Mekakucity Actors 10-12 [END]

An end is sometimes also a beginning. ☆～（ゝ。∂）

I hear that Yen Press licensed the manga AND the novels for Kagerou Project (aka what Mekakucity is based off of if you’re not familiar with the multiple names to the series), which is pretty exciting. I can almost guarantee that they were more coherent than the anime was, and I haven’t read them at all.

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With how things went after episode 9, we thought better to cover the last few episodes together rather than confusing our readers even more with our theories. So, we are at the end of Kagerou Project’s anime adaptation and it has been a bumpy ride. Here’s to another series blogged by Kara no Kyokai tag. Hope you enjoyed it because we sure did. (✿◠‿◠)

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Uh, I guess this is where I attempt to explain what when on from what I got out of my knowledge of the series plus what the anime showed. You probably picked a lot of this up while watching the show, but the storytelling was a bit… all over the place, so I might as well try to piece this altogether. Though even I still have a number of unfilled blanks. Especially towards the ending.

So Azami and Tsukihito were the start of everything, basically. They were both labelled “monsters” (Azami for obvious reasons and Tsukihito because he was an albino), but they met, fell in love, and etc. Time was obviously a big concern for Azami, since she’s basically immortal and Tskihito was a regular human, so her snakes (the source of her powers) helped her create a never ending world, where she figured they would spend forever in. Here’s where things kind of deviate, since in Azami’s song, Shinigami Record, the lyrics say that Azami waited in front of the door to the world, but Tsukihito never appeared. Time passed, and she eventually realized that he wasn’t going to be coming (it’s vague as to why she figures that he wasn’t coming, but since time passed, it might be hinting that he just died from old age or something), so she kind of gave up and thought about disappearing by herself. Combined with Shion’s song, Gunjou Rain, the lyrics there just kind of say that Azami disappeared one day and never came back (while Tsukihito and Shion waited for her to return maybe one day), so Azami seems to have been waiting in front of the door on the new world’s side if you take both sides of the story into consideration. Otherwise, why would she be waiting for Tsukihito to come? Obviously things went slightly differently here, since Azami disappeared to save Shion and Tsukihito. I guess the lyrics still fit (Gunjou Rain more than Shinigami Record), but the message seems to be slightly different. The anime was a bit more uh, traumatizing.

Anyways, somewhere down the line, Shion got a husband (yeah, they never mention him in the other versions of the story either, but Marry wasn’t formed through asexual reproduction or anything lolol) and had Marry. After a while, Marry and Shion were attacked by kids in the village (on August 15th) and were both killed. So this is where Azami interfered, and pulled Shion and Marry into her unending world. It’s also here where she lost control of her powers/snakes, and the Kagerou (the never ending world thing) suddenly was out of her capabilities to fully control. However, due to her pulling Shion and Marry in, a few rules were established. One was that anyone who died on August 15th would be pulled into the Kagerou, but there was a second rule to that and it was that two people had to die together. …Or at least I thought that this was an established rule, since this seemed to be the reason why Ayano never came out, but maybe not since she might have not come out due to her own violation. Er, I guess that this all happened in the anime too, but they were less clear about it (and maybe Azami lost control beforehand?). SO from what my understanding of the series was, all of the main characters were actually supposed to die, but were saved due to Azami/her snakes and the Kagerou. Generally the other person pulled in (like say, Hiyori) died in real life (or more like, they were stuck inside the Kagerou). Basically, if somebody who was supposed to die survived, the snake that let them live on was also what caused their power. The Kagerou itself was shown in various episodes. It was the blue and red world in Kagerou Days (Hibiya’s episode), or the destroyed city Takane was running through during Headphone Actor. You might have thought that it was Shaft just being Shaft, but some of the weirdness actually had deeper meaning.

