#dyz

following up on these two posts, I feel compelled to talk about a bunch of hifuu arranges (again specifying renmerry! sorry Sumireko!), specifically those arranged by RD-Sounds of circle 凋叶棕 (diao ye zong).

just gonna put this here in case I forget, you can stream 凋叶棕’s ‘main’ albums on spotify here!

Thing is though, they’ve arranged a Lot of hifuu-themed tracks, not just in dyz albums, but in all sorts of collab works with other circles too! I’m sure there’s lots of tracks, both hifuu and in general, that I’ve never heard of! And even among all the ones I have heard, I don’t really have the same amount of strong feelings for all of them. So for this post, I’ll only be going over the songs that really left a strong impact on me, and ones I would describe as being formulative for my hifuu experience! So there’s going to be a bunch I leave out, like say for example... true outsiders from 喩 (tatoe). It’s a song I like a lot, and its hifuu! But it doesn’t take up housing in my brain like the ones I really want to mention. But that’s fine! There’s still going to be plenty I gush about anyhow.

And like, might as well start with the original, classic, dyz hifuu album. 廻  (meguri/)... Just the album cover is making me nostalgic and emotional, because it instantly makes me hear the first track.

That first track is A Secret Adventure , and i know I say this a lot, but its definitely a classic! Firstly, remembering that this album is like, twelve years old is making me want to turn to dust 😩 , not that I first heard it literally that long ago, but oh my god to think dyz is still going strong to this day. As for the song itself, it has all those classic hifuu beats, being an energetic duet of vocaists singing about seeking out the mysteries of the world and anything is possible as long as the two of them are together! There’s probably a hundred of this exact kind of song out there about merry and renko, and I hope there will be another thousand more!!!

But I think such a ‘straightforward’ song is really there just to establish the premise of the album. As you go on and listen to a bunch more songs about various other touhous that fit the theme of the album. And near the end, you get to what I’m certain is an absolutely iconic piece for hifuu culture (that makes it sound like a cult...).

絶対的一方通行 (Absolute One-Way Street) . While I’m sure Merry=Yukari stories/theories/ideas had been floating around plenty beofre this album, my gut tells me that it is this song in particular that was the origin point of a lot of people really seeing the appeal and made to cry about a doomed renmerry for the rest of their life. It’s a great song with the lyrics about ‘someone’ accounting their terrible fate having fallen into the darkness and warning against ‘someone’ not to follow after...

I like it alright. 🙂 And the merry = yukari beat is something I think is neat, but not something I’m like, super invested in when I think about either characters. (Also I like the remake from a future album, 絶対的一方通行 ～ Unreachable Message more than the original!) Truthfully, I consider this more of a Yukari song than I do a hifuu or even a Merry song, and the real reason why I bring up this song is because it is necessary context for the experience of the album! You get to this song and its pretty dread and despair and tragedy all around, and that feeling carries over with you into the final song of the album, and definitely a song that makes me cry about renmerry forever.

ヒメゴトクラブ  (Himegoto Club) .....oh my goooood, this song. There’s no other touhou arrange I can think of that can be so purely described as a love song.

All the despair and uncertainy of the world around them, of the fears that everything won’t last, the mysteries surrounding them, the stars and the boundaries that they see with their strange eyes. This song is about how none of that matters right now. The only thing that matters and the only thing they think about is that they’re together, each other’s warmth. 😭 The associated booklet image has Merry and Renko in a dark room, sharing an intimate moment, tossing aside all other things in the universe (and their hats, same thing). It’s really really really really good and the perfect closing note for the album. it doesn’t get better (ie gayer) than this...

(actually just wanted to say that my favourite song from this album is カレイドスコープ (Kaleidoscope), but that’s a reimu song and this post is about hifuu!)

