An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Echoing Through the Haze: KagePro Songs Analysis (Part 2)

Here we are again! Last time we covered Kagerou Days, Yuukei Yesterday, Headphone Actor, Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, and Toumei Answer, roughly getting through the arcs of Takane/Ene and Shintaro and Ayano’s past. This time we’ll be following through with the Mekakushi-dan, Momo Kisaragi, and some big-time story in Lost Time Memory, Additional Memory, and Outer Science.

Mekakushi Code, Yobanashi Deceive, & Shounen Brave

(Mekakushi Code PV | Yobanashi Deceive PV)

I’ve lumped these together in large part because Mekakushi Code suffers from the same problem as Artificial Enemy in that it’s PV kind of… isn’t. And Shounen Brave, you may have guessed from the lack of link, is a step further gone as an album song. I’m mentioning it here for the sake of completeness (Three siblings, three character songs) but most of the material from it will be covered, albeit from a different perspective, in Fantasy Forest. So this section is largely going to be dedicated to Yobanashi Deceive.

Mekakushi Code is Tsubomi Kido’s song out of the three, but it’s also the least focused on the individual character (Kido later gets a proper character arc song, Never Lost Word, but since it spends most of its run outside the bounds of time covered by the main KagePro story, I won’t be going into detail on it). For the most part, it also has limited story for a KagePro song. While songs like Kagerou Days and Toumei Answer are about telling a narrative, Mekakushi Code is more about conveying a feeling or an experience; the sensation of, for the lack of a better set of terms, being Tsubomi Kido.

That’s interesting in its own right. Kido does at least talk about herself in this song, and there’s a disconnect between what she tells and what she expresses. I don’t think this is a case of bad writing in the least; rather, it’s a case of the character not having a necessarily accurate appraisal of herself (Something that will come up again in Never Lost Word and the manga and novels: Kido has some serious image issues). Kido calls herself, in one line, a shut-in NEET with communication problems… some of which might be true but none of which coordinates with her main status in this song as the new leader of her little band of siblings, the Mekakushi-dan. Similarly, her inclination to disappear is juxtaposed against her feelings of power and control that stem from the disappearing act (Her eye power).

This is a case where event to a layman like myself the music does a good deal of work mediating the balance between various elements. Mekakushi Code is a fast, upbeat-sounding song so the self-deprecating elements come off much weaker than the status and freedom.

Speaking of self-deprecating, Yobanashi Deceive. It’s… interesting in that regard. This is the character song for Shuuya Kano, and you would be forgiven for thinking, just going through the songs and PVs, that Kano might be some kind of villain. The color scheme of the PV all about black, gray, and orange, warm shadows in a fairly threatening cityscape dominated by looming, dark buildings. Kano refers to himself as a monster and doesn’t seem too broken up about it. He also outs himself as a liar… but then where do the lies start and stop? The text at the beginning has Kano warn you that it can be the true things that sound false.

Yobanashi Deceive is a rarity in KagePro Songs in that it seems to be actually addressed to the audience, and not even any of the other characters through some sort of logical connection (though now that I think about it, almost all the songs have some element that sets them apart from the rest). It’s a trait shared with Mekakushi Code, though you could argue with knowledge of the full Project that Mekakushi Code is the sort of thing Kido would want to say to new Mekakushi-dan recruits like Momo Kisaragi.

In my mind, the viewer being brought into Yobanashi Deceive more than other KagePro songs can be explained a couple of ways. The simpler explanation is that Yobanashi Deceive is a song about lying, and the sort of lie that Kano crafts has to be told to someone; his art doesn’t exist without an audience. The more interesting route in my mind is to think that maybe the fourth wall isn’t actually being broken here. True, there’s not really anyone in this song except Kano, but that’s because Kano is addressing himself. We even see a sure sign of this in the song: there’s a moment at 1:57 where Kano speaks to his mask, which then becomes another version of Kano, so clearly the truths and lies being addressed in Yobanashi Deceive are topics that Kano can or needs to face himself with.

The mask is another topic worth talking about. It first appears at around 0:56, after Kano introduces the idea of a “Monster” that spoke inside him and encouraged him to keep on lying. He goes on to wear the mask, and that he’s become like a monster himself. Without doubt in my mind, the mask acts as a symbol of Kano’s strategy of deception. He moves it to the side to smirk at the audience after making a crack about lying about lying (essentially) and it comes back for that self confrontation.

There’s another interesting part of the confrontation moment: It’s Other Kano (the one that emerges from the Mask’s place) that challenges Kano’s seeming belief that things have worked out or will work out as a lie. Essentially, though it enables him to be dishonest with the world, he can’t avoid facing the truth himself.

