This is where it all started: The songs
that make up the core of the Kagerou Project. Therefore, this is
where I’m going to start with more detailed analysis of KagePro’s
elements.
Now, I’m not a music person. I
appreciate a carefully-arranged series of select air pressure waves
as much as the next guy, but I’m going to admit I don’t have the
background and vocabulary to talk about these songs in more advanced
musical terms. I’m more of a story person, including visual
storytelling, and that’s the direction I’m going to approach KagePro
from, viewing these entries less as “songs with PVs” and more as
3-5 minute short films. Some elements might be shared with the
music, like pacing, and I can talk about how the sound design fits
together, but I am going to be mostly going through the story the
songs tell.
Because of that, at least for this
article I’m going to limit myself to a selection of KagePro songs,
most of which will be the ones that aren’t exclusive and have good
PVs, though I may need to cover or at least touch on others.
Because, while I might enjoy listening to some of the album
exclusives with a translated lyrics sheet at hand, it’s a very
different experience to watching the animations. While the songs
interconnect, working through where and how they do isn’t trivial,
and there’s not a clear list of where to start and end, which is part
of why I’ll be doing selected entries. So let’s dive in with…
Kagerou Days
(Original PV | English Cover with Wannyanpoo’s Fan PV)
Kagerou Days (or “Daze”, but I’ll
use the less-common “Days” interpretation for the song to keep it
distinct from the Novels, Manga, and Phenomenon) isn’t the first song
created for the project, but to my understanding it’s the one that
really exploded in popularity, hence why “Kagerou” appears in the
overtitle rather than, say “Mekakucity” that graces the anime and
albums. Perhaps it’s because Kagerou Days is one of the easiest of
the songs to parse in isolation. Others will usually tell you enough
to ‘get’ what’s going on but due to the short time they have leave
some elements out, out of focus, or in the background. Here, the
story is contained. It’s not explained what the supernatural element
is or where it comes from, but that’s not something you actually need
to know in order to enjoy Kagerou Days as a full story; it’s
admirably well contained.
The story of Kagerou Days is this: Over
the course of August 14th and 15th, a boy
(Hibiya) hangs out with a girl (Hiyori), until a point where she’s
suddenly hit by a truck and killed. After a moment of horror, the
boy wakes up on August 14th thinking he’s had a bad dream.
As he hangs out with the girl, though, he starts to notice that the
events of the day are falling out exactly like his “dream”.
Right before the inciting incident for the truck accident, he takes
her away from that place, only to see her suffer a different fatal
accident. And we return to August 14th. The scenario
plays out again and again, and the boy has to watch the girl die in
numerous ways for, from his perspective, ten years of trying to find
an out from her demise and the loop. After so much bitterness and
sorrow, the boy finally gets the bright idea to sacrifice himself to
the truck, pushing the girl out of the way at the last second and
taking the hit himself, hoping that this will break the cycle. After
that, we cut back to, when else, August 14th. Only this
time, for the last seconds of the song, we’re following the girl
instead as she mourns having failed, presumably to save the boy,
implying that they’re both experiencing their own versions of the
loop, remembering the iterations in which the other dies.
In song form, perhaps, but it’s a
really effective and well-told story. For a four minute video
there’s buildup, surprise, mystery, suspense, and even a functional
twist. Some directors can’t do all of that in two hours. It is,
admittedly, open ended, but to my mind in a way that catches the
imagination. It’s left up to interpretation or theory how these kids
got into this time loop, what it means, and how (or even if) they can
actually get out. It’s a great ambassador piece for the project
because it invites you to engage with it and makes you want to know
more about the spider web of stories that spreads outward from
Kagerou Days.
Maybe that’s why it’s kind of got two
PVs.
