A Beginner’s Guide to I★Chu (アイ★チュウ)

So you wanna join the male idol game hell, huh?

Hello and welcome to Aiden’s guide to the Japanese mobile game アイ★チュウ (Ichu), a little guide that was made in roughly a day to help new players with little to no Japanese knowledge enjoy the game to it’s maximum! The guide is divided in Starter Guide, Mid Guide and Extra Guide. Starter contains translations of the game but they are probably bad and inaccurate since I’m not fluent in Japanese and learned most of it by trial and error. Mid is a little more advanced and contains less translation and more in-depth information. It’s still under work and should be improved with time! Extra Guide are useful extras, such as blogs to follow, tags and official accounts. Updates are listed in the very bottom of the guide.

(Bro tip: Use Control+F to search for specific words and find what you’re looking for easily.)

Are you ready?

You start the game, choose a name, read the story, pay attention to the tutorial, and everything but suddenly you’re in a screen full of things that you don’t know what they mean. If you payed attention you might have understood the very basics of everything. If you haven’t (like I did *sigh*) then you might need to figure everything by yourself or find some help. This is when this guide comes in to help you!

Basic terminology:

• Ichu: The cards(idols).
• DISC/CD: The money that costs real money or effort. (Yes, I am THAT old to know what a CD is)
• Money/Gold: The cheap money you get when you finish a song.
• Kizuna: Means bond. It is the friendship level you gain at the end of each song.
• Tomodachi: Friend.
• Crowning: Getting SSS.
• Idolized: Fused cards.
• N, R, SR, UR/LE: Card rarity going from lower to higher: N(ormal), R(are), S(uper)R(are) and U(ltra)R(are). UR is called LE in this game but I still didn’t get what the E stands for.

This is the Main Menu. When you enter the game, this is the first menu that appears. Here you can go to all other menus, check your status and do a bunch of stuff.

• Main – This screen (forgive my typo).
• Story – Story mode.
• Play – Song selection.
• Manage Ichus – Level up, fusion, check cards, sell cards…
• Scout – get more Ichus.
• Store – Use irl money to buy DISCS/CDS that can be used to purchase several things in the game.
• Tomodachi – Friend list, friend request and more.
• Options – Various options.

When you touch the rank button you can check the items and ichus you own on this screen.

This is the Story Mode Menu. Here you can either check Main Story or Side Story. Main Story chapters can be unlocked by playing and ranking up, Side Story can be unlocked with max Kizuna (bond) with your cards.

If you tap the button at the top, this menu will open. It allows you to fast forward or auto complete the story. Check voice allows you to listen to all sounds produced by characters during the story (this is ultra fun to check). Changes auto from on and off works in a very strange way and I’m assuming there’s a bug on it since characters appear on the screen but do not disappear after their sentence is finished, which doesn’t happen in Fast Forward. Auto complete literally finishes the story the moment you touch it.

This is the Play Menu. Here you can select which song you want to play and the difficulty. To unlock a song on normal, you need to complete (or at least survive) on easy first. Same goes for hard, complete the song on normal first and then the hard one is unlocked. Pay attention to the required LP and type of the song. Easy consumes 5 LP, Normal consumes 10 LP, Hard consumes 15 and EXPERT 20. Songs can be Wild (Red), Pop (Yellow) and Cool (Blue).

To archive a SSS rank you must: 1) Get a certain score. It varies according to the song. To get S here you need a strong team.  2) Get a Full Combo. Full Combo here doesn’t mean you can’t get any good, bad or miss. From what I observed, you can mess in either beginning or end but only until 20 notes on most songs 3) Complete step 1 and 2. The third S is calculated based on your lowest grade, so let’s suppose you FCed but used a weak team got an C, your final grade will be C. Same applies for getting combo C and score S, the final grade will still be C. Combos lower than than the required for a C are graded as D.

This is the Side Songs Menu. Here you can choose from about two to three songs that change daily. Most of these songs give you a DISC when you FC, when you get the target score and for getting both Ss. Expert songs give you Premium Tickets when you crown the song.

