The Alien Stage Experience

ivan showing till the way out

Ok so the thing that strikes me the most about Sua compared to her Alien Stage design is that... It's very similar. The core elements stay: a blueish white dress, a big center bow, puffy sleeves that become gloves, a white head accessory to keep her bangs in place and contrast her hair. The main element that changed is the puffy skirt ; basically, the outfit is pushed on the cute idol side, but it's essentially the same.

There's also how the infection affects her: it invades her face much less than Mizi, allowing her to keep nearly her full range of expression (and seemingly part of her mental capacities). However it seems to go deeper in her body (her leg's good as gone), diminishing her perfect idol image.

(also one could mention Sua's long hair is typically associated with her restrictive childhood in alnst)

Now yknow when I said Sua's outfits were very similar to one another? Well Mizi's the exact opposite. She goes from a black dress, high boots, a generally mature look and a really good color balancing (the blue hair tips that she asked for herself!!) to a design so PINK it hurts. there's nothing but pink - not even black or white accents. Every part of her design that wasn't pink was removed (such as her eyes). It's a very childish looking outfit (the pigtails, the big puffy skirt, THE VERY PINK VERY MONOTONE LOOK), yet it's also very sexualised.

It's a denial of Mizi's identity. It's the naive front she put up during alien stage, with her image as an attractive girl who can use her charms to get by (like in the witch comic). It's also seen with her infection: it doesn't cover her body, which is desirable, but it nearly entirely covers her face, notably her eyes. If in Alien Stage she was turning a blind eye to the reality of the competition, in Zombie Stage her sight has literally been removed, and she's barely aware of what's going on around her.

y'know how mizi seems to have passed the idol tryout and sua probably didn't?

The lyrics in Zombie Stage are color-coded. Mizi is pink and Sua is blue.

You are My God

You are My Universe

...this is just soo amazing. They have a triple meaning, which is incredible. First of all, you got the You are God & You are Universe. Which is a fun reference to Alien Stage but also because it shows the importance of the other.

Sua is god, she creates the world around Mizi, as Mizi can't see. She can't see, and her cognitive abilities don't seem to be at 100%, which makes her even more dependent on Sua. Mizi's world is what Sua says it is.

Mizi is the universe. Sua lives in her, exists because of her, quite literally, because she turned her. And! And! My favourite thing! This is literally one of the Merriam-Webster definitions:

Universe - a systematic whole held to arise by and persist through the direct intervention of divine power

The legit universe is controlled and warped according to divine power, a.k.a a divine being, a.k.a god! Toxic celestial yuri

Okay, so the second and third meanings are pretty similar to each other, but they matter separately! My & My, very simple yet important. Who hasn't heard the words, 'you are my universe' in a romance before? Or something adjacent--you are my heart, you are my world, etc. It's cute, it's sweet, but without the my it becomes sooo much more. It becomes a statement, a fact.

You ARE god. You ARE universe. It is not just love that drives them to say this, but fact. Now add in the 'my'. You are My God. You are My Universe. It's an obvious reference to Clematis, plus another way to show just how toxic the relationship is. God is meant for the masses; that's how religion usually works, that's how Catholicism and Judaism and Islam works. For the people. Everyone may have God. But Sua is just for Mizi and that is bonkers if you think about it.

Imagine you, a mortal, are hoarding a divine being from the world...that is some platinum-tier possessiveness. And it's the same for the universe! The universe is where we all live, its safety is usually what makes everyone team up momentarily for. But again, here's one mere mortal trying to claim the whole freaking universe as their's...

Toxic celestial yuri y'all. Mizi's reality is what Sua tells her it is, and Mizi created Sua's new existence through no will of her own. They possess the other and will not share with those who may need them as well. They will worship and manipulate the other, respectively, until the day existence comes to an end.

Looking at these two scenes makes me wonder if Mizi's mom used to hit her in fits of rage and then proceed to apologize almost immediately. I mean, Mizi slapped Sua, Sua hugged Mizi and we can presume she had some flashback to when she was a kid and something similar must have happened with her mom AND that's why she looks so panicked in the below scenes because she realized she's just like her mom.