The mask appears twice more in Yobanashi Deceive. The first is in Kano’s hand in a more lushly animated moment (at 2:19 where he stands atop a dismal grey urban world to face a red dwarf sun) as the lyrics make one further rally at conflating lie and truth. Then, in the next stanza, the mask is shattered as Kano says that he can’t be saved. Personally, I take this to be if not true than at least a true fear – but what’s the cause and effect? Going from the song, I’d probably have to say that the shattered mask is the cause of ‘can’t be saved’. That is, without deception, Kano finds himself vulnerable, even lost. To the end, Kano puts on a lot of faces in this song, both his own running from smug satisfaction or taking a theatrical bow to looking at his life with distress and horror or crying his eyes out… and those of others, imitating Kido and Seto as he talks about them.

The last moment I want to touch on for Yobanashi Deceive is that: According to Kano, Seto and Kido also faced, thanks to their ideals, moments like his own ‘monster’ encounter. We kind of understand that there’s a degree to which he’s referring to the eye abilities, but there’s a deeper truth to what Kano says, both about himself and his friends/siblings: the implication of why. Why does Kido vanish? Seto feel the hearts of others? Something in them already wanted that.

Briefly, Shounen Brave is Kosuke Seto’s song. Unlike the others for the Mekakushi Dan’s founding trio, it tells more of a story, the background of Seto, the experience that left him with his eye ability, and in a sense the events of Fantasy Forest from his perspective rather than Marry’s. However, since it’s an Album song and doesn’t have an official NicoNico or Youtube release, and since unlike with Toumei Answer I can cover most of the story with Fantasy Forest, I’m only really addressing it for the sake of completion.

Fantasy Forest

(PV)

I’m pretty sure that I’ve been alluding to this one a lot but Fantasy Forest is one of the big ones for diving deep into discovering what the Kagerou Project is actually about, even if it doesn’t look like it at first. Fantasy Forest covers the story of Marry (importantly including her meeting with Seto that brings her into the outside world), who is (of the heroic cast at least) deepest tied into the lore that lurks beneath the surface of the setting.

This one is also a little different in terms of environment: the Kagerou Project, in general, is very fond of urban environments but Fantasy Forest is, well, set in a little house in the forest that looks like it came right out of a fairy tale. It’s a good environment on its own, and I think it helps to highlight how disconnected Marry is from the rest of the world. She talks a good deal about her isolation in this, and though the fact that her house looks like a nice place takes some of the edge off,it feels quite real when you consider the wider context of the setting she inhabits.

Marry is also a unique character in a lot of ways, and I mean more than any of these characters being unique people: she has an eye ability, but hers is a little different. Specifically, it’s inborn. Marry’s power, she believes, means she should never look anyone in the eyes lest they turn to stone. We see her mother use the same ability to protect Marry, though it seems like her mother also doesn’t survive the encounter, perhaps because she used/overused/abused her eye power (actually she got hit on the head, but you wouldn’t be sure of that from the PV). Does this ability sound familiar? The book Marry reads in the flashback to her time learning of her power from her parents seems to depict a classical, snake-haired Gorgon (likely the most famous such creature, Medusa, since it doesn’t seem to be depicting the character of Azami), the mythical creature that would most infamously possess such an ability. It might be easy to guess with the information given from this song, but Marry is herself a descendant of a creature something like that: Azami, the progenitor of the eye abilities, snakes, and Heat Haze.

The basis of her story is this: Marry was raised in isolation in the forest, taught that she should avoid humans. Her father, though seen briefly in silhouette, is gone by the time of the next important event in her life: while playing outside, Marry is set upon by a couple of thugs who seem inclined to beat, kidnap, and possibly murder her. Her mother appears to defend her but, as discussed before, dies trying to save Marry, and Marry is thereafter left to live alone in her forest home.

It’s not clear how much time passes. Marry grows up some, but not that much… but on the other hand, she’s a supernatural creature not bound to human scales of aging. I believe she’s well over 100 according to various sources. For this song, though, all that’s needed is the understanding of conflict between the fact that she’s lonely and isolated and the fact that in many ways she’s gotten used to it. So it’s quite shocking for her when Seto shows up at her door. Even though she’d been dreaming of something like that finally happening to bring her out into the world, she’s also afraid, panicked even. She trips over herself which ultimately prompts Seto to go ahead and open the door. Marry hides her eyes, afraid she’ll turn Seto to stone, but he empathizes with her fear (though misplaced, likening it to his own concerns about socializing)… and offers her the chance to live in a world without it. He shares some music with her, sparking her curiosity once again and, clearly, is eventually able to lead her out of the woods as a new member of the Mekakushi Dan, as the final scene shows her with a new hood, being introduced to Kido.