While loading, this screen will appear. The green box has some player tips and most of them are mentioned in the course of the guide. Touch the screen to change the tip and wait for the game to finish loading.

This is an example of how you can FC while not exactly FCing. The Target here states that you need a 270 combo while my combo (an actual FC) says I’ve got 300 notes right.

This is what a never played song on Expert looks like. You can touch any square to see it’s requirements.

This is what a crowned song looks like. Full of stamps!

This is the Manage Ichus Menu. Team Formation is where you can change your teams, select main team and leaders. Practice is where you level up your cards. To level up, select a card and then select the ones you wish to use as practice cards (ALL PRACTICE CARDS ARE CONSUMED which means they are gone). Friendly tip: You can level up card skills by practicing using the same card. Ex: You have a RR card, use the unidolized R to level up it’s skill. Idolize allows you to fuse two cards into a single one to get a stronger card that can be leveled up to a higher level. Select one card and then select other and fuuuuuusion~ I suggest to always choose first the card with highest level/highest kizuna since you can move these status on to the idolized one. The second card’s status can’t be moved on and do not have any effect on the idolized. Sell is for selling cards, you select them and bye bye~ Check your cards is self explanatory. Album allows you to check all cards you’ve owned and shows a little button stating if you have either max level or max kizuna with the card. Max leveling an idolized card does not add the button to the pre-idolized, same goes for kizuna. U/C information shows everything about all idol units and idols. It’s quite interesting to give this one a check~

This is what a card information looks like. You can check for various information, such as idol name, card name (same idol has different cards, you get?), status on each attribute, skill and so on. Locking the card prevents you from using it on practice but does not lock from idolizing. I don’t suggest doing voice download here since there’s a menu that allow you to download all of them at once but if you just want the voice from a single card, there you go, here’s the place. The crown shows card rarity that goes from N, R, SR and LE. When idolized, they become HN (High Normal), RR (Rare rare?), UR (Ultra rare) and GR (Grand Rare). By the way, I tend to call LE as UR a lot so to make things clear: UR/LE (both) means it’s LE, UR (only) means idolized SR. One day I shall fix this issue…

This is the organizing options for Ichus. Acquisition Order changes based on literally when you obtained the card, so if you idolize a card it will come last, even if the non idolized was the first one you acquired. By usage is by how many teams the card is present.

These are the possible album rewards. Each reward is followed by the number of the item that you receive and it doesn’t vary a lot, going from about 2 for ichu extension and 1 for everything else.

This is the team formation menu. You start with one team but you can create as much teams as you like, with a total of six, each allowing you to use from one to six Ichus. It was pointed out on comments that the brown phrase down there actually states how many unit members you’re missing. I tested and indeed, if you put all of them there, it turns golden and activates their skill (Skill 2) right at the beginning of the song. I still have to test if two skills work in the same team, since I tested with ArS and didn’t had smaller units complete.

The auto formation menu. Pretty self-explanatory.

This is the first Menu that pops when you go Scouting. Here you have only Special Scouting (I think it is called Premium Scout) that either consumes CDs or Premium Tickets. It can give you any of the followings: R, SR and UR. From my first scout, I managed to get eight straight Rs and two LE at the end, which means you can get a guaranteed SR or above. I was hella lucky! But use this wisely…

This is another Special Scout (this is Royal, i think) that only scouts SR or UR/LE. It costs 5 tickets tho. The horror here is that five tickets can actually get you five LE in the other scout, but they can also get you five rares. *sweats nervously*

Tomodachi Scout that consumes only Tomodachi Points~ Only gives N and R cards. No SR or UR here since it’s… well… completely free and doesn’t demand much efforts…

Ways to receive more CDs:

• Daily Rewards (Check the crown)
• Song Rewards (SSS) ★
• Story Rewards (Complete story/Affection story)
• Login Bonus (Enter daily to complete the calendar and get rewards) ★
• Events (Play, get a nice score and receive as reward) ★

Items marked with a ★ also give Premium Tickets.

