#this is the main appeal of kagepro to me. i know there is the manga and anime and novels

[infizero]

god i fucking love multimedia storytelling/stories told thru unconventional means so much. i dont even gotta be that interested in the story itself just tell me that its told through music videos or secret minigames or some shit and im THERE

[eijiroukiriot]

can you tell me about harutaka? i honestly am interested now bc i have no idea what it is but it being your second favorite anime ship makes it sound pretty promising :D

OKAY SO

harutaka is a ship from the kagerou project which is a vocaloid-song-series-turned-novel-series-turned-manga-turned-anime and so on and so on. the actual plot is mostly focused on a group of kids who call themselves the mekakushi dan (blindfold gang) who each have a superpower (called an "eye ability") and are stuck in a time loop that repeats every august 15th, but the main appeal of the series is the tangled web of relationships between the characters, and the songs (and chapters, etc) that focus on their relationships and histories and how those brought them to where they are today

harutaka is the ship between kokonose haruka and enomoto takane! their meeting is mostly explained in the song yuukei yesterday - basically, takane is a high school student with narcolepsy and a bad attitude who's always found it hard to make friends, since people tend to avoid her. to accommodate her during classes, her school puts her in a handicap class with just one other student - haruka, whose chronic illness has always made it hard for him to live a normal life, but who wants nothing more than to make friends, starting with takane. they're sort of opposites in that way. takane finds haruka's cheerful demeanor and relentless interest in her annoying - ideally, she'd like nothing to do with him.

UNFORTUNATELY FOR HER they both fall for each other basically as soon as they meet. the cherry on the cake is that they're dumb little teenagers who have never BEEN in love before (not to mention all the clashing feelings about having someone care about you unconditionally for the first time) so they deal with it in about the blushiest, dorkiest, most teenage way possible - haruka points his dumb cute face at haruka and she turns red and yells at him and he laughs all shy. it's a very tsundere/sweetboy romance at its core but i think the extra layers of getting to be very happy and feel normal and welcome for once in your life make this one on the surface alone

HOWEVER...you might notice that these characters don't appear to be in the lineup of the rest of the dan in the image above...except they are! just not quite as themselves. this is a bit that fits into the larger story of kagepro so it's going to sound a little strange on its own, but basically, their teacher was a part of this experiment studying the origin of the time loop they're stuck in - dealing with the supernatural powers that you gain once you're stuck in it. they don't know that he's been treating them as subjects this whole time, but going back a little into the high school romance side of things...right as the two of them are reaching the peak of their pining phase, one afternoon in class, haruka has a stroke - but to takane, it just looks like he's sleeping, and ignoring her, so she gets mad and goes home. later that day, when she finds out what happened, she realizes that this might be her last chance to tell haruka how she felt, and sprints to the hospital...except she never makes it there. when she collapses on the way, the proctors of the experiment find her, and separate her body from her consciousness, turning her into a (not quite artificial) a.i. that gets uploaded into the protagonist's computer. meanwhile, at the hospital, haruka is being offered everything he's ever wanted - a brand new body, with no weakness or illness...and no memories or emotions, either. he protests against it crying that he just wants to see takane, but it's not up to him in the end.

in their new forms, the two go by ene (enomoto takane) and konoha (kokonose haruka) - a cyber girl and robot boy. this is how they're stuck for the bulk of the story - everything that happens before this is a backstory that you only find out once you've seen both of them in action in their new lives!! and in their new lives, ene can't STAND konoha. takane really devotes herself to the role of ene, so even the people who she knew in her "past" life don't realize it's her...but it's the fact that konoha has no idea who she is that really hurts. imagine that every day you're tortured by the fact that you never got to tell the person you loved how you felt and now you're in this weird scary situation and you have no idea what's going to happen or if you'll ever get to be yourself again, and then he appears, but he doesn't look like he did or act like he did and even though you're painfully aware that it's him, he doesn't know it's you or even remember you or anything you did together...and you can't even let people know what you're feeling because you're stuck in this new identity!! through being in the dan together ene is forced to spend a lot of time with konoha but she refuses to address him by name (calling him "mr. imposter" instead which just sounds like an amongis joke now but is very emotional within the context of canon)