The original PV very much reflects the
song’s status as, while not strictly the first KagePro song, one of
the first few. It still has a good rhythm to it, but you don’t
actually see a whole lot… there are a few images that are panned
around and a couple abstract moments, but the visuals are dominated
by the lyrics. You can still follow it, and it supports the lyrics
telling the story well, but it’s not exactly animated and doesn’t
really tell the story on its own. More critically, it doesn’t add a
whole lot to the words music. The blood and good thousand-yard-stare
from the most common ‘shot’ of Hibiya aren’t nothing, but they aren’t
necessarily a lot either.
Normally, I wouldn’t consider fan
works, but the second PV for Kagerou Days is kind of in a weird
place. To my understanding, it’s what a lot of people associate with
the song in terms of visuals, and the artist who created it
(Wannyanpoo; a name that means, roughly “WoofMeowOink”) did go on
to do work for the Kagerou Project, so I figure I can talk about it.
It is, I would say, something of apocrypha; Hiyori’s design isn’t
quite what she’ll look like in other official material, and some of
the imagery is suggestive of supernatural elements that don’t
actually apply to KagePro, like palette swapped shades of the kids
emerging and interacting with them in place of, say, Hibiya’s own
mental fatigue with the situation. True, you could see some of these
elements (Especially, say, the world of clocks visited when the
timeline resets) as symbolic rather than literal, but for others the
PV seems to lean in the direction of these things actually happening,
and trying to dig into those mysteries would lead you astray since
they’re not really part of the Project.
On the other hand, the fan PV is very
well put together. When I say that the KagePro PVs often do resemble
short films this one (despite technically being a fan work) is one of
the ones that goes the farthest to prove it. It is pretty much fully
animated, and uses a lot of imagery, even small touches, to add to
the story. Not everything it adds ends up being true to KagePro, but
viewed in isolation it’s a strong and cohesive project. The creator,
when putting the PV together, also did an excellent job of being true
to the source. For instance, I mentioned that Hiyori’s design is
off… but Hibiya’s is pretty much correct since the original PV
showed it off a good deal and there was plenty to work with. Even
the look and feel of the PV, with its high contrast between blood red
and sky teal and heavy use of white, is clearly inspired by how the
original was handled and is something that will emerge again in the
visual design of the project. As long as you know what it is, I
think it does add to the experience of Kagerou Days.
In terms of how it weaves together,
Kagerou Days is a song with fairly few obvious connections, and most
of them are very deep in the project at least in terms of how you
want to look at it in order to actually understand, being the second
or later appearances of other characters. So to continue, I’ll be
picking the start of another thread…
Yuukei Yesterday
(PV)
Yuukei Yesterday (“Yesterday Evening”
or “Sunset Yesterday” if you prefer) is a very different song
from Kagerou Days in terms of its content and tone, so much that you
would be easily forgiven for not expecting them to belong to the same
thing. In the immediate, it’s a song about a (very tsun) Tsundere
(Takane) experiencing her crush (on Haruka). It’s got the typical
Tsundere fixings: denial of her feeling, lashing out in anger and
frustration because she can’t handle her feelings, and getting into
comic situations because of all of it. Our new Tsundere friend is a
clear firecracker with a mean glare and the boy she has a crush on
seems both sweet and exceptionally oblivious, and you would be
forgiven for considering that to be what there is to the song,
especially given the bright and colorful paper doll style a lot of it
takes on.
The ending, however, does present
something of a twist. It’s not as obvious as Kagerou Days’ twist,
but it’s certainly there. Throughout the song we see the main
characters paired with alternate versions of themselves, seemingly
drawn by the characters. In the last few lines of lyrics (the 2:50
mark in the song), though, we instead see Alternate Takane in full
color, like a person who actually exists (I dare say probably in
higher detail than most of the rest of the song), making a desperate
run through a sunset city while the lyrics talk about how she means
to tell Haruka how she feels, her face full of desperation and fear
despite a glimpse of happy possibilities. This is absolutely a case
where the PV puts in a lot of work. If you just listen to the song,
rather than watch it, it doesn’t really sound like there would be any
stakes on moment of breaking into a run to tell him. They’re school
friends, so even if her pent-up emotions being released in a torrent
demand that something happen right now, she can always tell him
later. The PV’s imagery paints a different picture; the palpable
desperation in Takane’s face suggests that there’s some important
reason why she has to be running, and not waiting any longer, and her
crying out to god at the end doesn’t feel as frivolous as it
otherwise might. The song does round off with some happier visuals,
flashbacks to the two of them hanging out with friends (Shintaro and
Ayano, who we’ll get to in good time), and an image of Takane
surmounting the hill in the sunset city with a leap that looks kinda
joyful when combined with the bouncy, bright sound of the song.
