[BLUES] Ikaruga Luca

キャラクター (Character)

Luca and P are sitting in an event meeting together with the event producer, where the goal is to figure out how they can better draw out her unique appeal. The appeal in question being of course, Luca's emo image.

Focusing on selling her character will help in attracting a target audience, and add some cohesiveness to the event if they have a clear direction in mind. He goes on and says that the opening number for the event will be Luca's first solo, "Kamisama wa Shinda, tte (God has died, they said)."

After the meeting, Luca and P talk outside for a bit.

Then, the flashbacks start.

近づく完成 (Nearing perfection)

Still in the flashback world, Luca is now recording her solo. Her trainer praises her technical skills, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

After her recording session, she talks outside with her manager.

Back to the present with P talking to Luca inside the car. She just finished her lessons in preparation for the event. P praised Luca's singing, saying that it sounded like her voice was coming from the very depths of her heart, and he felt overwhelmed because it didn't sound like a practice.

He asks a slightly different question from before.

And then we go to another flashback.

[True End] くすんだ空 (A dull sky)

Back to the present, Luca's about to start her show. P tells her that the crowd's been hyped way before start, and says that she's really popular.

And then, Luca goes on stage.

All of a sudden, Luca receives a message.

As Luca shouts in agony, the crowd roars and cheers.

The next day, P gets a call in the office. As usual, Luca's concert was a big success.
He steps out to tell her the good news, and finds Luca on the rooftop.

End.

Piecing the puzzle together

Until now, most, if not the entirety of this subplot was shown through different event scenarios and card commus, so I'll try to make a somewhat comprehensive outline of what happened. This covers three years' worth of commus so this will be inevitably longer than the card summary itself. Proceed with caution.

• The beginning and the end

Luca and Mikoto started as young trainees at the same agency.

From Seven#th, Chapter 4

They got along well enough for Luca to brag about knowing how Mikoto thinks on interviews, and they were also on good terms with their manager.

From Monaural Dialogues, Chapter 3

From Jimushiny Extra Page

All of the problems started around the time that they were preparing for the Fans Thanksgiving event. They decided on a theme and all they needed was a song and more practice, but in the end, they had to give up on doing contemporary dance because of Luca's solo activities increasing in demand. SHHis TFD showed Mikoto's side of the story.

At first, Luca somehow kept up with both her solo and unit activities even though they had to pass on that contemporary dance, but the decisive moment was when she started gaining more attention as a solo artist.

From Luca P-SR1 (blind driver)

After seeing the story from Luca's side in this card, it's confirmed that their former agency's management is mostly to blame for their unit's demise and why Luca became the way she is right now.

They still haven't shown the scene of how Mikoto took this news, but we can infer that they couldn't wrap things up nicely from a snippet of what seems to be their conversation after they got disbanded.

From I'm Very Very Sorry, Chapter 3

Then we see Luca's first appearance in the game in Mikoto's W.I.N.G. route, where they meet each other again after a long while.

The more they reveal about their past, the weirder this scene gets. Luca only became hostile when she heard that Mikoto joined 283Pro, which is understandable considering what we know about Amai and her mom, but Mikoto was strangely very upset in this scene.

One could say that maybe Mikoto had negative feelings at that time because their unit died to prioritize Luca's career, but she never talked about her in a negative way after that. She even bought a magazine featuring Luca in her P-SSR1; clearly she still cares enough even after their nasty reunion, so why was she uncharacteristically upset at that time...? Perhaps we're still missing a piece here. I'd bring out a theory but that'd be one hell of a tangent.

• "ikaruga luca"

Luca's past appearances before her inclusion alluded to the fact she didn't really want to be treated as "God", but this card made it clear that the "Ikaruga Luca" that we see now was supposed to be just a character to help sell her image.

From Mikoto S-SSR3 (X-DAY)

Ironically, Luca started becoming closer the exact thing the management wanted when she started drifting away from Mikoto, and she ended up completely fitting the mold when she lost her (and got even more depressed when she lost her manager).

From Luca P-SR1 (blind driver)

There was also this part in The Episode that shows Luca and the shadow of her past self, which shows the dissonance between her true self that used to be cheerful and the "character of Ikaruga Luca" that she is right now.

She kept seeing hallucinations of this shadow chasing her that caused a panic attack and made her start cutting her own hair. She's still seeing visions of this shadow in no/ode.

• "i forgot"

We saw a black splat after the scene where Luca gets a message that her unit is dissolved, then Luca said in the concert scene that she doesn't want to remember and even when she tries, it's all pitch black. They showed the same effect a few times in no/ode when Luca tried to say her mom's catchphrase to calm herself down (If I clench my fist, it'll be fine) and when she was about to remember what happened before. In the latter one, what triggered it was a scene where ShinyP told her to stop running away and forgive herself. It sounded like ??? at that time (and even Luca was confused) because running away is one thing, but Luca hasn't done anything to warrant forgiveness. Though, it's clear now that maybe P was talking about the past because Luca seemed to blame herself for what happened to her unit.

Luca memory-holed the past for obvious reasons, but there's other stuff that she says she forgot, or wants to forget. In her S-SSR1, she tried to get her smashed phone screen repaired, but the clerk at the repair shop told her to do a backup first because her data might get wiped in the process. She remembered the past a bit, but in the end didn't go through it. Another case is her SR support card in SfP (I know it's not enza but still), where she was thinking about what made her continue idoling but couldn't remember it.

Luca...

• what the hell is this card

The loredump ends here, you can stop reading now.

I just really want to say that this card feels like a sucker punch to any Luca fan or LucaP. There was a tiny bit of Amai and Nami in the 4/12 Shiny Day commu, but who would've expected that they'd get the gears rolling after only one day?

The way they handled her character by giving her nothingburger commus (except for blind driver whose saving grace was adding more to the past story) and turning her into a joke over the past year made everyone following her question what the fuck are they planning to do with her (or if they even have a plan in the first place), then here comes this card, where they just dropped some heavy lore. I guess it somewhat makes sense that they only revealed this now seeing that her solo song is what changed everything, but really, I wish they revealed this sooner because it's almost been 3 years since SHHis TFD and we're still stuck here...

I couldn't believe my eyes when saw the card animation and thought "lmao no way, this is definitely bait" but then I read the commus and felt like killing myself.

I can only hope that they stop fucking around and end this mess already so Luca can have some character progress.

The last thing I want to show is the last line from Mikoto's MSC:

....now look at what this card's max omoide says.