most of the time, most likely so that fans can interpret her however.
• Hidden Depths: Quite a lot, since everything about a character's background isn't completely revealed in the main story. One would need to depend on playing the events, courses, or getting gacha cards to find out more about the characters.
• Inconsistent Dub: Several parts in the story and events are voiced. This is also included in gameplay. In story, the characters sans Anzu/The Player and the teachers will have a fully voiced scene depending on the CG. This isn't included in the events, however.
• Idol Singer: Is a game about these, though all the idols in this game are male and female idols are not mentioned. As well, not all the units fit into the traditional “idol” mold, with Valkyrie being the most prominent example of a deviation, as all units seem to cover a different genre or style of music that fits their respective unit theme. There have been some experimentation and crossovers with music styles used by the units, however.
• In the Blood: Hokuto's father, Seiya, is an idol, while his mother is an actress. A 4-koma also reveals that Subaru's father had also been an idol in the past. A fact later confirmed in the April Fool's content that both Hokuto and Subaru's fathers attended Yumenosaki academy with Sagami and Kunugi.
• In the Hood: The player/Anzu's face and hair color is always hidden, even if one CG has her drawn in, as seen here◊. Happy Elements had made it a rule to only have the player/Anzu's visual to be shown only up to her shoulders, though hints of her canon appearance can be found in some of the CG's and a little bit of Continuity Nod. As of the Anime's airing, this has been averted.
• In Name Only: In-universe example, with Wataru's (and surprisingly Anzu's) play adaptation of Cinderella, which is more like a reimagination of the tale than an adaptation at all. It features two princes who are supposed to fight for Cinderella (interpreted by Tomoya), the not-so-evil stepmom being also the spirit helper, who doesn't do much other than deliver a dress so Cinderella can go to the ball (which Cinderella forgets on her way there anyway), and the sisters being actually supportive of Cinderella. Before you ask, no, there aren't even any shoes. In the end, one of the princes (played by Hokuto) gets so shy upon the prospect of meeting Cinderella he runs away, pursued by her while she's being cheered on by the rest of the cast (including the other prince played by Kuro, who was supposed to be in love with her as well). Despite all of this and of the... peculiar acting of everyone involved, as well as the fact that Wataru changed the script without telling Tomoya, the play ends up being a success.
• In-Series Nickname: Very prominent as the cast has several nicknamers, but the most obvious one is the Five/Three Oddballs,^note Rei, Kanata, and Wataru, are currently known as the Three Oddballs while Shu and Natsume aren't considered one anymore. and it's revealed in the Magicians Assemble story that Eichi was the one who gave them this nickname. He also purposely made the "Five Oddballs" (gokijin) sound like cockroach, (gokiburi), to give off the image of them being inhuman, and have them lose respect in the school.

• Impossibly Cool Clothes: While event outfits tend to be more on the tame side, Gacha outfits are shown to be far more explorative due to the outfits being based on the concept of the gacha story, no matter how ridiculous, rather than set in the games reality. As a result, a lot of the outfits that can be unlocked through Gacha tend to be this.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Over the events (Which are said to be set after the main story), the initially Jerkass characters are shown in this light.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the Ensemble Stars!! main story, Natsume, Madara and Leo, who were frequent Out of Focus characters that didn’t have much of a role in the original main story, due to being introduced far later in the series than the original cast, discuss their original out of focus status with each other and pretty much state that it feels like they have a bigger role in this new story.
• Leitmotif:
  • The event BGM's. Also, the unit songs. For example, Akatsuki has the usage of Japanese instruments while 2Wink had EDM beats.
  • The units themselves have a motif for their unit's image. UNDEAD, for example, is based on the myths of demons and beast like Vampires and werewolves, Knights's have a Chess Motif, Ryuseitai are based on tokusatsu's, etc.
• Light Is Not Good: The top unit, fine, has a theme centering of angels and light. Majority of them are part of the student council, whom the protagonist are against of, but subverted that none of them are actually evil.
• A Lighter Shade of Gray:
  • While the student council seems to be the set up antagonist at first, as most of the members are part of the top unit fine, when the player meets the members of fine in person through the story, you find that they are ''completely'' different from what their reputation suggest them to be: Wataru is a Cloudcuckoolander with no sense of animosity towards anyone, but loyal to Eichi, Tori is a Spoiled Brat who admires Eichi, but is starting to mellow to other students in time, Yuzuru is polite and kind to anyone and a bit pushed over by Tori (although he does push Tori back quite a bit), since he's his butler. And the president of the student council, Eichi, who happens to be fine's leader, is actually quite friendly, interacting with the protagonist in Friendly Enemy levels, despite the rule he might have placed within the school's unit system.
  • With this now common knowledge to those way ahead in the game, many think that there may not be an actual antagonist in the story in the first place.
• Limited Wardrobe: While this was justified in Ensemble Stars!, where a good portion of the time the characters were seen in their uniforms due to still being in school, it’s not so much in Ensemble Stars!!, where characters have sets of casual outfits that they’re constantly seen in when not in unit or gacha themed outfits (the latter of which don’t reflect on reality due to being based solely on the theme of the gacha). The casual outfits usually only change by the season (Spring-Summer and Autumn-Winter), as well.
