#imaginary reload

@taro4oto2:

Me: Jin-san, in your mind, what kind of adult will Kisaragi Shintarou become in the future...? Jin: Ah~! Kisaragi Shintarou, huh; he is who he is~. I’m thinking of writing songs concerning him from now on too. I’m currently 28, and if I think about him at around this age... I guess he’d probably be a teacher or something like it.

@BlueD01:

“Jin-san, what do you think Momo-chan will be in the future?” Jin-san: Let’s see... *thinks a little* An actress, I guess. “‘An actress’?” *thought process stops* Jin-san: She might also go... overseas. (Memory is faint here.) “Ooh.” Jin-san: I want to write these stories about the future next time. (At last.) “Thank you very much!”

@920ms:

My hands were shaking during Jin-san’s autograph session. Hella.

Although it was a commemorative autograph section for the release of MekaRelo, I’d wanted to tell him no matter what that I get strength from listening to Otsukimi Recital when I have to lighten up... So, I told him this, but I accidentally ended up babbling that Hibiya and Momo’s interactions were the most interesting to me and that I liked them a lot. And then Jin-san said, “I like them too! What will happen to them from now on?? I’m really curious!” as if to dig into it.

Of course I knew that he liked Hibiya and Momo’s combo, but the “What will happen to them from now on?” has been echoing in my brain the entire time... I had a bunch of other things to say, like, “The songs of Momo’s friends are also the best” and, “I’d been listening to Mekakucity Days/Records/Reload a~~ll the time coming the way here”, but my attention was drawn too hard by Jin’s words, so I couldn’t do it...

@BrainBurnShout:

Started with an explosive crossfade.

The host was the woman in charge of KADOKAWA’s Mekakucity Talkers (she’s a beauty).

Jin entered the stage slurping the Shissou Word-themed drink like, “I’d wanted to eat the pancakes but they sold out before I got to it.”

He had his first impression of VOCALOID with “Melt”.

The origin of his conceptualization of “stories told through music” stemmed from Kinniku Shoujo Tai and The Who.

He had planned on the narrative even before Jinzou Enemy, and while gathering up the pattern usage of “a story that ~ the eyes”, the first one he came up with was the one that “locks the eyes”.

One sentence of the initial concept that remained in his PC was: “Medusa does not come out of her house.” (original text)

KagePro is a “curse from his 19-year-old self” because his period of training was long.

He struggles with the consistency of the plot, like, “This and that don’t connect!” and, “That’s my old self~”.

During the innitialization of his PC, he interpreted the “name registration” wrong and accidentally named his PC “Frederica”.

*PC falls down the stairs during moving* Jin: FREDERICAAAAAA!!!!!

He had the ending of the story decided from the beginning.

Due to this, he couldn’t introduce new characters even though he’d always wanted to.

He’s been writing the sequel while thinking that if it turns out impossible to publish, then so be it.

Host: Are you going to make them reincarnate in a parallel world? Jin: That would be a spin-off... like, “Kagerou Quest” or something.

What hides beneath Ayano’s gentleness was something he’d come up with since the initial stages. (He didn’t mention it on Twitter or the like, though.)

[In regards of a question about “becoming an adult”] Jin: Until joining (Edword) Records, I had been in the position of Big Bro, but now I’m a full-fledged Uncle.

Since he’s an adult, he has to pay taxes. He’s been somehow making ends meet with the money that everyone bought the CD with.

[In regards of a question by an Asahiner from the audience about My Funny Weekend] The cheerful verses like the one that goes, “move forward” were said by Hiyori.

The Asahiner who had been waiting all this time for a Hiyori song is overcome with emotion.

The reason why there wasn’t a Hiyori song from the start is that, “If I had included her, everyone’s worries would have been relatively...”

Jin-san: Hiyori-sama.

He has the image of the adult Mekakushi-dan.

It seems Kido will be a caretaker in an orphanage.

When he talked about that image to Sidu-san, the MV’s adult!Kido was suddenly brought up. Jin: Did you turn her into an adult already? Sidu: Should I not have done that?

Hibiya will be an archeologist, and since the Medusa is said to have her roots abroad, he might do a research on that.

