Tokyo 7th Sisters is a Japanese mobile rhythm game by Donuts Inc. The game has gone through three rhythm game systems to date. The first system, which was used while the game was only available on iOS, had notes in the shape of stars flying across the screen to a marker which could be in any of nine positions set in a 3 × 3 grid, with gameplay resembling a one-button Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. The second system, introduced with the availability of the game on Android and used for three years until a renewal, had two lanes forming a circle, with the buttons placed at the bottom corners of the screen (although in practice you could press pretty much anywhere on each half of the screen). The third and current system instead uses 7 lanes side by side with notes of varying widths, including the newly introduced flick and sky icon notes. Currently, the game has a Japanese server and (for some reason) a Thai servernote .
This game also has a story mode (called Scout in-game) in which players search for idol cards while progressing through the story and a battle mode in which players battle other players or certain in-game characters using their idol cards.
The story goes as follows:
In the year 2032, the legendary idol unit "7th Sisters" suddenly retired from the industry and disappeared. That was the end of the idol industry… until two years later, when a young glory-seeking employee is appointed to be the manager of Tokyo's next generation idol studio, "777 (Three Seven)", commonly referred to as Nana-Sta. However, the city continues to believe that idols are a thing of the past, and Nana-Sta is no exception. Their slump continues, but one day a mysterious and beautiful female manager approaches you and says, "If the idols of the past are gone, we'll just have to make new idols! True "sisters" linked by powerful bonds!" The story of the idols of the future, the 777☆SISTERS, will now unfold.
Tokyo 7th Sisters contains examples of the following:
- Anti-Frustration Features: If an idol requests for a private lesson, the normal cost of a ticket to hold the lesson is negated, in case you've run out of tickets to schedule the lesson. And on failing or quitting a song, any idols in the team with max motivation will retain it instead of have it reset to 0, which is the case for a cleared song.
- Arc Number: 7. The leader of the 7th Sisters bears the surname Nanasaki, the studio you work in as the manager is named Three Seven (hence 777☆SISTERS), you have 49note playable characters (that makes 7 to the 2nd power).
- Comically averted with 7th Sisters actually only having 6 members, alongside Nicole hiding her identity under the surname of Rokusakinote
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Sparkling any GS+ or PS card beyond level 20, which increases their level cap (from a base of 99 for both rarites) by the same amount, to a maximum of sparkle level 30 (level 129) for GS+ cards and sparkle level 40 (level 139) for PS cards. Either a lot of high rarity cards featuring the same character as the target card (and/or GS sunglasses Coneys, which would have easily worked on a GS card), or a single PS sunglasses Coney, is required to sparkle the card by one level, and for PS cards, only P or PS cards will work. GS Coneys, while comparatively much easier to get than PS Coneys, are still not easy to get, and are better off used on GS cards. GS+ cards, being generally weaker than PS cards and not much stronger than GS cards, lie more on the Impractical side, as even if you can sparkle such a card, there are generally better options, while PS cards lie more on the Awesome side, as there do exist cards of this rarity which clearly can be worth sparkling beyond level 20, most notably
Mana's first PS (but most extremely high ATK cards also apply). - As of the third rhythm game system, the Combo Bonus Up live member skill. It's a lot worse than the Score Up live member skill, unless you've already racked a nice combo count when it activates, in which case it can potentially be a lot better. Thing is, for it to really be reliable, you have to be able to reliably full combo songs on Expert, where you can potentially rack up the required combo count for the card to be worth it, and for it to be useful, it has to have at least a decent ATK score, and cards with this skill tend to have low ATK, a carry over from the skill it replaced note . Nevertheless, it did see some practical use for the medley songs, and Mito's 3rd PS has high enough ATK that it falls into Difficult, but Awesome instead.