Before moving on to a new thread, I think I’d like to bring up the complexity with which Marry is portrayed in this song. Marry is a young (seeming) girl with a cute design and a naive innocence; it would have been all too easy to make her a ball of harmless sweet fluff. And she has some of that; she’s a kind person with decent empathy, and we see a few scenes of her playing around as a kid or befriending wildlife… but we also see some more depth to her. In the scene where she learns about Medusa, Marry examines her eyes in the mirror and, recognizing the meaning of what she sees, actually gets mad and smashes it. When Seto shows up, it’s also good that Marry has an internal conflict about these events. She may have been waiting for a knock on her door from the wider world, but when it comes, she’s terrified. And why shouldn’t she be? The last time she met humans, they beat her up and killed her mother, and on the other side, she was taught that she was something dangerous, and she saw her mother’s version of that in action. Whether for herself or for her visitor, she has every reason to be afraid and not just jump at what had been her idle desire. It’s a nuanced look, that considers what she might be feeling based on the events, rather than just giving her one mode to be forever stuck in. I could probably point this out with most of the character songs, but because the failure state for Marry’s characterization is so basically vanilla, the fact that KagePro passes with flying colors is all the more relevant and impressive.

Kisaragi Attention

(PV)

For a moment, we’re going to have change tracks as we move to Momo Kisaragi, Shintaro’s sister (though he only makes an extremely brief cameo in this song), and an idol singer who’s a little overwhelmed by her popularity. Of course, this is KagePro, so her problems are not exactly what I’d call normal, even if they look that way at first.

In any case, Momo’s story involves her day on the town. She knows she’s an insanely popular idol, and so she tries to dress in plain clothes with a hood to avoid drawing too much attention. Of course, a gust of wind blowing her hood back is the end of that and… yeah, when she says her existence is torment, the crowd that immediately pursues her no matter how much she tries to run kind of sells it. We continue Momo’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day as her flight from the mob of fans sees her hurting herself more than once. At her wits end and wanting to quit the idol business that had started like a dream, Momo runs into Tsubomi Kido and the Mekakushi Dan.

Even before Momo encounters Kido and the others, we do see that she has an eye ability, because her eyes flash red in a moment suspiciously a little before the mob seems to find her yet again. She doesn’t seem to know she has this power, much less how to control it, but she does seem cognizant of the fact that she wouldn’t normally be considered as good as she is (and thus, while she doesn’t understand the cause, of her eye ability’s power to draw attention). The Mekakushi Dan, however, do understand, having lived with their powers for years (since the beginning of Ayano’s Theory of Happiness at least) and come to master them. During an interlude, we get to see Momo hang out with and befriend Kido, Kano, and Marry, and after that she receives a pep talk about how she can overcome the bad parts of what her eye ability brings. Momo goes out on stage again, a renewed idol and able to trigger her attention-grabbing ability at will for the performance, ready to sing her heart out thanks to her new friends.

And… That’s kind of all there is to this one. Kisaragi Attention is, on its own, a full story of Momo’s brush with quitting idol-dom (not that it would help her too much if she did). It’s also the taster of the Mekakushi Dan’s presence in the story. We know where they came from, but how they’re living now, as their own strange family, working to understand the powers? That’s here in Kisaragi Attention. However, it doesn’t really touch too much on the broader mysteries of the Kagerou Project.

Otsukimi Recital

(PV)

Otsukimi Recital is a second song for Momo… and also for Hibiya. Remember him? The boy from Kagerou Days has, apparently, emerged from the Heat Haze while Hiyori did not, and in the process he’s run in with Momo and the Mekakushi Dan.

There is technically another song, Konoha’s State of the World, that serves as a bridge between Kagerou Days and here. Sort of. It also follows up Yuukei Yesterday. Sort of. It concerns Konoha, who is the alter version of Haruka from Yuukei Yesterday like Ene is Takane. Sort of. I’ve chosen to bypass it. Again, sort of. This paragraph is here after all. It’s a fine song, but it leaves less of an impact on the story than most. Instead, we’re here with Otsukimi Recital.

