justsomedweebcat

All quoted lyrics translated by Shiru.

While it’s not an opinion I’ve heard too often on this subreddit, I find quite a few people online who claim Kashika’s lyrics indicate Akito is suicidal, and you can see why they’d think that— the lyrics talk about wanting to die several times, after all. But is that really all the song is trying to say? Or is there something we’re missing?

Kashika’s lyrics perfectly encapsulate Akito’s character. First is the beginning of his journey: “When my quivering voice breathed life into a song, it was then I realized, that was the first time my breath could be seen.”

Akito had felt incredibly lost and unmotivated before RAD WEEKEND, coasting through life with no goal in sight. Singing to one day surpass RW was the first time he actually felt like he was alive, the first time his purpose of existence had come into view.

What does it say about “death” in the lyrics, then, if singing is compared to “life”?

“Even if I want to die, I’ll put that in these verses, these lyrics; today, I’ll sing while appearing to be dead.” Possibly one of the most heavily quoted verses of the song, but when you take ‘death’ to mean Akito giving up on his dream, you’ll find it describes the decision that he makes in multiple of his focuses.

SBD and FAWO both include Akito spiralling badly after a defeat, against Arata and Shepard respectively. The flashback in FAWO, especially, is the first instance (in-universe) of him doubting if he can really reach his dream, if he really has the talent. And he didn’t get back up immediately after that. In fact, he sat in his despair, and, to quote the great words of Ken himself, “with a look on his face like the world just ended”. But Ken told him to keep moving forward. To follow his passion no matter what doubts he may carry, and break through his limits again and again.

So he does.

SBD showcases this new mentality— multiple times, actually. When he formed BAD DOGS with Toya and was mocked for his lack of talent compared to his partner, he pushed aside any feelings of inadequacy and trained by himself day and night until he could keep up. When he lost to Arata, did he get frustrated at himself? Yes! But he didn’t let himself wallow in it. As unhealthy as his method was, he simply kept going to become stronger. Because that’s all that matters.

Then there’s RTF. When Akito faced the possibility that he could be burnt out, that he might no longer have the spark that drove him forwards all along, he refused to accept it. Sure, he did sit with his feelings (quite literally in his event card), but burnout wasn’t going to become his new reality. He sought out external help, looked as hard as he could for a solution, and above all else, he sang on anyway, because Shinonome Akito does not simply stop.

The struggles he face might still be there. He may not be able to resolve the way he feels immediately. But it’s as Kashika said. “My faults are also part of my life”. Akito accepts that he carries flaws, yes. But he will always move forward regardless.

And, of course, FAWO. The event this song was commissioned for. Crawl Green was the stage of his biggest failure, a source of shame. He wasn’t sure if he even deserved to step inside it again, but he agreed VBS’ next event should be held there. Why? Because it was a step in the direction of surpassing RW. Because something like feelings paled in comparison to the prospect of making progress. And later, when he redeemed himself, proved himself worthy against Shepard, he didn’t feel satisfied. In fact, he was angry at himself for even being proud for a split second. He felt like he should never pause in his path forward, like he had to keep going no matter what.

It’s not just the negative feelings he moves past. Again, Kashika reflects this: “Both hope and despair drive my pulse”. Absolutely everything, no matter the good or the bad, is used to power his journey, to bring him ever closer to his dream.

So, what’s the conclusion? Are people wrong about Kashika because its “death” definitively stands for the loss of passion? Not necessarily— this is just my own interpretation, after all.

What’s most important is that both this post and this song are ultimately about Akito’s resilience. When people’s takeaway from Kashika is that “Akito wanted/wants to die”, my criticism is not that it is impossible for Akito to harbour suicidal thoughts, nor is it that the “death” in Kashika’s lyrics shouldn’t be taken literally. The point isn’t if the lyrics are figurative or literal. Whether Akito wants to die, is losing his spark, or is experiencing some other kind of despair, it doesn’t matter to him. He will take those feelings anyways, use them to (pun unintended) fuel his drive, and claw his way back up every single time. He will always (pun fully intended) Find A Way Out. And that is why we’re missing the point.