Even in Jin-san’s own mind, there are many interpretations: “So and so will get married”, “No, it’ll be so and so”. “The one Shintarou will marry is Haruka!” *audience acclaims*

Jin-san will write the interpretation of the winner of his peerless inner fight.

Haruka is main heroine.

Rather than saying that the albums go from 1st and 2nd to the 3rd, it’s more like the 1st and 2nd are an omnimbus and the 3rd is a backside.

What he depicted with Imaginary Reload was the strength of Mary, who isn’t there just to be protected.

The top was reached by drawing out the 274BPM Konoha~

Remind Blue has parts of Summer Time Record that he hadn’t been able to write about.

It was supposed to be Shintarou’s song, but the lyrics turned out as something that applies to everyone. (Seto has his own Remind Blue and it might be that Kano thinks the same things.)

As a result of Jin-san’s definition of friends, which is “we think alike even without saying anything”, it ended up becoming a song about the whole Mekakushi-dan.

From Jin-san’s childhood experiences, fireworks = summer’s end (an element also used in the novels).

Therefore, the English version of “Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni” is “Fireworks in the Summer End”.

@ndfakvnico:

Shissou Word “She’s bad with words, and I’m the same as her, so I made that into a song.”

Additional Memory A song about regret. Jin-san’s grandfather passed away, and for a while upon coming to Tokyo, he hadn’t been able to see him at all. After the funeral, Jin-san found a file with cutouts of himself from magazines that his grandfather had kindly gathered up. He regretted not having been able to convey anything to him.

Lost Day Hour A song about friends. There was a time during middle school in which he found himself unable to go to school. “If you don’t go once, you become less and less able to.” Back then, he encountered wonderful music. A-kun (provisory nickname), who told him that he also liked said music, came around and the two of them formed a band together. Jin became able to attend high school. He didn’t know what a friend was until then, but he thought, “I guess he’s my friend”.

Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni A song with the image of summertime fireworks. “Tokachi District holds the second largest fireworks festival of the country. I wonder what being second place is like. Just what are they fighting on this? (laughs)” It’s like the scenery of Gin no Saji; a place with that kind of feeling to it.

Remind Blue “Summer is hot and I don’t like it, but it has its charm. I wonder if I was properly able to make that end of summer into a song.”

As always, he drank a lot of water. Actually, in addition to the four bottles that were put there, he also brought a lot of water with him.

As he talked about each song, he would play them with his accoustic guitar.

“Such an honestly pretty library. So many books. It’s my first time singing in a place like this, so I’d been wondering if I wouldn’t get chased out if someone like me suddenly showed up and started singing. (laugh)”

By the way, he was indeed wearing a jersey... lol.

He was super cool when he was singing, but during the time of exiting the stage, he made his way out unsteadily while bowing, so he gave off a feeling of ordinary Nii-chan and it was heartwarming.

He’s good at singing. (my childish reaction)

His manner of speech was extremely gentle, and though I really enjoy the excitement of live concerts and the like, that calm atmosphere and his kind way of performing and talking had me going, “Aah, this totally goes well with Jin-san. It totally goes super well with him. Play-and-talk live concerts are the best...”

There were 100 people with regular tickets, lots of others were standing behind them, the costumers of the nearby Starbucks were all looking too, and many people also stood watching in rows at the second floor’s corridors.

The venue was a Jin World.

I’d been reflecting on the meaning of him doing a library live, and I think it’s something amazing. At the end of it, a staff member asked something by requesting people to raise their hands, and turns out that there were mostly middle and high scholars attending. It felt like there were also grade scholars and college students. Is there any other rock musician who would open an event at a middle school or a public library? Well, there might be, but that’s still incredible...

We were told that we couldn’t enter the venue unless we had a regular ticket, that it was okay to enter because it was a public space, that we couldn’t get autographs, that we actually could get them even without the ticket, and, hum, get your information... together... (tiny voice)

He talked a lot more about the songs, but it’s not coming to me... aah.

In one sentence, it was awesome.