Store Menu. (I never come here since I’m poor…) One 11 scout costs 3,600 yen which is…30 USD. 30 USD to my currency is… a lot o money… Restore LP uses a single disc to full LP. Expand maximum ichus is… 3 slots for cd I think?

This is the Tomodachi Menu. Tomodachis shows all your tomodachis. Friend ID is your friend ID and the search by ID function, where you input a friend’s ID and then the games searches the profile for you to send the friend request. Sent Requests are requests that are awaiting for an answer (either yes or no). Received Requests are requests other players have sent you. You’re free to say either yes or no. Message Box is where you store messages from other players. It can store 99 messages.

This is the tomodachi list. You can check for tomodachi leader cards, attributes, ranks, send messages, manage tomodachis and much more. The small kuma is used to send “trés bien” for your friends and an awake kuma means tomodachi is online, while a sleeping one means tomodachi is offline.

This is the tomodachi organization menu. I’m not sure about the last row because I didn’t quite comprehend the difference between number of times tomodachi used you to number of used support. Number of times tomodachi used you may be actually tres bien received by tomodachi but I just have zero from everyone so I can’t say for sure.

When you finish a song you can send a friend invitation to the person you picked as support.

And now the last menu! The Options Menu! Profile shows your profile. Rank is for the server general rank. I don’t know exactly how this is calculated but… It’s there… Settings if for general settings such as show pop ups, sound and transfer code. Q&A and notices is basically a help screen which answers questions such as “Why is x not working?” and so on. Tutorial contains photos of several tutorial steps in case you forgot something. Download voice/Voice Download allows you to download voice from each idol or all of them at once. I suggest downloading all of them all at once (it takes quite some time tho). How many CDs you have is the one I’m most uncertain of. It showed a 0 and a 48 (which was my CD quantity at the time) so I’m assuming it shows how many paid cds you have, how any free and the total amount. Website takes you to Ichu official website. News shows game news, such as android release or fix, idk. Links has a bunch of links to other official Ichu things, like twitter and other social networks. Seiyuu Info shows all idols names followed by their seiyuu (voicer). In case you wanna go check their other works~

Here’s your profile~ Feel free to add me if you want.

This is what the Rank Menu looks like. It is the about the same for either song rank or overall rank.

These are the Settings. Skill Effects are the effects each idol does when their skill is activated. You can turn them completely off or limit their appearance to Monitor (you know the big screen where your leader appears? that thing). Other effects* are the stage effects. It’s a good option to turn them off if your game has too much lag BUT the game loses a lot of it’s adorableness and liveliness. To set up timing, hit the red button and this screen should appear:

Pay attention to the song and hit the white circle following the rhythm. After that a mini game will come. I suggest using this to find out how much “inside” are perfects, greats and goods.

When you finish the mini game, this is the last screen you’ll see before everything is done. Cancel undo everything, restart goes back to the single note screen and retry allows you to practice the mini game again. Accept updates your timing to your new.

Switching or touching the bluish green button will change the tab to the bluish green menu. BGM, SE and VOICE are the usual, background music, sound effects and voice. Auto text speed makes text appear instantly. Don’t forget to confirm changes when you’re done~

This is the screen to find your ‘Transfer Code‘. Transfer Code are two codes used to retrieve your account if you’re gonna change device or restart the app. Even if you don’t plan on changing device or anything else, CHECK IT OUT AND NOTE IT ON A SAFE PLACE because we never know what can happen and it would be a shame to lose everything. You can also input another transfer code here but as soon as you go play the game for the first time, there’s already an option to use your transfer code.

Touching the get button will make this screen appear. Hit OK.

There will be two codes, take note of both and keep them really safe! If you forget your transfer code, just come back here to see it again. Hit ok when you’re done.

And here I conclude my Starter Guide. I hope it helped you guys!

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Mid guide is where I’ll feature other guides that aren’t as basic as the Starter. I may add other guides as the game updates with new things or by requests other players send me.