That’s it for Meguri, so going to just segue into a different dyz album, this one just because of one specific song in it.

hey did you know that 騙 (katari) on rd-sounds website has two pages for it? One true and one ‘fake’ which is filled with false song titles? I love gimmicks.. Anyhow, the theme of the album is deception and its got a lot of really cool tracks, but I was really surprised that one of the songs is explicitly a sequel to Himegoto Club, its booklet image borrowing from the one from meguri, and the song itself opening with the exact same notes!!

rebellion -たいせつなもののために-  I really love this one... Also i think it might be the only song I’m gonna mention on this post that doesn’t have Merami for vocals?! 3L is here singing this super cool and dramatic song about Renko in despair over having forgotten something, someone important, and forcing herself to remember before dedicating herself to finding that someone again... The whole song is super cool but its of course that final line that’s shouting after Merry’s name that never fails to destroy me 🤩🤯😭 It’s also easily my fav song of the whole album. Now to move on to something that’s arguably most special to me...

辿／誘 (Tadori/Izanai) This... is actually the first dyz album I ever listened to. I believe its with this album i first discovered the circle, or at least its definitely the earliest I remember where I really took note of the credits. With that said, I’ve actually revisited the music on this album very rarely compared to other dyz tracks, part of that is because most of the tracks in this album(s?) are don’t exactly make for easy listening the way a fun pop track would, one part is that listening to it alongside looking at the booklet images and the lyrics feels especially important for the experience, because i think no other dyz track goes as all in with rd-sounds ‘double-meaning’ tricks as the two main songs of this album. And another part is that... well, its special to me, and I guess I feel like like I can’t just pop it in for any old occasion...

The beautiful world is the reason this album is in this post though. The basic gist of this song is that its about Merry becoming Yukari, but its even more dramatic and heavy than Absolute One-Way Street. The lyrics go on about how becoming something else and leaving everything behind is terrifying and scary, but by the end, those things are happily(?) given up in order to embrace the new world they’re a part of... I said i’m not super invested in this story beat, but this song along makes me glad it exists... When this song puts you into an existential high, you gotta wind down with its associated instrumental track, 何もかもが、幻想 ...

(While I’m here, my actual fav song from this album is the other ‘main’ one, Calling. I’d dare say its in fact my favourite rd-sounds song ever,  but its not really related to hifuu so i’m just mentioning it here for fun n_n)

...So that’s actually mostly it for the dyz albums, and now i’m just gonna hard divert into a bunch of other things. rd-sounds has done collabs with many circles and to provide music for specific projects. This is where this post is going to sound even more aimless and rambly before, because um... most of the works i’m about to talk about are things I’ve not ever actually properly experienced obviously due to lack of either availability and/or any translation or even basic summaries/resources I could find. I really can only guess and estimate the context to all of these and their associated songs, haha.... n_n;;; u_u I do still want to talk about these next few ones because against all odds, they do all stick in my mind to this day and were very formative in a sense for me! Will I ever actually properly consume any of these one day? ...Probably not, but that’s the beauty of art, right? To be able to get something out of something even while barely understanding it?!! That’s what i’ll choose to believe..

First on the agenda is 現夢 -genmu- by TUMENECO! First of, its over a decade old 👵. Secondly, its an album that goes hand in hand with an illustrated novel written by 四面楚歌 (Surrounded By Enemies) ((oh fair warning, i like a bunch of their work, but warning if you’re even just heading to their website. some of the stuff and its covers thats just out there in the open is NSFW)).

I’ve actually read a translated version of that novel, so for once I actualy get the context of it! The songs are all based on events or themes from the novel, and are separated into two discs, one for vocal songs and the other for instrumentals. Of course the first song in the album is led by TUMENECO themselves and with a true yukina and Mie classic. But wouldn’t you know it, the very last song on both discs to close off the album as a whole go to RD-Sounds and Meramipop, woohoo!