@kugamiryou

The moderator this time was the editor of Mekakucity Talkers, and her hairstyle was kind of similar to Azami-san’s.The song order of the rendition was “Shissou Word”, “Additional Memory”, “Lost Day Hour”, “My Funny Weekend” and “Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni”... but! Guess what: Jin-san said, “I wanna play them after all” and additionally performed the first part of “Imaginary Reload” and all of “Remind Blue”!! Jin-san’s hopping as he played was cute.

The general course of events was that a teaser movie soon played, then the host came on-stage and called Jin-san over, Jin-san showed up slurping a Shissou Word drink, choked while drinking it, and then performed Shissou Word. After that, it was announced that there would be a lottery and some of the prizes were Jin-san’s personal belongings.

The first corner was “Jin-san Talks About Kagerou Project”. It was a talk about why he started making KagePro. With the trigger being that the band he had in high school broke up, he decided to make stuff on his own, and he started creating a story first from the fact that “There are many depictions of ‘eyes that do ￮￮’, huh!” or something of the sort.

“Locking eyes” ➡ “Medusa” ➡ “This is it!!” ➡ “A Medusa who doesn’t want to lock eyes with anyone won’t come out of her house!” - with this trend, it seems the first thing he planned out was Kuusou Forest.

Apparently, the stories of the novel and manga progressed with him deciding their ending first, and he indeed wants to write the next novel. If he ends up unable to publish it, he’ll write it like, “whatever” and turn it into a book anyway, and he talked about writing something like “Kagerou Quest”, lol.

After he finished performing Additional Memory, he stated that he “couldn’t mention it on Twitter”, but he had wanted to say that “Ayano isn’t just a gentle girl”. From then on, we had a questions-and-answers corner.

Q.: What was the moment in which you thought, “I’ve become an adult”? A.: That’s a theme I want to write about in the next novel. I thought, “I’ve turned into an adult, huh” when I was making Lost Day Hour and suddenly felt like calling my friends. Also, when I started paying taxes.

From someone who’s been an Asahiner for 7 years: I want to know the reason why you made My Funny Weekend. A.: I’d wanted to use Hiyori, but I couldn’t until now. Hiyori is strong, so if I’d used her before, she would make everyone else’s worries dim. It feels like Hiyori made me write the parts that go, “being greedier is just fine”. I’m not the one who came up with them.

From a person who used to stan Shintarou and started stanning Ayano after Additional Memory: Please tell us the reason why you gave Ayano that moment in AddiMemo. A.: It’s the one song in MekaRelo in which someone is dying alone. Sorry for going, “I’m sorry” right after singing, “It’ll surely be an even better day!”. This is actually a story that I wished I had included in the manga.

Q.: I would like to know about the Mekakushi-dan of the early stages. A.: There are parts of the way the loops work that I haven’t written yet. There’s a possibility that, epending on the loop, the characters of the first Mekakushi-dan might show up (like the female Konoha).

Q.: I would like to know about the Mekakushi-dan of the early stages. A.: There are parts of the way the loops work that I haven’t written yet. There’s a possibility that, epending on the loop, the characters of the first Mekakushi-dan might show up (like the female Konoha).

Q.: Will you write the story of the characters turning into adults? A.: I’ve already thought out what kind of jobs each will have and who will be married to who. There are many stories in the minds of everyone, but I want to write something like, “This kind of future also exists”. For example, Kido taking over the orphanage and Hibiya becoming an archeologist to investigate the Medusa abroad. But whenever I try to make so and so get married, another side of me cuts it off like, “Wait a minute... the one who will marry Shintarou is Haruka, right?”, so whoever wins this unique armed struggle tournament inside my brain will be the one to write.

~About MekaRelo~

He had wanted to make songs regarding what he couldn’t write in the novel.

Imaginary Reload: it’s about the girl who had been waiting to be rescued in Kuusou Forest going off to fight on her own will, and doesn’t just wait to be saved. It’s 274 BPM, so it’s the fastest song?

Shissou Word: it’s based on the fear that Jin-san experienced when he was a child from continuously being asked, “Why can’t you do such a normal thing?” and from wondering, “What is ‘normal’ even?”

My Funny Weekend: it’s the song that feels the most final episode-like to him.

Additional Memory: a song that he thought he “had to write”. It’s the saddest one.

