"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.