- Sparkling any GS+ or PS card beyond level 20, which increases their level cap (from a base of 99 for both rarites) by the same amount, to a maximum of sparkle level 30 (level 129) for GS+ cards and sparkle level 40 (level 139) for PS cards. Either a lot of high rarity cards featuring the same character as the target card (and/or GS sunglasses Coneys, which would have easily worked on a GS card), or a single PS sunglasses Coney, is required to sparkle the card by one level, and for PS cards, only P or PS cards will work. GS Coneys, while comparatively much easier to get than PS Coneys, are still not easy to get, and are better off used on GS cards. GS+ cards, being generally weaker than PS cards and not much stronger than GS cards, lie more on the Impractical side, as even if you can sparkle such a card, there are generally better options, while PS cards lie more on the Awesome side, as there do exist cards of this rarity which clearly can be worth sparkling beyond level 20, most notably
- Bland-Name Product: All over the place in the episodes, such as "Camcom Amusment(sic) Z" and "7th Mart". In one of Tomoe's G/GS cards, she's acting in a commercial for "Popky" pretzel sticks.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Some characters' quotes upon clearing live stages comment directly at the gameplay itself, such as Matsuri's request for a new high score or Ferb's comment that there were no misses.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Par for the course with an Allegedly Free Game. Infamously, the rates for the top three rarities were 1%/1%/4% prior to the 4th anniversary when the gacha rates were raised to a far more generous 3%/4%/7%. And in the chuunibyou episode event which rewarded the first event G+ card, the event GS+ was mathematically impossible to get without buying stamina charges (the fact that Makoto was said event GS+ didn't help matters).
- Chuunibyou: During an event episode, Makoto, Susu and Sawori suffer from this. Despite it being presented as something that 14 year olds suffer from, Kajika isn't affected for some reason.
- Class and Level System: Sort of, for each card, which has a default type depending on the idol the card features. The Prestige Class is accessible to any GS(+) or PS idol card that is not No Type, and which has been given the right Item Produce item for the Prestige Class corresponding to the card's attribute: Vocalist -> God Voice, Varadol -> Comedienne, Model -> Actress, Player -> Star Player, Dancer -> Trickster. The card will gain 5% HP and ATK. By giving the right Item Produce item, you can also change the card's attribute of a special lessoned card of any rarity (again, excluding No Type cards) to a different one (silver gets a choice of two attributes, all others get one each) which varies depending on the card itself, at a cost of 10% HP and ATK. Notably, you can't change back in either case unless you also give the right Item Produce item corresponding to the card's default attribute, which you have to separately feed from the Prestige Class, but the card can switch anytime between any type you've unlocked this way (unless that card's placed in a Performatch unit), and if you have duplicates of that card you don't need to unlock anything a second time.
- Comeback Mechanic: In Performatches, team rankings are updated every 30 minutes, and the team with the fewest points gets a +50% ATK buff for that duration. This used to help to keep the Vocalist team in check, until they started running away with the lead anyway.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Coney. In the episodes, she can get quite intense when training the idols. Her Experience Points giving cards have her describe herself as a demon coach. And one raid event styled her as "Sergeant Coney".
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The order goes Vocalist > Varadol note > Model > Player > Dancer > Vocalist. Of course, this doesn't mean that Competitive Balance is in play…
- Elemental Tiers: Vocalist is considered the strongest, as it has by far the most Platinum cards (mainly due to being the only attribute to have more than one representative in the 7th Sisters) and the most high ATK cards, and the Vocalist team has dominated every single Performatch to date, holding the lead most of the time during every Performatch and outright winning all but three early editions (the 2nd, 4th and 9th editions were all won by Varadol), and starting from the 12th edition the name of the winning team has been a Foregone Conclusion. On the other hand, Model is at the bottom of the pecking order, due to how few high ATK cards it gets; at one point the Model card with the highest ATK was type changed from Vocalist.
- First-Episode Twist: Coney's real identity being Nicole, the leader of the 7th Sisters. It would have been a Secret Identity if she wasn't so terrible at hiding it, not that it stops her from denying it at every opportunity. In the prologue, the player character's predecessor almost lets it slip twice, only for Coney to interrupt him with a Coney chop both times. Early on Haru finds out (but plays along anyway), Rona sees through it instantly, and all it took was asking for her age for Ume to confirm her identity. Before long it becomes common knowledge to everyone except the player character.
- Flawless Victory: The third rhythm game system introduces a "Full Perfect" caption, complete with a special animation, if your Full Combo consists entirely of Perfects.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Inverted for Clover during the first Live Jack event, played straight for every other team. Due to a bug with calculating the number of fans in each nodenote , Clover, considered the weakest team in that event, took over almost the entire map, occupying all but one node for two hours straight, even locking everyone out of the guerrilla battle for the second hour. When the bug was fixed, they failed to capture even a single node for the next two rounds.
- Gimmick Level: For the third rhythm game system, the temporary Another difficulty charts are this.