On to Tateyama’s issue, he wanted his wife back from the Kagerou and killed Haruka and Takane to gather more snakes on the other side, probably. Obviously, he was under the influence of the Clearing Eyes snake, who both wanted to grant Tateyama’s wish and create a new gorgon like Azami. So Ayano threw herself off a building so she could keep a snake for herself and prevent them from coming altogether anymore. Bringing Shintaro’s significance into this, in something the series calls “Route XX”, he ends up not un-hikki-ing himself, not meeting the MekakuDan and killing himself (Ene first, but she was probably fine because her power was immortality), instead due to his ANGST over Ayano. This was his “death”/ contact with the Kagerou. The one the anime showed with him meeting everyone else is referred to as “Route 1”. Route XX is also why I assume Ene was so mindful of his mental state all of the time, since she knew he had the possibility of trying to kill himself (which was counterproductive too, if they wanted a solution to standing up against the Clearing Eyes snake). There was an interesting bit I read (I think it was a novel summary) about where Ene and Ayano talked sometime in the Kagerou about trying to stop the Clearing Eyes snake, so I assume that Ene retained some, if not all, of the memories of the time loop they were stuck in. Though that might have been changed in the anime, since she had no idea about her body. So unless that was the first time she went to that place with Kano, she didn’t retain her memories (and I guess her concern would have been about Shintaro in general).

The deal with the time loop? Well, the Clearing Eyes snake killed everyone all the time, so that Marry would keep using her snake to make the same wish. I think he had to grant wishes in order to keep living or something, and that was the fastest way to eternal life (either that, or he was just an asshat). In the manga, right after the graveyard scene, the Clearing Eyes snake (who had somehow taken over Konoha at this point) killed everyone with a gun, so at least he changed things up a bit, I guess. Due to his appearances like that, I had a pet theory going on where Tateyama’s snake might have been a red herring, and that Konoha’s snake was the real one trying to gather everyone together, but apparently not. The Clear Eyes snake just kind of took over Konoha conveniently at the end. I guess this kind of means that we some of Outer Science in the anime, but it’s just not the same without everyone actually dying. If you’ve been wondering why I’m so stuck on that one song all of the time, it was basically my favourite from the series. …Because everyone died horribly (after making you attached to them) and the way Jin posted it trolled everyone into thinking that this was really the ending to the series. …After a few days, he finally uploaded the good end. Though in the CD book, he gives Outer Science such a great quote.

“This story isn’t fictional.
And that’s why all of your ‘tragedies’
Are so stupid that it makes me yawn.”

Obviously things didn’t end that way this time though, and everything worked out. Since Hiyori made it out of the Kagerou, maybe the other characters did too somehow. …Er, from Shion and Marry’s talk, maybe Shion didn’t, but things seem more peaceful in the Kagerou now, so it’s probably a better place to be without the Clearing Eyes snake around. Somehow. Though that’s definitely not saying that the ending was perfect, because HOLY CRAP were there a lot of lose ends around. After spending so much time focused on Takane and Haruka, their reunion was totally ignored in favour of everything else going on. Likewise for Hiyori and Hibiya (or just about anyone else on the show). They spent most of the series building on characters as the focus, but then threw almost the entire plot at the viewer all at once and went to ignoring the characters.

We previously theorized that the current world that we see our main characters in, is not the only one they are related to. There has to be another because everyone has some hazy memory or special power that connects to the supernatural being we call demon, who Kara has named: Azami. Everything definitely boils down to this being and her daring to have a dream of normalcy after falling in love. But as we all know life is not so easy and thus, many cruel lessons were learned by her following generations.

But we have to see that she was the not the only main character of the series but the entire Mekakushi-dan. Like Kara said, after spending episodes on building the characters, putting them in the background was kind of weird for me. I was really looking forward to the dark Konoha (for Outer Science of course), but he never really got much screen time sadly. Not to mention Ene/Takane didn’t even talk to Konoha/Haruka, even after all those FEELINGS. Sure, Shintaro can act like that because he supposedly remembers everything but what about our other pairs? Ene and Haruka? Hiyori and Hibiya? I guess, I can blame it all on the timing and plot progress under 12 episodes but I wish things were executed better.

After Shion and Marry, I would say, Ayano had to sacrifice a lot after learning the truth compared to others. Of course, Tateyama was an ideal host for kuchinawa-san (I’m borrowing the Monogatari-term), to play with this group of people and create multiple worlds but for what reason? For perverse entertainment or simple fulfilment of Tateyama’s pure wish to be with his wife twisted by its thinking? Whatever the cause maybe, I appreciated the fact that Ayano tried the hardest to break the chain of recreation by sacrificing her own life. Even when on the fore, it didn’t seem to affect the events much; the wave did reach its crescendo in making Shintaro remember their past. Well, every one of their past because who knows how many times they had to be reborn just to serve the snake’s wish?

