kyushumi i can tell you very clearly how they formed: they met on online forums! they kept crossing paths on those and realized they had a lot of overlapping interests and got along decently well, so mizuki made them a nightcord server :) they formed in middle school, in a way that could have easily occurred in regular canon too, but since other things that were supposed to happen in canon dont, they end up becoming each others closest friend group instead. so their formation is more of a depths+ribbon flashback type of situation, not mainstory. mainstory takes place as they start meeting in person instead! once their sekai starts pulling them in theres a few times where they end up there in school uniforms and go Holy Shit Wait were all in the same area??? and so they start to plan meetups in person after that

as for fts, its still a little less solidified... bad dogs forms as normal since the significant canon diversions throughout the au dont start taking place until later than that, so no changes there... ruikasa do get roped in during their mainstory time though! i imagine it going something like emu misses tsukasas interview at phennyland -> tsukasa doesnt get hired for the wonder stage -> he decides to try something different to broaden his skills and chooses trying out street performance as that direction and also because he knows touya is doing that so he can also support touya! but hes more focused on show/performance than the music necessarily (not that that it isnt still something hes working on but. hes an acting guy at heart) so things are kinda tense. then he meets rui doing his own street shows with his drones and stuff and drags rui into the street music stuff too because wow wouldnt this guy be so helpful at making their shows cooler! and rui kinda goes along with it just to have more tools for his shows and such. the problem is that.......... most of them kind of dont get along. the group has a lot of butting heads on how to do things at first. mainstory is both about the group forming and trying to smooth out their problems to eventually find a way to balance the music and performance aspects. is that coherent? i dont know. i know it makes sense in my head at least

im still deciding the exact details, but theyre definitely not going to play a huge role regardless... ive got a solid plan for shizuku, but tsukasas a little more back and forth on options right now

either way whats definitely going to happen is that shizuku is also coincidentally at the aquarium at the same time and she ends up crossing paths with harusaki and she joins them for a bit (before heading back off on her own) but i might have it being that tsukasa is also there with her! like they decided to meet up for the day since they managed to have time that lined up to get a chance to do something together and maybe tsukasa heard about it from saki so he suggested it as where to go? not realizing that saki was planning to go on the same day lol and then the same thing kinda happens where the group all hangs out for a bit together before splitting back off into their pairs

but if i dont do that then tsukasa would be just like. hearing about everything that happened from saki at the end of the event? im leaning towards shizukasa also being out at the same time though, i think itll be more fun

thank you so much for enjoying them! especially yyj, they definitely took the most effort to redesign because i didnt feel that sticking to the mmj-but-new-colors designs of the in game versions made sense when exploring the au further... (and also because the mmj outfits are ridiculously hard to draw and i didnt want to have to draw that repeatedly but shhhhhh thats the secondary reason)

theres tons of stuff i havent shared about the units as a whole! i have sekais for them, vs for them (which everyone will get to see soon! ive drawn 3/5 so far and the last two will be on the way soon enough, i strained my shoulder the other day and i havent been able to draw since because i want it to fully recover first), so much random little interactions and details that never really come up... if you ever want to hear anything about a specific character just ask! i love talking about them :D