Lyrics in title quoted from HAVEN by NILFRUITS, translated by Tackmyn Y.

I think it’s been discussed at length many times how crucial Akito and Toya are for each other, but rarely is the impact of VBS as a whole on the members discussed. And you can hardly blame the fandom for that — VBS’ story is very explicitly written to focus on the two “partnerships”, so there’s much more material to explore for BAD DOGS and Vivids. But VBS is something very important for Toya’s development, and it’s important to Toya himself too, and so I’m here today to talk about that.

What I think we need to understand first and foremost is just the situation Toya was in before meeting Akito. He loved the beauty of piano, but that passion was quickly quashed when harumichi forced him to practice over and over until he reached perfection, and he no longer could find enjoyment in the one thing he cared about. So, he broke himself out of his shitty life of classical and turned to street music instead. (Honourable mention to Tsukasa for giving Toya the encouragement he needed to run away!)

But he didn’t start out truly loving street music the way the rest of VBS did. He threw himself into it because he knew it was something Harumichi would hate, he sang just to rebel, just to prove a point. He wanted to reject every aspect of his past miserable self more than he actually cared about singing.

And Akito changed that. Akito walked up to him, and asked him if they could sing together. It was through bad dogs that Toya started to love street music for what it was, and genuinely started singing out of passion, genuinely wanted to help Akito reach that dream of surpassing rad weekend. Maybe he began to believe in that dream too.

But no matter how hard he tried to run away, old habits were hard to break. Harumichi had drilled into him over and over the importance of the intent behind a piece of music, that without the right mindset, anything played was not good enough. That he himself was not good enough. Could never be good enough.

And so he felt like he didn’t belong by Akito’s side, but he never got the courage to voice it, or maybe he didn’t even realise that self-doubt until it surfaced in the main story. And what was the catalyst for these emotions bursting out?

Meeting Kohane. Seeing the way Akito talked about her.

And when that self-loathing came in at full force, he left. Because what was he thinking? How could he have ever deserved a place alongside people that sang for their dream and nothing else?

But as counterintuitive as it might seem, Toya needed that falling out. That doubt would’ve never resolved on its own. If Akito hadn’t grabbed him by the collar and screamed in his face that he was needed, that Akito chose him no matter what, his feelings would’ve festered, buried deep in his heart. So in a way, Kohane was the catalyst for Akito and Toya’s issues resolving.

And after Toya joins VBS, they continue to help his relationship with music heal. In Nocturne, it’s discussing with his teammates that helped him realise he still had hangups about Harumichi that needed confronting so his singing could become more free.

It’s because of VBS that Toya was able to move on from his past, and now his music isn’t forced to be perfect, nor is it driven by frustration and shame, it just is.

The thing that he had loved above all, the thing that had kept being tainted by his past, the thing that had accompanied him all his life. He finally gets to enjoy music for the sake of music, nothing else in the way, and that is the best possible thing that could’ve happened to him. VBS is what changed his life, expanded it from the confines of his room to this unfathomably wide and beautiful world.

And in return, he loves VBS so, so much. In SDSC, he feels bad for having his teammates patiently guide him through his first camping experience and looks for any way he can contribute too. And the desire to be able to help his teammates is so intense that in Chapter 7, he temporarily forgets about his acrophobia and climbs up a tree (though he does recall his fear once he reaches the top and struggles to get back down, which was very cute, but the way).

Then there’s WOAO, where, again, Toya wants to be of help in some way, but can’t quite find the direction his music should go in. Then he realises — he wants to stand side by side with his teammates. He wants to be able to lend them a supporting hand the same way they have to him, to catch up to their rapid improvement. So he expresses that love and admiration through what he knows best, and turns it into a song.

And of course, we have Take the Best Shot!, where Toya was struggling to smile naturally for a photoshoot, and the thing that got him to smile without realising was thinking about VBS.

VBS is the sun that caressed his cheek and drove away the shadows of the past. VBS is his everything. VBS is his miracle.