• Lethal Chef:
  • Ritsu's a subversion. His food's appearance scares most of the tasters, but is stated to be tasty according to Anzu (as long as you don't look at it, anyway).
  • Played straight with Ryuseitai's Tetora. He thinks that he cooks good food, but it's actually pretty bad.
• Loser Friend Puzzles Outsiders: Several, given the complicated web of relationships in the game:
  • Eichi and Wataru's friendship confuses almost everyone. Those on Eichi's side don't understand why he's so smitten by a loud, flamboyant weirdo. Those on Wataru's side are understandably mad about the whole 'trying to sabotage them' thing, not to mention Eichi's generally difficult and sly behaviour. Despite this, they're very close.
  • Likewise, Keito and Kanata do not like one another, due to their very turbulent past history and clashing personalities. Both would much prefer if Souma did not like the other nearly as much as he actually does.
  • On the other hand, Souma does not at all understand why Kanata seems to get along so well with Kaoru, who he views as a disgrace who only cares about chasing after women. However, over time he gradually learns to recognise Kaoru's good qualities, and respects him for helping Kanata during the events of Aquarium.
  • Arashi and Mika are great friends, but Arashi does not like the way Shu treates Mika.
  • Tori and Tsukasa both venerate Eichi, but cannot stand one another. Eichi finds it hilarious.
  • For a mildler example, Tetora holds Kuro as his role model, but initially can't understand why Kuro speaks so highly of Chiaki, who seems much less cool and manly to Tetora's eyes.
• Luck-Based Mission : Almost everything in the game is luck based, from getting the cards you actually want from the gacha (which is very hard if luck is not on your side, especially if you want the 5* card, which have a 1.25% chance of appearing), getting a specific jewel to drop even with equipping cards that has the ability to boost it, to the bouquet that randomly appears when playing the roulette minigame (which also appears randomly as well).
• The Main Characters Do Everything: The main characters in this game seem to dominate the idol industry, formerly run the school, run Ensemble Square, disband an ancient Cult that has operated for hundreds of years, and even take down corrupt producers when that should be the job of the police.
  • Anzu seems to be the only relevant in-universe producer — or at least the only reliable producer next to Ibara, who only wants to produce Eden. She makes their uniforms, writes and composes their music and she produces a majority of the units in both the original game and the Stars!! update. The ones she doesn’t produce often come to her for help rather than going to the PAssociation. It seems she hasn’t learned her lesson from the original game, as overworking herself was what caused her to be hospitalized in the first place.
• Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes: In one story, Souma uses his sword skills to quickly slice up an apple.
• Mini-Game: Has one for a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter first introduced during a past April Fools day in Ensemble Stars! mode. They also introduced a shaved ice mini-game where the player could collect materials for shaved ice for the units based on their favorite topping. Creating their favorite shaved ice would earn the player prizes in the form of ES coins, stat pieces and idol pieces.
• Meaningful Name: Most of the cast has these; their pages on the wikia have more insight to each.
• Microtransactions: Some things can only be accessed with paid dia, the games currency, rather than dia that can be earned for free through doing events.
  • The free daily solo scout costs 10 paid dia, vs the standard 35 free dia required for a solo.
  • The guaranteed 5-star scout, which can only be done once, costs 350 paid dia.
  • In Music, MV costumes from Ensemble Stars! (chosen through fan-voting), certain limited costumes (Anniversary outfits, for example) and Tour Event MV outfits (added after one year from their respective event) can be bought with 300 paid dia, and come with a bonus 10-scout ticket as a bonus.
• Mr. Exposition: Lots of characters take on this part to explain the Yumenosaki Academy's mechanics to the player/Anzu, but Hokuto is the most obvious example, especially in the earlier chapters of the main story, where he'd outright interrupt conversations between other characters to explain what they're talking about.
• The Musical: Like almost every popular male-character centric franchise, it inevitably received several.

Tropes N-Z

• Never Trust a Trailer: Happy Elements uploaded some video's of the cast confessing to the player/Anzu at their youtube, making it seem that the game would have Dating Sim elements, but when the game was finally out, the Dating Sim elements were non-existent (besides the Ship Tease between the Player/Anzu with the cast and the game's interface, at least). The only exception had been Leo who joined halfway after the game's release. Members of the units Valkyrie, Switch and MaM are also excluded due to being newer units.
• The Nicknamer:
  • Subaru nicknames all those whom he is close to (Sarii for Mao, Hokke for Hokuto, Shinonon for Shino, to cite a few) except for the player/Anzu. Ironically, he seems to dislike the one nickname he has ("Baru-kun", from Natsume).
  • Ritsu also nicknames those he knows of. (Suchan for Tsukasa, Secchan for Izumi, Nakkun (Now Nacchan) for Narukami), but like Subaru, the exception is the player/Anzu.
