Four Nijisanji Talents Warm Up for Splatoon Tournament in Three-Hour Session

NIJISANJI — Four Nijisanji talents, Sakaki Ness, Yamagami Karuta, Nekoyashiki Miku and Harusaki Air, played Splatoon 3 together for more than three hours on Wednesday night in Japan, each streaming the session on their own channel. The practice came ahead of this year’s Splatoon tournament, whose team draw was set for 6 p.m. Thursday.

Getting started took some doing. A lobby problem left Nekoyashiki alone in a match with random teammates, so the other three went to watch Nekoyashiki’s stream while the first game was played solo, a Splat Zones match Nekoyashiki had only read the rules for. After rejoining, the four teamed up, and a knockout win about 17 minutes in was Nekoyashiki’s first Splat Zones victory. One participant suggested the four enter the tournament as this lineup, and chat cheered the teamwork.

“It’s not a team, but it had the feel of a tournament team.” — Sakaki Ness, closing the stream

About an hour in, the rotation switched to Clam Blitz, in which players gather clams and shoot them into the opposing goal. In a tight match, Ness, playing a charger, forced a clam into the goal late, and a teammate called it a hero play. Afterward the talk turned to how fun the mode is once it clicks: “Clam Blitz is actually fun, you know,” one participant said, and the others agreed.

Nekoyashiki was a steady source of highlights. At 1 hour 48 minutes, Nekoyashiki got behind the enemy line and called out the position, and a teammate Super Jumped in to drop a large batch of clams into the goal. Shortly after the two-hour mark the players felt shaking during a game, asked viewers in the area to put their safety first and stepped away from the game for a few minutes before resuming. Nekoyashiki’s rank rose to C+ later in the night.

The final stretch was Rainmaker, a rule Nekoyashiki had never played. Carrying the Rainmaker, Nekoyashiki scored two splats, and Ness said he could not have done that on his own first try.

At the close, Karuta said there would be no stream Thursday and that taking part in the tournament was still unsettled. Ness said the group was not a team, yet the session had carried the feel of one, and Air asked viewers to keep cheering whatever team the draw produced.