"Baumkuchen End Credits" by 雨良 Amala

[malymin]

Type: Song
VSynth(s) Featured: Hatsune Miku, Kasane Teto, Akita Neru

Watch on YouTube

Reccer's notes: This is an extremely post-Mesmerizer take on Neru, I think. (Yes, Neru literally wasn't in Mesmerizer, but the Anglosphere-originated meme of Neru secretly being the sinister mastermind behind the events of that song's MV very much did go viral in the Japanese side of vocal synth fandom too.) Neru is presented here as a sinister film director carefully crafting a false reality for her own amusement. The "false reality" here, however, is likely more metaphorical than literal, compared to the "yellow one behind it all" fanon that accumulated onto Mesmerizer.

I'd like to add some commentary from a youtube comment by an account named CursedWithAGift, since those get buried so easily and this comment points out interesting details in the MV. It's long, so I'm placing it under a cut.

From my understanding, given that I can only get the machine-translated lyrics at this moment, it seems like Teto was in a relationship with Miku, only for Neru to eventually tear Miku away from her. Teto’s miserable, trying to find a logical reason as to why it happened, but Miku cannot really give a proper answer besides “it is what it is” (basically). Neru, on the other hand, seems to be a very bitter person, who’s only with Miku purely to fuck with Teto and her previous relationship with Miku.

Specific things I’ve noticed:

• There’s a running theme of unreality throughout the MV. More specifically, the theatrical elements seen all throughout (e.g. the sunny and rainy backgrounds being fake—we also see a bit of each backgrounds in Neru’s studio, she also holds the clouds and the sun as props, and she controls both a Miku and a Teto marionette at one point, etc.).
• Teto and Miku’s comically gloomy/sunny backgrounds seems to imply that both Teto and Miku are too caught up in their own points of view to see what’s really going on—that their feelings are all just entertainment for Neru.
• Neru-centric backgrounds, on the other hand, are a little more three-dimensional (the desk, the chair).
• The only other three-dimensional space we’re shown besides Neru’s studio is the winter scene from the flashback (of when Miku left Teto), where the snow feels more real (instead of being cutouts).
• Neru has enough space under her umbrella for Miku, but only uses it for herself.
• Neru’s parts may be more grounded to what’s “real”, but her view of both Miku and Teto are very comical and simplified (even more than the whole MV already is); the Teto and Miku marionettes she plays with and the images of the three of them on her computer shows how the events are playing out from her perspective.
• Teto’s background gets gloomier and gloomier until it rains, and even after that. Miku’s background starts off with a slightly cloudy sky, then eventually a yellow sun comes and clears the sky. Teto’s background is mostly gray, save for the time it gets a pop of blue droplets. Miku’s background is mostly blue, save for white clouds and the yellow sun that shines over it.
• Teto’s screams are fucking gut wrenching.
• Miku’s hair ties are wings, Neru’s is a snake, and I honestly can’t figure out what Teto’s are—maybe a pair of scissors? At the end, Teto’s are broken, like it’s been ripped out.
• I don’t know what the flowers on Miku and Neru’s head (during their wedding) means, but I’m sure it means something.
• The injuries on Teto’s head are tripled when you compare the first and the last chorus.
• The title card shows both a tetomiku and a nerumiku color palette (red-blue and yellow-blue), both of which are dull.
• The colors of the background in the first chorus is composed of shades between blue and yellow, making Teto’s red palette seem like it doesn’t belong—like an intruder to their relationship.
• The color of their pupil represents who they are into at the moment, i.e. “the apple of their eye”.
• Miku’s pupil switched from red to yellow way too casually, or at least that’s how it looked from Teto’s point of view, showing just how quick she is to change from one lover to another the moment she gets bored of them.
• The way Neru’s pupil kept switching between blue and black at will seems to imply that her affection for Miku is a facade.
• Teto’s eyes are mostly closed during the last chorus, during Miku and Neru’s wedding. The first to open is her left (blank) eye. Then when she opens both, the pupil in her right eye has changed.
• Teto’s eyes eventually switch from blue to black—much like Neru’s—and it feels like Neru’s true goal wasn’t just to get Miku, it was to make Teto a bitter, miserable person like she is. It makes me think that Neru was probably someone who, in the past, was dumped like Teto was.
• Miku has a too-idealized vision of what romantic love, is so she’s quick to fall for what looks like that ideal and is quick to leave when it bores her. While Miku probably didn’t intend to hurt Teto the way Neru did, she’s still selfish in how she doesn’t seem to care much about hurting her at all. She doesn’t care to think about the consequences of her own decisions. She cannot give Teto an answer for why she left beyond “it’s just how I feel”. And in a way, she’s right—she can’t really do much to control who she falls for. But she can control her decisions and how she acts upon it, and could’ve ended the relationship with a little more care and consideration, which she didn’t. She naively believes that if she followed the “guidance of heaven” (whatever that might mean to her), then it will all turn out well in the end.
• Teto’s “in the end, everyone is self-centered” really struck me. She recognizes how hurtful Miku and Neru has been to her, but she also recognizes that what she was asking for (to have Miku back when Miku doesn’t love her anymore, and seemed to be much happier with Neru) is also self-centered.

