useless observations about hatsune miku (and friends) feet, as depicted in Project Sekai

Background/explanation:

Project Sekai: Colorful Stage! is a mobile rhythm gacha game featuring a serialized story about Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloid ("Virtual Singer") characters interacting with and helping an ensemble cast of original human characters who are really interested in making music. Obviously I wrote this, so you can tell I'm a fan.

This document details and discusses the number of feet shown in the game's gacha/event cards (in the Japanese version as of 11/8/2024, counted from picture galleries at sekaipedia.org and data from sekai.best)

Note that there may be errors in the underlying data, or errors arising from my elementary school-level counting skills/reliance on a calculator, because I'm a totally brilliant artistically gifted genius who pretty much failed at math in school (meaning I'm autistic). If I become aware of any mistakes I will correct them.

How I counted:

• counted across both main cards and cameos in other cards.
• at least one foot needs to be clearly bare with visible toes.
• each set of bare feet in a card counted as one point.
• partial showings (open-toed sandals, see-through tights/socks, or other obstructions) counted as half a point. closed toed shoes do not count even if they show the top of the feet
• characters clearly taking off their sandals/socks/other footwear counted as one whole point
• niigo miku (who wears one sock on one foot while the other is bare) counts as half a point (this only comes into play once)
• feet that are assumed bare but out of frame not counted

...Why did you do this?

Personal curiosity mostly. I was looking at some of the cards on the wiki and was like "feet!" and then I started counting the feet and it got way out of hand. I'm pretty sure the main reason I did this is because I have unmedicated ADHD and am procrastinating on more important things. I guess I might also like feet? I might like girls' feet? I might appreciate anime girl feet?

Look, if you're gonna judge me, you might as well stop right here. I'm not here to argue about the merits of fictional girl feet. I just felt like counting feet. You got as far as clicking so I figure you're probably interested, or something. Either close this tab or else proceed and enjoy, or be entertained by my enjoyment of, the feet.

feet counts:

virtual singers:

• Miku 2 (half barefoot counted for cameo in Mafuyu card. wears sandals once)
• Rin 1
• Len 0
• Luka 0
• MEIKO 1.5 (half point for sandals in one card)
• KAITO 1

L/N (Leo/need):

• Ichika 1.5 (half point for sandals in one card)
• Saki 1
• Honami 0
• Shiho 0

mmj (More More Jump!):

• Minori 2 (1 point counted for bare feet in background of 1 Airi card)
• Haruka 1
• Airi 1
• Shizuku 1 (two half points for sandals in two cards; feet never fully bare)

vbs (Vivid Bad Squad):

• Kohane, An, Akito, and Toya never show feet partially or fully. All 0!

wxs (Wonderlands x Showtime):

• Tsukasa 1
• Emu 2 (feet bare once. wore sandals twice)
• Nene 1.5 (wore sandals three times)
• Rui 0

niigo (Nightcord at 25:00):

• Kanade 1.5 (feet bare once; wore sandals once)
  • note: this is VERY FUNNY because Kanade is a shut-in and her feet are probably bare MOST of the time. But in all her cards except for the birthday one she's either outdoors or in the extracanonical non-literal trained card scenes, wearing costumes that involve shoes, or her feet are out of the frame. SHE PROBABLY HATES SHOES BUT COLOPALE CONSPIRES FOR HER TO WEAR THEM except in her 2024 birthday card. in the 2024 birthday cards they just kinda had everyone wear their regular clothes and basically confirmed in that, that Kanade is almost always barefoot. Anyway.
• Mafuyu 3.5
  • also note: okay so I'm counting the one card depicting the flashback to child Mafuyu being fed apples by her mom. Her feet are bare in that. I don't expect anyone to get off to that except like, my freak lolicon friends who I respect and adore and permit to get off to that if they like. But I'M ONLY COUNTING IT BECAUSE IT TECHNICALLY COUNTS. Anyway: she wears fishnet tights with sandals in one trained card. You can clearly see the whole shape of her feet there. It only counts as a half point though because consistency.
• Ena 3 (feet bare twice. Wears sandals twice)
• Mizuki: 0.5 (evidently Mizuki, unlike Kanade, really likes shoes. makes sense. fashion enjoyer. good. anyway she wears sandals that show her toes and heels once)

random data factoids:

• The entirety of the cast of Project Sekai has been (by my own arbitrary measurement) shown barefoot in their cards about 25.5 times
• The average Project Sekai cast member has been shown barefoot a number of 1 times
• With 1027 cards as of this writing, the average Project Sekai card features bare feet about 0.02 times
• With 29 cards counted as featuring fully or partially bare feet, 2.82 percent of all cards feature some degree of bare feet
• Of those 29 cards, 18 feature fully bare feet, making for 62.06 percent of the feet depictions
• Those 18 make up 1.75 percent of all the cards in the game
• Thus the average card features fully bare feet about 0.0175 times (an overall negligible difference from the generally bare feet figure)
• Bare feet are clearly, mathematically, not a very common feature of Project Sekai’s cards. It can be deduced thusly that when they are featured, it is either incidentally, or deliberately for the sake of aesthetic significance and/or fanservice. Clearly the latter intent is deployed only sparingly.
• the feet in these cards are generally quite nicely drawn.

Ranking groups by barefoot card stats (averages rounded to the nearest hundredth):

1. nightcord at 25:00: barefoot 8.5 times, for a mean of 2.13 between all four members
2. more more jump: barefoot 5 times, for a per-member mean of 1.25
3. virtual singers: barefoot 5 times, for a per-member mean of 0.83
4. wonderlands x showtime: barefoot 4.5 times, for a per-member mean of 1.13
5. leo/need: barefoot 2.5 times, for a per-member mean of 0.63
6. vivid bad squad: barefoot 0 times.

The niigo girls are barefoot most frequently.

What this means, I cannot tell you for sure. Personally I think it’s because they’re the most depressed and hottest girls in the game, which makes them the gayest girls, which means they’re most frequently barefoot, which makes them more gay, which makes them more hot. Obviously niigo Miku’s feet are half bare for a reason. because gay, depressed, and hot, but only halfway. She has one foot in the dark and one foot in the light. As per her role of, y’know, helping the niigo girls become less depressed.

(Which foot represents the dark, and which represents the light? Does depression entail taking off your shoes, or putting some on? Personally I think Miku's left foot is the not-depressed one and the niigo girls are happier without shoes, but you can have whatever interpretation you like, I guess)

If we discount Mafuyu’s bare feet from her flashback card, they’re only barefoot 7.5 times and their average becomes 1.88, which is still a respectable bare feet average. If we count KAITO’s one and only bare feet card, and Rin’s one bare feet card, which both just so happens to be of their niigo variants, and also niigo Miku’s feet cards, AND also the zero times that the niigo versions of Luka, Len, and MEIKO are shown barefoot, niigo is barefoot 11.5 times, and their per-member average becomes 1.15… I guess. …although then if we did that everywhere we’d have to count all the vocaloids…? and that’d just be uh. whatever

Actually, no, let’s count all the vocaloids!

…When you do that, the stats don’t super meaningfully change, only 3 groups change their stats at all actually (niigo, mmj, and wxs)

• niigo is barefoot a total of 11.5 times
• MMJ is barefoot a total of 6 times
• WXS is barefoot a total of 5.5 times
• VBS gets half a point for MEIKO’s sandals in one card, but they’re still never barefoot so it changes nothing

So yeah, basically, this doesn’t do anything to the rankings. Everyone’s feet are still bare about the same amount. The virtual singers do not as of this writing have any cards of their original iterations with bare feet.

Vivid Bad Squad’s feet are never bare, which I assume is because they’re never depressed, and also I guess, just like, haven't yet gone to the beach together. Obviously they’re just too cool. They might be a bit gay, but they’re apparently too cool to take their shoes off.

The other groups’ bare feet cards can be mostly attributed to their swimsuit cards, or the edge cases of their sandal usage. The virtual singers’ non niigo bare feet cards are just them (Miku and MEIKO, to be exact) wearing swimsuits. Tsukasa’s one bare feet card is of Saki making him do crunches, so there’s clearly no aesthetic significance in that. That’s just a thing you take your shoes off for. (really who wants to see Tsukasa’s bare feet anyway)

what can we conclude from this data???

The average member of Nightcord at 25:00 has been barefoot twice throughout their gacha cards. This is a figure unmatched by any other Project Sekai group. Their feet are also, in my estimation, of significantly more aesthetic interest in the framing of their cards than those of any other group.

I therefore once again reiterate that the niigo girls are depressed, gay, and hot.

Thank you for reading this useless numerical audit of bare feet in project sekai cards.

Here is a full list of the project sekai cards that I saw fit to count as featuring either fully or partially bare feet:

• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Where_Could_the_Big_Seashell_Be%3F (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Dancing_Flower_Petals_in_the_Wind (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Dive_Into_Me
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_the_Meaning_of_Our_Encounter (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Start_By_Doing_Some_Sit-Ups! (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Because_It%27s_Important (trained)
• KAITO does have his shoes off at the beach in the trained version of this card, but because the feet are out of frame it doesn’t count.
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Feelings_That_Can%27t_Be_Ignored (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Let_Me_Hear_That_Song_of_Yours
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_Escape
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Prayers_Soaring_Into_the_Sky (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Smoothies_Blended_With_Feelings (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Did_It_Fall%3F
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/An_Idol%27s_Duty (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/The_Strongest_Idol_Smile! (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/What_I_Want_to_Be
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Butterflies_From_Long,_Yet_Never_Forgotten_Days
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Training!
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/The_Barbecue_Magistrate!%3F (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Ju-Ju-Ju-Juuump! (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Dream (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/A_Touch_of_Kindness_on_Your_Trembling_Back (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday!!_2024_(Kanade) (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/The_Words_Thrown_at_You (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Memories_of_Warm_Affection
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Warmth (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/True_Feelings_Spilled (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/An_Expression_That_Made_Me_Want_to_Draw
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Gloomy_Afternoon (trained)
• https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_Be_Going_First! (trained)