My Favorite Seasonal Events #2: Halloween

[mobage_manual]

Welcome to My Favorite Seasonal Events! In this section of the blog, I’ll be making a Top 3 of events centered around a certain season or holiday across all the mobages I’ve read stories from, shortly explaining their plot and the reasons why I like them. 

After a long time without any seasonal event worth noting, Halloween has come! Which means, a new entry is here, and they’ll be happening more often from now on, this time, for real! Most mobages have already held their Halloween events already, though, as they usually schedule these events to end around the actual date rather than starting on it. I’m not the biggest fan of the celebration myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good event themed around it! Without further ado, let’s get into the Top 3!

Top 3: Gothic Halloween of Ghosts (HELIOS Rising Heroes)

I actually debated a little over which HeliosR Halloween event to feature here, as they’re generally on the same level, but North’s event won the debate in the end! 

This story, as per most of HeliosR’s seasonal events, follows a certain sector (this time, North Sector) as they prepare for the Halloween LOM (League of Million), the first one for Gast and Ren as rookies, also. 

I decided to highlight this one because I love the insights it makes on both Ren and Victor, especially on the first – it actually explains a few things about Ren’s backstory and his connection to Nova that the Main Story wouldn’t focus on until a while later, which I appreciated. It was also HeliosR’s first Halloween event, and I think that also makes it more memorable, in the symbolic sense. However, there are a few other events I like better, so it only reached the third spot of this ranking!

Top 2: Full-Power Wonder Halloween! (Project SEKAI)

Does this event sound familiar? If you’ve read the latest entry of Recommending Characters featuring Rui Kamishiro, it might, because I’ve just covered this exact event in it! And I like it enough to write about it a second time in the span of one week, haha. 

Like I mentioned in Rui’s entry, this event follows Wonderlands x Showtime as they prepare a show themed around Halloween, which is just around the corner. However, as they start rehearsing for the play, Tsukasa gets injured, which makes Rui rethink about his guidance as the troupe's stage director… I don’t want to get too much into the details, both not to spoiler it, and also because I’ve recently covered it, but that’s the gist of it!

Once again, I think this is a crucial event to understand Rui and clear a lot of misconceptions that exist around his character and way of acting towards his friends, so that’s a reason why it’s so high up, but it’s simply so good in itself. It also reminds me of the beginnings of Project SEKAI, which I am nostalgic for, and that definitely had a factor in its placing in the ranking. However, an event can’t make it to the top with nostalgia alone, so it’s time to introduce the first place… But not without seeing the runner-ups first!

Runner-Ups:

This time, there’s only one runner up I’ve considered, because once again, I’m not the biggest fan of Halloween events, so there’s still quite a few I have to catch up on! Nonetheless, there was one event that almost made the cut, so I’ll go over it real quick!

HORROR NIGHT BUSTERS! (Helios Rising Heroes): like I said before, it was really hard to just choose one HeliosR Halloween event to highlight, so naturally, this one ended in the runner-ups! This time, the event is centered around the West Sector (mostly around Junior, and how he overcomes a setback in his own style), and themed around the movie Ghostbusters, which isn’t uncommon for HeliosR as they tend to take inspiration from a lot of western movies. And now, onto the first place, now for real… 

Top 1: Horror Night Halloween (Ensemble Stars!)

… Once again, Enstars takes the top spot with an event that, oddly enough, follows up straight from the last entry on the series’ Top 1 event!

Once again focused on Knights and Trickstar’s rivalry, the former is coerced by the latter to work together in the Halloween-themed Dreamfes after a discussion over a magazine interview that cut around Trickstar’s answers, making Knights look bad. Nonetheless, the both teams try to work together, but because of the rocky dynamics between the members, progress isn’t steady, and Knights’ leader, Leo Tsukinaga, is nowhere to be seen as well… 

Just like most Enstars events that focus on a specific holiday at Yumenosaki, Horror Night Halloween (also known as ‘horaharo’ or ‘horoharo’ in the fandom, so as to shorten it) is a long event, which means there’s also a lot it tackles. On the one hand, you have the entire conflict between Makoto and Izumi, and all it entails (which would be a very interesting topic to talk about, but that would take me a lot of time and diving into other many events), but that thankfully gets resolved, even though the writers reverse their development from time to time. The same can be said for Izumi and Leo, the other important duo in this event that also go a step forward (but whose arc continues until the Repayment Festival for Knights). It’s not just those three, though. Many other characters get the chance to shine – all of Trickstar and Knights do. And because of everything it entails – from learning to let go of someone, to forgiving, to getting back together with people you thought you’d never come back to – is why I place it first! I never get tired of it even after so many rereads. 

Closing thoughts:

And with that, we’ve come to an end! It’s been a good while since I last updated this series because of the lack of seasonal events between Summer and Halloween, so it was a bit hard to get back into the groove and structure of these entries. Time constraints, and three entries almost back-to-back (this Sunday will have another entry of Recommending Characters, now all laid out in this month’s schedule in the pinned post) made it even harder, but here it is! It’s also the first time I post an entry on a school day, so please bear with an afternoon update as well… 

November is, once again, void of any major holiday, so we’ll see each other again with another entry in the series once the Christmas and New Year’s season arrives! Until then, please stay tuned for everyone coming before the end of the year!