  • Izumi nicknames those in Knights and members of the tennis club which he is part of. Except for Leo and Anzu.
• Nominal Villain: The entirety of the war is a case of Gone Horribly Right, in which all of the villainous characters heavily underestimated how successful their sabotage attempts would be against their victims. However, Souma in particular knew nothing about these plots when he first joined Akatsuki, believing it to be a wonderful new idol unit that would soon do great things, and totally unaware that it was created solely to carry out the Student Council's wishes. When he finds out the specifics of what Akatsuki was planning to do to Kanata, a close friend of his, he was very upset and tried to convince his seniors not to, but was expelled from the unit for this. After a lot of soul-searching and crying, he decides to try to stay in Akatsuki in the hopes that he will be able to change it from the inside, as they have already begun to engage in some real idol activities and turn into a legitimate unit. As a result he knowingly goes along with some of Akatsuki's later activities, particularly during the main story when they stand as a barrier to Trickstar against fine. However, he works hard for Akatsuki only in the hope that it will someday break away from fine entirely and become a great, audience-pleasing unit that won't hesitate to challenge fine itself. And he is actually successful: Kuro and Keito both come to realize their mistakes due to Souma's positive influence and become extremely protective of him, and in Quarrel Fest, Akatsuki does finally escape from its unhappy origins and become the great idol unit Souma always believed it could be.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In short, details regarding the "War" that takes place before the start of the game. We might find out more about it, but recent events only give vague information, except that it's one of the reasons why Leo skipped in his early days as a third year, and possibly why Yumenosaki academy's unit system is the way it is today. Until the player/Anzu comes along to abolish it together with Trickstar.
  • Whatever Rei did in the past that made Ritsu hate him. It's implied during the 2015 Halloween event that it had to do with Rei leaving to study abroad.
  • Rei and Keito's relationship. All we got is that they used to be friends and were in the same unit once, but that's it.
  • Apparently Leo, Madara and Keito used to cause trouble together back in the day, but it has yet to be explained what that implies. Also, Madara had helped Keito out in the past, leaving Keito to feel obligated to return the favor which he does by allowing Madara to form the solo unit ' MaM '. Its explained in the Monochrome Checkmate event that in return of delinquents breaking Leo's arm in a scrap over a cat that'd been hurting, Madara and Keito played Robin Hood, running wild in the academy and " purging " it of evil with Leo watching over them to make sure they wouldn't take things too far.
  • Madara being a former member of Ryuseitai also counts, as subtle hints as to why the original Ryuseitai broke up are dropped but never fully explained. This was eventually further elaborated on in Meteor Bonfire.
  • In addition to the above, there's a lot about Madara that has yet to be explained: the darker aspects and all though hints are dropped in nearly every event he's in, implying that there will be tie-in event(s?) that explain all eventually. The Revolutionary Live Which Heralds The Dawn does give a bit of insight on his character and motivations, however.
• No Hugging, No Kissing:
  • Has quite a bit of Ship Tease between the protagonist and several of the characters (if not every single character save for the teachers) that doesn't go anywhere as the game never gives the player the option to reciprocate the characters feelings, nor does it imply that Anzu is romantically interested in any of the boys. The most the player gets is Anzu becoming flustered if the boys say something flirtatious to her or becoming nervous around some of the boys (which is not always an indication that she's shy because of an implied crush) but thats it.
  • The Ho Yay between the boys often serves as a way to demonstrate how close the boys are, but it never goes beyond that. As much as the boys flirt with each other, one would think that some of them would just confess and start dating at this point, but that doesn't happen for obvious reasons.
  • Despite the game having a Cast Full of Pretty Boys, Kaoru is the only character known for having girlfriends, with most characters either not displaying an interest in dating girls (outside of teasing the protagonist) or not having a history with being romantically involved with anyone at all. Of course this is likely to avoid pissing off players who want the boys to themselves, but it is quite unrealistic, especially since the game makes no mention of the usual idol singer Contractual Purity trope that would justify the lack of the characters dating around.
• Not a Date: Anzu ends up taking Kaoru out to the aquarium since she got tickets from Shinkai, and keeps insisting that she's not taking him on a date. He doesn't mind either way.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: While initially played straight during the initial years the game is running to fill in things that happened throughout the year and before, this becomes an Averted Trope with the release of "Chorus★Operetta of Beginnings" where the previously 2nd year and 1st year students have become third year and second year students respectively. Ensemble Stars!! main scenario also explicitly mention that the original third year students have graduated and everyone in the cast is now associated with the agency Ensemble Square.
  • In Ensemble Stars!!, some of the characters have grown taller, though their appearance otherwise have looks the same.
• One Degree of Separation: Not as extreme as most cases, however, almost every character is seemingly connected to another character in the cast, including the new characters introduced in Ensemble Stars!!. These connections run through the Childhood Friend trope, being a relative, or having met some time in the past that was not mentioned anywhere before.
• One-Gender School: Not strictly the school, but the Producer course, of which Anzu is the first female student.