The main conflict of the song is that Momo wants to cheer up Hibiya (basically passing on the good turn the Mekakushi Dan did her to someone else touched by the supernatural), but Hibiya is continuously haunted by his memories of Hiyori and the horrible fates she suffered throughout Kagerou Days. Momo goes through a lot of attempts to reach out to Hibiya, but one by one they fail, or he slides back into depression right as he’s about to take Momo’s hand and accept that things could look up. Finally, Momo uses her eye abilities to break through and let him know that he’s not alone, possibly attracting his absolute attention so her words will get through to him. Momo passes out from exertion, but wakes up a moment later (being taken care of by Kido) to see Hibiya trigger his own eye ability and resolve to face the world with new determination.

And… a lot like Kisaragi Attention, the story on offer is kind of it. It’s worth noting, I suppose, that Wannyanpoo (the artist who did the Kagerou Days fan PV I linked and analyzed) was responsible for this official PV, because there are quite a few moments where Hibiya has a flashback and the imagery directly references that fan PV for Kagerou Days, such as the image of Hiyori and the cat (which Hibiya remembers when Momo, ever klutzy, steps on a cat’s tail) and Hiyori’s death to falling beams (which Hibiya recalls towards the end, when they visit a park). So I guess the canonicity of the Wannyanpoo Kagerou Days PV is kind of uplifted here, at least for bits and pieces.

There’s a strong sense that Kisaragi Attention and Otsukimi Recital (along with Kagerou Days, I suppose) are part of a bigger story in a way that doesn’t apply to many of the other songs. True, everything’s interlinked, but at the same time the consistent characters and themes between these songs, along with the fact that they both tell chapters of a story, make them feel more like, well, chapters rather than conceptual executions in the vein of Yobanashi Deceive. The other chains do string together into a larger story (and I, in fact, found it really fun and engaging to have the web fall into place as I first dug into KagePro myself), but Toumei Answer has a radically different theme and tone when compared to Ayano’s Theory of Happiness. Ditto Headphone Actor and Yuukei Yesterday. Kisaragi Attention and Otsukimi Recital are more cut from the same cloth.

That, though, basically clears up what I want to say about them. It’s time to dive into the depths of KagePro.

Lost Time Memory

(PV)

So, Lost Time Memory, both one of the crux lore elements of KagePro and possibly my favorite of the songs. Strap yourselves in, because there are two stories in one and a lot of elements to bring up and discuss in this one.

First of all, the basic story of Lost Time Memory… is not so basic. You see, unlike most of the other KagePro songs, which each show only one of the timelines that the story goes through, Lost Time Memory shows two. Effectively, we get the possibilities running in parallel, two versions of Shintaro’s life starting on a summer day a couple years after Ayano’s Theory of Happiness and Toumei Answer.

We start with a flashback to, presumably, the last time Shintaro saw Ayano alive (Different main routes treat this scene differently, but that’s the most basic read and how Shintaro sees it). She wants to get closer to him, but Shintaro basically tells her to buzz off. Shintaro’s a prickly person; we can kind of understand from how he regarded Ayano in Toumei Answer that he wouldn’t really have meant anything bad for her and was probably just feeling asocial. But, whatever the reason, that interaction has quite naturally cast a long shadow over Shintaro’s life.

On Route 1 (how the PV refers to it), Shintaro ultimately emerges from his seclusion and self-hating decay, heading out into the world where he ends up making friends with the Mekakushi Dan, having an adventure with them, Momo, Hibiya, Konoha, Ene joining them on his cell phone, the whole gang’s here. Though he’s still not exactly happy out in the world, things are looking up. His thoughts still turn to Ayano, but there’s both an acceptance of her death and a strange hope. Impossible? Maybe, but Shintaro even has some sort of vision of Ayano.

Meanwhile, on Route XX (again, the PV’s term), Shintaro remains at home, degenerating, escaping his present not into the outside world but into dreams where he can be with Ayano again, unable to accept her death. Ene tries to to drag him out of the pit of his despair, but Shintaro is too far gone, and her needling gives offense. He actually kills her (visualized as strangling, though clearly he’d have to do something technical to delete her digital existence) and is then overwhelmed by the weight of his actions.

We then get a scene of Shintaro’s death. What route? Both of them, woven together. On Route 1, Shintaro is facing off against a dark version of Konoha (Kuro Konoha, Kuroha, or just the Snake of Clearing Eyes, take what you prefer). He ends up taking a bullet for his trouble in quick, heroic action – depicted in this as preventing Kuroha from turning the gun on himself. Route XX, however, has nowhere farther to fall: Shintaro takes up a pair of scissors and commits suicide, presumably by something along the lines of stabbing himself in the neck.