This last part is going into a more tetoretical territory (…heh), but I feel like maybe Neru used to like Teto? At the very beginning, when Teto’s eye was shown to be blue and Miku’s was yellow, I naturally thought that Neru’s then would be red. I was kinda surprised to see that hers is also blue, so much so that I had to rewatch and really focus on their eyes. Of course, after knowing the story, it made sense. But I still feel like Neru having had feelings for Teto in the past it would make it make even more sense that she’d wanna tear Miku away from her, as a messed up way to get back on her, you know? What a messy trio.

In conclusion: toxic yuri <3

EDIT: additional notes!

Rin_I_Guess:

I'd also like to note that the song is called "Baumkuchen End Credits" I did a little research and found out that Baumkuchen is "a popular return present in Japan for wedding guests" and "the shape is connected to tree rings, which symbolizes longevity and prosperity in Japan." (from Wikipedia) So I believe Miku and Teto were supposed to live a long and prosperous life together, but then Neru ended it

CursedWithAGift:

Yeah! Some JP comment also said that a Baumkuchen Ending is a trope where the main couple/ship of a story doesn’t end up together in the end, and one of the characters instead attends the other’s wedding as a guest and eats the baumkuchen alone. Eve actually has a similar song (which I’ve already listened to before), I just somehow never made that connection myself lol

And my own observation: in the snowy flashback where Miku's pupil turns from from Teto-red to Neru-yellow, her teeth also turn from flat and human-like (like Teto) to to sharp and carnivore-like (like Neru) the same moment her pupil changes color. (She consistently has both a yellow pupil and sharp teeth every other scene in the MV, so these design elements are consistently linked.) Feels related to Teto's sense of betrayal at losing Miku to Neru, and perhaps a feeling that Neru is "corrupting" Miku.

Comments

[malymin]

Months ago I saw a video featuring the Kagamine duo and Yi Xi as the vocals, where who's singing is represented in the MV with the highlighting of cute simple character item icons. Orange for Rin! Banana for Len! RAW BLOODY STEAK for Yi Xi ^ᶙ^. If that doesn't yell "Yi Xi has a character item in the same sense as a classic Vocaloid", I don't know what does.

It really is Teto's territory now, huh? What makes you say she's the strongest character in the scene ATM? I mean, I sense it too, but...

[sewagelag00n]

I think I basically said this already, but i definitely sense a coherent character arising from songs like Regret Rock, Minimum Rage, and Birdbrain, where she is kind of a girlfail that makes bad decisions. I don’t think this is as related since they’re a smaller group, but Decoyman has some songs where Teto is truly Just Some Guy (and I REALLY like Reckless Abandon). It’s a departure from the “perfect digital/virtual idol” image that VOCALOIDs usually have, but I actually really like it.