This is one you can just sort of enjoy
on its own, especially as a more fun and upbeat entry, but it
introduces (in a chronological, rather than production sense) some
important notions, forming the background of Takane and Haruka and
the groundwork for their alternate forms, Ene and Konoha.
Headphone Actor
(PV)
Headphone Actor follows up with Takane,
undergoing a fairly strange experience. We see her here in her
alternate form(/costume), the one she was running in at the end of
Yuukei Yesterday. And, once again, she’s going to be doing an awful
lot of running, starting when, during what otherwise seems like an
average day, a voice on the radio declares that it’s the end of the
world. She puts on her headphones to calm her nerves when a voice
comes over them – it sounds just like her own voice and tells her
that if she can make it over a particular hill in time, she’ll see
what’s going on and can be saved.
Naturally, Takane starts running. She
makes her way through the streets, where everyone is quite naturally
going crazy – screaming, crying, praying, rioting… it’s the end
of the world after all. Takane stays fixed on her mission: Get over
that hill to see what’s beyond and, in doing so, survive. The
Takane-voice in her headphones reminds her of the countdown, but at
last she makes it.
And in making it, she realizes she was
on the Truman Show the whole time: the town is some sort of science
experiment, and the lab-coat clad scientists applaud Takane’s success
even as they shatter her reality. The town’s not needed any more, so
might as well toss in a bomb and blow it to hell. Takane, in this
vision, lived her whole life in a box, and can only gaze on the ashen
ruin that used to be her whole life.
The voice from the Headphones speaks
one last time, saying she’s sorry, as a faint outline appears to
speak those words.
Now, there’s a good deal to unpack from
Headphone Actor. First of all, it’s clearly not 100% literal. It’s
not exactly framed as a dream, but some of the details are extremely
dream-like. There’s a good reason for that, being that Headphone
Actor (Along with Kagerou Days and at least a couple others) depicts
an experience within the Heat Haze, which can distort time and
reality to the extreme ends. Second, there are elements that tie
back, elements that tie forward, and multiple ways you can read some
of the elements, giving you a different perspective on the characters
depending on how you look at it.
The ties back, at least as we’re
regarding it, are those to Yuukei Yesterday. In terms of production
it was Yuukei Yesterday (17th song) calling back to
Headphone Actor (4th song), but in terms of the arcs of
the characters, it’s the other way around. The big one is, of
course, Takane’s run for the hill. In Headphone Actor, she’s running
to escape the apocalypse. In Yuukei Yesterday, she’s running to tell
her crush how she feels. But the scenes are clearly basically the
same thing, including Takane’s appearance, the color scheme, the hill
motif, and her desperation as she runs. There are a few ways you
could look at this. I think the most natural is that the events of
Headphone Actor are something of a metaphor for how things happened
in Yuukei Yesterday; much like a dream, the Heat Haze seems to borrow
elements and repeat or reinterpret them, so it’s not entirely strange
that if “Running up a hill at sunset, with a tight time gun” was
weighing on her when she entered the Haze, it could become part of
her Heat Haze experience. By that metric, Headphone Actor would, in
some ways, be an exaggerated retelling of the ending of Yuukei
Yesterday. Personally, knowing more about the project and how the
Heat Haze works and how, at least in most routes, Takane ended up
entering it, this seems pretty likely. However, there’s another take
that’s at least interesting food for thought.