As much as it pains me to admit, TTTO is overhated. And before you stick that knife in my gut, let me explain what I mean by that:

The Proseka fandom fights over many things, but the one (almost) unanimous consensus we've managed to reach is that TTTO, or, more commonly called, Toya5, is the worst written event in the game so far. And I wholeheartedly agree with that! But at the same time, there’s more to this event than the dumpsterfire just about everyone has memed on. The core message of "music is free (as in freedom, not cost)" in this event is something I think we should pay attention to, especially in the context of how meaningful that is to Toya, even if it wasn't what I originally hoped for or expected.

The conflict between classical and street music has always been a heavily relevant topic in Toya’s story. It begins in VBS’ main story, when Toya feels unworthy of performing alongside Akito, having started street music as an act of rebellion against his father who wants him to stay in classical. But he ultimately stays when Akito points out that no matter his original reason for singing, he keeps going now because he genuinely loves it. It continues in Nocturne Interlude/Period of Nocturne, where Toya acknowledges the passion he holds for classical, but also finally cements, with his own words, that street music is something important to him, something he won’t give up at any cost. Then, The First Concerto, where the guilt of rebellion in the main story is dredged up again, but this time in a different lens— instead of being ashamed for the reason he starts street music, Toya’s guilt is rooted in the fact that he ran away from his life of classical, something painful but still undeniably precious to him. This is resolved when Toya sees his past not just for its wretched end, but for everything before that, and stands proud of his accomplishments as a musician ultimately.

The idea that classical and street are one and the same recontextualises all of this massively. It's not just that he should be proud of his past even if it ended badly, or that it was worth giving up classical to pursue a path of his own choice. It’s that he never gave up anything, because from start to end, there wasn't a single second Toya didn't spend facing music. Both his time with classical and street are core parts of Toya’s identity, and to deny either would pain him (as evidenced by VBS main story, TFC, and VBSWL2), which is why it’s important when Toya realises at the end of TTTO that music is music, regardless of genre, because it finally completely sets him free from the internal struggle that he has held for the better part of the game’s runtime. The idea that Toya's journey with music is one whole instead of two divisions is also reinforced by the fact that he never experiences a "RAD WEEKEND"— While Kohane's RW is arguably the scene where she first hears An sing and it makes her heart race, Toya doesn't have a big bang moment with street music at all. Instead, his world orbited around music from the second he heard Harumichi press a single key on the piano, and that love continued all the way until now. He doesn't need to feel guilty for giving up one passion and starting another, when they're both parts of the same emotions he always held.

Now, does the event do a good job of expressing this? No. Not at all. Though Toya lingers on the realisation for a while and we have a flashback of him categorising music by classical/street, not much dialogue is really dedicated to what music being holistic actually means to him. And Harumichi's new backstory, if anything, is detrimental to the message— Music is supposedly a beautiful, holistic art that can't/shouldn't be viewed in the lens of separate genres, yet he decides to vehemently reject street music (and his son by extension) out of a personal grudge. Which Toya... sympathises with??? Why is Harumichi painted in a sympathetic light if he is doing the exact thing this event condemns?

And there we have it. Harumichi. Though there are some other minor issues with TTTO, his writing is undoubtedly the problem that singlehandedly makes this event universally hated. To understand why he's written poorly here, we must first look at how good his writing was before.

Nocturne has a heavy focus on Harumichi’s characterisation, and TFC also spends a decent amount of time on him. SDSC does mention him briefly, but I’m sure “man caves to his son’s request after he makes a whole powerpoint to argue his point” isn’t particularly relevant to the story, albeit entertaining, so let’s go take a look at Nocturne.

The event does a fantastic job of establishing who Harumichi is— a father who acts out of genuine concern for his child, but is too blinded by an obsession with classical to see the harm he’s doing. In a way, he almost serves as a foil to his son, his fanaticism tainting his relationships with people where Toya’s love for music has only ever served as a bridge of connection. These father-son parallels are not-so-subtly pointed out in the event by Kohane, who suggests that Harumichi is insistent on Toya returning to classical for the same reason Toya vehemently refuses to do so, only that Harumichi’s passion lies with classical where his son’s lies with street music. Toya uses this commonality to try find middle ground with his father and make him at least understand, if not accept, Toya’s choice, and the results are… mixed. Harumichi attends VBS’ show at Toya’s request, a sign that he may be willing to put aside his prejudices and open his mind, but still can’t understand what value his son sees in street music. Well, progress is progress.