• Only Six Faces: Runs on this trope due to the simplistic art style. Every character shares almost the same face and body template with the only differences being in their eye shapes, heights, skin-tones and occassionally shoulder widths.
• Out of Focus: Thanks to having many, many characters, a few characters got hit by this. As of Ensemble Stars!!, they seemed to have attempted to rectify this by creating unit song events which focus on a particular unit and tours, which focus on two or more units at a time, with unit appearances moving in rotation, meaning that every unit will have a chance to receive spotlight within a given year.
• Palette Swap: The SCR versions of 5 star card outfits are this. Despite being palette swaps, they are notably difficult to unlock, requiring multiple copies of the same card to even view the node required to obtain it.
• Passing the Torch: True to what was stated in the Repayment Festival events, the old unit leaders in Ensemble Stars! have passed on their titles to their juniors, though they continue idol work within their original units after graduating. Despite this, the media and game itself will still sometimes put the old unit leader front and center.
• Permanently Missable Content: If you missed a special collaboration event/scout with another franchise or promo event, too bad! You won't be able to get the cards or read the story. It's not added to revivals, either, making it impossible for you to go back for them.
• Platonic Valentine: The idols are expected to make chocolate to give out to their fans as Fanservice for the Valentines-themed event Chocofes. Most of them also give out friendship chocolate to the other characters as well, usually with a touch of ship-teasy Ho Yay. For example, at one point foreign transfer student Adonis wonders why girls are expected to give chocolates to boys they have a crush on, and Souma responds mentioning that he himself gave Adonis chocolate. Adonis naturally then asks whether that was meant romantically, but Souma says it was friendship chocolate.
• Police Are Useless: Considering all the crime that goes down at Yumenosaki and the implication that one of the characters may have gotten away with murder more than once they’re this. In A Dark Night’s Passing, the police actually do do their jobs for once however, they don’t arrest those that perpetrated the crime in the first place, only those that were called in to take revenge. Obviously this is because of the Plot Armor of the main cast.
• Power Creep: Mostly downplayed, but cards introduced in Ensemble Stars!! are notably more useful and are usually stronger than those from the original game. The cards from the original game will also find less usage even if they’re strong outside of ! Mode, as unlocked ! outfits cannot be used outside of that mode, players cannot obtain more “fans” for an idol when using those cards, and they have different idol road requirements than the cards introduced in !!.
• Power Equals Rarity : The cards in the game has levels according to their strength, numbered from 1-stars (weakest) to 5-stars (strongest). Naturally, while the 1 to 3 star cards are rather weak and very easy to find in the gacha, the 4-star and 5-star cards are strong, but very rare and requires a lot of luck to find, especially the 5-star cards, with 1.25% chance of appearing from the gacha. In Ensemble Stars!!, the rate-up for

a 5-star card has been raised to 3%, but it isn't guaranteed to be the card featured in the current scout.

• Power of Friendship: A huge motif in the main story as well as the story overall. Units become True Companions over the course of the story no matter how dysfunctional they started out as, working through their many hardships whilst supporting each other in spite of their issues. The only character that started out alone, Madara Mikejima of the solo unit MaM, is shown to be unhappy (though stoically so) and lonely because he lacks the connections other characters have made through their units, despite being surrounded by friends himself. He finally officially "ensembles" (fanspeak for joining a unit with someone) in a way when he forms Double Face with Kohaku Oukawa in Ensemble Stars!!, and the writers have gone on the record to say that they want to give Madara a friend who could also stand as his equal on stage.^note He's been in units with other characters before, originally being in Ryuseitai with unseen characters, then Ryuseitai with Chiaki and Kanata. He's also been in several temporary units such as Traumerei. That said, these were either temporary or in the past. Though it's clear from this point in the current story that Double Face will have it's own issues as a unit they will need to overcome together.
• Prequel: With all of the connections to Ensemble Girls! with Leo and Anzu's backstory, Stars! serves as one to the former game, seeing that Leo's in college by the time the events of Girls! happens and its protagonist is in a completely different school. It’s unknown if this is still the case after the Ensemble Stars!! update, as the game carries on per usual with Anzu still attending Yumenosaki.
• Proxy War: In the second game where Eichi from Starmarker Studios and Ibara from Cosmic Productions use Alkaloid and Crazy:B respectively (even making using of the Amagi brothers' connection).
• Retcon: Happens very often in the story, to the point where it has been noted by the wiki. Even more so now that the game has shifted over to the Ensemble Stars!! Story, introducing new information for some old characters, while altering the past lore we already knew about to fit a new story direction.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Madara delivers a rather scathing one to Subaru and Hokuto, as well as Trickstar as a unit, in the event " The Revolutionary Live Which Heralds the Dawn ".
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Sakuma brothers, though they are not evil. However, it might allude to their status as "vampires".
• Remember the New Guy?: Happens with nearly every new character introduced that wasn't in the game from the start, though it helps that Anzu, our primary POV, is a transfer student and so wouldn't know them anyway.
