ai adores gaku ♥︎

i can't even begin to explain how much stress and mental exhaustion this event brought me, and that's new when you consider that i've been tiering on gaku's bday events for about five years now.... like this was Hell, and the new bday event format is all to blame, geez 😭 if i start ranting about how i find this new format SO ABSURD i might end up with a much longer post than expected so i'll refrain—but genuinely, i personally think that switching up the format from a tower style with stages and such into this somewhat just glorified normal event style with an added lottery system was a really disappointing move, and it took away the fun that initial bday events had ;; not to mention, they made the points just so low here....! 💢 1 million doesn't seem like a lot, but without boosts, a maxed strong duel can only give around 300 pts....!! even just breaching 100k is hard... it's so crazy, really... i've seen a good amount of players say that this format made them discouraged too—i really pray they change their mind and bring back the old format next year :(

...anyways, sorry about that, truly, but everytime i remember it i just get really upset 😭... back to gaku !! i maxed out his chibi card pretty early on, along with stories and cgs ><

i'm still deciding on whether i should continue with fully awakening gaku's birthday ssr or not, since anniversary is also so near... i really love the fully awakened version, though...!! his smile is so bright, just like in 2020BD, ahh.... TTT my lovely...

and have i mentioned how much i ADORE the cg set for this event ?! it's genuinely so perfect, it hit all the right spots since i personally am so fond of kakyu and i loooove seeing him in his element... the stories didn't disappoint either !! or, well, there hasn't really been a gaku story that let me down, hehe... he's far too lovely 🥹 fuchan even described him as radiant in episode 2—i nodded so much my head almost fell off.... 好き… the illust here quickly shot up to be my most favorite cg ever—i'm so sorry, 2022BD gaku with your pinky promise theme...

i spent around 4.6k dias this year! i really miss my 5k count, it was the first time i've ever saved that amount, and it was gone within four days 😭 as for my strategy, i was literally just glued to my phone, i don't think there's more to say about that... the disadvantage i mentioned previously was regarding 2x rakes and strong duel letters—this event format really requires you to buy them with paid dias if you want a fighting chance, and i could only buy around 5 pairs since i had leftover paid dias from when my dear friend bought me gaku's birthday set last year 🥹 i couldn't use those 5 pairs until the very last day, the last hour rush, so i made up for it during the first few days by literally never closing the app and grinding and grinding... since it was a fact that if i stopped, i'd really be left behind and it'd be super hard to catch up without any 2x boosts 🥹 that's why i found this so mentally taxing, argh... it was nothing like the grind i did during the down memory lane event on the en server, since it was SO easy to just farm points from stages :") here, you had to go through the horror that was event patrols and desperately wishing a strong duel would pop up rather than weak or average... i think i spent around 300 dias on lp refills alone 😭

also! god, gaku fans are something else—it makes me super happy to see how competitive they are cause it makes so much sense for his fans to also be dedicated HAHAH no, like... the top10 border here was 1.2m, and for scale, the previous highest border was 600k during kuya's bd event last july.... gaku oshis doubled that amount, how scary... a lot of people wanted to be in t10... probably also because of the added incentive of getting special merch delivered to top tierers ><