- Idol Singer: Naturally.
- Last Lousy Point: The Tension S rank Sisters mission for each song in the We Are Sisters events, which requires everyone to finish the selected song with a total of 30400[note]38000 in the first edition[/note] Tension. Naturally, this becomes even harder for higher difficulty songs, but even for lower difficulty songs it's not uncommon to see this mission being the only one left uncleared for each song, even when SS rank missions were introduced for other mission types in the second edition of the event. This wasn't so much of an issue in the first edition of the event, but in the second edition you had to clear all missions for all songs to get a GS Coney. This in turn makes the event mission in the second edition where you have to clear all Sisters missions That One Sidequest, with no other event mission even coming close in terms of difficulty.
- Lucky Charms Title: 777☆SISTERS, as well as many of the songs. And in the Harukaze music video, the idol studio's name is stylised as NANA☆STA.
- Magikarp Power: Due to GS cards changing their leader skills when changing to a different class or their Prestige Class, this trope can come in play if the new leader skill suits the card much better than the old one. The biggest example is Makoto's softball card, which is a G with weak attack, high HP and a leader skill that reflects some of the damage taken back to the opponent, to which hardly anyone would bat an eye, but upgrade the card to GS (cheerleader) and unlock God Voice and its leader skill and you get the third (or fourth, if you count one of Mana's PS cards with a slightly weaker healing leader skill but in exchange has a much stronger healing member skill and much higher attack) best healing card in the game, and by far the best non-PS healer card.
- Marathon Level: The Memory of "Blossom" event, based off the Chain The Blossom concert, had two really long songs, which are actually medleys taken from the concert.
- Min Maxers Delight: Pick Player as your account type to take full advantage of Mana's first PS card and farm to your heart's content in daily scouts, as your account type (which can never be changed) increases the HP of all cards of that type by 3% during battles.
- Non-Elemental: No Type, which is neither strong or weak against any elements.
- Nonindicative Name: This is the reason for KARAKURI's initial challenge to 777☆SISTERS: because they aren't actually sisters (save for Sanbon Ribbon, although in their episode later on it's implied that Susu and Sanbon Ribbon had yet to join at that time). The 7th Sisters aren't actually sisters either.
- Parental Abandonment: Qruit and Rui (and possibly all the 7th Sisters) are orphans, as are the Karakuri twins. And of the current Nana-sta cast, Hime's mother is dead.
- Pendulum War:
- Live Jack events in a nutshell. Although the team with the most girls with Platinum rarity cards always has a clear edge.
- Old Performatch events used to be this, prior to the 12th edition, with Vocalist usually (but not always) coming out on top.
- Relationship Values: Every idol card has an intimacy value, which is higher for rarer cards. Maxing out intimacy for any idol cards give a stat boost on them. Doing the same on cards of silver rarity and above gives 7th Coins, this game's in-app purchase currency and unlocks intimacy scenarios, in which the idols get personally close to you.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Manager and Coney.
- Spell My Name With An S: The English fanbase is divided as to whether use the in-game romanisation (e.g. Shinjyu) or the standard Hepburn (e.g. Shinju). And in-game, Coney's profile page spells "Cony" instead.
- Stealth Pun: What do we refill charisma with? With donuts.
- Super-Deformed: The idols in the i-n-g minigames, and as of the renewal, in Dance Mode during songs.
- Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: As if the title didn't make it obvious...
- Too Awesome to Use: The PS sunglasses Coney can sparkle any card at any level with 100% chance of success, raising its level cap, but in practice you're going to hoard them until a card that's actually worth sparkling (such as Mana's first PS) comes by. And even then if an even better card comes out, that means you just wasted them. And of course there's no way you're going to use them at lower sparkle levels (below level 20) when you can farm BS and SS sunglasses Coneys on weekends for that. The GS Coney is also this to a smaller extent, as there are few GS cards worth sparkling beyond level 20.
- Useless Useful Spell:
- For lives, Score Up in the second rhythm game system, and Easy Time (or Steady Up) in the third system. Ironically, the former became the most useful skill in the third system, and the latter used to be the most useful skill in the second system.
- For battles, any skill other than damage negation, skill negation,note ATK buff (that doesn't buff only itself, but either its entire subunit or all cards of its type in the unit)note and HP recoverynote is considered this. And that's just for leader skills; just about all member skills in general are considered this trope.
