The Mikudela Catalog

[malymin]

It's absolutely only a matter of time before the streams fully cross.

People really liked Mesmerizer by 32ki. So far, they also really like Static by Flavor Foley. These music videos tap into aesthetics and themes that are currently popular with young online horror fans.

Back in the day, there were a fair number of Vocaloid "song series" - a narrative told from different angle via the medium of a set of interconnected Vocaloid songs (and their respective music videos). Many of these (Evilicious Chronicles, Bad End Night, Dark Woods Circus) used the Vocaloid characters as "actors" as well as instruments; others, like Kagerou Project, used completely original characters. While not all song series had dark, horrific, or tragic themes, they were pretty popular and common! I don't know how to accurately sum up what "dark" themes and aesthetics were popular in general with Vocaloid producers and fans at the time, but they were very... of the era? In the same way that Mesmerizer and Static are so clearly of this era, and not something that would have been made during the intial late-aughts-to-early-teens Peak Vocaloid era.

I got the feeling that people, especially young fans, really wanted Mesmerizer to have a sequel, to follow up on the implied narrative and - but that's not what 32ki wanted to make. I feel like Static is slightly more likely to have a follow-up, but not by much - Flavor Foley's first album did not have a shared narrative between songs, and the group has stated on Twitter that their projects will follow a "flavors of [theme]" pattern:

We make songs that explore different sides of a common theme. Our debut album, "CARDIAC CONTREPOINT", examined the varying flavors of "love".

Analog Horror series and similar ARG-inspired unfiction are a popular medium for indie serialized storytelling at the moment, typically published on Youtube; a lot of them interact with artifacts of nostalgia such as analog media, old videogames, the "old web", or general kid-media aesthetics. Vocaloid song series are a historically popular medium for indie serialized storytelling, historically published primarily on NicoNico but frequently reposted onto Youtube; the "golden age of vocaloid" is, itself, now an object of nostalgia for a specific cohort of otaku and weeaboos. Two standalone vocaloid songs with analog horror or mascot/kidcore horror elements have already been extremely popular. It's only a matter of time before someone who has interest in the overlap makes a Vocaloid song series, an actual serialized piece of storytelling, with these elements. It will probably take a little while longer still for one that actually goes viral, and/or is good, to get made. But it is a matter of time.

Comments

Kinda off topic thoughts about the subject

[zenigotchas]

Tbh speaking as someone who was a child and active online in the 2010s when vocaloid was bigger in the Murican sphere of the net and creepypastas were a thing, I am not really surprised about the scary vocaloid stuff being extremely popular then or even now. This is just my limited view as someone who wasn't super deep into vocaloid (but still liked it and still enjoys a good vocaloid song), but they always reminded me a lot of creepypasta? A lot of these vocaloid music videos could be taken as lost episodes or just generally darker reimaginings of the characters. Hell there's an entire creepypasta called The Alice Killings which references the vocaloid song "Alice Human Sacrifice."

So even now I'm not shocked at all that people may be hoping for more creepy vocaloid stuff. There's the people like me who grew up on this stuff and would like it, and then there's the new batch of young kids getting into horror and creepy music through stuff like creepypasta themed FnF mods, analog and other similar indie horror works (and those are definitely the modern day creepypastas). Plus there are probably still scary Miku songs being made out there as we speak.

Sorry I know this wasn't a post asking WHY these things were/are so loved, it just kinda popped into my head as I was reading this (I'm sorry if I'm blowing up your inbox btw)

Re: Kinda off topic thoughts about the subject

[malymin]

No worries! I kind of like it when people just add their thoughts to a post, even if it's only tangential. One nice thing about Dreamwidth is that the comments are all nicely consolidated and easy to browse, wheras reblogs/retweets/etc make commentary scattered, and replies on most conventional socmed are a pain in the ass to read through if you don't have the time to go through the infinite scroll.