Mid Guide currently features the following guides:

• Kuma Guide
• Card Guide
• Event Guide

Kuma (Japanese for “bear”) is the friendly nickname I’ve given to the Gigantic Bear that appears in Story Mode. His actual name is Kumako-cho but I forget it very easily (sorry…). Kuma has several cards in the game and to figure out how they work you either read the description or try your luck. I’ve went with the second option since I don’t understand kanjii and I’m really glad to say that I’ve got how they work somewhat well!

This is what an average Kuma card looks like. They all have 1 of each attribute, can’t enter a team, can’t be trained and can’t be idolized and can’t have a max kizuna (Actually they should, since kizuna already comes at max lol). A cool Kuma should be used on a Cool card for the best effect.

Battle kumas!

These are what I call “Battle Kumas”. They are used for practice and give a lot of exp.

Cooking kumas!

These are the “Cooking Kumas”. Cooking Kumas give about 1 exp when trained but they have a chance of leveling up a card’s skill. So far, RR Kumas works on LE cards so I think it’s safe to assume they work on all kinds of cards with skills and R Kumas only worked with R cards, no results in four tries with an LE. (It is currently unknown by me if R Kumas works on SR cards since I do not own any SR).

Trophy kumas!

And last, “Trophy Kumas” are used for earning money. They give 1 exp as the cooking kumas but… Have no effect in cards? In four trials I’ve noticed no changes other than the exp going up but when I tried to sell them I’ve noticed that they are worth a lot of gold.

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This guide will be centered on events. Since I barely participated in the first one, I apologize for the lack of information ;w;”

Summer Kiss was the first Ichu event. For now I’ll refer to this kind of event as a “Play Event” since you mainly just had to play a single song.

When there is an event, the red curtain will open and will feature the event image (and within the image you can see the name of the event, date it started and when it’ll end and idol the event is focused on). Just touch it to play~

When you touch the event image in the curtains you will get to this screen. Here you can check event information, your rank, possible event rewards and how many points you need to get them, time until the event ends and your points. This time, the idolized card is the image appearing in the background and the non idolized is the one used in the event image. It’s very nice to have a good look on them kususu~

The area showing the time until event ends follows the same trend as other ichu songs: first it will show by days and then change to hours.

Also, while playing in the event, keep the main event unit in your team and completed. During this event, the main unit was Twinkle Bell so you should have both Satsuki and Mutsuki. You can play with just the two of them but I suggest to keep a full team even if they’re not in the event unit. The more Twinkle Bell cards the best, so if you have six different Twinkle Bell cards, use all of them!

When you press play, this screen will appear. Select the game you mode you want and have fun~

When you finish the song, this screen will appear showing your event results. Song Clear points are received by finishing the song. Tap Bonus are received by the quantity of the main event unit notes you got right. To get the best of tap bonus, have the maximum of event unit cards and get a full combo~! Score Bonus is received by getting high scores so it’s good to keep some strong cards in your team. Obtained points is the total you received and Current points in your overall total points. Points for next reward is how much you need to receive the next reward.

This is the information screen. It can be viewed by the touching the green button. It features the full event image, which unit is the main one and the most important thing you might need to know: the rewards for each rank. If we don’t have a player boom soon, these might not change so it’s kinda safe to assume you can use this as a reference for the next event.

Next button is the rank button, the yellow one. Here you can see everybody’s rank, yours, their points, yours… Not much to explain here.

This is the rewards screen, the red one. Here you can check on both point rewards and rank rewards. Point Rewards turn dark and marked with a Kuma when you acquire them while Rank Rewards are separated by kind (LE card and N card are different things so they have different spots) and do not change.

When event is over, you can receive your rank rewards in the present box.

The second event is ハッピースマイル～ (Happy Smile/ (Summer Colors) Happy Smile). It is also a “Play Event” (play same song over and over), is Kanata centered and the Event unit is F∞F(Fire Phoenix/Fenix). Keep Seiya, Akira and Kanata in your team for more tap points. Rank rewards and point rewards shall be updated to match this event since the last one is over.

