YE@RBOOK (iDOLM@STER) zine retrospective
Happy 20th anniversary to THE iDOLM@STER! It's almost been a year, but I'm finally posting some notes on YE@RBOOK, the iM@S anniversary fanbook I ran last year. 265 artists, 300+ characters! You can find the full digital edition on itch.io.
ST@RTING LINE
In 2024, I realized that zineshit and fandomshit was taking up way too much of my time so I decided I wasn't going to do it again. But when Izzy brought up how Mikau wanted to run an iM@S zine for the 20th anniversary, we convinced ourselves within the hour.
I don't think anyone else would've stepped up to run it if we didn't, but even if someone did I doubt it would've been a physical, free-for-all zine with every character.
Being able to include every artist and every character is really important for me, especially for an anniversary zine (just read my post about SideM zine). I can't really do much art-wise except include people so I'll try.
Format
So it was important to include every character, but we were again limited by pagecount. If it went over 80 pages, the weight would increase the international shipping price by 25% extra or so.
Option 1 was based on ALL IDOL CATALOG, with each idol getting a quarter-page piece. Option 2 was the yearbook idea suggested by Izzy. With this format, we could fit in photos on top of solo portraits.
We wanted to have more themed pages (like food, Valentines, sports, etc.) in addition to seasons and lives, but no one submitted pitches for those so we scrapped the idea and just worked with what we had.
It was fun! Like putting together puzzle pieces to see which illustrations would look best with each other, theme, color and composition-wise. I love when all pieces of individual art feel enhanced by the others surrounding it. It makes each spread of the zine feels like a whole work of art in of itself.
Management
This is where I kinda fucked it up...
I was feeling pretty confident off of the back of running the SideM zine and TGAA DOGS zine (which I found incredibly depressing to run at the time but found very successful in retrospect). But I just seriously underestimated how much work would be needeed for YE@RBOOK.
The thing was that in the SideM zine, Izzy took care of all of the physical work (checking and shipping the actual books) while I handled everything else (artist check-ins, graphics, formatting, finances). In my mind I was like okayyy I can take care of the digital side of an 80 person zine by myself, no stress. So for a 250 person zine, we just need one extra mod... that math obviously doesn't work.
The processes I had set up for SideM zine required a little bit of manual work, but it didn't scale up well for iM@S zine. 80 people is already a lot for a physical fanbook, so I thought I had the experience/expertise to be able to handle something bigger. But 250 people is a lot to sort through and 300 characters is a lot to keep track of.
I did a stupid amount of manual work to ensure people got a character they liked. During applications, we asked people to write the top 10 characters they wanted to draw. I used a bunch of conditional formatting shit to determine if there were any #1 picks that no one else wanted to draw, #2, #3, and so on. When that didn't work I just moved stuff around until everyone got a character in their top 10—ideally higher if they weren't doing a photo.
The most commonly requested #1 characters were: Nana Abe (8), Chihaya Kisaragi (7), Ritsuko Akizuki (6), Riamu Yumemi (5), Ranko Kanzaki (5), Nanami Asari (5), Shiki Ichinose (5), Uzuki Shimamura (4), Michio Hazama (4).
I went a bit crazy and kept adding characters throughout the production process. World's first anything to have Select Shop Privé Manager and Reika Tougouji in the same setting.
Release
Including the artist copies, we produced approximately 380 books through Mixam and reprinted the SideM zine at the same time. Roma drew a super cute Amaama sticker, which we printed through Jukebox Print. The quality is undeniable.
Izzy and I went to SideM 10th live again, so we gifted a copy of the SideM zine to Shugon and iM@S zine to Terashii. I don't know if the seiyuu really look through every gift they get, but I like to think that they got to see how much the EN iDOLM@STER community loves the series.
Here's me forgetting to buy giftwrap. And here's me making my mother take a photo of me with an anime girl in Osaka.
Issues
Actually, I burned out way back in December 2024. After having a nightmare about AI-assisted Google Sheets1 that nearly made me throw up, I decided I wouldn't stress out too much over the zine. Unfortunately, looking away only compounded my stress and list of things to do.
But my constant health issues meant it was impossible to do anything for the most part. Weekdays were filled with sleeping at work and catching up on work right after. And yet even more made it a mentally miserable time.
But in retrospect I'm glad I had a project so big to distract me from the constant depression and I'm glad it was iDOLM@STER. There is nothing else I love more, that I would want to dedicate so much time to but this.
I share the same birthday as iM@S, July 26. Publicly posting the zine on its anniversary and seeing my timeline flood with fanart from the EN community was the best present I could ask for.
Thank You!
So I'm incredibly thankful for all of the artists who made it go so smoothly. It's just so awesome to see every iDOLM@STER character represented in one worldwide project and I'm terribly proud of how things turned out. Every artist's style is unique and every idol is beloved.
Thank you to my co-mods Izzy and Mikau, who handled shipping and check-ins respectively. We also collaborated on the cover and interior chibi! Mikau drew this gorgeous illustration of our favorite idols together. I'm so happy!!
Thanks to Teku, who fixed up some spreadsheets for me. Meri, Nate, Ham, who I forced to be in a group chat to get opinions. Trish, who translated the letters for Shugon and Terashii. Black, who I still ran to for advice constantly. All my other friends who supported the project and acquantinces who have been very patient with this taking up most of my time and burning me out.
And thank you again to all the readers, buyers, and of course, artists, who made this project possible.
Ai MUST GO!
I don't use Twitter anymore, so connecting with the mainline iM@S community is pretty difficult. I'm glad that I could do one big thing before fucking off forever. Even if it gave me give me white hair from stress.
My best friend's girlfriend reads the zine.
Thankfully I now go outside and am double medicated so I am in a much better state of mind. I'M FREEEEEEEE!!!2 ...But if anyone ever runs a big fun iM@S project again please invite me.
Appendix I: Mine
Besides drawing Haruka, Uzuki, Hazuki, and Ken for the covers, I drew portraits for Amana, Setsuna, and Amai.
Can you believe that I thought Tsutomu Amai was the sexiest man in iDOLM@STER before I became a Barok van Zieks self-shipper.
Shinsoku/Enjin crossover, obviously. Join my Shinsoku Ikkon Discord server.
I did say no manga producers for the portraits because then we would be picking and choosing who gets included but photos were fair game. WWGP MY BELOVED!
Last-minute Azusa and Kamiya in Yokohama Chinatown for a wedding photoshoot. I got to visit Chinatown again during my trip; seeing the gates IRL after spending hours drawing them was so rewarding...
I included Minako/Kana/Serika because of that Chinatown collab, and I was going to include C.FIRST as well but they have main character hair color syndrome so they stuck out like a sore thumb. SideM announced a collab with Shinsoku and HighxJoker a day after I finished it.
Appendix II: Promo art
My past approach to promo art has always been to make it easy and slap a simple pic on a default template, but this time I decided to make everything unique except for the general color palette.
I was really happy with how things turned out! It's way more work, but each piece looks distinct and interesting on its own. A couple of artists also volunteered to create promo art—see the full set on Twitter!
You had to write your function in a British accent to be able to calculate numbers. This was lowkey prophetic because they eventually did add that feature without the British part.↩
I actually do still have shit to do but I wanted to publish this post before it felt too late. I hope I can delete this footnote within one month.↩