The next two Toya focuses place a lot more emphasis on his relationship with his teammates, but Harumichi makes a comeback in TFC, an event most people would agree is the most emotionally significant for Toya’s development thus far. He initially refuses when Toya asks for his advice in composing, but gives in when asked again, Toya emphasising the importance of achieving success in a crucial moment for VBS, about to reach their dream, and not just pinpoints the source of Toya’s struggle, but helps absolve him of his guilt. Though Harumichi still expresses explicit disapproval for the path his son has taken, he openly, without hesitation, tells him that the knowledge he gave up his whole childhood for wasn’t for naught. That Toya’s skill as a musician was, even now, undeniably strong enough to put him on equal footing with the people he idolised. That Toya should be proud of himself. And when Toya ultimately completes his song, Harumichi reviews it with careful attention until late into the night.

From Nocturne and TFC (plus a few additional tidbits from SDSC and Toya’s CFes), the picture painted thus far is this: A father causes his child undeniable pain in pursuit of an ideal “happiness” he imposed, and still can’t quite fully understand the true joy that his son does eventually find, but acknowledges his achievements regardless and tries to be more open-minded where he can when confronted with how important this new life is to his son. He might not be kind, or even a particularly good person, but little by little, he opens himself to change. Which is oddly like an allegory for homophobic parents, now that I think about it, but let’s not get too off-track.

The point is that Harumichi represents a twisted version of Toya’s core traits: intense love for music, conviction in ideals, desire to help. Where this manifests in Toya as determination for improvement that can turn self-destructive at times, Harumichi turns cruel, stubborn and self-imposes his idea of a good ending in ways that only turn out harmful. But he progresses, no matter how miniscule, no matter how much it pales in comparison to the hurt he’s brought. And in a story about freedom from the past (Nocturne, SDSC, TFC) and freedom of self expression (WOAO, TTTO), that makes him the perfect NPC, because he embodies the idea that people are inherently able to grow and change, no matter the starting point. No matter if it’s an abused teen or his abuser, whether a person would belong in heaven or hell, they possess the capability to shift and evolve, because that’s what being human means.

And how does TTTO contribute to this brilliant theme? Well, for those of you who have somehow missed the absolute onslaught of memes, this event introduces a backstory for Harumichi to explain why he’s Like That. Now hold on a second, bcat! I hear you say. Didn’t Nocturne already establish a clear character motivation? Why would we need anything more? Is it maybe further fleshing out what’s already there? No, of course not. The definitely intuitive and very logical answer is that the characters actually guessed wrong about Harumichi in Nocturne and we’ve had two whole events focused on the Aoyagi father-son reconciliation where Toya operates on incorrect assumptions. Obviously.

But hey, retcons aren’t always a bad thing! Nagi is likely a retcon, with early-game dialogue leaning towards Ken having one partner, not two, but she’s still proved a well-written NPC that contributes to An’s story well. Maybe a little too much so in LUTF, but overall a solid character. So who’s to say these new character motives don’t make Harumichi more interesting?

Well, let’s actually look at what this backstory is. Turns out Harumichi actually respects genres of music outside of classical, and enjoys discussing or even playing them. The reason he was so against Toya doing street music was actually that a bunch of street musicians mocked classical for being old and stale when their own “innovative” music was hardly impressive, and the insult was so great to Harumichi that his impression of street music was tainted forever.

This makes some sense in a vacuum. Harumichi carries a grudge against street music due to past unpleasant associations, which I guess kinda parallels Toya’s experience with classical post-childhood if you squint hard enough, Toya is able to see the good in his past where Harumichi cannot, etcetera etcetera. However, the only point of interest I can find in this backstory is invalidated when you place it in the context of, well, everything else.