As the music slows for a moment, we see both Shintaros descending. Do recall: die at the right time or in the right way, and you end up swallowed by the Heat Haze instead. In both routes, this is Shintaro’s fate, and he ends up facing Azami. In Route XX he sits in misery, defeated, as prior events (particularly images from Route 1) flash in the background and Azami looks down on him. In Route 1, Shintaro has somewhere he needs to go. He shocks Azami, walking right by her to his destiny.

That destiny is, of course, Ayano.

Again we see Shintaro beside himself, as Route XX Shintaro evidently makes it to Ayano’s corner of the heat haze. One comes with determination, the other in despair. Both reach out for her, to hold onto Ayano like they couldn’t, didn’t do in the flashback that started the song. Route XX Shintaro is once again too late. He reaches out, but there’s nothing there. Route 1 Shintaro, however, stands before Ayano. They’re able to speak, and smile at this reunion. Ayano throws her signature scarf around Shintaro, and we cut to his eyes, gleaming bright red in a sequence that wouldn’t have all the pieces to put it together in viewer hands until the Manga finished in 2019 (we’ll get there). However, the image of Shintaro fades into his Route XX self… or perhaps his self before the deciding moment between the routes. Worn out, lying in bed, and the clock reads 12:32 on August 15th, just as it did at the start of the routes.

Where’s Shintaro going this time? That’s what the song leaves us with.

Alright, now it’s time to dig into some of the visual storytelling in this one because it’s intricate and really rather brilliant. For one, recall how in Ayano’s Theory of Happiness I pointed out the focus on the color red, how it was called out as the color of heroes and how there were two big, notable uses of a lot of red in character design through KagePro. The first was Ayano, with her red scarf and hair clips, who’s certainly framed as a hero in Ayano’s Theory of Happiness. The other is Shintaro, specifically Shintaro in his Route 1 form: he dons a bright red jacket when he rushes out into the world, dies trying to do something heroic, and ultimately reaches Ayano in the depths of the Heat Haze. This is the Shintaro that gets displayed the most, the one who is something like the main character (you might say Hero) of the Project’s main story, the hero of the tale. Route XX Shintaro, who succumbs to his despair, hurts the people that care about him, and ultimately fails, doesn’t wear red: he has a plain black hoodie throughout. It’s a good choice that stresses how differently he could turn out, any given time through the events that lead to his NEET seclusion.

Another thing I want to highlight is the classroom. In Toumei Answer, we saw the classroom that Shintaro and Ayano once shared, and there were several shots of the arrangement, including the desks of the two. Since Ayano died (according to the real world) we also saw a vase of flowers placed on her desk back in Toumei Answer, a memorial for a lost classmate – watching those flowers slowly start to wilt and realizing that the rest of the world was already starting to forget her was framed as part of what drove Shintaro to give up on the outside world.

(As a complete aside, flowers on a desk can also be used as a form of bullying, at least in Japanese media whether or not real people still do it: put out a memorial for a student who’s alive and well and it’s like saying “wish you were dead”. So now if you run across that in anime and wonder why giving someone flowers is an aggressive act, you know.)

Here in Lost Time Memory, we see the classroom twice. The first time is in Route XX Shintaro’s dream. At that point, Shintaro and Ayano are the only people present. Their desks are clear and they can talk and laugh again like nothing ever happened, but on every other desk in the classroom there’s a vase with flowers; this signifies, quickly, how everyone else in the world is basically dead to Shintaro on this route. His flight into this dream as an escape from reality excludes the broader world (much like his seclusion in his room did), “killing off” everything outside himself and Ayano.

It’s also worth noting that the Ayano in Route XX Shintaro’s dream isn’t wearing her scarf, either when they’re talking in the class or when she’s falling head-first past its window as Shintaro’s reality implodes after killing Ene. In essence, the Ayano in Rout XX Shintaro’s myopic dreams isn’t her full self. This is in contrast to every other time Ayano appears in Lost Time Memory. In the opening she and Shintaro are seen in silhouette but her collar is such that she’s still probably wearing it, and of course she’s got her scarf with her in the Heat Haze. More interestingly, at the end of the section that’s just Route 1 when Shintaro experiences a momentary vision of Ayano, it’s the real Ayano with scarf and not the illusory Ayano Route XX Shintaro conjures for himself.