i really could go on and on and on about the very real angsty teenage emotions that go into this ship and the themes of love and loss but i've already gone on long enough - it's a combination of the actual dynamic and the goofy will-they-or-won't-they and the hardcore emotional story that has kept me on this train for all these years. i started shipping these two in MIDDLE SCHOOL!! and even now the fact that once the time loop is broken and august ends they get to have their happy ending and be together makes me think that wow. love is real and worth fighting for.

mekakucity actors is a bad anime and i definitely don't recommend it if you're trying to consume an easy-to-understand version of the kagerou project, but i will leave you with the anime version of yuukei yesterday because it's basically the only canon content we get of harutaka (and friends...i would explain shinaya but that's a whole nother post). thank you for letting me ramble! :)

[polandspringz]

Realized (in wake of the Children Record Reboot) that the reason I like Re:Zero so much is because it’s basically just the advanced version of Kagerou Project. Time travel stories and groundhog’s day scenarios are nothing new, and if anything in terms of anime I would have to cite series like Higurashi for coming before Kagepro and Re:Zero with the whole “everyone dies before a reset”, but to me the bad ending of Outer Science in Kagepro always appealed to me because it’s much more a “video game bad ending”. Kagepro has the characters reset and no one remembers the past, at least not until the ending of the final route, and the reset spans almost a century since it resets all the way back to Mary’s childhood. With Re:Zero of course it’s a shorter loop and usually much more painful in terms of the deaths, but that’s not the only comparison I want to draw between the series.

With Kagerou Project, the desire to “save everyone” is never stated. Sure Ayano has her motives but if looking at Shintarou as the main character, since he is the one who most parallels Subaru, Shintarou’s motivation throughout the course of the story is not to save everyone in the Dan because he never knows the events of the future until late towards the loop. With Subaru, well the entire point of Re:Zero is him resetting time in order to save everyone. It’s the main motivation of the story and his character. It’s explicitly stated, its the clear goal. Subaru is better at putting on a mask than Shintarou, but at the end of the day they are the same person, Shintarou just more quiet and awkward. But, even though it’s not stated in Kagepro, we as the audience know that is the only happy ending. The characters don’t know it, but that’s what the audience is here to see, how will they stop everything from happening this time. Because both series are heavily video game-esque, they both have more weight to their route-splits because they feel like different endings of a video game. Although, Re:Zero presents those bad ends as resettable (as long as Subaru does it fast enough), in Kagerou Project some of the bad ends are locked in. There are some routes that end in tragedy and then saving, but at the cost of other things (see the manga route). Kagerou Project may have the same goal to reach the true end, but readers can accept any of the endings along the way, making it feel more like a video game where choices matter. In Re:Zero, there is only one ending, and the only way that we don’t reach that ending at the end of a series of  loops is if Subaru gives up, because the story would then end. It feels more like someone getting up and walking away from their game console because the challenge is too hard. In that way, Kagerou Project presents a more advanced form of story, but in other ways, I think Re:Zero is the more advanced in how clear cut it’s goals are in stating outright what the characters are motivated for.

[starspatter]

1, 4, 5, 8, 24, 29, 35, 36, 39

1: What is your #1 favorite anime?

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, hands-down. (Haruhiism 4 lyf)

4: If you could make a spin-off of any anime, what would it be?