The first problem is that Harumichi is not condemned at all in this story. It turns out that Toya’s only reason for being constantly verbally berated in his own home is that his dad held a petty grudge upwards of several decades. And how does he react to that? “Oh, I didn’t know that’s what happened, I should try to understand my father more.” The story supports this attitude when an NPC suggests Toya talk to his father if he wants to better understand the past. Which is just… why? As I’ve said above, Harumichi’s attitude here is exactly what the message of the event is against. He has one bad run-in with street musicians, then proceeds to reject street music as a whole, clearly defining lines between genres. But not only is Toya sympathetic to his father here, he’s encouraged to learn more from Harumichi, whose recharacterisation, I cannot state this enough, is antithetical to what this event wants to say.

This backstory also removes a lot of Harumichi’s depth. Depth is (not exclusively, but commonly) introduced by creating internal conflicts in a character. Before TTTO, Harumichi has an obvious conflict: love for classical VS love for his son. Where the first prevails in Toya’s childhood and leads Harumichi to overwork his son to the point of injury, the latter slowly comes to light as Toya removes himself from the lens of classical and Harumichi has to come to terms with his emotions outside a single-minded obsession for music. His actions also don’t always line up with his words, and that creates intrigue. The greyness of Harumichi makes him feel like more than a walking Toya angst machine. With the recontextualisation of TTTO, his core internal conflict becomes “grudge VS love”, which is shallower— not just in terms of Harumichi’s morals, but also loses the obvious parallel with his son and is just boring when the conflict has such a clear and cliche winner. It might also have become shallower because it abandons, oh, I don’t know, just two whole events’ worth of buildup. And the penultimate conclusion of Harumichi’s story, that people can grow, is a lot less impactful when said growth is finally letting go of a grudge over an extremely minor incident instead of putting aside the love one holds, an undoubtedly difficult choice no matter how warped said love may be.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to attempt to paint Harumichi in a better light like Ena4 did with Shinei, but when you do so by ignoring what previous events have established, including the most well-received Toya event thus far, do I even need to explain why this is an awful idea? It's not that childishly petty and whiny characters are inherently bad, or that a redemption arc isn’t deserved. It's that TTTO guts the writing of Aoyagi Harumichi, the central NPC of Toya's story, erasing his depth, removing the emotional impact of his gradual reconciliation with his son, all while still being unable to link his shiny new backstory to the core message of the event.

But back to the title of the post. What does this massive fumble mean for future Toya events? Well, TTTO ultimately had a good concept. Toya wants to stop categorising music and love it as a whole, finally completely resolving the classical-street conflict that he’s struggled with since day one. Though the event fails to emphasise this development in a truly meaningful way, I think we can criticise the major shortcomings in this story while still acknowledging the original intent behind it.

An idea I’ve seen passed around is that Toya’s story is “ruined” after this event. Disregarding the writers’ history of recovering from questionable event quality (see: LUTF being succeeded by WTWG and An’s BFes), there is still so, so much more to Toya’s character as a whole that we aren’t talking about because we’re too busy making “street music killed my grandma” jokes. Just like LUTF is about An’s idealised image of her community being shattered, not Taiga and Caucasian Destination, TTTO is about a resolution to the core conflict of Toya’s character that has been present since the beginning of the game, and as distasteful as the execution was for this plot point, what it means for Toya’s arc is still undeniably important.

Toya’s story isn’t over. Harumichi’s character may be mangled past the point of salvaging, sure, but his son is doing just fine— and if the writers wisen up, Harumichi can very well stop being present in Toya focuses now that he’s been proper fleshed out (or at least, that’s what they think they’ve done). Toya6 is already showing promise, with Sasanomaly’s description of the commissioned song leaning more towards the ideas of empathy and helping others than lending itself to anything I’d associate with the Harumichi storyline. Maybe it’s not guaranteed that the writers will move on fully from Aoyagi family dynamics given how important they have been, but at the very least, we can say that things aren’t doomed.

This isn’t to condemn people for hating on TTTO (which would be hypocritical when I myself have criticised it a considerable amount), or to convince anyone to start liking this event (I don’t either), but I think it’s time the fandom as a whole jumps off the hate train and starts looking at… anything else about Toya, really. Because isn’t that exactly what Toya needs in TFC? To not just rightfully loathe the ugly parts of the past, but to also see what little good existed underneath, cherish it, and move forward with it?