The other time we see a facsimile of the classroom is when we catch up to Ayano in the Heat Haze: the place where she’s waiting takes on the form of that class, and once again I need to draw attention to the flowers. In Ayano’s Heat Haze, what desks have flower pots on them? The answer is much like Shintaro’s dream: all the desks of people we don’t know are marked with flower pots. However, there are two small but critical differences between Shintaro’s dream in Route XX and Ayano’s Heat Haze in this regard: In the Heat Haze, Ayano’s own desk has a flower pot on it: Only Shintaro’s desk is exempt, marked instead with a large paper crane, the likes of which she often folded his perfect tests into. Especially contrasted with Route XX Shintaro’s dream, this is really powerful. While the statement made by Shintaro’s version of the class, keeping the two of them together at the expense of everything else, is the harsh and selfish “Everybody else can die for all I care”, the statement that Ayano’s Heat Haze makes is different. By including herself among the dead and marking Shintaro’s place with a symbol both of good fortune and their happy times together, she seems to say something more along the lines of “You mean the world to me”.

Shintaro is singled out as special to Ayano, for himself and not for what Ayano wants of him the way that Route XX Shintaro chooses his illusion of Ayano more for what she is to him than who she is herself (hence the lack of her scarf). There is also, in a sense, an acknowledgment of Ayano’s own grief. In Shintaro’s dream, Shintaro and Ayano are together. In Ayano’s Heat Haze, Shintaro and Ayano are apart. It is, in some ways, a mirror of the reality that Shintaro faced in Toumei Answer. In Toumei answer, one desk was separate from all the others: Ayano’s, with the flowers marking her demise, and that separation of Ayano away from Shintaro faced him with a challenge that haunts him until Lost Time Memory when he either overcomes the worst of his misery (Route 1) or is crushed beneath its weight (Route XX). Similarly, in Ayano’s Heat Haze, one desk is separate from all the others: Shintaro’s. He’s separate from Ayano, and nothing she can do can reach him any more than the living Shintaro could reach her in Toumei Answer. This is Ayano’s challenge, the mirror of what Shintaro himself went through.

Which brings me back, in a way, to the last moments of Lost Time Memory. Ayano vanishes from in front of Route XX Shintaro, while Route 1 Shintaro greets her and her initial reaction is shock. I personally think that there’s not all that much reading into the Route 1 reaction. Of course she’d be surprised, expecting that critical separation to stand between them. But what of Ayano’s vanishing in Route XX? It seems… odd, really. Route XX Shintaro may be a failed Shintaro, who let his grief over Ayano’s death consume him to the point of committing suicide, but there’s not evidence that Ayano’s feelings are really different in Route XX as opposed to Route 1. Personally, I think it’s simply Shintaro’s failure: she didn’t choose to disappear, Route XX Shintaro was unable to reach her. This could tie back to the first scenes in the Heat Haze. Route 1 Shintaro leaves Azami’s presence, but Route XX Shintaro is never seen to stop sitting there like a lump. We know (From the experience in Kagerou Days) that the Heat Haze can torment those trapped by it. And, when the two Shintaro’s are juxtaposed in Ayano’s classroom, Route XX Shintaro is placed facing away from her even though in the scenes with just him he’s reaching out to her just like (or even more desperate than) Route 1 Shintaro. This is my theory: Route XX Shintaro, because his misery has claimed him, never really makes it to Ayano. He entered the Heat Haze struggling to reach her yet despairing that he could never make it, and thus his reward is to face a situation like Sisyphus or Tantalus: able to reach for what he wants, but never to finish getting there.

As for Ayano’s own feelings, there’s another source to address that topic with.

Additional Memory

(PV)

Additional Memory is the story of Ayano as she becomes trapped in the Heat Haze, and by her own regrets. At the beginning, we see Ayano jump from the school rooftop, an act that saw her swallowed by the Heat Haze. Since it pertains to multiple routes and we’re finally hitting on the act itself from her own perspective, now seems a good time to go into what’s going on with Ayano’s sacrifice play. In many routes, Ayano learns about the Snake of Clearing Eyes. What she learns is that the Snake is working to grant her father’s wish for her mother back… but that the means Clearing Eyes is set to use is thus: gather ALL the snakes in the real world, outside the Heat Haze, and transfer them into Marry so she’ll become a new medusa, capable of impossible things like resurrecting the dead. This will kill the current hosts of the snakes (that’s anyone with eye abilities) including Ayano’s adopted family and her friends Takane and Haruka who Clearing Eyes is manipulating into becoming snake hosts. Ayano’s counter plan is simple: enter the Heat Haze, gain a snake herself, and then… stay there. Don’t take the one good opportunity to escape. With the goal Clearing Eyes is working for put forever beyond its grasp, it would have no reason to hurt anyone else she cares about.