  • Leo was the leader of Knights, but hadn't been attending school since before Anzu's arrival.
  • Up to eleven with Natsume, who was Anzu's classmate during the time before he was introduced, but apparently she never met him because he skips a lot of classes.
  • Madara's excuse was he was overseas most of the time. Though from his introduction, Madara would show up infrequently and sometimes randomly in other event stories sometimes for this reason which is consistent with this excuse.
  • In Ensemble Stars!!, there's Tsukasa Suou's "cousin" Kohaku Oukawa who is supposedly a big part of Tsukasa's family backstory despite never being mentioned until his introduction in the new game. He is the only new character introduced beyond the original Ensemble Stars! cast with family ties to a preexisting character as every other new character was either a Childhood Friend to someone in the main cast or someone they knew of before Anzu entered the school. Beyond Tsukasa, Kohaku is aware of the Mikejima and Kanzaki family line, even stating that the Kanzaki and Oukawa families used to clash back in the day, but this again was never mentioned as a fact in the original game. This is all Hand Waved away as Tsukasa never mentioning Kohaku was because Kohaku was kept away from the outside world for a majority of his life up until the point of Ensemble Stars!!.
• Sentai: The unit Ryuseitai.
• Serious Business: Being an Idol Singer, which is treated even more seriously in-universe than it is in the real world, despite all the real life horror stories surrounding the business.
• Shout-Out: Ensemble Stars as a franchise makes plenty of references to other works through character dialogue and sometimes even event titles.
  • In a self-referential type of way, unit song event 5 star card motions make direct references to the Ensemble Stars!! Music MV’s those cards get in that app.
  • In Road to Show, some billboards in New York display advertisements for Witch, East Side Story, Sunny Girl, and Ghost Core
• Ship Tease: Too many to list
• Shrinking Violet:
  • Shino from Ra*Bits. Partly due to anxiety.
  • The player/Anzu is canonically this by one of the game's main scenario writer's, Akira, of Sasami-san@Ganbaranai fame. In part of having a gloomy school life in her previous school which was expanded in the game's novelization currently only available in the AGF event and now up and available through pre-orders, she gets better over the course of the story. This also confirms the fact that Anzu is Angie, who had been mentioned in Ensemble Girls!, see more in Continuity Nod.
• Sleepy Head: Sakuma Rei and his brother, Ritsu. They always like to sleep during daytime. It was coincidentally this very reason that Ritsu, who is a year older than the rest of the second year students, forced to retake his whole second year again due to scheduling reasons. The 2015 Halloween event reveals that both are quite weak to sunlight.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Some of the characters, but Koga is one of the examples for using the arrogant self-honorific, Ore-Sama (Which is considered prouder than the usual "Ore").
• The Smurfette Principle: In-universe, the player/Anzu is the only girl among the cast.
• Sock Slide Rink: In the Biblio story, Hajime amuses himself on a rainy day by sliding through the school hallways in his socks, explaining to Midori that since his family is poor he's used to looking for easy ways to have fun.
• Spell My Name With An S: Everyone thought fine is pronounced as it is in English (As in "I'm fine"), but it's actually pronounced as "fee-nay". Wataru actually makes a joke out of this in one of the events.
• Spoiled Brat:
  • Tori. Crossing a lot to Bratty Half-Pint until Character Development.
  • Eichi used to be one when he was younger.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • The Player/Anzu's transfer in the main story. Her decision to become Trickstar's producer, and also her initial transfer is what brought the harsh unit system at Yumenosaki academy to an end.
  • In the manga, Trickstar's themselves are one to the student council and fine since Anzu is Adapted Out.
• Talking Is a Free Action: The units whenever they’re performing in an event take a lot of time to monologue to each other on stage, seemingly while they’re in the middle of said performance. Since there are no text boxes that indicate what’s happening around them, or whether or not they’re backstage when these performances take place, it’s often difficult to tell what exactly is going on.
• Tastes Better Than It Looks: This is Ritsu's specialty: all of his cooking ends up looking very strange and incredibly unappetising, but anyone who eats it admits that the taste is pretty good. One suggests that if people could eat it without opening their eyes his cooking would be really popular.
• Technicolor Eyes: A lot of characters have unnatural eye colors such as red, gold, purple or even chartreuse in Leo and Kanata's case. The most common In-Universe eye colors seem to be purple and blue while the rarest eye colors, not being shared with anyone else in the cast, such as Madara's blue-green eyes, Nazuna's pinkish red eyes, and Yuzuru's reddish-purple eyes.
• There Are No Therapists: On the same level as Police Are Useless and Adults Are Useless, in this universe the characters are left to deal with their issues of varying severity on their own.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Or favorite shaved ice topping. In Ensemble Stars!! Basic, every character has a favorite and least favorite topping for their shaved ice though some characters, like Niki, like everything and dislike nothing.
• True Companions: The units are close-knit with each other, no matter how dysfunctional. Trickstar is the best example as they share a close friendship with each other despite adversaries or positions. It was also a main charm for their own unit.
