Preface
To put it bluntly, Ensemble Stars! is hell to get into.
The Why
For starters, Basic!, the intellectual property's original app, and where most of the important content to understand its characters arguably comes from, is essentially a gated community with fan translations scattered and/or lost to time. It's not as if it's for clique-ish reasons either, because the legality of fan translations existing in a grey area necessitates it being on the down-low (see: August 2021—The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, or in other words, The Ensemble Stars Wiki having to take down every fan translation there, lest legal action be enacted). While available translations have been thankfully archived via The Wayback Machine, it's a little clunky to to use at times. As of this writing (March 2025), there is still no sign of an official English version for the Basic! stories to be made accessible, despite its sequel, Music! having miraculously made it to the west on the 16th of June, 2022.
Then there's quantity and the structure of stories. It's a lot. From sneaky name drops and mentions of character backgrounds within the slice-of-life moments, to lengthy sagas where given characters take the spotlight, it's just a lot. Due to the nature of the IP being a gacha kusoge "live" game, where stories are continuously added to the known timeline via "events" and "scouts" (AKA gacha banners), jumping around the in-universe calendar is to be expected.
While I may sound like I'm griping, I wouldn't be making this Lore Compendium page if I didn't fall in love with some aspect of the story and the narratives the characters find themselves in.
This compendium is mainly for myself, but you're free to reference it if you'd like. There's a lot of information, so I may make errors, but I'll try my best not to—it'd be against my self-interest for referencing too. Do also note that as an Eccentric lover, the information I attempt to gather here will be most relevant to Rei, Wataru, Kanata, Shu, and Natsume. I may be insane, but not that insane to make a broader compendium of the whole cast all by myself. The Ensemble Stars Wiki exists for that. By making just the five characters I've mentioned be the emphasis here, it'll hopefully be more focused and in-depth, with fewer clicks and cross-referencing.