If Kara’s favourite pairing of the series is Azami and Takehito Koyasu voiced youth, my favourite pair has to be Ayano and Shintaro because they seemed to have gone through a lot. It’s still a mystery on how she stepped into their current reality but hey, Konoha’s other version Haruka showed up, same for Ene’s Takane version so I guess, we should really not question too much details but we can always explain this away into the shadow of their powers and snake’s ultimate goal of getting them together for another rebirth.

After the whole, nobody knows their future, it was nice to see everyone together. Specifically Ayano and Shintaro because they sure have been apart a long time. Here, I have to appreciate Shaft’s sense of detail on Ayano in the last scene and anyone voiced by Mai Nakahara already sounds cute by default but overall, she rocked that summer dress and pretty much Shintaro’s world. If only the others in Mekakushi-dan had left them alone. At least they ended everything on a positive note. It counts.

I love this series. I really do. But when I know the general direction of where this is going and even I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on sometimes, that can’t be a good thing. This really wasn’t a problem until the final 2 episodes, though I imagine that most newcomers were lost long before that point. Though the problem didn’t lie so much with the plot (for me at least) so much as with how they spent so much time focusing on character interaction, only to kind of ignore it at the end. I’m really glad we got to see Shintaro and Ayano sort things out at the end, but, uh, I’d kind of REALLY like to see how Takane and Haruka feel about all of this. Or any of the other characters, really. They all could have used some sort of conclusion as opposed to “yep, everyone + magically Hiyori is alive. …K, that’s all you’re getting.” There was also a significant jump between Outer Science to “YAY everything is magically solved” in Summer Time Record too, but I was kind of hoping that the anime would fill in more blanks than it did. It answered the questions about Takane and Haruka’s magical recovery, I guess, but not much else.

Maybe they could have told the story more coherently. I liked the unconventional way how they did it, but watching this all the way through, I imagine that this was a reeeeeeally bad entry point for anyone new to the series. It would probably have been better if anyone watching had at least some kind of knowledge to the general storyline, prior. There are a lot of good ideas in the plot, but they kind of get lost when they’re thrown around like this. Mekakucity probably could have benefited from more time, too. Everything felt so rushed at the end, and even one more episode probably could have helped. But oh well, it’s a little too late for that now. I enjoyed the anime overall, but most of that came from my love of the source material as opposed to the anime itself. It wasn’t the Shaft that was the issue, but just the rushing at the end, I guess. It should be interesting to see how the novels turn out when they finish. Hopefully this wasn’t a sign that Jin is just bad at writing endings.

This has been a roller coaster ride, alright. I have heard mostly complains on this one and even when I agree that this is not one of the most coherent stories you will come across to, it still had enough oomph to keep my interest piqued. As a newcomer in this fandom, I actually enjoyed playing cops and robbers with the clues given. After finishing the series, I will move on to manga and even watch all the original music videos to put 2 and 2 together. I love doing this on all my mediums, be it books, games, movies, series and anime. This is the reason I wanted to throw a tantrum at Shaft in using Mamoru Miyano (seiyuu of Haruka/Konoha), to voice kuchinawa in the scene where Azami and Shion were trapped by it. That really threw my game because he’s Marry’s generation not Shion’s. There were some blobby animation too but oh well, you can’t always have top-quality animation in all scenes.

Overall, this was entertaining, if not one of the pivotal projects of Shaft. Monogatari will remain their apple of the eye. I felt the end being rushed but even then, this was definitely fanservice for the Vocaloid community and Kagerou Project niche. Jin’s music was great and I will definitely look forward to the upcoming album. I wish the group’s connections were explained thoroughly or even an actual circumstance of world recreation given rather than I just wanted to play with my friends. Welp, at least it kept me guessing till the end and with the group back together, we can always meet on another plain, on some other time.

♪ヽ( ⌒o⌒)人(⌒-⌒ )v ♪

PS: Main image art by 477.