The event image changed, as expected. As some know, Lancelot has been released and if you’re wondering where they are in the main page, just touch the red arrows to see their greatness. Nothing else to do here other thank poke Kanata and join the event ~~~

The only change in the event menu is that now we have event stories and the Idol image. Now we have two Viva Carnival Kanata cards… It’ll be painful but I’ll try to save the whole event and maybe translate later >_> *do-M mode* I’m not do-M enough gomen. Now let’s get to the numbers~

Event stories are unlocked as following:

• Chapter 1: 10000 points
• Chapter 2: 22000 points
• Chapter 3: 36000 points
• Chapter 4: 50000 points
• Chapter 5: 65000 points

According to many players, last event it was best to hardcore play Easy mode since it gave the most points. This time, they fixed this and now the harder the difficulty the best result you’ll obtain (assuming you FC and have full event unit), so during this event it’s best to play Expert mode. Based on screenshots (and doing the math), I’ve found that the points should go somewhat like this (Points / LP cost = Received points by LP):

• Easy : 443 / 5 = 88,6
• Normal : 937 / 10 = 93,7
• Hard : 1703 / 15 = 113,5
• Expert : 2354 / 20 = 117,5

The difference in Expert and Hard is quite small imo so if you can’t play EX yet it won’t make such a big difference. Same goes for Easy/Normal. But I suggest playing the most profitable (Normal/Expert) since it can be a good practice.

Rank rewards goes as following:

In case you also wanna check the point rewards, click here. Point Rewards list is gigantic and I didn’t want it here since it looked too big and very aesthetically unpleasing.

The third event is (華房心の) サイン会&ミニライブ (Autograph session and mini Live/(Hanabusa Kokoro’s) Autograph session and mini Live). This is a “Log In” event. To receive the LE, players must log in the following hours (Tokyo Time):

Japanese GMT or Tokyo Time(this is how iPhone calls it lol) is (GMT +9:00). My GMT is (GMT -3:00) which makes the hours exactly the same but changing AM to PM (so handy~~). Click this website to find out your GMT and time and get ready for the event. Remember to set up your alarms too heheh.

Kokoro event is here~ First, we have a new bear hanging from our status bar. It’s a Kuma pawn which takes us to the event ‘mini game’.

This is the event menu. It is like a Game of Life board where you confirm your presence  move your pawn around the board by hitting the red button. You can move the pawn by one step each of the times specified in the event description. You need to move your pawn about 20 times to receive the LE card.

It will be the same as the current one and will give players a chance to idolize their cards. Get ready and good luck~!

If there’s anything different with this event I’ll update it here. For now, I think it will follow Satsuki and Kanata’s style.

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Official Ichu

Website (Japanese)

Twitter

ITunes Download

Market (Google Play) Download

Unofficial websites/blogs
I-chu Wikia (ENG)

I-chu Wiki (JP)

(New blogs are always welcome so if you want to share a blog you run/like, please message me.)

Recommended Tags

These are my recommended tags for searching on Tumblr:

#アイ★チュウ #aichuu #ichuu

The tags vary a lot since there are people writing either “Ai” or “I” and either “Chu” or “Chuu” (the official twitter is ichu_official so I’m sticking with Ichu or the japanese one).

Updates List

Update 1.0.1(10/07/2015): Added new menu translations, tomodachi interface and organizations.

Update 1.0.2(12/07/2015): Corrected mistakes that were pointed in the comments (thank you so much Lune! <3)

Update 1.0.3(25/07/2015): Added events and some other details.

Update 1.0.4(31/07/2015): Updated events since Kanata event is out and corrected some Tomodachi mistake pointed by Yukine (thank you <3).

Update 1.0.5(07/08/2015 after Kokoro): Added settings translations, Kokoro event basic information and some other information.

Update 1.0.6(07/08/2015 before Kokoro): Added more things to the Kokoro event and some minor changes.

Update 1.0.7(11/08/2015): Minor changes.