Lost Day Hour: the song that had him thinking, “I have to make this” back when he was writing volume 6.

Remind Blue: a song that made him think, “This is the last summer song”. It’s a song packed with the things he didn’t manage to write about in SumReco. It has the image of Shintarou, but there are parts about Haruka, about Seto and about Kano, so it’s kind of a song with no definite protagonist. Makes one think about not forgetting summer.

Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni: since the fireworks festival that he once watched in his hometown is his image of the end of summer, so he had wanted to make a story that ended with people watching fireworks, but he was indecisive, because “the last battle happens in the basement of a school, what do I do~” (said originally with a northern accent). He didn’t want to let summer end, but if it didn’t end, it would be weird and unpleasant.

After this talk, Jin-san was about to play My Funny Weekend, but realized that the Shissou Word drink he was having had disappeared without him noticing and was like, “Where’s my Never-Lost Word!?”. He drank water instead, sulking.

“I might make a mistake, sorry!” ➡ *makes a mistake during the hook* ➡ “There were no mistakes, right!?”

Then, we had the big lottery. Sadly, although I had a number in hands, I wasn’t able to get Medusa, the amplifier that Jin-san used when making Imaginary Reload. Sad.

And so, we had the last song, Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni. Jin-san played while saying, “I wanna do collaboration drinks again~”

Everyone frantically lined up to pay their checks and buy goods, but then Jin-san suddenly came back, said, “I wanna do this after all!” and played Imaginary Reload and Remind Blue while drenched in sweat. “Why is it that I’m sweating so much even though I’m playing while seated?”

And then it really was the end... however, people quickly queued to get autographs as if racing to board the last train. While stiffly shuddering, I also got autographs on my CDs and MekaTalk, then handed a letter to him.

I was happy to get a “Ah! It’s a folded paper crane!” reaction from him, but I was nervous for real, so I turned into the typical figure of a useless otaku. When he was signing, I told him, “I won’t be able to go to tomorrow’s autograph session, so I’m happy to be getting it now.” and he replied, “I’ll hold lots of other events after this one! So when the time comes, please! Do attend them!!”

I’ll go.

@Hiroyannn168

I arrived at the venue a bit too early, and when I was waiting for the opening, the staff people and Jin-san passed by me like it was nothing...! He was giving off a civilian-like aura. He boarded the elevator crammed with staff members as if having fun, and when the door was closing, he waved a little at us.

During Jin-san’s play-and-talk live, there was a questions corner and Jin-san discussed about the compositions. He had always wanted to try creating collaboration drinks based off the songs, so it seems he talked it over with the personnel like, “Shissou Word is this kind of song” and, “This color will do~” and, “Could you make this thing float? Is it impossible?” in order to have them made. The band BACKHORN, which Jin-san likes, had been doing these kinds of collaboration drinks, so he had wanted to try his hand at it no matter what.

There were also two types of pancakes that had the image of song compositions, RED and BLUE, and just when Jin-san thought of eating them too, he was told by someone from the staff, “There are only five left” and went, “Incredible” www... They were mad popular, so there was a lot of people eating them.

When Jin-san entered the stage, he brought with him a Shissou Word-themed glass and was drinking it like, “Yummy”.

He’d said on Twitter that he wanted to do something like explaining about the compositions of the songs, so he tweeted about it just a little, but he hadn’t been able to tweet at all after that, apparently because he had been practicing for the live and doing all sorts of things in the meantime. It seems that, since Jin-san was late to tweet about it, he decided to do it properly if he had the chance to tweet later. Is what he said. That he wanted to “explain a little about the song compositions tonight~”.

First track was Shissou Word. At the applause that rose naturally from the audience, Jin-san bashfully said, “thank you” in-between the lyrics. The motif behind Shissou Word was Jin-san’s experience with being asked, “Why can’t you do normal things?” Even though normal things are easy to do for other people, they’re difficult for him... that’s what the song says.

He looked happy when he asked a girl sitting at the far right of the first row, “What are you drinking?” It seems that this person was having the Additional Memory drink (it was red).