• Updated Re-release: Basic and Music are this to the original game.
• Verbal Tic:
  • All the Three Oddballs are examples of this. Kanata speaks in Hiragana, never in Katakana or Kanji. As for Rei and Wataru, Rei speaks in a manner similar to an old man while Wataru speaks in dramatics.
  • Shinobu from Ryuseitai speaks in an older form of Japanese.
  • Leo greets hello by saying "Uchuu~" which means space in Japanese. Implied to have taken this phrase from meeting Ruri sometime after skipping his 2nd year. See Continuity Nod.
  • Madara has a tendency of speaking in four-character compound idioms, as reflected in his flavor text.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Downplayed compared to other games, but choosing some of Anzu's snarkier dialogue options can be seen as this. Some of the boys brush it off while others appear to be visibly bothered.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Clothes for the idols can be unlocked through events and gacha. Only gacha 3 stars do not come with new outfits.

• Wall Crawl: If the novel is to be believed, Rei is apparently capable of this, and does it when Koga tries to chase him around the music room.

  Anzu: Seeing me act pleased instead, Hokuto-kun sends a puzzled look my way, before he throws his gaze to the ceiling. There, Rei-san is attaching himself to the ceiling like a spider to escape from the ball of violence that is Kouga-kun.

• We Used to Be Friends: Chiaki and Eichi were friends as children, but totally forgot about this until it came up again in Saga pt. 2. However, though Chiaki disapproves of Eichi's actions during the war, allying with Kanata, he is still something of a fan of fine, and in Saga refers to Eichi as a friend. (Eichi himself defers.)
• White-and-Grey Morality: While many of the characters have done questionable things in the past, and some even do over the course of the current story, all are ultimately treated as sympathetic, helped by the Rotating Protagonist structure ensuring that everyone gets to give their point of view eventually. Even the main story, which does focus on a specific four protagonists and has a more typical protagonists vs antagonists story structure, exudes this: while the destruction of the student council's grip over the other students is treated as straightforwardly good, it's made clear that Eichi truly believed that he was doing the right thing at first, and genuinely underestimated how badly his actions would affect others (particularly the Oddballs), and after he is defeated admits that he's starting to feel genuine friendship for the protagonists.
• White Sheep:
  • Mao is one to the Student Council. Especially as the only other member not in fine (Akatsuki's Keito), is actually loyal to Eichi's cause. Until the end of the main story anyway.
  • Kuro, for being the first member that acted cordial and friendly to the protagonist and Trickstar who came from Akatsuki can also count in the early parts of the story.
• Yakuza: Madara's mother is stated to be someone who formerly " went against society " but is retired now, speculated to be an ex-yakuza princess by Kaoru and subtly confirmed by Madara himself. This would explain where Madara gets his unconventional notion of justice from.
• Yandere: A downplayed version by Sena to Makoto as Sena is more of a Yangire than an actual Yandere. However, when speaking directly to Makoto, he is certainly a lot more dere than with, well, pretty much everybody else. He seemed to drop it out ever since Leo returned... but still acting the same to Makoto nonetheless.
• Yonkoma: Has an official, on-going 4koma series illustrated by the creator of Pop Team Epic , Bkub Ōkawa.

Tropes Present In Ensemble Stars!! Music

• Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Per the norm for Ensemble Stars!! but some notable examples include.
  • SPP: SPecial Performance. Refers to the special dance the center character can do during a song when Ensemble Time is completed.
  • SCR: SeCRet. Refers to the Palette Swap version of a 5 star card outfit, obtained when the player has 3 copies of the card. There are also SCR versions of MV outfits. These require more copies of the card to unlock.
  • MV: Music Video. Obviously.
• Allegedly Free Game: More so than Basic, due to Music requiring the player to spend dia and/or money in order to get to a single copy of the event 5-star card, in unit song events, at least. And good luck trying to get more than one copy of the 5-stars, as it would cost around 12k dia to max out the card.
• Animated Music Video: The MV’s are this and they are only viewable in the app through the Music app. The player has the option to switch between 3D mode and 2D mode.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Like Basic, most cards come with Live 2D outfits. In Music, however, unit song event cards and 5-star scout cards come with music video outfits. 5-star cards also come with SCR versions of the music video outfits. Work will also have office outfits drop, and they're obtainable from playing events, though the methods for earning them have changed over time. Tour events initially don’t come with MV outfits, likely because the cards are potentially obtainable for free, but they do come with the standard Live2D costumes and SCR versions. After a year from the original event's run, Tour events' MV outfits can be bought in the Dia Shop.
• An Interior Designer Is You: The Office function in Music, which allows you to purchase furniture, some of which your idol can interact with. Events also give the players more decorations, some being trophies and others being posters of the featured unit.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The rhythm game segments have several.
  • Getting a Good won’t break your full combo, unlike in similar Rhythm Games such as BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!.
  • You do not actually have to hold during the long notes segments, so long as you tap the note at the required time.
  • You do not need BP to do songs outside of events which can be good if the player is simply looking to test how hard the song is to play at different difficulty levels.
