From our other sites
The story
A·ZU·NA, the unit from Love Live! Superstar!!, dropped its first new song in four years — only to land at a modest No. 21 on the Oricon weekly chart. Over on 5ch’s Love Live! board, the gap with Liella!’s mini-album “Hyper Glowing!”, released around the same time and clearing 20,000 copies in its first week, became a hot topic. Fans of Nijigasaki and Liella! kept the sales debate going, comparing the unit’s past first-week numbers (14,203 → 13,181 → 16,626 copies).
21st place, huh
Source: oricon.co.jp / original article here
What people said
1st: 14,203
2nd: 13,181
Anime Season 2 insert song: 9,349
3rd: 16,626
If Nijigasaki fandom's peak energy was 100, I always figured it was down to like 30 or 40 by now —
so this basically tracks with the sales.
Yep, Nijigasaki loses lol
I know the digital/streaming side does well.
Nijigasaki fans don't spend money on Nijigasaki, you know.
Free Liella!-bashing is basically the most "support" they can muster.
Let's get Love Live! Superstar!! doing unit singles too!
A brand-new unit's mini-album just topped 20,000 copies, in case you missed it.
Koichu is just a joke/gag song, you know.
It's strictly the show's theme song, not a serious Liella! release.
Meanwhile you guys were expecting A·ZU·NA's first song under composer Hayashi to sell way more, weren't you?
This right here is the result
of an actual serious-versus-serious showdown.
Weren't you the ones bashing the sales of "Koi no Tutorial," which also had no serial code…?
Love Live! is finished.
It's the Idolmaster era now.
I actually like the coupling track — feels like it'd go over well live — but "Monochrome Labyrinth" is weak.
Yeah, it's true a CD with no serial code isn't going to sell these days.
Also, shipping does seem delayed this time around.
I preordered on Amazon ("Ama") back on 7/8 too, and it's now showing an expected arrival of Sunday.
So it's gonna keep climbing and hit 10,000, huh?
Even then that's still half of 20,000 lolololol
What's the point of comparing it to a serial-code release in a reply to Re: #85?
No serial code and it's on streaming, so that number checks out.
Who was it again that kept chanting "2,409" over and over when someone said the same thing about Koichu?
You're just getting the same thing thrown right back at you.
Their CDs aren't selling, so they might as well contribute to Love Live! that way.
Nah, not doing that~
We don't need to embarrass ourselves like that — we pull crowds in with proper lives~
lol
Are you seriously out of your mind?
Sounds like someone who's never held down a real job.
People said the exact same thing during the "Eigasaki" movie's Chapter 1 too —
"it's just opening day,"
"it's a weekday"…
And the result was a massive flop.
Yep, debunked.
If it were selling out everywhere like Ren's soundtrack did recently, the cumulative total would keep climbing,
but there's no sign of that happening here, so it'll basically come down to first-week numbers.
There's no big release event planned either, right?
Nijigasaki fans keep getting owned lololol
Just
admit you lost already.
Oh yeah, true.
The "Ikizura" live sold decently since it came bundled with a Love Live Fes serial code.
Lay off trash-talking the 2,409.
Background and Key Points
Love Live! is one of Bandai Namco’s flagship multimedia idol franchises, built around several rotating “school idol” casts that release music, anime, and games in parallel: the original μ’s, Aqours, the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club cast, and Liella! from Love Live! Superstar!!. A·ZU·NA is not a rival group but a two-member sub-unit drawn from Liella! itself, so the thread’s framing of “A·ZU·NA vs. Liella!” is really an in-house comparison, while the sniping at “Nijishin” (Nijigasaki fans) drags in a third, unrelated cast entirely — a sign of how tribal the Love Live! fandom’s sub-groups have become. Oricon’s weekly singles/albums chart, the benchmark cited here, tracks physical CD sales, which in Japan are often inflated by bundled serial codes for handshake events, lottery draws, or concert tickets that push fans to buy multiples of the same disc.
The thread’s real fault line is less “did it flop” than whether the comparison is even valid: posters split over whether A·ZU·NA’s single, which shipped without a serial code, could fairly be judged against serial-code releases, and over whether first-week Oricon numbers mean anything before cumulative sales are in.
What’s likely to trip up outside readers is that serial-code presence, not raw fan enthusiasm, is often the biggest lever on Oricon rankings — a no-serial release competing against one with an event ticket attached is structurally disadvantaged regardless of the music’s reception, a distinction the thread argues about but never fully spells out for anyone unfamiliar with how Japanese CD sales actually work.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Love Live!) thread “A·ZU·NA’s Long-Awaited New Song After 4 Years Turns Out to Be a Shocking Flop!“.
Leave a Reply