Alright, as promised here are my observations from the Shinjuku Sega qualifier and the Mikado block finals. (Unfortunately, Mikado decided to start the block finals early, so I didn't actually get to see the games, but at least I got to check the brackets afterwards. I also got the check the 32 player qualifier from Mikado that was earlier during the same day).
Another quick note: Ma-ryan seems to either be banned for now, or people chose not use her, because I didn't see her at all during any of the qualifiers. However, she is not broken or anything. She's just a nerfed version of her boss version, with similar attacks and animations. She lacks her boss cape and the supers, but otherwise she is pretty much the same.
Anyways:
Shinjuku Qualifier
This was pretty much a Touka only qualifier. 50% of all the people who entered played Touka. The finals where Touka vs Touka, and most of the the characters in Ro4 and Ro8 had Touka players in them. Kasumi Love (かすみLove)won the qualifier with Touka/Yuma, which is a combo I've never seen anywhere else, but it seems quite viable, especially since Touka doesn't really need to rely on her assist to do damage. I also got to see Touka combo into level 3 super, which seems pretty easy, I've just never seen anyone use it. (Does ~13k, 3 bars, corner only from what I can tell, might have been high emotion).
There was only 1 Riannon, and she only made it to Ro8. Same as last time, there was NO Manaka players at all. All other characters where represented by at least 2-3 players, so except Touka and Manaka, the cast was pretty evenly played.
Mikado Block finals & Qualifier
Same as always, 32 player qualifier. Very even character usage at Mikado. All characters were represented, and no crazy Touka numbers this time. The winner was some Arawn/Ulthury player with a kanji name I can't read (because whoever writes the brackets at Mikado has crappy handwriting). A few Riannon players, but none of them made it very far.
The block finals was Hayashi (Konomi/Kamyu), Taronyan (Karura/Rina, the guy who won at Sportsland last week), Blacky (Touka/Rina) and the previously mentioned kanji guy, 両-something (Arawn/Ulthury). In the end, Blacky won, beating Hayashi in the finals.
So far, based on all the qualifiers and random players I've seen so far, the game seems pretty well balanced. All characters seems to have a decent chance in most match-ups, and most assists seems usable as well. Currently, I'd say Riannon is top tear, but not by much, as tournament results would seems to suggest as well. There are lots of good Touka players, but there's also lots of Touka players in genreal.
Some noteworthy players:
There is a Tamaki player by the name of Satoshi. I'm pretty sure it's GG Potemkin Satoshi, but he'd already left when I got there so I can't confirm this. He made it to Ro4 at Mikado.
Die-chan is playing Morgon. He went to both Sega and Mikado but lost at both.
There is a Karura player using Daigo as his Nesica name. This is not THE Daigo, so don't get confused if you see him in some vid.
By the way, I've had some time to tinker with the Nesica customization page if anyone wants some info on that. Most of it is probably never going to make it into an eventual console release, but I can post all the alternative colors and whatnot if anyone's interested. Most of the info is here http://aquaplus.jp/aquapazza/mobile.html if you can read Japanese. You can also access the actual customization site http://p.aquaplus.jp/ on any computer as well even though it's suppost to be mobile only, just trick if by setting your browser user agent to iPhone.