Of course there are some problems with this plan. One is that Ayano is basically throwing herself directly into Hell and staying there to achieve what she wants. The other is that the Snake of Clearing Eyes has played her: it exists as long as it’s working towards its “master’s” wish, and while pulling a resurrection would take all the snakes… rewinding time to a point where the wish was possible takes less, giving that “out” for Clearing Eyes to labor towards and achieve.

Additional Memory is largely concerned with the first issue, the personal cost that Ayano incurs when she resolves to go through with her sacrifice, but there are implications in here that she becomes all too painfully aware of the futility of her actions. One of those big regrets, naturally, is that she never told Shintaro she loved him. At first, her life flashing before her eyes, she’s resigned to this. It hurts, possibly more than anything, but at the same time it’s necessary: if she’s going to save the lives of those close to her, she can’t really have what she wants with Shintaro. She’s not content to let her feelings, her presence, her story just vanish. She doesn’t want it… but that’s the course she’s locked into.

Then she’s actually in the Heat Haze, and she’s able to see the truth. We’re treated to a scene of more than just her own life flashing before her eyes, ending with a moment at 2:53 (blink and you’ll miss it) where we see Ayano together with the empowered Medusa form of Marry – Marry on her knees in agony as seen in the “Bad end” Outer Science (we’re going there next), and Ayano herself with a snake superimposed over her.

After bearing witness to all of this, Ayano’s tune changes. Instead of forgetting and being forgotten, she makes it her place to remember, and to hold on. To the truth, and to her true feelings. Her thoughts turn to Shintaro again, and what will keep her going during her imprisonment in the Heat Haze: some day, some how, her words will finally reach him.

Additional Memory is, on the surface, a simple but important piece of the Kagerou Project. Ayano’s feelings are kind of guessable from how her Heat Haze appears in Lost Time Memory, but it’s extremely powerful to hear them from her, as she feels. This is in part because I think some incautious readers might initially write off Ayano as the sort of character who’s just plain nice to a fault, the simple saintly type like so many others. But there’s a harshness to additional memory that helps viewers to understand Ayano at her depths. She is sweet, and kind, and loving – but that doesn’t mean she’s not also strong and determined, capable of experiencing some very ugly emotions like rage and bitterness given what she goes through. Ayano is still basically a good person, but the composition of Additional Memory makes it clear that like most humans she’s got a bit of a dark side, and stands as far more than just a gentle girl.

It’s also worth noting that while Shintaro and Ayano’s feelings for him figure very strongly in Additional Memory (being the deepest, strongest feeling that keeps her going forward, waiting and perhaps struggling for the day when a miracle can happen), I could probably do a major round-up of Ayano without mentioning that she has a love interest (after all, he doesn’t really rate in Ayano’s Theory of Happiness). This is a comment that’s more strongly to KagePro as a whole than to just Additional Memory, but it’s one that needs to be made: Ayano has a funny little thing called depth, allowing her to have a kind demeanor and friendly approach while still not being defined by it.

In any case, there are other notes before we leave Additional Memory behind for now (I will be referencing it in later KagePro writeups. The same is probably true for all of the songs, but some are more equal than others in that regard.) Additional Memory is one of the newest songs in KagePro, and the PV really shows it: it’s amazingly intricate, to the point where you could probably go through it frame by frame. Some of the big notes are repeats from older songs: The old timey television motif appeared in Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, representing perhaps her window to the outside world, and it recurs here, absolutely serving such a role. Clips from Lost Time Memory are actually used to show Ayano having to relive the events at the beginning of that song, and the Heat Haze Classroom makes a few more appearances, both as the motif for an upside-down world and in basically the form we see in Lost Time Memory, complete with flowers on every desk but Shintaro’s. We even see her fold up that paper crane. The longest shot at the end is of a lone desk, Shintaro’s, stood on the field of flowers that Ayano spends a lot of her Haze time in this song. This helps reinforce Shintaro’s role and importance to Ayano even though only a hazy figure is viewed in the flashbacks to Lost Time Memory and he isn’t named in the lyrics. And, of course, the critical color choice is back. Much of Additional Memory is rendered in black and white, with exceptions made for splashes of red. Ayano’s scarf, hair decorations, and eyes are always colored in despite the monochrome world she exists in, reinforcing red as her thematic color and calling back to her would-be heroism. Of course, given that this is Additional Memory, it’s not all sunshine and roses here: red also appears in the gleaming sunset and, perhaps more importantly, blood spatter effects that half-consume Ayano at certain beats, giving a brief visual shock like she actually hit the pavement after a long fall. Like the harsh words, the harsh visuals take Ayano out of the romanticized position she might have ended up in, and force the viewer to see the worst along with her.

