Mirishita Producer Details 10 Years of Customer-Oriented Concept Development at CEDEC 2026
At CEDEC 2026, held July 22 to 24 at Pacifico Yokohama North, Bandai Namco Studios producer Takahiro Kakizawa presented a session on the concept development behind THE IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE! THEATER DAYS, known as Mirishita. Kakizawa, who joined the project in March 2016 as the developer-side planning and production producer, said he had never played the iM@S series and had no mobile game experience, which pushed him toward a customer-oriented approach. He defined the target audience by narrowing from broad categories like 2D beautiful girl content fans and smartphone users in their 20s to 40s, to a specific group: people who left games due to lack of skill, lack of time, or mismatched smartphone usage situations. This led to adding the condition of wanting to enjoy games casually. Kakizawa identified core iM@S needs, including adoring idol cuteness, feeling a sense of raising them, and experiencing the joy of being thanked as a producer. He stressed that meeting needs means implementing ideas without excess or deficiency, using two evaluation axes: trial, whether players pick it up, and performance, whether they play repeatedly. Post-release, the team tracked SNS trends, implementing a gentle gyaru trend with events in December 2023, August 2024, and April 2025.