  • The threshold to clear a song is considerably lower than most games, meaning the player can mess up several times and potentially still manage to clear a song, as long as they maintain the minimum amount of Voltage required.
  • You can choose how much BP you want to use on a song regardless of the songs difficulty, but higher usages of BP can give the player more event points, which is beneficial if you want to get the event cleared fast.
  • Each event there is a log-in bonus that extends for the entire duration of the event in which materials needed to progress (whistles and song passes) are sent out. The amount of materials given depends on the event.
  • Tour Event missions save your progress, meaning that if you couldn’t clear the mission the first time, you can always go back and finish it later. As well, your missions aren’t reset when you exit a tour stop, only the fever bar is which doesn’t affect anything outside the potential 3 dia reward.
  • Tour events overall appear to be this compared to the much more difficult unit song events, as they’re a more lax type of event that can potentially net you a free copy of the event 4-star and 5-star of your choosing if you’re willing to put in the work. While stars are required in order to unlock the 4-star tour stop (30 stars) and the tour stop before day 30 (77 stars), the player does not need to clear all missions for a specific day in order to to progress otherwise and can easily go back and finish missions in order to meet the requirements. The missions are also straight forward and easy to clear.
• Anti Poop-Socking: The BP Meter. It caps at 10 BP and takes several hours to fill up without the player using whistles or dia. While whistles can be obtained as a log-in bonus depending on the event or as an event reward, it's easy to burn through them in an hour or so and to be forced to wait until the BP meter fills up on it's own. Whistles and passes also expire once the next event begins, making it pointless to attempt to hoard whistles until another event the player is more interested in shows up. The work ticket meter is this as well, as at lower office levels, it takes 30 minutes to just get one ticket with the max being capped at three unless the player levels up and gets an overflow of six tickets.
• Boring, but Practical: The most economical way to clear unit songs events is to put your strongest cards on one team and clear any rainbow attribute song. "Walk With Your Smile" is usually the one players go for, due to it being one of the shortest songs and one of the easiest to clear on higher difficulties. It's boring and can become tedious after the first few days, but it saves time and is the quickest way to accumulate the max amount of points a player can get from a particular song.
• Choreography Porn: The MV dances are notably well choreographed and entertaining to watch, even by those who don’t play the actual game. According to Word of God, they’re motion captured. SPP’s, which are special unlockable dances that your teams leader does during Ensemble Time when they’re featured in a song, are this as well.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the original attributes, which are divided into three: Performance (yellow), Dance (red), and Vocal (blue), there are the Music exclusive attributes which are Glitter (green), Brilliant (blue), Flash (yellow) and Sparkle (red).
• Continuity Nod: Despite the players being locked out of past events and most information from Ensemble Stars! unless they play the Basic app, references to past events and scout stories in Music are this.
• Costume Porn: While they’re the same outfits as in Basic, the MV outfits are much more detailed and textured than the flatter looking Live 2D models.
• Cut and Paste Environments: In the music videos, the various Ensemble Square stages (ES Live Stage, the outdoor stage, Marble Cast stage^note It's only called the Marble Cast stage in the Double Face debut event, so it's unknown if the stages from the other music videos simply look similar or if they're all actually the same stage) that the idols perform on are this trope. Each time the stages reappear, they're decorated to varying degress to represent whichever unit is performing at the time. Unit song events, and by extension Shuffle events, tend to err more on the unique side when it comes to stages, as if the characters aren't performing somewhere completely different, the stages will be borderline unrecognizable due to how many changes are made to them. Angle tricks also keep the stages feeling fresh, even if they're recycled.
• Developer's Foresight: For the music video segments, the developers accounted for the differing heights of the characters, meaning that poses will change slightly to make up for differences should a tall character be placed in the role a shorter character had and vice versa. Hilarity Ensues in most cases.
• Early Game Hell: In the Music version of Ensemble Stars!!, you can't get higher scores unless you properly level up your cards and the skills that comes with them.
• Ensemble Cast: Events operate the same as Ensemble Stars!! Basic, though there is a special case when it comes to music videos. During unit song events, the 5-star character will not only be the primary focus of the story, they will also be the center of the music video released alongside the event. This gives everyone in the unit a chance to be the focus of a music video even if they're not the unit leader.
• Faceless Masses: The models seen during the outdoor ES stage music videos are this. The other music videos that feature a crowd may count as this, as the crowd is usually just represented by colored glow-sticks being waved around.
• Fictional Currency: L$’s, which are obtained by completing lives and jobs. They’re used to buy office furniture, level up work perks and to buy limited time items such as personalized birthday cakes for the characters. They’re otherwise useless to the player outside of the office, but is treated as important currency in story.
• Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: The "extras" seen on screen in the music video segments are Faceless Masses with varying shades of brown or black hair. The NPC's seen in the "Work" feature do have faces, but they're all fairly generic looking compared to the colorful main cast.
• Flawless Victory: If you "Perfect Combo" a song, and S+ it score-wise.