Our “genderbending” Haruhi Full Circle AU? *shot* More realistically(?), since I just finished watching A Little Snow Fairy Sugar, I’d really like to see a spin-off exploring the character Vincent’s past and his ability to see Season Fairies, since I’m sure he must have had a “fairy friend” of his own at one point. ;(

5: List your top 5 anime’s

1) The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2) Ouran High School Host Club

3) Full Moon wo Sagashite

4) Natsume Yuujinchou

As for #5…  I’ve never had a definite entry for this slot.  I’d probably say AnoHana for personal reasons, but Kanon and Haibane Renmei are also strong contenders.  Mekakucity Actors doesn’t count.

8: Who is your favorite anime character?

Forever Yuki Nagato from TMoHS, since I love how stoically badass she is, but moreover her Disappearance version is almost exactly like me IRL so I relate to her a lot.

24: Name [1] anime you wish everyone would watch

Any of my top four really lol.

29: Has an anime’s fanbase ever made you hesitant to watch an anime?

I can’t think of a specific situation where the fanbase itself really put me off…  Usually if it’s something really popular I’ll at least give it a shot for a while first to decide if I personally like it or not.  I do remember back in 2014 after the disappointing travesty of Kagepro’s animated “adaptation” Mekakucity Actors ended, a lot of the people whom I had hyped up/tried to get into the series started watching No Game No Life instead and began lauding it as “animé of the year”, which made me irrationally angry and sore so that I pretty much refused to watch it out of spite (just as I basically boycott any SHAFT-produced shows now lol).

35: Have you ever dropped an anime, if so why?

The first (and perhaps/almost only) animé I ever definitively “dropped” was Isshuukan Friends, since the whole trope of characters being utterly oblivious to “romantic feelings” just made me so irritated I was ranting the entire time.  (Not to mention the premise of “losing one’s memories” each week is pretty clichéd to begin with.)  It got to the point I simply flat-out couldn’t stomach anymore and figured I’d be better off not forcing myself to continue further despite the cute style (which is the main reason I wanted to watch in the first place). =/

While “One Week Lovers” (as I like to call it) is the one thing you’ll never get me to touch again with a 10-foot-pole, other shows I’ve “shelved” bc they got too boring/dragged on, though there’s still the chance I may return to them someday. *cough* Like The Disappearance of Yuki Nagato-chan, if only for the ItsuHaru interactions. >.>; I pretty much stopped reading the manga at the same point after the “amnesia” arc wrapped up though, since it was the only time anything really interesting happened as it seemed to tie into the main series.  Otherwise it’s just an average romcom, completely lacking the magic of the original…

Most of the other series I have “on hiatus” were based on friends’ recommendations, and unfortunately they just didn’t appeal to me that much.  Again, I wouldn’t rule them out completely though (aside from maybe Chobits, which is probably the lone exception to the “watch if Kyon” rule, but that’s more to do with my personal problems regarding “robot romance”).

I did nearly drop Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood for aforementioned reasons, and was highly tempted to drop MCA after ep09 - anyone who’s seen the show will know why - but fortunately I had some friends who helped me get through it and kept watching with me.  I am glad I finished the series at least; though it ended up as a truckwreck I still love the core characters and themes, even if they’re special only to me.

36: In your opinion, what makes a good anime?

Something that can elicit a strong emotional response from me, with likable/interesting characters and (preferably) consistent quality of animation/storytelling, but most importantly leaves a lasting impact somehow.

39: Is there an anime you wish was more popular?

Mekakucity Actors even though it was an abomination  Again, any of my top four - including Haruhi since even it sadly seems relatively unknown at this point. OTL More specifically though Full Moon and Natsume since they’re such underrated gems, which people likely don’t give a chance since they’re so long/unheard of.

[01tsubomi]

tell me who kido is so i can be excited with you

Whoa!! Hello-- I’ll try not to sound too 2013 tumblr fangirl while talking abt this aha

It all goes back to the Kagerou Project which is a vocaloid series with a pretty clear main plotline about an alternate dimension time loop, but most of the appeal comes from the focus on the individual characters. It’s about this organization of kids who were given powers after near-death experiences and how they interact and help each other heal and move on together - for a series of music videos, the characters are really well developed and likeable!

