I wasn't expecting the stories for N25 to be so touching. I find the fact that the main song - composing the future - was composed by mafumafu to be so personal to me. I always really liked Mafumafu.
When I first got into music because everyone else my age really liked it I mainly listened to nightcore and thefatrat and couldnt enjoy the stuff my peers did. It was around 6th grade. I didn't really listen to music up until that point because I never really enjoyed it. Or did anything but play videogames and watch anime and youtube videos. But I wanted to be normal so I tried really hard and found music I liked.
One day around 7th grade we were in art class and I decided I wanted to be cool by getting really good at drawing so I went home and watched anime speedpaints - Hyanna Natsu. I got really into them and ended up finding Reol because plus danshi was in the background of one of the speedpaints and I really liked the song. Or thought it was absurd. Whichever.
From there voila! Presto! Eventual vocaloid obsession. It went a lot further than just the soothing relationship I had with nightcore, where I finally felt like the target audience for a piece of media. Vocaloid was perfect for me.
I actually already had experience with vocaloid when my brother introduced me to it at least like 5 years earlier. But I didn’t dig it at the time. But because of this, I did in fact think Vocaloid was a band full of people who dressed up when they went on stage for a concerningly long time. And yes I thought Luka was dead in that one MV. Like forevers gone. At the time I didn’t particularly love life and constantly wondered what was wrong with me and why I couldn't be normal. I was also sad because I didn't have a bedroom or privacy and was getting bullied and stuff. But I just wanted to know what made me so different to everyone else. And all this music about how much life sucked and hearing stories of people killing themselves because life sucked so much meant a lot to me. I didn’t have the words to say this until very recently, but even little me was so comforted knowing that hating life and thinking it was shit wasn’t an Ivy thing specifically. It was possible and viable and valid to think it's all bullshit and want more. I think the lyrics of mafumafu could tap into that with reincarnation. But it's been a while so maybe not and I remember wrong. PinnochioP especially. It took me way too long to realise that's where the seed for my alien obsession was planted LOL. And Neru. These artists reassured that everything did in fact suck and it wasn’t a me thing. I actually stopped listening to mafumafu when one song came out and I was reading a comment analyzing it that said the main character was a teenage girl because that's his target audience, and I felt so cringe normie for being the intended target audience. How ironic. From constantly wishing to be seen, accounted for, understood and thought of… Only to reject it once it happened LOL (because I was a teenage girl you see…)
It's so strange, growing up a reject and nothing. My mum once told me a story. She was worried because she heard from her friend, whose daughter took the same bus as me for 12th grade, that some boys from another school were yelling at me and calling me a weirdo and a freak. I explained I had no idea because I had my headphones on and couldn't hear (fact). I have no doubt this actually happened. I would get barked at, yelled at, I was once physically abused by one girl in 5th grade - but she grew up homeless and her brother went on to commit suicide so like. She's an outlier - and generally ostracized after moving to Robinjail at the start of 5th Grade. I would always wish I could just put tape over my mouth to shut myself up. But eventually I gave up, accepting no matter what I did I’d be dissatisfied with the way people treat me. I was right btw, nothing changed as I grew up. The bus story was 12th grade remember! I’ve had social anxiety since before moving I think. Vaguely I remember staring out my window and fantasizing about going outside. I think I may have just been too stupid to go outside though LOL.
But now I live in the city, people stop me on the street to tell me they like my style? They think I’m cool? When I put my hand up to speak in discussions at University, everyone looks at me. Whoever is currently talking loses the spotlight completely. What the fuck happened? Surely it cant be true that every person in Robinjail is fucked up and evil and people in Melbourne aren’t? Why did I go from 0-100 for no reason??? Like okay, I wasn’t bullied as much in year 12, but I think I was just able to laugh at people and myself a lot more so I just didn't gaf.
I connect with N25 a lot. The feelings of life is shit. Being hated by life itself. Being an alien. I was never depressed or anything. And I think I’m the complete opposite of Mafuyu. I have too much identity. I knew from a young age who I was and what I loved, and it hurt trying to hide it, and I never could very well. I did lie for a longgggg time about not liking anime and video games and stuff (canon event for all weird kids). But eventually in 7th grade I could stop lying. It was very relieving. Now my weird niche-ish interests are cool (I got to explain the hatman and LSD dream emulator to like a super cool psychology researcher HELLO?). But N25 is the perfect band for a vocaloid game. Vocaloid music to me is what made it okay to be a fucked up loser. Sadness can't be quantified, and it doesn't need to be qualified to exist. Which is - according to me - a major part of how it's able to be conveyed so eloquently through music. I haven’t read any of the lyrics to the songs, but I feel like I already know what they all mean to Mafuyu.