but since its the easiest thing to talk about without worrying about where im going with stuff, ill give you a bit of sekai lore! every unit starts with a miku and one other vs 👍
- aoharu is the only one im not committed to a sekai with yet. theyre hard to pin down. because generally ive considered giving them a park for their sekai to represent the idea of youth, but i could also see them retaining a school-based sekai (but even with it set in a different part of a school, it overlaps a lot with leoni... but i guess that wouldnt necessarily be a problem for reasons youll see soon enough). since i dont have a solid idea for a specific sekai setting yet, i also have the least clear ideas for their vs designs, but theyll likely also be all highschoolers in a band. besides miku, they start with len!
- yyj has the backstage sekai, a sprawling labyrinth of hallways and rooms. the kind of stuff youd expect to find, well, backstage! and some stuff youd potentially find at an idol agency too. theres rooms for meetings, practice, dressing rooms, and theres even the occasional door that leads to a stage... but the stages arent in use, theres no audience, nothings on in there unless they choose to turn it on. their second vs is luka, with their vs still being idols like mmj, although with the sekais lack of active performances, they also perform various backstage jobs
- fts has the alleyway sekai, which is just about what youd expect. the names pretty on the nose. pretty similar to the street sekai, but tighter, darker, really no open spaces in the same way. theres also a livehouse near where they typically land in the sekai, much like the ones found on and around vivid street. the livehouse is owned by kaito, their second starting vs! also their miku... might be a mikuo? im still debating back and forth on that. its a more masculine miku either way though ^^
- hapisen has the headquarters sekai, a superhero base set in a skyscraper overlooking a city below! for now they cant leave the tower to enter the city, but theres plenty of windows to see whats going on outside. and those going ons are........ quite a lot! the city is a very superhero-cartoon-y setting, theres always monsters and villains and battles going on out there where heroes show up to defeat their enemies and then the city magically restores itself shortly afterwards. within the tower itself theres a central meeting space with all your typical superhero gadgets and stuff, plus lots of other rooms elsewhere throughout the building for the vs and hapisen to practice for their shows and battles! their vs, obviously, are superheroes themselves, and their second vs is rin
- and last and certainly not least is kyushumi with the woodland sekai! its a very still, quiet forest, with aimlessly winding pathways throughout it. its got a sort of magical energy to it, more than just that of what a regular sekai would be like. and thats because its actually a fae forest! the vs are the fae themselves :D some of the unusually peaceful atmosphere is simply because its a sekai, but also because it is affected by the magic of the fae as well. there are areas for everyone to rest, clearings along the paths, but trying to leave the paths altogether is incredibly difficult, as the forest is very dense. their second vs is meiko, if you couldnt have guessed by process of elimination

aaaaaaand thats a lot of yapping! hopefully you enjoy some shuffle unit sekai lore :D feel free to hit me with questions about specific characters/character dynamics if youre ever curious, i love talking about this au if it wasnt super obvious already lol

thank you im glad you like them! favorite character dynamics huh....... platonic relationships are definitely the core of this au, mainly the leonimmj stuff that comes out of oops we are the first link between our two species reconnecting but it turns out we all get along pretty well and despite all the chaos of aliens visiting earth for the first time in a long time (so long that humans forgot that aliens are real) were managing to have a good time.

and also the wxs dynamics. i especially love the emukasa dynamic here. it could be a romantic ship long term but im not committed to that happening it isnt that important. theyre a really funny friendship though. emu abducted tsukasa to bring him onto the slug planet (he was part of a space exploration crew, was doing some solo probing in the solar system they had just arrived in and she got him then) with the expectation that hed get picked up since the slugs occasionally abduct people for fun to bring them down to their planet and most of the other aliens that visit know that they do this and just go and retrieve whoever got abducted within like a few hours but. the humans do not know that. they have never been here before. tsukasas crew assumes hes just dead and lost in space because they cant find him (oops). but now he gets to live with the slugs! and theres a bunch of silly shenanigans where he and emu cant understand each other but theyre stuck together because this weird man is the one SHE brought here so hes her problem now and they have to hunt down a translator to a human language (difficult to find, see again humans and aliens have not been in contact in a long time) so they can talk to each other properly. and once tsukasa gets over the "this girl kidnapped me" stuff they become very good friends

and also harusaki for a romantic pair because i always love them anyway but also its a little funny with saki being on the receiving end of the first direct contact from mmj and instead of being scared or anything she goes "holy shit cool giant monster girl" and they eventually end up very close over the course of mmjs time working with humans in a way that ends up leading to their sweet but silly dynamic thats pretty similar to canon (with some slight variation because theyre adults in this au and meet in adulthood)

oops thats a lot. sorry about that. enjoy my alien rambling i guess