I’ve been into kagepro since 8th grade so I’ve got that unbreakable attachment to it as a whole but I’m even more attached to the characters. My favorites have changed through the years but pretty consistently my #1 favorite character has always been Kido. Realistically I don’t really know why I love her so much but I just. really love her. Basically has the power to disappear, she hurt a lot growing up until her (+ adoptive brothers Seto and Kano) were taken in by a family with a young daughter named Ayano. This is pretty much lore at this point but Ayano was a perfect big sister to the three kids who never felt wanted until then, so it hurt all of them a lot when she died. Technically Ayano was the founder of their brigade and made it so they wouldn’t be insecure about their powers (since people would call them monsters, if they were a secret organization then they could be heroes). After Ayano dies, Kido becomes head of the brigade (hence danchou) and tries to act really tough (she uses ore pronouns! which I find really cute for some reason bc she kinda struggles with it) but she’s still kinda always scared that she’ll really disappear someday. She’s kind of a chuunibyou because of everything she’s gone through but she’s also a really caring figure for everyone in the brigade. 

Again I don’t know Why I love Kido so much but she’s a contender for my favorite character in any piece of media, so it kinda sucked that most other characters in the project got a song + MV all to themselves (especially Seto and Kano who have these amazing detailed MVs for songs that are iconic) and Kido just had this song that was arguably not even really about her and came with a still image instead of an MV. 

Kagepro still has media like novels, manga, etc coming out now but the music videos stopped being released in 2013 when the “final” MV was released. The fandom kinda died out after the really shitty anime in 2014 but in early 2016 Jin (the creator of the series) announced he’d be making a new song and everyone pretty much lost it. Honestly it didn’t cross my mind even once that it could be a song about Kido. I figured that for the first song in a couple years, he’d do a full-group kind of thing or focus on the backstory and lore of the series. He kinda teased at it for a long while (to the point where I wasn’t even waiting for it anymore, I just figured it’d happen when it happened) and a few days ago he announced on twitter “New song tomorrow. It’s about Kido.” and boy i LOST it

This is already long but god!! I love Kido so much and it’s really emotional to me that the first kagepro song I’m even around to see released (I got into the series after the “final” song was out) is one for my favorite character. What’s even more emotional is that we don’t really see the characters grow up in the series because the “true end” happens almost immediately after everything else. And Kido’s new song is about her learning to accept herself over her life and it ends with her as a full grown, self-actualized adult, which made me fucking cry personally. She gets her first real MV and it’s about her learning to accept herself. I love her so much.

In conclusion I’ll always love emo chuunibyou Kido who wears a hoodie with a face mask and says things like “ore wa” and “oi, omaera” but I’m also incredibly happy for grown Kido who doesn’t want to disappear anymore and I love the kagerou project (fun fact, #kagerou project usually only trends on August 15th because that’s a major date in the series but yesterday it was all the way at #6!!) 

[polandspringz]

The Problem with Kagerou Project

The title of this post may make people sort of wary, considering I’m posting this on what is supposed to be a celebratory day, but let me be clear: The problem I have with this series is possibly one of the biggest things that makes me love it and hold it so dear.

It’s confusing, I know. But at the same time, I feel it’s very simple and obvious. Something other, early Kagerou Project fans will understand as well.

Ever since I discovered Mother’s Basement’s “Adapt or Die” series on Youtube, my subconscious have been slowly piecing together some of my nostalgia with the various failures of mine to get my friends into a Vocaloid song series, that also has a series of novels, and a manga, and a very disheartening anime adaption- but oh, no, you have to listen to the songs first, or else you won’t- and at this point in my passionate, albeit complicated, explanation to my friends about how great Kagerou Project is, I realized the fault in this series. It is quite possibly the fault- to some extent, in some other series as well.

Part of the fun and love I feel for Kagerou Project was the experience.

