Wednesday, January 7, 2015

MekakuCity Actors: watched beginning to end in one day


Last Seen: All of them.

Ok so I'm going to break my own formula here, and just kind of wing this one, because I liked it that much. I've been feeling inspired all day on the adrenaline boost this find gave me, so bear with my rambling for a bit, it's what happens when I go off-structure. (well, okay, it just gets worse when I wing it, shush.)

First, a little back story. Way back in the day, I used to frequently scrounge through youtube for random Vocaloid songs. I still occasionally do, but not as often, or for as long. A bit of scale: I once had 12 tabs of them open and buffering, and was constantly refilling each tab with a new song as I listened to each one. The only thing that stopped be was a friend contacting me to play a game. So...take everything after this with a grain of salt to spice it that I'm predisposed to liking Vocaloid based songs, and that colors everything I'm saying.
I don't recall when, but I encountered one particular song, that included an AMV (animated music video). Most of the time, I was used to just staring at a backdrop of some fan-art of the vocaloid that was singing. Said AMV was off-the-walls-crazy. I couldn't understand a lick of what was going on, but it was perfectly obvious that someone was quite crazy in it, and they were wrecking shit up. I loved it, the music fit with it nicely. Of course, as I sit here typing, I can't for the life of me think of what the song was called, or the other songs that eventually accompanied it.

Now, I eventually was able to come across some comments discussing how it fit in with the rest of the songs...and I went looking for and found them. I can't remember if this was before, or after, the song or one of its siblings was subtitled with english. Since I vaguely recall being led onto the trail by youtube comments, I'm inclined to believe it was before, since they were trying to puzzle out to each other the songs meaning, and how it fit in with the rest. Before I had ever sat down to watch this anime after being pointed at it by an AMV I randomly picked to watch, I had already accumulated all of the sibling songs translated versions, and listened to and pieced them together. I'm not going to spoil anything, but the 'set' of this story seems to be cumulatively known as the Kagerou Project? I may be wrong but I took a quick look at said AMV's comments and they seemed to be referring to it as such. NOW WAIT! BEFORE YOU RUN OFF TO WATCH/LISTEN TO IT:
I'm not entirely sure which order is spoiler'ish. Time to get to the main point today-

I whole-heartedly recommend this Story.

However, I do not know which means of receiving it you would most enjoy. Said comments seemed to allude to there being Novels or Mangas of this Story as well? Which was news to me.
I have no idea what the proper order of existence is though, which medium came first and inspired the others, which were made by the original story creator, so on and so forth. Hell, from what I know of how pieced-together multiple vocaloid songs can occasionally do, there may not even be a unified single author. I've seen it happen that a popular song inspires another creator to make another song that is a sequel to it, and then another creator to make a sequel to that. *
Here's what I can tell you without spoiling anything: The Songs I listened to, (which I believe are collectively referred to as the Kagerou Project?), are chronologically before the Anime. Additionally, said anime is the end of the story. Now, that is not to say that the anime is unwatchable without the having previously received the rest of the material, the anime basically covers the full run of the story, but it only has 12 episodes.
*STOP THE PRESSES, I JUST HAD A GENIUS IDEA
.
[
time passes]
Ok so, I just googled 'Kagerou Project' and found a wiki article dedicated to the thing. So now I can speak with more authority. The original centralizing author is called Jin. He made a song, and the article seems to imply it was released simultaneously with a light novel, both of the same part of the story. So that's the proper order of things, I don't know if the animated MV (music video) I originally consumed was part of this or made for the song after by a fan, I've done enough studying for you now. So the proper order of things, if you are inclined to care, is songs/novels first, then anime. However, you could also just watch the anime if you feel so inclined. The comments (presumably by fans) were all grumbly about the anime because they felt it left out some of the impact of the story contained by songs/novels, since it could only cover the end of the story in its 12 episodes. Myself, I loved it, but here's the context to that:
Finding and watching this anime was basically the accumulation of ...what, more than one now? maybe three?.. years of working off and on to piece together the story around that first song I listened to. Keep in mind this included watching out for and finding translated subtitled versions of the songs, AND trying to figure out which order they were each in relation to each other. Most of the comments I was using to do so apparently were like me, and didn't know there was additional material to help with that(or no one felt the need to say what they all thought was obvious). So finding and watching this was basically an immense jackpot payout of a huge effort I poured into a hobby. I may be overly-invested and emotional about this. Regardless:
The story's end, which the anime is of, basically includes an inherent summary of itself by its nature. That's all the more I can say without spoiling on the topic, so after a huge ramble, a finally piece of structure to try and tie this all together:

Summary: The incidents which occur on August 14th and 15th bring a group of boys and girls together…they become members of a group and call themselves the “Meikakushi Dan” (Blindfold Organization) and each member possesses a strange power involving their eyes.

...Yeah that's kind of a bare-bones explanation, but I can't really say much more without spoiling something. It's not the deepest story...but it is very complexly woven together, which I love.

Long story short? I recommend finding a youtube playlist that has the Kagerou Project songs (with MVs) in chronological order. It will...torture you a bit more to do that before watching the anime, but it may make the anime more potent for you. It certainly did for me.
[Aside]Talk about the perfect thing to inspire me to come back into writing here full swing, eh?
Probably dropping off radar again, unless I'm right and one of the shows just ended, then you'll get an End post for it sometime after Saturday, before I go silent again for a bit.
Oh, and for reference, the song I encountered was quite out of chrono-order, and it was about the Yellow eyed guy. Again, that's as specific as I can be and remain spoiler free.
[aside end]

1 comment:

Nicolas said...

This is a great ppost thanks