#& yet without that motif it implies she doesnt get to live after her song so thats something i think about often

[red-dyed-sarumane]

kyuuyakus so good not only bc its like the only song heavy enough i can tolerate at loud volumes that can Almost drown out my coworker who never shuts up but ALSO for the points ive said 74times & will continue to,

aru sekai shoushitsu set us up for something super sci-fi, which. yes. the series very much is. but it was so technical and almost coldly indifferent. and then we're given the whole "old testament" in the title & the whole intro reading that isnt far from dantes inferno type content as my good friend emimin pointed out. we've got this new aspect added in and at the same time the lyrics let you know this character's still dealing with the complex technical stuff, from the terms down to the second kanji in ashita being incomplete as though because of a program error or interruption or some other similar reason.

and it feels even more different because theres just so much emotion in this one compared to shoushitsu. all the "bye-bye"s written in ways that express deep pain, the fact that the "see you tomorrow"s are cut off in the way they are the first time, and so drawn out the second time. the genre's not the spacey, distant trance type that shoushitsu is; its heavy, its intense, its got as much to it musically as there are details in the story. it's not just to sound cool, it's getting her state of mind across just as much as the spoken words. the world's being destroyed physically & metaphorically, everyone's suffered this over and over, they've parted ways so many times and its just never something they can get used to, especially not if they want to keep trying to end this whole loop, she's stressed past imagination trying to keep everything in check when its just not possible, & the intensity of the music just emphasizes all of that. there's less intense parts too, sort of like a forced focus on what she's doing that all too quickly builds to a panic. or the in the second part where everything gets so dire, the bell's tolling and she's running out of time, the piano over top of it giving such an uneasy feeling, and then right back to that heavy panic. theres so much emotional charge in it you know the long notes aren't just magu having fun with it; you just know they're meant as screams. i dont even think i can say screams for help, i think she knows shes past the point of help or at least that she's supposed to be everyone else's source of help that it's just stressed lamentation. she's doing everything she possibly can and its not working so all thats left is to cry out about it.

and then u have the rute furute wo a motif in here that's added in under the "fractal wa/kurikaeshita" parts that really hits harder now with kannagi for extra context. knowing that this is in the past & can't be changed and everyone else is using this as a point of reference. then u of course have the nami no ne wo motif, & the longest & clearest instance of it aside from maybe oumen mokushiroku so u know she's herself & gets to live, gets to keep doing this & watching other people die. (although i have absolutely no frame of reference for how long she lives given this is a past event & she doesn't seem to be present in the more current time songs. we dont really have that context yet) & then we're back to the rute motif on top of what still sounds like a jumble of nothing. but i also thought the rute line was nothing and here its a big deal so i cant wait to realize what this other jumble is, considering its also under the last ima kizanda parts.

theres just so so much to it, so many little intricacies that build such a full picture from whats otherwise one of the more simple series songs & i cant love it more.

[red-dyed-sarumane]

thought dumping without looking at my sources here BUT

i just dont get it right like the line in shoushitsu so VERY directly says "as long as you're a person the old world's legacy will continue in the toroidal direction" mea!ning! (based off other context in both shoushitsu & other songs like maximizer) so long as the characters continue to follow their paths of their own will & desire & don't think of it as only something they need to do or as the only relevant trait about themselves, then they still have their selves/egos and still are full people. and in that case that they're full people they're guaranteed to follow the path of the world into its next iteration, in other words, they get to keep living, or if u want to stick with the terms in shoushitsu they're "reborn" in the new world so to speak.

this isnt even speculation, this is shown to us in both the text in shoushitsu (the text thats like "she slowly closed her eyes, and i gently opened mine. a certain world had disappeared") and also the text in canon (about how she comes to in front of a fountain after it rained, implying the start of a new loop/world)

and even up to the end of oumen mokushiroku it's clearly tenshi still holds her own values, still has her wants & seems to be aware of herself. i dont know if the "'not me not me' those words didnt reach anyone" is referring to tenshi or apoptosis speaking, seeing as its implied apoptosis was the first to be chosen as a sacrifice until she pinned it on someone else (who happened to end up as tenshi). tenshi's hyper aware of time almost like how the laboratory character is, that hyper awareness that can only come with knowing an indisputable end is coming. she knows what's happening & can't find a way out of it. but that doesn't make sense to me. if she's still herself, if she stepped in to take apoptosis' place, that's her own judgement, protecting the other is her own goal in that case. i guess it's possible to only fall on tenshi if she's the one least likely to protest, but even of the event of being forced to be a sacrifice, even if she has to "accept" this fate, that's not real acceptance, that's not really throwing herself away in the sense that this series requires. i guess it can be stretched that far if needed since it seems like the only real option here, that she ended up giving up her own goals to fulfill a role the others demanded, thus became a "thing" rather than a "person" at the last minute. but even then that doesnt add up. shes crying over this. shes ACTUALLY crying over it. despite ALL the stress & psychological torment going on in the entire series, she's the ONLY one shown crying over it (yes several others are mentioned to cry. it only makes sense. they arent SHOWN that way however) & no one who's truly accepted a role, even this dire of a role, would really cry over it right? it's hard for her. her smile looks like it could break any second.

yet even for being an early song in the series, if she wasn't meant to be a "person" there's enough in the song to tie it to the series without it having the motif. the ou itself directly ties it to aru sekai shoushitsu & that's how a lot of people realize its related. the motif isnt really necessary to show its a series song. look at all the more recent songs that dont have it specifically to show the characters dead. so why is she singing hers. it feels like saying she's dying as herself truly, but then she should just wake up again like everyone else if that was the case. what makes it a sacrifice really and why is it different from how everyone else is dying?? the only other thing i can think of is that, if she's singing it, it's like a last wish of sorts. the sort of thing only meant for emotional impact. it's true that it's still the only song besides shoushitsu that has the motif sung instead of added to the instrumentals. i can't help but feel that has a meaning to it. maybe it is to say she's giving it up. i just don't know it doesn't make sense to me given the other details i feel like she should still get to live.

i mean both kyuuyaku and kannagi sing out the rute furute wo a line. touhikou doesn't but those two do. it doesnt seem to bind them to each other any more than it does touhikou.

so i just really don't know how i'm supposed to take the end of oumen. everything else, everything else seems to say she's dead. she's not coming back. the way she says she wishes they could meet again, the way she says everything goes dark. the way how in unplanned apoptosis, the song tied the closest to oumen, she falls apart even worse after the sacrifice is brought up. how in kanon shes deeply regretful over the fact a sacrifice ever occurred. everything else is saying tenshi's dead she's not coming back. except the fact the main motif to say a character lives is in the song. and the thing is, oumen and apoptosis seem to be all magu wants to give us regarding that particular incident. we might not get any more info on what happened there beyond those two. sure kanon's related too, but not as deeply, not enough to give any more clarity to this one situation. sure we get new unexpected info every new song, but coming back to these two feels so unlikely. it's like everything's here already, yet its still not enough to know everything.