うつつのゆめ (Dream of Reality) It’s basically the ending song of the album and the novel! And arranges of Innocent Treasures just feel inherently special to me. After everything else in the story and album is said and done, it all ends with a wistful, yet upbeat song about celebrating your dreams while they last. The story itself ended on a bittersweet note of having to ‘wake up’ from the dream that is Gensokyo, but then further ending with the hope that dreams never have to ‘truly’ end, and this song captures that really well... And i’m like a giant sucker for the very final lyric, which is the very last line of dialogue you see in the story as well n_n!!!

That’s the one among these I have the most context for, and now for the one I easily have the least.

喜劇機械、もしくはジェーン・ドゥ達によるパラード , or Comedy Mechanism: Parade of Jane Does, is a novel written by ゐた・せくすありす (Vita Sexualic). There are seveal novels written by them, many hifuu-themed ones too. The general opinions of them I’ve seen is that most of them delve into very dark and grim themes and imagery even if they’re not listed as Adult (and the ones that do have that listing are like wow not enough content warnings in the world) and that’s on top of also being quite a bit abstract and surreal in its presentation.

Honestly if I was going to talk about any of Vita Sexualic’s works, it really ought to have been ジムノペディが終わらない / The Gymnopédies Never End, because that one actually has a readily available english translation on the web, and its associated song is actually on a regular dyz album!

But no, instead I’m bringing up Jane Does, which is apparently way longer and somehow even more esoteric than that. I actually bought the digital version of this novel on the artists BOOTH page quite a long time ago too because I was so intrigued by it!

I don’t know what this story is about. Like, at all. If its anything like the author’s few works I’ve dabbled with, its probably a bit hard to grasp even in the original language, and contains too many instances of gruesomeness. ...But, no matter how much I disagree with those aspects, there’s still always been value somewhere that I took away from it.

Not that I know what that value in Parade of Jane Does would be, exactly, because even now, I’ve gained almost zero solid knowledge about this story! I could guess what its about, but I don’t want to because I’d be embarrassed at the real possibility of being 100% off the mark. So like, why am I even bringing this up at all?!

well, scanning through the novel, there is a section where the words take a pause and you’re assaulted with a whole bunch of surreal images, which I intepret as the reality around the characters falling apart. One of those images is a QR code that leads to a song, the whole reason I brought this story up in the first place!

セルフ・トーキング 或いは 魔女というガラクタによる魂の在り処への言及のバラード  (Self Talking: Or a Ballad Alluding to the Whereabouts of the Souls Of Garbage Otherwise Known as Witches)

I actually think the coolest way to experience the song if you’re not going to ever experience the novel (and you’re probably not...) is through this video on youtube, which is a really well editted thing that adds subtitles and also splices in illustrations from the novel itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vSgnYR57BM

I’m like, not gonna even try to talk about what I think the song is about or how it relates to the story, even if I have plenty of thoughts in that department. But the biggest reason as to why I mention it on this post onw is because discovering this song and the associated story and even just glimpsing it in this way, from a distance where I barely understood it and yet found myself moved and even frightened by how it sounds and how it presents itself... Well, it played a big part in making me realise just how much I value creativity in presentation, and just how cool and how much fun it is to really play around with ways that you can make a person listen to a song or read a story. It’s sort of a similar reason why I like the dyz albums that really play around with ARG-type gimmicks.

From now until forever, I’ll always think about how the song ends, with the same line from Merami just going on and on, looping and repeating and layering over itself with no end as everything fades to quiet. Even just that little touch left a big impact on a younger (and current) me...

Anyway time to move on to something more fun! A video game! Except its got a lot of death in it. Whoops.

秘封祭 (Hifusai), or Hifuu Festival -Merry Bad End-, is a visual novel by 四面楚歌 / Surrounded By Enemies.

The hook of this game is that Renko and Merry are going about their day like any other, and depending on the choices you make, they may meet different kinds of outcomes. There are 60 stated different endings, a couple of which end really badly for one or both of them. As you progress, the whole premise of the game takes on a meta feel, as questions rise about how ‘real’ each of those bad ends were, whether the next Renko and Merry deserve to find a happy ending after all the ‘others’ died, etc etc.

