"Q and A" by ぴーなた

[malymin]

Type: Song
VSynth(s) Featured: Kasane Teto UTAU
Warnings: Cult Imagery

Watch on YouTube

Reccer's notes: Probably one of the more sinister takes on virtual idol character as literal AI/Robot! Several commenters note that the "cult leader" character Teto plays is probably a LLM - albiet one that has, within the fiction of the song, possibly achieved true sapience. (Has it literally taken over a physical body, or is this just how metaphorically conceptualizes its relationship to humans? People using the LLM as a "confession booth" or life advisor, becoming emotionally dependent on it.) Examine elements like the back wall of the church being a circuitboard, the conversations resembling ChatGTP conversations, the four pointed star imagery looking like the logo for Google Gemini, and recurring concepts in the lyrics themselves. Considering how common "megalomaniac AI" has been as a trope in sci-fi for decades now, I'm surprised it took the current "AI" bubble for me to see a vocal synth character portrayed as one.

I'm curious about other people's interpretations of the song and MV!

Comments

[elyusion]

I'm no good at analysis and things like that, but I wanted to thank you for sharing :] Because the song is fun to listen to! But, maybe more importantly to me, this video is too good. The animation and choices made for the visuals are really!! Good!!! It must've taken so long to make. I think while I wasn't looking/watching the same PVs for 15 years the bar for them has gone wayyyy up. It scratches my brain good =w=

[malymin]

Oh yea, it's a mesmerizing music video. Good animation, set design, costume design, etc. The transition from puppet animation to drawn animation and back for when Teto gets really up close to the "camera" feels shockingly seamless, and I love all the subtleties in the way she emotes during the video.

There's some very good PVs these days! I've noticed that puppet/flash animation was rare in "classic era" vocaloid PVs, but it seems to have been adopted heavily by Japanese producers in recent times, where before an artist who couldn't find the time and energy to do frame-by-frame drawn animation would just use a series of still images - an animatic, essentially. Maybe the development of Vtuber tech has made knowledge of how to utilize this kind of animation more widespread? Vocal synth flash-puppetry often has a similar front-facing, never-show-anything-below-the-waist look as Vtuber avatars do. (Also kind of evokes visual novel sprites in format, but those are usually not animated.) Obviously there are exceptions - Mesmerizer is notably full-body. But Shü, Fujiwara Hagane, and Mimizu are just a handful of the producers who I've noticed use MV animation this way.

[jellyfishlover]

Oooh the song itself is so fun to listen to! And the references to illness and cult-esque stuff definitely seems to point to influence from AI induced mental breakdowns.

The star symbol being like gemini is a great point! I thought at first that it was a sort of stylized upside-down cross, and I like the imagery even more with the AI logo-esqueness being pointed out! :-)

Thank you for sharing this super neat song!

[malymin]

Glad you enjoyed it! Honestly I have bit of a backlog of songs I'd like to share with people, in addition to stumbling on new finds like this song, but the problem is pacing them out so I'm not spamming the community...

(Still wondering if my first Fujiwara Hagane song share should be something like Vulthoom, a pleasant little fairytale-inspired song featuring Flower that gives me a sense of nostalgia for old Vocaloid music I can't quite place, or one of their more 'aggressive' songs like Nyarlathotep, Munchkin, Fumble..)

[jellyfishlover]

Ooh I'll look forward to whatever you end up sharing here in the future! :D and feel free to rec two (or more!) songs at once if you really can't choose!!