Second track was Additional Memory. The song goes like, “Ayano has a so-called gentle girl image, but she also bears these kinds of feelings”. I sensed that listening to the hook with Jin-san’s live voice made it resonate even more sharply in my heart. A shout of her emotions... is what it felt like, I guess?

Jin-san also said something along the lines of, “It’s great being able to expand my range of expression by not just using VOCALOIDs but singing with my own voice too~”.

It seems Jin-san spent a period in truancy during his childhood, and what gave him energy back then was music and books. At any rate, by the looks of it, that had been a truancy amongst truancies.

He’d wanted to form a band in high school, but the bassist quit, so he quickly became spineless about it. It appears that when he was like, “What do I do?”, a senpai of his recommended VOCALOID to him. He came to admire songs with high levels of story settings, similar to the ones from Kinniku Shoujo Tai, and started wanting to create something like an album that would turn into a story – that was the beginning of KagePro.

He said, “It’s interesting that there are lots of phrases about things you can do with your eyes.” Like, “Averting one’s eyes is Hikikomori-ish, concealing one’s eyes means that kind of stuff.” (“That kind of stuff”, you say!? This is just the kind of specific term I wanted~)

It seems that the plot of back then is still in his computer. “The Medusa is a shut-in”, and things like that.

Jin-san is still burdened with the curse from when he was 19 years old www

He also talked about how his computer fell from the second floor when he was moving www and about he wound up naming it Frederica www

Q&A corner. It was a corner where he received questions from people that he’d randomly point at after they raised their hands. The contents of all questions were amazing...

Someone who’d been an Asahiner for over 7 years said something along the lines of being really happy that there was a song about Hiyori-chan, and Jin-san commented that Hiyori-chan is a character with an extremely firm notion of self, so he had wanted to release it sooner but it seems he hadn’t been able to. That’s because, back when the Mekakushi-dan members were still fretting and saying stuff like “oh, my dirty”, if Hiyori-chan had been there with her “Move forward! There’s no mistake that tomorrow will be a much more wonderful day~”, she would cut them off with a single stroke.

It seems she’ll have a lot of screen time from now on. And it looks like rather than Jin-san writing the part of the lyrics that goes “being greedy is just fine”, it felt more like Hiyori-chan was “making him write it”. Hiyori-chan is awesome.

Someone asked Jin-san, “At what time do you think you became an adult?” and he answered that, in the past, he would think of himself as an Onii-chan when looking at children, but now he thinks he’s an Oji-san. That he was paying taxes, laying out a path and keeping it clean www. He said he “ended up becoming an adult when creating Lost Day Hour”; he could see his friends everyday when he was a child, but it seems there’s no such thing after growing up, and he’d find himself thinking, “I wanna give my friends a call”.

Imaginary Reload is 274BPM, and apparently that’s the most in all songs he’s made so far. Incredible. By the way, the maximum for BPM is 300.

It seems Jin-san also likes Remind Blue. Even though he had said, “I’ll make this one and then I won’t write songs about summer anymore!”, he made Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni right after that www. His 28th summer song...

Questioner: Even though I’d never budged from Shintarou until now, I ended up coming to like Ayano-chan the most after listening to Additional Memory. Jin-san: It seems a derby happened there. Is this a horse race or what www

Additional Memory is a bit of an unique song even for MekaRelo. He said, “I’m sorry... for bringing about a song that falls down with a hard thud immediately after saying that ‘tomorrow will be an even more wonderful day~’ with My Funny Weekend.” Like, “She dies all by herself...” He also said that what he was going to discuss from that point on were spoilers.

Shintarou’s snake is... The snakes exchange the abilities for lives... Then, lives are their,,,...???

He was like, “Please don’t spread this on Twitter and the like~”.

Remind Blue. This song was supposed to be Shintarou-san’s, but the figures of everyone overlapped in it, and it feels like each of them is being nostalgic in their own spot. The lyrics go, “together with the me of yesterday”, so Kano-kun and Seto-kun were also in it... is what Jin-san said. The way of talking is masculine. So it felt like it turned into everyone’s Remind Blue. Jin-san did say that, to him, friends are people who think the same.

