This ginormous 6000+ page Idolmaster memorial book could serve as a blunt weapon 

As the discontinuation of The Idolmaster SideM Growing Stars on July 31 draws close, an official Memorial Book commemorating the past 8 years of the Idolmaster SideM series has been announced for March 2024. The book has been gaining attention for the fact that it will include a whopping 6000+ pages, equivalent to about five Bibles or five copies of The Lord of the Rings and exceeding even the Wikipedia book by Rob Matthews. The implied magnitude has made news of the new product spread even outside the related fandoms. 

The Idolmaster SideM Growing Stars is a free-to-play rhythm game published by Bandai Namco for mobile and is part of the Idolmaster spin-off franchise called The Idolmaster SideM, which focuses on male idols unlike the original series, and targets a female audience. In April this year, Bandai Namco announced that the game will end its service on July 31 this year. 

According to Nicovideo news, an official Memorial Book has been announced for the series. The concept of the book is to commemorate the series’ 8-year long history, and it is essentially going to be a compilation of card illustrations, in-game publications, previously unpublished character outfits and settings, as well as member shots. But one particular detail of the upcoming product made users do a double take – its sheer volume. The SideM Memorial Book will apparently exceed 6000 pages, consisting of three B5 card illustration collections and fifteen B6 comics published in-game. 

The Memorial Book is scheduled to go on sale on March 15 next year and is already available for pre-order on Bandai Namco’s Asobi Store. The price of the book reflects its monumental size at around $250 per copy for the regular edition and around $280 for the special edition. 

Learning of the Side M book, Japanese users were shocked, to say the least, and many rushed to check how the Idolmaster book compares in size to the Japanese Kojien dictionary, only to find out that the Japanese representative of huge books is nowhere near the Memorial book’s size at 3216 pages.  

The fact that the Kojien is extremely thick and heavy even though it uses thin paper made people shiver at the thought of the total thickness of the SideM book, which will surely use thicker print paper. Users collectively recognized the book’s potential as a blunt weapon and even as a bulletproof shield.