This is where I have to be a little specific to differentiate what I mean when I say that other series might have it to some extent. A lot of a show’s appeal is not only its general construction in technical things like sound, music, animation, story, and characters but also the journey it takes you on. While things like enjoyment scores have been faded out of many Youtube Anime reviewers score systems, it is still a topic that is prominently brought up in other debates. Videos by Glass Reflection and Mother’s Basement on the Anime Strike and Netflix debacle in licensing shows have presented the reasoning at Netflix that they want seasonal anime weekly instead of in a binge set up is because the consumers want to be able to make theories and discuss things right after they happen. This happens all the time with manga, of course, as those who read chapter by chapter instead of by tankobon join in on forums and post on Reddit or talk on podcasts all about what each individual frame or image could foreshadow or how emotions were portrayed and etcetera. It is even possible for shows that aired a long time ago to be appreciated by newcomers who could talk to their friends about what happened and avoid spoilers to have their own private analytical sessions so that the longevity of a show’s enjoyment factor can keep going even once a series has laid out all its cards and concluded.

The problem with Kagerou Project is that it is quite different.

As I mentioned above, we do have a light novel, manga, and anime series, all of which can fit into the appeal I described. However, there is another sector of this series, the earliest, and something of which only a select few of series at the time had: The songs. Nowadays we’ve got series like Honeyworks, Mikagura, and even one that went before Kagepro (and did not achieve the same fame), Shunennpro. Kagerou Project began with the song “Jinzou Enemy”, which was not only Jin’s first work, but also the first in the line of many different works to come. It was released on NND on February 17, 2011, and what were we given: A Vocaloid song by Miku with a girl that looked very much like Miku for the art. Not a lot to speak of. However, flash forward two years to March 29, 2013, and we’ve got the release of “Lost Time Memory”, the tenth song to be released, and what do we have now? Well, not only do we have ten songs in a series, but we’ve got a fully animated PV by the artist and animator Sidu and a fairly well established timeline that puts Jinzou Enemy in the middle of the Lost Time Memory PV in all the scenes where the character Shintarou is wearing a black sweatshirt, dubbed as Route XX. We also have two light novels now, but they are very early on in the series’ plot, and take place in the future, after the events of both songs, but in the second timeline occurring in the Lost Time Memory PV, probably.

With that alone, I hope I can help to start draw one’s eyes to the main difference Kagerou Project has over other series. Instead of getting a simple story that developed naturally, we were given one scrambled. For the earliest fans, you got essentially a plot diagram, a rather barebones one, to create a plot from. We had songs that told us sometimes about a certain character’s life or a main event in the series, and in a story about many timelines, many of us theorists had to struggle to figure out which song existed in each route or each branch of the timeline, only for Jin to throw us another bone and curveball with an animated video for one of the songs. “Kagerou Days” is probably the most notable example of this, and not just because it gave the series its name. The shocking imagery presented in the lyrics described to the listeners a major event, one that occurred for every character in some shape of form, on this exact day, August 15th. The strange thing about this song is that it took something that was not cannon, and it became cannon, as Wannyanpu’s PV for the song was originally a fan work, so despite it being rather fascinating, originally we had to only pull from the lyrics, and not the amazing animation we wanted to couple it with. And then, Wannyanpu was brought on the team, and suddenly we were allowed to use this animation as cannon- even if Hiyori’s and the “Heat Hazes’” appearances were not.

