So this song has been stuck in my head...

[malymin]

Watch on YouTube

A friend, when I showed her it, told me that:

yeah, a lot of the non-meme vocaloid fanwork I've been seeing has been about this one music video

And I think I understand why? It has some of the kind of qualities that often drew people to make little mini-fandoms for specific Vocaloid song+mvs: catchy song, distinctive designs (that are variants of the vocaloids singing the song), and a vague/implied narrative (bonus for dark qualities) ripe for speculation and iteration on.

The main difference is that I hazily remember a lot of classic Vocaloid mini-fandoms were for things that wore their edgy, dark, or angsty qualities on their sleeve, like Daughter of Evil or Dark Woods Circus; this particular juxtaposition of a cheery exterior with a dark underbelly feels influenced by '10s and onwards web-horror, particularly unfiction (you know, ARGs and stuff) and stylistically adjacent media where the evil hides under a kiddy, utopian, or otherwise friendly/safe aesthetic. Detail like Teto blinking the morse code for SOS, making the American sign language sign for "help," etc. feel very modern compared to the way 00's web-media would convey the "cute thing is actually sinister" premise before the Big Reveal at the end.

Now imagine an old man, puffing a pipe, grumbling that "kids these days don't want hatsune miku dark fantasy Alice-in-Wonderland hanakaki yandere cannibalism guro anymore. All they want is to play bright, colorful videos at .01% speed and collaboratively decode ciphers messages about how the cast of Whimsy's Playhouse is suffering."

The difference between me and that old man is that I'm delighted to be able to witness this stuff. :)

(Also the more classic edge still exists - check out Fallstay's "-ism" series - it's just not what's hip with the kids.)

Comments

[clovercrayon]

MESMERIZER I LOVE MESMERIZERRRR... I love seeing vocaloid songs blow up online its so fun to see that for the community

[malymin]

Apparently some people's first exposure to Kasane Teto has been through Mesmerizer? Kind of fun to me. Also she's really rocking the more masculine uniform (to Miku's matching feminine uniform) in this video; I think I wanna see Teto in pants more often now. XD

[clovercrayon]

I LUV MASC TETO TOOO we gotta see her rocking suits more ...