Chapter 12
“This a purely democratic election for the entire nation! We will have no choice but to quietly accept the results!”
“However, not all citizens are equal.”
“Of course, every citizen will be given their own voting equipment, which means they have the right to vote—”
“But those who purchase a ticket and secure a seat in the audience at the ES Dome will see their votes counted as one thousand.”
“In addition, the votes of ES fan club members will be counted as one hundred votes!”
“If you buy a ticket, you’ll be worth a thousand votes; if you become a member, you’ll be worth a hundred. This system may seem unfair, but voting is a pure democracy in name only.”
“Perhaps you can think of it as a way to give more power to those who are more interested in idols and love them more.”
“The same thing goes in the stock market. SS will be the largest event in the idol industry, one that will determine the course of its future.”
“Those who invest more of their love and money into idols will be given more rights to change their futures.”
“If this were a vote that affected our Constitution, such inequalities would be impermissible!”
“But well, this is merely an idol festival, so… We hope you’ll understand ♪”
“Let’s return to the topic at hand. You, the voting public, are not necessarily obligated to vote in every single round.”
“If you don’t have a preference between any two representatives, you can leave your penlights unlit. In the event that happens, your unused vote will be stored in your equipment.”
“And then those stored votes will increase the strength of your next vote.”
“So if a person refrains from casting a vote in one round, then in the next round they’ll essentially have two votes to cast, correct?”
“Yes. By utilizing this system, it’s possible to do things such as giving the idols you’re biased toward massive amounts of votes.”
“That will depend on how the Finals unfold, however. If your bias is among the first to appear on stage, you won’t have many votes saved up, and this system will be meaningless to you.”
“That, too, is a strategy you can use. The units with enthusiastic fans will be brought up to perform in the second half, and those fans can expend their accumulated votes on them.”
“Fufu. Well, I’m not sure such a cunning strategy will work this time, when you consider the scale of the event.”
“Even so, it would be immensely foolish to take on SS without any sort of plan, don’t you think?”
“I do. Intelligence, strength, and luck—all three must be utilized in order to achieve victory. No, rather: without all three, you will have no chance at winning this year’s SS.”
“It’s true. For the record, the wins and losses each team’s representatives throughout the series of showdowns will be automatically counted by a machine.”
“In the end, the team with the highest number of wins will be declared the victor.”
“Indeed! All of the units on the winning team will be given certain privileges—”
“Well, I won’t get into the details; it’s just boring talk about payments and the like ♪”
“Fufu. There are no penalties for those on the losing team, so you may vote however you see fit. This is a festival, so let’s all keep calm and have fun over our New Year’s soba.”1
“But I digress. The unit who earns the most votes out everyone who performed in the Finals will be deemed as the best in the nation.”
“In other words, they will become the winners, the champions of this year’s SS.”
“They will be the greatest idols in the nation.”
“That’s right! Even if their team loses the composite vote, they can still be declared the champions if they earn more votes as an individual unit.”
“Precisely. SS is a group competition this year, but at its core, SS is an event to determine the best idols in the country.”
“Which explains why the system is set up the way it is.”
“This will be something of a special prize for them, entirely separate from the clash of the two teams.”
“Yes. If you want your unit to be the champion of SS and be dubbed the greatest idols in Japan—”
“Then it would be wise to try and claim votes for yourselves, even if you must use the idols within your own team as stepping stones.”
“That is yet another strategy. No, that is foundation for which we idols live our lives.”
“Will we be losers who no one hates—Or will be winners who everyone hates?”
“Or will we be something else entirely, something so new and valuable that we can’t even conceptualize it?”
“What kind of life should we lead? How should we exist within this chaotic modern society?”
“The time has come for idols everywhere to begin thinking about their answers to that.”