Congratulations to THE IDOLM@STER sound team at NAMCO BANDAI Studios! They claimed the top award in the sound category at the 2012 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference (CEDEC) ! Three members of the team pose with the award below. Note that they are all being totally awesome by wearing the 7th Anniversary Concert exclusive iM@S Producer-style ANIM@TION EDITION neckties ! Mr. Nakagawa, Mr. Uchita, and the Sound Director, Mr. Ishihara, pose with their award The award was given for “Surpassing the bounds of game music, J-pop songs from a game.” The full description for why they received the award reads as such: “The light J-pop songs created by the virtual-idol producing NAMCO BANDAI Studio Sound Team have surpassed the bounds of game music, brilliantly achieving things such as: appearing as opening and ending music for a television anime, realizing a dedicated 2-day concert at the Yokohama Arena, and having character single CDs hold 5 spots in the Oricon Weekly Top 10 chart

So it seems I only update this blog now when one of the iM@S idols has a birthday. This time it's Takane, also one of my favorites! Coincidentally, the birthday for Takane's voice actor, Yumi Hara, falls on the same day! So be sure to celebrate both of their birthdays today! As usual, you can get free wallpapers and such from the official site . Also, you get a birthday video from Niconico too! 【ニコニコ動画】【四条貴音誕生祭２０１２】 Princess Game 【アイドルマスター】

I've been away from this blog for a while, but I couldn't pass up saying Happy Birthday to one of my favorite iM@S idols, Yukiho. Happy Birthday! Yes, I know it's not the 24th here in the USA, but it is in Japan, so that means it's her birthday to me. Now go get the free wallpapers and such from the official site !

So I got THE IDOLM@STER2 First-run Limited Production Edition today for PS3! I was so excited! I would have gotten it the day before yesterday, but I just didn't get home early enough to pick it up from the post office. Anyway, I picked it up yesterday, and there was no stopping me. First, a shot of the box. The box it came in next to my 360 copy of iM@S2 When I picked it up, it was lighter than I had imagined, and I it seemed a little small to get an A1-sized tapestry in it, but opening up would show my fears to be unfounded. Unpacking it all, I found everything I'd hoped for. The contents of the shipping box I unrolled the tapestry and the poster to take a look and them, as I had bought the game specifically from Gamers to get them. They are pretty awesome. The A1-sized tapestry The B4-sized poster I also opened up the foil packet to see what was on my anime film strip. Turns out it's the same as the Gamers postcard I got with the set. I wonder if maybe ce

So I just made some Kara-age tonight from some kind of Kikkoman kara-age mix. It was really straightforward. I just cut up some chicken, shook it around in a bag with the mix, and then fried it. My results are below. I made some rice to go with it and just ate that. Wasn't bad. Some of the pieces were still a little powdery, but I blame that on my poor cooking ability. I feel like it was saltier than I would have liked, but I guess it's hard to adjust it when it's a pre-made powder. I'll have to look into a real recipe for kara-age sometime.

I just saw the banner today about the iM@S Social Game (temp name) coming out at the end of November. Although I had seen the blog post when it came out yesterday, I hadn't gotten around to reading it and sorta forgot about it. Anyway, it's certainly an interesting idea, and I'm curious how it will turn out. It seems that there will be over 100 girls to produce, including the already present 765 Production idols. I do hope the 876 Production idols will be available too, but no news on that. It will apparently be on Mobage . You will put together a team of 5 idols that you will produce from those over 100 girls and you can do jobs with them, raise their abilities through lessons, and have concert battles with rival idol teams. So far, it sounds a lot like regular iM@S, but with a lot more idols. But then they say they're going for some kind of card battle type game. So I'm curious as to what they're going to do with that. I was already getting my card battle ID

It's Hamuzou's birthday today! Also Hibiki's. Anyway, as usual, you can get all your wonderful birthday extras from the official iM@S anime website .