• Gameplay Automation: The Work mini-game has an auto-function.
• Harder Than Hard: "Expert" level songs, especially songs from unit song events. =EYE= is a notable example, being so hard that it's difficulty is frequently complained about on social media.
  • With the release of "Special" level for certain songs, this doubly applies. Miwaku Geki (which requires the use of multiple fingers) and Emerald Planet (whose beatmap resembles Cinderella Girls' Witch mode) are some of the most notorious examples.
• Life Meter: Has one which determines how much the player has to go to clear the song. The threshold for clearing the song is low but getting Bad or Miss significantly lowers the players score.
• Luck-Based Mission: Being a gacha game, "Scouts" are this as the chances of getting a 5-star card, especially the 5-star card you actually want is low. The "Work" function also dabbles in luck, as the work missions can potentially drop chibi outfits for the characters. This happens infrequently, however.
• Microtransactions: In Ensemble Stars!! Music, The Ensemble Taishou MV costumes, which were from the April Fools event, were added to the dia shop and cost 300 paid dia per office. The outfits also come with a 10-scout ticket. Kohaku Oukawa and Jun Sazanami’s outfits can be purchased for 500 ES coins due to their participation in the event.
  • The Anniversary and Half Anniversary events introduce several gacha that require paid Dia to receive a guaranteed 5 star scout. One scout guarantees a 5-star with an MV outfit, rather than one of the 5-star starter cards.
  • The Anniversary event introduced a voting system that allowed the player to vote on old unit event outfits from Ensemble Stars! to be ported over and turned into MV outfits for their respective unit. The winning outfits would be added to the Dia Item shop, to be bought with paid dia similarly to the April Fools event MV outfits. They also come with a premium 10-scout ticket.
• Mini-Game: The touch-and-go Work minigame.
• Mythology Gag: The choreography from the various Dream Live performances reappear here.
• Palette Swap: The SCR versions of the characters outfits are this, however only 5 star cards unit event, shuffle event and gacha cards can receive this. MV outfits’ also have SCR models.
• Permanently Missable Content: Considering Revivals don't exist in Ensemble Stars!! Music as of current, if you missed any event cards, it's impossible to go back and get them. The game does give you the option to unlock event stories you missed with dia after a certain amount of time has passed, though.
  • Averted with office furniture from collaboration events. They're often permanently added to buy mode after the collaboration period ends, but they're no longer on sale, making them significantly more expensive than they were upon release.
  • Averted as of the Re-release's first year anniversary. Past events' cards, office outfits, mini-talks, backgrounds (and even MV pieces) can be bought with Memorial Coins obtainable through events. Each past event's Memorial section is released chronologically upon one year from their initial run, starting from BIGBANG.
• Play Every Day: The game has log-in bonuses and playing certain songs while events aren't going gives the player more items and skill up tickets. These change daily. As well, players often play everyday during events to keep up with their BP level in order to get cards before the event ends.
• Power Equals Rarity: The same as Basic, however in Music, 5 star cards do more as this game adds 4 new Attributes (Glitter, Brilliant, Flash, Sparkle) along with the original attributes (Dance, Vocal, Performance) in order to do a number of different things during songs such as boost cards of the same attribute up to 120%.
• Score Multiplier: Some cards can do this.
• Rare Random Drop: For the lives, idol pieces and large stat pieces. For the Work mini-game, work outfits but especially unit outfits as both can only be obtained by getting Great or the far more illusive Perfect during the mini-game.
• Spiritual Successor: In terms of being a Rhythm Game Music is this to THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage due to the many aspects of its gameplay it borrows, while adding a splash of THE iDOLM@STER: Million Live! Theater Days.
• Title Scream: Opening up the game will have one of the idols shout "Ensemble Stars!! Music!"
• Random Drop Booster: Some cards are capable are doing this, though 5 star cards are often better and can boost the drop rates of Rare Random Drop.
• Retcon: Although contradictions in writing are to be expected given the length of Ensemble Stars' existence and the sheer volume of stories released in the game over its 5-year lifespan, the story is prone to retconning information, particularly information from the original game, to suit the needs of the newer stories. A recent instance of this was in Kanata's Lookback event, where they not only purposefully retconned elements of Kanata's childhood (such as his understanding of the term "parents" due to the event story's emphasis on his mother, Souma's knowledge of Kanata and Madara as children when Madara first met Souma in high school, etc.), but also went back into the original game's narrative to change details to reflect these changes.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Has the same gacha and event outfits as Basic to dress your character up in. Some cards also come with outfits for the Animated Music Video segments as well.
• Vocal Dissonance: The vocals of the original song will not change even if you set a different characters on the team. This is only averted in the songs "Brand New Stars!!", “Walk With Your Smile”, and "Fusionic Stars!!", as every character has their own rendition of the lyrics.
  • "Stars' Ensemble" partly averts this by having each character have a unique voiceline before the song starts, but otherwise plays this trope straight.
  • The acoustic version of "Walk With Your Smile" also plays this trope straight.
• Rhythm Game