>>20773664Can do. Part of me wants to wait until Mori gets a chance to kill half my rrats in a few hours, but maybe getting to grudepost that half for all eternity is part of the appeal?
I mostly just want people to give the album a chance, and take its complexity and opacity as part of what makes it so goddamn beautiful.
>>20772760Fuck it, here's one more rrat with zero proof:
Mori knew from the moment she decided on this UnAlive being a reply to End of a Life that it was going to need to wrap it all up with an Elliot Hsu piece, but one that replaces the childlike nostalgia of Ibasho (the story of a journey she finished a long time ago) for a more mature, more beautiful track (the story of a journey she just started, one that probably can't ever be finished).
Because a fantasy song was the only way she could ever properly follow up on the blunt force trauma that was End of a Life. Resurrection, reincarnation, idols, hope, and love, are the stuff of fantasy. If you're a richbeat, think back to what she said about magic. Think about the time she mentioned a song from back in za day that used the waltz-style "compoud meter" which, in short, divides every bar by 3 instead of 4. Whatever it is that she was referring to then, every single track released as Mori Calliope has forgone this tricky rhythmic style to instead divide everything by 4, the "simple meter" which is even more compulsory for rappers than it is for reapers...except for Ouroboros. While completely absent from Suisei's discography, and most other Holos as well, you do see (half of) A New Start and with Daydream, using the relatively-rare compound meter, and then make up a whole bunch of bullshit about how those songs relate to this one, but even I'm not enough of a schizo to take that very far.
>In ages forgotten, a Reaper was born>Spinning tales of deadly belief>A yearning to traverse that forest of thorns>In remembrance of what lie beneathHere we return to the question of whether or not the light Mori offers us is a predatory plot for profit, a saintly swearing that she'll save us, or some fucked up mix of the two. Then a callback to the image of "thorns" in Red as a metaphor for the pain that comes from challenging one's own mortality, the "hemmorhaging" that comes from being enough of a menhera to try to become a living fantasy and live forever - perhaps in honor of the days that she herself descended into the underworld to follow the legacy left by legends who came before.
>The dangers abounding, the horrors untold>Cloud my vision, ’till I cannot see>Peculiar enchantments begin to unfold>And the Underworld calls back to meHey look it's a TL;DR of everything she's been grappling with all album. It's magical, it's miserable, it's bringing her back to where she started even though she can't stay dead.
>As the light grows dimmer and fades…>Cross that river now>Make our way beyond the gatesCombining the Sanzu River with St. Peter's Gates in yet another two-sided symbol of her being our sweet little psychopomp, here to bring us the most delightful death she can.
...but both those symbols, contradictory as their lore may be, point to the same thing as the ending of Everhood:
Death is not an ending, but a beginning.
She then reframes the "End of a Life" (literal death, Callification, loss of innocence, reincarnating as a VTuber, or whatever the fuck else) not as an indefinite confinement to death, but rather a freedom from the constraints of one's old life.
>Release from our confinement>Together, we’ll find it>The trail is fraught with perils>And yet, we don’t mind it>But looking towards horizons reminding me of then>Can’t repent>Though I’ve hardly been spentShe hasn't lost her admission that she can't turn back time that we heard in Red/EOaL, nor her belief in the inexhaustible spark she and her deadbeats share in the climax of SUA, and OWTH for that matter. They're two sides of the same coin. Yes, the old ways are gone, but with that comes the hope for something we'll be even happier with.
>A journey downward toward somewhere new, yet familiar>I’m learning how to stand>For the smile I swear to defendThat doesn't make the same issues you struggled with back then necessarily disappear, nor does it mean she's grown up all the way, but the biggest change is the same one she revealed in Scuffed Up Age - she's not fighting for her own smile as a solitary stranger, but as a collective community who can teach itself to smile together.
>Till the end>As we further descend, then>Shall we go?>To be swallowed fates belowAnd yet here we are, timelooping into the exact same shit about the inevitability of fate and whether or not it's a good idea to confront that shit in the first place.
...Which, as we'll see in Part 2, includes timelooping back to re-confronting Mori herself. Fighting her in UA wasn't enough, Falling in love with her in RP wasn't enough, we have to confront her one last time to finish this album.