I entered the Kagerou Project rather gradually. I was a big Vocaloid fan at the time, and I remember listening to these songs and their videos but not connecting the dots quite yet. A lot of those Tumblr 30 Day Challenges often ask me what was the first song I heard, but I’m not even sure, because it could have been “Kagerou Days”, “Kisaragi Attention”, “Imagination Forest”, “Children Record”, or “Headphone Actor” which if we go by the creation of my Tumblr, places me at some point in 2012 when I first really discovered the fandom lying beneath this whole series of songs I was enjoying independently. At this point, I had missed out on about eight songs, each with their own long stretches of time in between them that forced fans all over to struggle to grasp some sort of story from these songs. It was after “Kisaragi Attention” that the first light novel was released, and I missed that and the second one too, and I’m sure at the time, old fans of the series might have been experiencing the same thing many of us now are dealing with now that the series is largely concluded. When new people come in, there is so much catching up to do, and while you are explaining what the person missed, explaining things that are now chronological and linear that you had so much fun piecing together for months, over a course of a year, you start to realize that, although this series is amazing to you, and might soon become amazing to that new person, there is a chunk of it they are missing. A chunk of it that you can only explain, a chunk they cannot experience, not ever in the same way the community did, when it fought to translate lyrics liberally or directly to get the most out of song’s meaning, its story. All the fun you had with that, all the work you did, you just helped make the story easier to understand, and while that person may be able to read that part of the story in the light novel or watch the songs and produce theories of their own before they hear yours, it’s pointless really. We know what the songs mean, we know where they fit. We know your theories are wrong. What the new people don’t know is that you had the same theory a year ago, back when we only had one or two or three songs and no light novel. What they cannot experience is those intense periods of joy when a new song comes out that gives you more to work with. Well, they could, I could, because at that time, we were only eight songs in.

I was in the side of the fandom that only really paid attention to the songs. I never could get into the light novel at the time, because it hadn’t been licensed in the US yet, and wouldn’t be for another three years. It was hard to find good translations online at the time, and it was hard to enjoy something that I had been introduced to as an audio and visual work in a literature format, despite myself having no problems with books. Light novels themselves bothered me, and I did not quite yet grasp the difference between them and normal “western” novels. So, whatever theories were brewing during each new release, I for the most part ignored, and learned along the way when I made an error in a theory I published because I was missing a crucial detail revealed in a novel. I learned from fanfictions, from things other people wrote and what they thought, and together as a community we turned the plot diagram into a story as Jin continued to fill in the pieces. I was an active reader of the manga when I could find a fan translation, but that got hard to find as well, and it was not up as fast and lyrics were. So, I continued to stick mainly to the musical side of the series, the original side. And it was there that I found the section of time that revealed to me how much I loved this series and how different it was from other.

I am certain a lot of what I’ve already said could be completely applied to anyone entering a series. Catching up to One Piece is a job in its own right, and as I’ve done it and then fallen away, I always find myself experiencing it in a new way than those who grew up with it, because nostalgia does play a large role in our enjoyment of things. But, I still believe the media difference in Kagerou Project compared to other series is what makes it special and this enjoyment thing so vastly different. The emotions that Jin drew from us, not from his writing, but from how he released the story and built it through this schedule, it felt like as he was creating this series, we too were creating it alongside him. It was something born from songs, and maybe our theories, those written on Japanese blogs, maybe they helped him write some of the different routes later on too. The feelings I have about this series, I see them summed up in the time between August 31, 2013 and September 2, 2013. Those who have gone through this will know what I’m talking about. On the first date, we were given the video for Outer Science. The song had already been released on an album, but it was now we got a music video. I remember being told by many upset fans it was to be the last video of the series, and that was it (I do not remember if the anime was announced before or after this, but it seemed liked the end was near for all of us at the time). What this song entailed was the “Bad End” of the series, similar to how many videos game have. We were treated to a song where the villain of the series, one of Azami’s snakes, who we dubbed Kuroha when in Konoha’s body, was killing all of the characters before the “Queen”, Mary, and how he kept taunting her to reset. Yes, the last music video we got for a series we all held dear was one were we could make out characters were getting tossed in front of cars and being decapitated, and while none of this was explicitly shown in gruesome, the mere idea that we could see Kuroha dragging Seto away by his collar but not visualize his head was too much for us. I, myself, joined in on the parade of people making really terrible fan art that depicted the blood as “jam” and Seto, Kuroha, and Mary were all sitting around jolly having a good time. It was one of the biggest disillusioned denials in any anime fandom. So, disheartened by the images we had been given and sad that our beloved series was coming to an end, this went on for two days.