Jin-san had Saiyuki-san draw the manga extra from MekaRelo A, and it seems it went like this: “Is it all right this way?” “It is.” “Is Kido-san okay like that?” “She’s exactly like that.” “The Kido-san that Saiyuki-san draws is really cool!” Jin-san said with great admiration.

Speaking of which, it seems that there’s already a conception of the Mekakushi-dan as adults in Jin-san’s mind and he’s decided things such as, “This person will be like that” and “Their occupation will be this”.

Kido-san will run an orphanage; taking over the will of that orphanage is very much like her. Hibiya-kun will be an archeologist. There are legends about Medusa all over the world, so he’ll be researching that.

He talked about how an adult Kido-san appeared in the MV of Shissou Word after he commissioned it to Sidu-san... something like that. It looks like he’s thinking along the lines of... “this person and this person will get married” as well. But Jin-san also said, “Shintarou’s wife will be Haruka-san (laughs)”. Apparently, these Jin-san’s are on a peerless inner fight inside him, and the Jin-san who wins will have his scenario come to life.

Haruka-san is KagePro’s main heroine www

Jin-san asked the audience, “Do you want to see the children of the Mekakushi-dan?” (I do.) “I wanna write novels,” he said. He was like, “I wanna introduce new characters!”

A parallel universe (one of those that are trendy nowadays?) called “Kagerou Quest” might happen www

Alternatively, it might be set in outer space, and it’ll be like a Martian version of the Mekakushi-dan fighting? Something along those lines? (Martian Mekaushi-dan!?!?)

There was a break of about 10 minutes. In that meantime, we lined up for the sale of goods, ate pancakes, etc...

The latter half of the live started.

My Funny Weeked. Jin-san seems to think that this one is the most last episode-like song. He said something like, “It’s my first time playing it live, so if I make any mistakes, pretend you didn’t notice~” and began playing. There was clapping from the audience seats as if to cheer on him, and he stopped playing right before the hook for an instant, but soon resumed it. After he finished singing, he asked, “See, there were no mistakes, right~?” (lol)

During the play-and-talk part, Jin-san drank water because he was out of options, since he had left the Shissou Word drink that he was having at the beginning somewhere, but he heard someone say from the seats, “The Never-Lost Word has been lost” and replied with, “You say some clever things www”.

Jin-san mentioned that he “was bad at conversing”, but I enjoyed his talk.

Big lotery. I ordered food and drinks and received an application coupon with the second item. The prizes were a set of guitar picks, a set of can badges, a volume of Mekakucity Talkers, a poster of MekaRelo (with Jin-san’s signature), a set of ticket holders and cards that came with the novels as appendix, which Jin-san claimed to have turned his house upside-down in order to bring over, and Jin-san’s own CDs (of Mekakucity~) and guitar effector (he apparently recorded Imaginary Reload with it, and its name is Medusa too). To the people who were sorted, congratulations~!

It seems Jin-san has only told about a part of KagePro until now, and he hasn’t yet talked about the extent of the loops.

When he was a child, he used to think, “I don’t want the new semester to start. It’d be good if summer didn’t end.” but an endless summer is somewhat disturbing, just like the two people living together in the last volume... of the novel.

Wasurete Shimatta Natsu no Owari ni. It seems the last chapter of KagePro closed with fireworks. That’s because, in the past, when Jin-san lived in Hokkaidou, there was a huge fireworks festival, and he thought back then, “Summer is over, huh”. He was like, “But how will I bring up fireworks when the story led up to the school’s underground, a place that has nothing to do with it!?” (lol)

ENCORE!!!

From a wing of the stage, Jin-san got his face out and peeked through (?) from within the curtains with a glance. He’s kinda cute despite being an adult man...

It seems he was being considerate towards us and saying, “It’s late into the night and there are people here who have to go home...” He then played Imaginary Reload (but just the short version of it). And in the end, he was like, “I do want to do it after all!” He sang Remind Blue.

He bid his goodbyes with waving hands~!

Jin-san, you’ve granted me really fun and good memories tonight. You’re indeed by yourself when you’re making music and writing novels... you’ve also gone through hard times. Tonight was super enjoyable, and even though it was a play-and-talk live, you up and said that you were sweating bullets www

“Please let me perform live again,” he said to us.