In Yuukei Yesterday, for the majority
of the song, the Takane of Headphone Actor is not the real Takane;
however, at the end, when she’s desperate to tell Haruka how she
feels and has to make the run in order to do so, it is the Headphone
Actor Takane we see, with no hint of the action from Real Takane.
So, I think it’s possible that the implication is, from another
direction, about the depth of Takane’s feelings. Rather than
Headphone Actor modifying Yuukei Yesterday by showing us a nightmare
version of her run. Yuukei Yesterday could be meant to modify our
understanding of Headphone Actor, giving us more insight into what
Takane is thinking when she’s running to escape the end of the world.
Specifically, if you take this interpretation, there’s at least a
meaningful part of Takane’s mind that needs to make it to safety,
because she still has something so important to tell Haruka. Finally
speaking her mind would be the great motivator there, in some senses
her reason if not to live than at least to push through a terrible
situation when it might otherwise be easy to see the scenario as
hopeless and give up. A desperate need to hold on (particularly to
love), against seemingly impossible odds, is a theme that comes back
in the Kagerou Project. We see it in different forms in the stories
of Shintaro and Ayano, the story of Marry, the story of Hibiya and
Hiyori, and even the story of Azami that forms the foundation for the
others – it’s hardly a stretch to say something like that might be
intended for Takane and Haruka as well.
I would normally deal with the forward
link in the next song in the chain (again, next as the characters
would experience it) but there’s a bridging song that’s Album
Exclusive, so since I won’t be going into full detail on it I’ll
address what needs to be covered here. At the end of Headphone
Actor, the copy of Takane’s voice she heard over her headphones is
given an image. It’s just an outline and only there for a second or
two, but it’s not quite Takane’s outline. Rather, the image belongs
to Ene, hinting at (or, arguably, establishing) the link between the
two characters, that Ene is an alternate version of Takane. This is
made more explicit by the song “Ene’s Cyber Journey”. Takane’s
body and mind are separated and her mind (as Ene) enters cyberspace
and is lead to the computer of her old friend, Shintaro Kisaragi.
The song basically acts as a bridge that’s half Headphone Actor and
half the next one in Ene’s timeline, solidifying the connection that
would be otherwise fairly easy to miss. Technically the next step in
Ene’s line is Artificial Enemy, the first song created for the
Kagerou Project, but since its PV is literally a still image and its
story material will be covered again from a different perspective,
we’ll catch back up with Ene when we get to Lost Time Memory. For
now, it’s time to start down a different road.
Ayano’s Theory of Happiness
(PV)
The start of a different story, Ayano’s
Theory of Happiness, telling a story in itself, but with details that
are begging to be filled in by other material. The basic story is
that Ayano Tateyama gains a few new siblings – adopted siblings
with red eyes, who view themselves as monsters because of it. Ayano
tries to be a good big sister to them, telling them that red is the
color of heroes and playing make-believe to the effect just to see
the poor kids smile a little more. It works, but the idyllic
existence Ayano and her family knew is thrown into disarray by the
death of her mother and something dark about her father. Ayano
stumbles upon some darker threat to the lives and happiness of her
family and her friends (Takane and Haruka, glimpsed briefly), about
which she cannot speak. Basically, everyone she cares about is in
jeopardy. She keeps her dread and desperation hidden behind a smile
before finally hitting upon a plan to do with the red eyes: if she
had some herself, perhaps she could save the future of the others.
The PV shows her approaching a dark rift, facing some sort of
supernatural terror, and while it’s not entirely clear either what
really happened to her or what the story the rest of the world knows
is, it is fairly clear that she’s gone after that, whether
conventionally “dead” or not. From beyond, she laments that the
people she cared for would probably be upset with her, but still
hopes that the kids will really see her as a big sister and that her
friends and family can hold on to happiness and love the coming days.
What the threat was, and why Ayano’s
sacrifice defused it or was at least expected to defuse it, is
probably the element of the Kagerou Project that is least well
explained in the songs: I think the most understandable version of
these events comes from Mekakucity Actors, but for what we have here?
It is, in a lot of ways, the heart of the Project. Ayano, in her
life and death, touched most of the other characters. We see them in
this song; the focus is on her adopted siblings Kido, Kano, and Seto
but there’s also time given to Takane, Haruka, and even Shintaro, at
least in the PV. Speaking of the PV, it’s a good one, loaded with
grace notes and embellishments that help tell the story more. For
instance, the lyrics keep vague about the dark turn that Ayano’s life
take, but the visuals let us in to the tragedy of her parents. The
lyrics stay focused on her family, keeping the cope of the song
tight, but in the visuals of the PV she also spares thoughts for her
friends, some of which are in danger themselves as well as her
family.
One big thing that Ayano’s Theory of
Happiness does is, of course, establish Ayano. I know that seems
obvious, but because of the role she fulfills in the story as a whole
it’s important that we know who she is as a person. We see in Theory
of Happiness that she’s a good, kind person… and not just passively
kind either. She takes an active interest in the happiness of her
adopted siblings from the beginning and more critically takes it upon
herself to protect her friends and family, even at the cost of her
own life.
In this song, Ayano mentions red being
the color of heroes, and in the design of the Kagerou Project, it’s
an important color – the eyes of Ability-users turn red, and there
are a lot of sunset colors in depictions of the Heat Haze, not to
mention the blood that some songs will indulge in (looking at you,
Kagerou Days). However, most of the characters actually avoid it as
a thematic color, perhaps because of its important status, meaning
that red eyes don’t get lost. There are, however, two very notable
uses of red by characters, and one of them is here: Ayano takes up a
bright crimson scarf, at first as a way of helping get her new
siblings to open up, but it does become a kind of signature garment
for her. Later on, when she has to step up in agency, she adds a
pair of red hair clips like her mother wore. Ayano’s use of red
elements helps to highlight, through visual means, her death as a
case of heroic self-sacrifice rather than the tragic suicide it’s
elsewhere made out to be by those who don’t know the full story. The
framing in the PV supports this. If you look at the shot at 4:08 in
the PV, you’ll notice a few things. First of all, Ayano’s scarf is
in full color (it isn’t always) and is fluttering out in the wind on
both sides of her, giving her a bigger outline in that bright,
vibrant red. Second, Ayano facing the rift here is presented like a
shot of an action hero; it’s from a low angle and behind her, so she
looks huge and even powerful, but what’s she’s facing, out in the
distance, looks even bigger. It’s the same sort of shot you’d want
if you were setting a powerful warrior up against an indomitable
monster, except here it’s being used for an ordinary school girl
because that’s the kind of spirit and determination Ayano has. She
might be too humble to really consider herself a hero, but the
framing of her actions in her own story say that she is, even if
she’s a tragic one who doesn’t come back from that date with destiny.
Even after dying (and ending up in the
Heat Haze, of course), Ayano still thinks of others. In the end of
Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, she doesn’t know how her family is
doing. She hopes well, that the people she cared about will go on
smiling without her, but she does have some suspicion that everything
in the outside world might not be sunshine and roses. To see how the
outside world did, indeed, react to Ayano’s sacrifice, we turn to
Shintaro Kisaragi.
Toumei Answer
(English Cover with PV)
So, this is the one Album song that I
actually want to discuss. Because of its status, there’s not an
upload of the original by the artist but the song and its attendant
video (which is official) have been covered by JubyPhonic. I’d feel
more bad about linking fan work when discussing the official
material, but her English covers are kind of what first got me into
the project, and while her lyrics may not be the most literal
translation of the Japanese, they usually do a very good job at
communicating the story and the intent while fitting the music
extremely well. So if you haven’t been following along with songs in
a language you don’t speak, maybe check her out.
As for the content, this is the first
(chronological) song to feature very arguably the project’s main
character, Shintaro Kisaragi, in a central role. He appeared briefly
in the PVs for Yuukei Yesterday and Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, but
Toumei Answer is from Shintaro’s perspective, giving us an outside
look on the ending of Ayano’s Theory of Happiness. We see how Ayano
befriends Shintaro – he’s a genius (never seen with less than a
perfect 100 on his tests) but he also seems kind of sour and bored
with the world. Ayano meets his attitude with a very different
perspective – much like how, in Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, she
teaches her siblings that their red eyes can belong them to heroes
instead of the monsters they saw themselves as to begin with, Ayano
seems to be the one thing that shakes Shintaro from his ennui, and
her approach to the world as something wonderful is infectious: you
can see it at about the 1:09 mark when his eyes, that are usually
depicted as shaded or downcast not just in Toumei Answer but in most
of the songs he’s in, light up when he sees Ayano, and he actually
looks at something with a little wonder rather than jaded
indifference (or shock).
Of course, then Ayano goes and commits
suicide. That’s the story the world outside her battle with the Heat
Haze gets: she jumped from the school rooftop and died, and most of
the song is dedicated to Shintaro not just mourning her death, but
attempting to understand. Shintaro seems to blame himself at least
partially – not for causing Ayano’s death, it seems, so much as for
failing to prevent it, by recognizing warning signs or just generally
being a better friend to someone so precious to him. Scenes of
Shintaro mourning are paired with flashbacks to his time with Ayano,
and it’s easy to see that they had a strong bond even if he was a
grump. With her gone, Shintaro has of course lost the light she
added to his life, and if anything the loss weighs on him even more
than mere absence. His test scores may remain perfect, but if it
wasn’t a big deal to him before, it now aggressively doesn’t matter:
the 100 was never the reward to Shintaro, so what is there without
Ayano making her little paper cranes out of them, even if he might
have claimed to not care before?
After Ayano’s death is made public,
Shintaro both sees that others will likely forget her (in a brilliant
small moment, watching a leaf fall from the vase of flowers left on
her desk as a memorial) and curses himself for despite his great
academic gifts, not being able to answer the problem that really
mattered. At the end we see a mixture of memories and imagined
possibility (an example of what he thinks he could have done, like
finding Ayano crying alone so he would have known she had a problem),
as well as Shintaro’s actions: He flees campus and is done with his
alarm for school, retreating to the NEETdom we’ll later find him in.
While others may forget, Shintaro ends
the song resolving not to, promising that he’ll remember Ayano’s
smile into the future.
Toumei Answer, on its own, doesn’t
really add new information we couldn’t glean from Ayano’s Theory of
Happiness, Lost Time Memory, and Additional Memory (I’ll get to those
latter two in good time), but it’s an important bridge for the
emotions that run through Shintaro’s arc, and it’s good to have it at
the point we do rather than relying on later material. It also does
a good job at feeling real and close. In Toumei Answer there are no
supernatural elements, not even hints like the ambiguous ending of
Yuukei Yesterday that ties in with Headphone Actor. It’s just a song
about a boy coping (badly) with the loss of a dear friend, events
that were from his perspective part of the mundane universe we
understand in every way. That’s something unique in KagePro, at
least the “main line” songs I’m covering here; the project is
very good at giving a lot of humanity to its characters, and handling
their emotions tactfully as real people, but it usually does do so in
the context of a scenario that is somewhere between surreal and
fantastical. Toumei Answer is a big part of that for Shintaro and by
depicting him totally in isolation from the weirdness that otherwise
permeates the project, we a gain a better understanding of who he is
in entirely human terms.
Hm? A real, emotionally effective and logically consistent portrayal of grief over the death of a (girl)friend driving a boy into seclusion as a NEET? I strangely feel the need to beat a dead horse over a four minute song doing this better than an eleven episode show somehow.
We’ll catch up with Shintaro when we
reach Lost Time Memory, but in the meantime we’ve got Ayano’s adopted
siblings to catch up with.
That, however, will be for next time –
this analysis article is running very long, so part 2 will run next
Wednesday. We’ve got some powerhouse songs to attend to, so I hope
I’ll see you all there.