Once again, it’s time to check in with my progress in Tokyo Mirage Sessions. This was a very side quest focused week, but I did get a little bit further in the main story. Well, before I get to all that, let’s start the same way we always start. Numbers. I have 29 hours and 40 minutes of play time, Itsuki is level 45, and I’m currently partway through chapter 5.

Since I ended last week in the Fortuna office standing right next to Maiko, I decided to start with her side quest. She’s drunk again and needs help organizing some of her things. She tells Itsuki where he should put her things, including putting his hands on her breasts. Itsuki says that he thinks he should just leave, but Maiko convinces him to stay and help.

What follows is pretty much the easiest side quest yet. Literally all you do is select which item you’re going to put away and then watch a scene where Maiko explains why that item is important to her. You do that like four times and then you’re done. To thank him for his help, Maiko presents Itsuki with a copy of My Complex 2, the sequel to that collection of risque pictures from a few weeks ago.

Tsubasa is hanging out right next to Maiko’s desk, so taking care of her side quest next seemed like the natural choice. Apparently, Maiko got a famous composer, named Sawafuji, to write Tsubasa’s next song. He shows up, but tells Tsubasa that he can’t write the song because he’s going to write one for another idol instead, and then leaves. Problem is, the idol in question died last year. It was reported as a sudden illness, but she had actually been killed by a mirage.

The gang deduces that the same mirage must now be manipulating Sawafuji. They head off to the idoloshpere and find Sawafuji and the mirage. Tsubasa manages to free Sawafuji from his control by singing one of her songs. Then, kind of predictably, we fight the boss. After the fight, Sawafuji agrees to write Tsubasa’s next song. So, great, that worked out well.

Next, Ellie wanted to see a movie with Itsuki. It turns out that it’s a horror movie, and the reason she wanted to see it was that the show she’s on is taking a sudden genre shift, and she’s not really sure how to act in horror. Itsuki and Ellie watch the movie, but are pretty distracted by the noisy crowd, resulting in Ellie not really getting much help for her problem.

There are some kinda creepy ghost looking monsters in the idolosphere, so Ellie decides that killing a bunch of them will give her the experience she needs. I’m already over-leveled for this dungeon, so tracking down and killing the monsters is super easy. After we get it done, Ellie is confident that she has what it takes now, but Itsuki points out that she’s not really scared though. If anything, she’s just gotten more confident around scary things. Ellie ends up convincing the new director of her show, the same one from chapter 4, to make her the heroine of the story.

Immediately after finishing that quest, I unlocked Ellie’s final side quest. It seems that the director wants to take her to Hollywood to film a new movie. She’s not really sure what to do, since going to Hollywood has been her dream, but it would mean leaving everything going on in Japan. For now though, she asks Itsuki to go on a date with her.

What follows is a repeat of the pretend date Itsuki went on with her in her first side quest. The difference though is that Ellie asks him questions to see how much he remembers the details of last time. We even go back to the movie theater, and she asks which movie we saw. Probably would have been a harder question if I hadn’t literally just done that quest. In the end, she decides to go to Hollywood, but not until all this mirage business is over. Thank God, because I was not ready to lose one of my main party members.

Finally, I had a side quest from Barry to do. Maiko has decided that Ellie and Tsubasa will perform a duet, and she’s asked Barry to train them. After yelling at them a whole lot, Barry sends them to the idolosphere to perform ten session attacks. Apparently this will help them learn to work together. This was all really easy, and after I finished it I unlocked a new duet attack.

Like I mentioned at the start of this post, I did get a start on chapter 5. I’m going to wait to talk about it until next week though. I’ve only just gotten started, so I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. But, come back next week to see if I managed to get through the next chapter.