Or at least that’s what I assume is the gist of it since I kinda skimmed through a playthrough on youtube n_n;;; I doubt I’ll ever be able to fully experience or even understand all the themes and nuances myself, but I’m very intrigued by the premise, format and presentation as usual. As for how it relates to RD-Sounds, they arranged for the OP and ED of the game, with vocals by Meramipop as expected! And it’s specifically the ED, the credits song, that I wanted to talk about.

イニシエイション  (Initiation) I might not have actually played through the whole game first-hand, but I still felt something special as this song played to mark the end of the very long journey full of winding paths... It’s a song that’s both dark yet triumphant, as the lyrics talk about overcoming all the other versions of themselves that met a bad end, and how they’ll resolve to crush them all, stamping over them in order to get to that good ending with the person they love... It’s pretty perfect for the vn and also for a cool, dark yet still managing to be hopeful renmerry n_n

And we’re not even done with Surrounded By Enemies yet!

祝現 (Celebration) is a CD consisting of two songs arranged by RD-Sounds. It was released alongside a big collab project called HIHUU WEDDING -Welcome to Ghostly Chapel- , featuring a wide range of art and photos themed after Merry and Renko having a wedding getting married. Yeah!! That’s what I’m all for!!! Please do more of this thing instead of uncomfortable stories about Sumireko But i’m here to talk about the songs.

ずっと近くの明日  (Tomorrow, Forever Close) Its Renko and Merry’s wedding wovs, the song! Yeah!! Lyrics about exchanging promises to be together forever, about how it all feels like a wonderful dream, and how they’ll walk hand-in-hand towards the future no matter what it holds for them! It’s a perfect theme song for the entire HIHUU WEDDING project as a whole. I love it a lot for how completely fluffy and happy it is.

But I also love it because its necessary to come before the second song on the disc, which wouldn’t be as good on its own without this song to provide context and then contast.

すぐ傍にある未来 (The Future So Near To Us) .....

....This is the only song that could challenge GITR’s Forgotten Paradise for title of my favourite hifuu arrange ever. In concept, it’s pretty similar to Himegoto Club, how absolutely nothing else in the world matters except for the bond Merry and Renko share in the present.

But compared to Himegoto Club which was all about love in the face of uncertainty, I feel like すぐ傍にある未来 is about love in the face of inevitability. The world, dreams, and anything else they may have loved or had hopes for is inevitably going to disappear if it hasn’t already, and even the idea that their current happiness can last forever is just a dream that won’t come true.

And yet they are exchanging vows and promises to stay together forever anyway, and are happy to do so... Aaaaaargh!!!! 😭🤪🤯🙃😻

(^ getting a lot of mileage out of this one lately)

I think that about covers all the rd-sounds hifuu songs that have and continue to really and truly drive me insane for one reason or another...

(spoilers: it's really good. buy it)

we sure can!!! I'll put this under a readmore though because it's very long

1) 墓標 (bohyou): I'll be honest here I think this song and the hohuri album are one of the main reasons behind the DiPP Renaissance in 2015-2020 (significant increase of DiPP fanworks/fans being able to recognize jacketko & labelko). a big circle making DiPP songs led to more fans reading the original story and then making fancontent of it which in turn got more people into it etc. so to my dear followers if you're reading this and you're not a dyz fan but you gave DiPP a try thanks to people creating more content of it after 2015 mayyybe you should also listen to 屠 (hohuri) by diao ye zong...... anyway the song itself is really good. the intro is chilling - just imagine getting that CD back in the summer of 2014, putting it in your music player/pc expecting the first track to be an arrange of A Sacred Lot like written on the tracklist and instead you get THIS! (I did with my friends and it was scary.) the instrumental is amazing, I love that it's mostly original with bits of arranges from DiPP here and there, and Merami's performance is leagues above everything else she'd ever sung for the circle until then imo (and it kept getting better after that). and just, that last part...

listening to the latest DYZ releases the way they were always meant to be listened to: