Mizuki Foreshadowing

maybe she's still dreaming. You discuss what happened with everybody. You all had the same dream.

the same dream, which took place over multiple years. Kanade still hasn't woken up yet and has the weakest constitution of the group. Is she just taking longer to wake up? or...might she never...?

Kanade still hasn't woken up. It's as though she's choosing to remain in the dream world. the dream world where Kanade got to have a life, where she got to feel alive and happy, where her father stayed part of her life.

Miku is trying again to wake Kanade up but you're afraid that for everything Kanade means to you, everything she means to each of you, she doesn't want this world, and if given the choice....

Your name is Shinonome Ena.

But, first, there is direct counterevidence to interpreting Mafuyu's experience in WL2 as what her real life might've been like without K's music. Because, we get this scene right here. Mafuyu reacts really weird to Kanade's song.

but, we know how Kanade's music is different in this AU. Rather than canon, where it resonates with people close to disappearing, instead, people who aren't especially depressed love it, Ena's bitter that it's too happy, Mizuki prefers idol music, and Mafuyu failed to feign to Kanade in the Ending part 1 that she liked the song that Kanade wrote specially for her. Kanade was correct in picking up that Mafuyu hadn't actually cared for what she wrote her.

Also, Ena remembering she had friends once who know her pain and love her more than anything

While I want to say that this implies it's part of what drew her to Mafuyu or was something they bond over, Mafuyu's mask is very expressive and it doesn't seem as though she talks this way at all.

But, here all of her voicelines since I think she's neat!

To be clear, Kanade is still coping with the loss of her mom which still devastated her father. Her dad still struggles to stay relevant with his music and to close freelance composer deals. Kanade supports her dad with caregiver duties, rather than supporting him directly with her own musical insights. At the same time, Kanade is the reason her father is staying afloat emotionally. In that way her passion for music helps her father; his daughter's love of music inspires him to his better self.

But, I still struggle with the question of why everything is about becoming a better composer to her. Does she want to make sure she won't struggle like she's watching her dad do? Does she want to be successful enough to support him financially? Was, in the wake of losing her mom, music something that was able to fill the hole left behind in both Kanade's heart and her father's? (that, without music she is forced to contend with her grief left unprocessed because she didn't have a choice but to singlehandedly emotionally support her father?)

Mizuki in the normal timeline is still incredibly closed off. She hit Secret Distance and realized that she's headed off the biggest social cliff of her life by catching feelings to stay with these people as far in the future as next year, and that she has to get out. And Ena fought tooth and nail to chase her down.

She doesn't get that without it being about saving and disappearing. Sure, Ena cameos and Mizuki is like, huh, me and her would have a lot to talk about with fashion, I can already tell we'd get along great. But that was just warming us up for the real hit. An ardent fan of Amia's work with accessory design gets seriously excited hearing she's going into dresses because this could be her chance to collab with her, having experience designing clothes herself. She practically throws herself at Mizuki but, those walls can't come down anymore, because nobody even knows there are walls.

Rui is off forming meaningful lifelong bonds and reaching new heights too, with WxS at the Morinomiya Revue, while Mizuki realizes that's impossible for her. She dropped out of school for her own survival and secured her happiness in the moment, but it's a dead end and she knows it.

She's trying so hard for her friend. Airi wants to prove to herself that she is the sort of person worthy of being an idol.

And, in an AU where all that changed is K isn't able to save Ena, Airi never quits being an idol. Ena needs her; Ena needs to believe that even a lost dream is still worth it to chase.

Both Airi's and Ena's dreams have died, but Airi can't give up because it would mean Ena might.

and this scene!!

We learn the secret sauce to Kanade's music. It's not that she's a composer prodigy. It's that she's a composer prodigy whose life got so horrifically derailed she must become something which saves.

like, Kanade's VA understood the assignment. Kanade is unrecognizable in her worldlink 2. She has personality, even as she's still suffering as her father's caregiver.

I like how natural it is that the tree should die. It's the only thing growing in Empty SEKAI. (and, as we all know depressed people cannot keep a plant alive) It literally sprouted during the Mafuyu running away from home arc; this feelings-plant is not surviving.