That much said, we’re heading onto the last song for this exercise…

Outer Science

(PV)

Outer Science is the “Bad End” of Kagerou Project routes, and simultaneously serves as its villain song, being from the perspective of the Snake of Clearing Eyes as it revels in its moment of triumph. Even before the lyrics kick in, Outer Science pulls no punches as it starts off with what sound like warning sirens, like the viewer needs to be alerted to the doom that’s rapidly approaching. The black and yellow color scheme is also very threatening – dark, off-putting, and reminiscent of danger markings. Even when the background shifts to red (so often a positive color in KagePro) it’s very much the red of spilled blood and destruction, appearing only in the field and not as a marker for the characters. What follows is a barrage of evil gloating and torment as The Snake of Clearing eyes ultimately forces Marry to reset time, unable to accept the tragedy that the snake has created. And the snake is mocking her, the Mekakushi Dan, and Azami the whole way down.

Well, maybe not all of those the whole way down – Clearing Eyes slaughters the Mekakushi Dan in the musical interlude, after all.

It’s still worth paying close attention, though, as there are a few important notes. One is that, of the main-line songs, this is possibly the one that touches the most on Azami as well as the Snake of Clearing Eyes. She appeared briefly in Lost Time Memory but her character song, Shinigami Record, is an album exclusive with no PV and thus not something I can quite cover. In Outer Science she appears a few times, identified by implication as the former “master” of the Snake of Clearing Eyes, who is only too eager to point out mistakes she made like caring about the world or falling in love. It doesn’t explain what Azami is (indeed, she’d remain one of the bigger enigmas for someone casually following along) but it does somewhat put her into context.

The other big thing is that this is the one where we actually get the truth about the routes. Throughout the song, Clearing Eyes is tormenting Marry, mocking her and hurting her by killing her friends. There’s some quick text at the beginning of the PV (before even the warning sirens kick in) and it means something like “If you want to save him, use your powers.” That is, ultimately, the Snake’s goal as stated before: if Marry can’t accept her reality, she has the power to turn back time, allowing the Snake of Clearing Eyes to keep existing. Even so, the snake mocks her for her softness; if Marry didn’t care, if she could watch indifferently, he could be defeated for good. But she can’t, and that seems to bring Clearing Eyes no end of enjoyment.

And so of course we sign off with the reset. Marry takes on her full powered form, screaming and crying for her loss, and time slips away. Backwards, step by step, to the beginning – possibly all the way back to Azami’s beginning. Except there at the end is the Snake of Clearing eyes, smiling smugly, waiting for his next chance to ridicule the end they’ll come to. The Snake’s motivation might be fairly basic, to keep ‘living’ as an independent being, but it clearly enjoys the torment it inflicts, which catapults it up the villain ratings.

There are some of the KagePro songs that need to be analyzed, but Outer Science in particular is exactly what it presents itself as: three and a half minutes of evil gloating, music and lyrics utterly dedicated to the bad guy’s triumph. And it’s rare in media we actually get to see that, but the structure of KagePro allows it, and both as a piece of fiction and a music video, Outer Science is well worth a watch.

Conclusion

That’s what I feel I need to cover regarding the KagePro songs. I’ll be referring back to this often as we resolve the mysteries (or open new ones) on the Novel, Anime, and Manga routes, and I feel like for deep analysis I’ve covered my bases. If you’re going to be diving in on your own, though, look up a few more: Summertime Record (the “Good End” which I skipped because it’s essentially the denoument, not the story of the climax), Never Lost Word (Kido’s life, largely focused on her young childhood and extending into her adulthood after the events of the main KagePro story), and Konoha’s State of the World (Konoha’s character song, which mostly places him as an observer to Kagerou Days) do expand things somewhat while Children Record (the “opening piece” for KagePro) and Daze (technically the OP for the anime, Mekakucity Actors, but there’s a separate PV for the full version) function as good encapsulations of the feelings that run throughout KagePro, either one setting the scene very well for the material with actual story meat. And if you really get into it, the albums are actually not that hard to find, and contain quite a few songs with a good deal of meaning such as Toumei Answer (which I cheated to include in this analysis), Dead and Seek, or Shinigami Record to name a few. It really is worth it, even if you have to hunt down a translated lyrics sheet.

Before I go, here’s the run down of remaining KagePro Articles

1/22: Kagerou Daze (Novels)

1/27: Mekakucity Actors (Monday Anime Review)

1/29: Kagerou Daze (Manga)

Assuming no serpentine entities reset the timeline before then, I’ll be seeing you there!