And then-

On the second date, September 2, 2013, we were given a wonderful surprise.

The “Good End” of the series, the song titled “Summertime Record” was released with a music video, depicted Haruka Kokonose, back in his body, no longer Kuroha or Konoha, a slightly new appearance. Everyone was alive, everyone was happy. The whole song sang about the good memories shared and the video depicted reflection and spoke of nostalgia, and showed the entire gang in the future, back together again, going their separate ways. All of us began crying at the sight of this video. We had been played by Jin, Sidu, the whole team. They had evoked despair in us, and then toyed with us for two days and then said, “No, we can’t leave them like that”, and granted us our good ending. We were given a proper farewell to the series, or what would have been a proper farewell, and sent along with a message from the creators through dialogue that flashed on the screen at the end of the video.

One of the biggest issues I have with getting people into this series is I never know where to tell them to start. It’s so hard for me to tell them “Just go watch the anime”, because the 2014 anime was bad and although it helped bring more people into the fandom, it did not cause the same affect, it did not take us on the same journey that we had over the course of 4 years (now 7?) I also have the problem of telling them to read the light novels or manga, because, at the time of me writing this, we have one novel left to be published. The manga is more of a wild card, as many fans are angry at Jin’s writing of certain characters right now as it seems to be causing continuity errors and the constant decision to make everything a different “route” in the time line makes it more annoying than fun nowadays. It seems more as though Jin doesn’t know how to reach the good end as is going to keep hitting as many bad ends as he can until we get to the perfect one. We have been given some promise of an anime remake, one that makes me hopeful for the anime industry knowing that it is happening because Sidu, like us, was angry about how Mekakucity Actors ended. (At the time of me writing this, there has been no news since last August 15th in 2016, about the anime). I want to point them to the songs, but then I feel as though I have to point them to the wikia page to understand what each song means, and its honestly not a lot of fun to read the explanation when there is unknown out there, because everything has either been proven or disproven by the other media entries that already exist. I know that all series have this problem where it might be hard to let new people in because of spoilers and the fact that everything has already occurred, there is nothing to predict, but my point here is not really about that.

My use of this fact existing in any media was a way to explain my thought process, to justify my illogical nostalgia that makes me want to dictate how a person consumes this series. Perhaps the evangelical in me is the one that believes all of these stories are beautiful and that Kagerou Project in particularly needs to be experienced by everyone. Maybe it’s the self-centered part of me that just wants to be able to have everyone just talk to me about the series. I love Kagerou Project, and I know all day I’m going to be watching Mekakucity Actors and cringing at episode nine’s CGI while I take photos in my Momo cosplay and still cry at the ending when I hear Jin sing Summertime Record at the credits. I love this series, and I want everyone else to love it too. But, a part of me cannot stop thinking about that two day period in 2013, that time where we felt such anger and then such elation that we collectively cried over some stupid song that is part of a “Vocaloid song series”, which is possibly the statement that turns people off the quickest to this series. The journey Jin took us on, emotions we felt during that, maybe we will get to experience it again if we ever get Mekaucity Reload and it lives up to what all of us who love this series hopes it can be. Maybe then, we will be free from the “shackles” of Kagepro, as we all exclaim on this day while we anxiously wait for any piece of news about the series.

…

Maybe then-

I guess it must be goodbye now.

You won’t forget again, will you?

Don’t worry. I couldn’t forget a tale like this.

I wonder about that. I bet you’ll have completely forgotten about it by tomorrow

And is that so bad? I mean, if there are better days to come…

But, we’ll meet again somewhere, won’t we?

Of course we will. Well, I’d better get going now.

Right. I’ll see you later.

We will all meet again.