Kagerou Days Update

Takane meets the snake with "Eye
Opening" power

Konnichiwa~

I haven’t posted in forever! I mean, it’s already 2014!!! I literally haven’t posted since last year.

For my first post of the year, I’m going to a Kagerou Day’s update. Since I stopped posting, chapters 17-19 came out and they were amazing! I freaked out reading each and ever chapter!

Let’s start with chapter 17

The Ene’s mysterious past is completely revealed, and now its certain that she and Haruka have been experimented on. Kenijrou-sensei has betrayed both of them, he’s been planning on using them for experimentation for the past year, possibly longer since he states that preparation took a year, he never mentioned how long he spent planning it.

From my understanding, their experiment on Takane seems to have failed and she’s lost her body because of it. That’s just my theory, I could be wrong. Nonethelesss, the experiment on Haruka was a complete success and they now have a “key” and can open the next Heat Haze. What does this mean exactly? I’ll go over it in chapter 18.

Ene is born

Anyway, in this chapter we see Ene enter the Heat Haze, for the first time we see a character’s experience when obtaining their eye ability, and it was amazing. Entering the Heat Haze had always been a rather obscure idea. I loved the art for this scene, it was intense and beautiful, made even better by the simple line “Open your eyes”. You have the power, its there in front of you, you just have to open your eyes and accept it. Plus there's the fact that her snake is possessed by the "Eye Opening" power, referring to Takane's desire

for knowledge, to escape the shadow. Anyway, after accepting her new power, Takane recreated herself as Ene, and she began her virtual journey for knowledge, for a home. I love how after she opens her eyes, she says her eye burns. Knowledge is often symbolized as light, but when you've been in the ignorance of darkness, the light can burn. Beautifully written Jin! A great allusion to the Allegory of the Cave

Her flashback ends at the end of the chapter and we see the Mekakushi Dan heading to the base after their fun day at the amusement park. She doesn’t have all the answers, but she’s rather content.

Then we see Kuroha.

                                                                                                                                   

Now chapter 18 (oh my god, even thinking about it makes me freak out)

Kuroha is one the most frightening
 characters I've ever met.

Kuroha’s sudden appearance at the end of chapter 17 gave me a heart attack. I’ve only seen him in Outer Kano as “the ‘Deceiver’ from that time”, and tells him he’s gotten better at using it, ‘it’ being his eye ability of course. I might write too much about Kano, but my heart broke when he pointed the gun at him and said “Those wounds you hate so much are going to increase again” because I really think it’s a reference to the bruises Kano’s mother’s abuse created when he was a child, the bruises he desperately wanted to hide. The next scene: Kido screaming and rushing to his side, Seto charging bravely towards Kuroha, Momo blocking Mary, and Shintarou protecting Momo. The Mekukashi Dan takes care of each other, they are a family, even if Momo and Shintarou have only been there for a day, they share a bond. But, like Outer Science, their defenses are futile; he kills Seto, Kido, and metaphorically kills Ene. I know she wasn’t really dying, since the phone isn’t her body, but her crying as he crushed the phone was tragic.

Science (plus a few brief appearances in the other MVs), and all he did was murder my precious Mekukashi Dan members and mentally torture poor Mary. Anyway, he refers to

Before he can continue killing, Mary resets time.

What does this mean?

Well going back to Konoha being the key, I’ve come to a new understanding of Mary’s special powers. Mary has the ability to combine the snakes, which I believe will be key to the resolution of this series, but from my understanding of “Mary’s Fictional World”, the song and the bonus chapter, Mary has the ability to reset everything. Konoha is the key to the current timeline, but once he arrives he’ll become Kuroha and kill the Mekakushi Dan, forcing Mary to reset everything once again. This leads to alternative timelines and time loops that trap others.

Outer Science supports this with the scene of Kuroha suddenly appearing on the roadside, pushing Hibiya in front the truck.
I think it’s very likely that Seto and Kano are aware of the other timelines; Kano since he seems to be on top of everything and Seto probably has an idea of it because he’s so close to Mary and very aware of her.

I feel like Mary isn’t fully aware of what’s going on, I feel she resets time like an instinct to seeing her friends hurt.

Anyway, back to the chapter, we see time is reset, entering Shintarou’s nightmare full of regrets about Ayano’s death, very similar to the dark Shintarou in Lost Time Memory. Then he wakes up and we see chapter 1 again. It deviates from it though when Momo enters the room.

An alternate time line from my understanding.

Indifferent Hibaya
and fangirling Hiyori
appear.

Chapter 19

Hibaya and Hiyori enter the story and we see the 5 of them enjoy a shopping trip, well mainly Hiyori and Momo who quickly become friends. We get to see Hibaya be adorably shy about his feelings for Hiyori too~

A pretty pleasant chapter until the ending, when we see Hiyori asking for help as a truck comes towards her.

We’ll have to wait for the next chapter to see where this continues. I wonder if we’ll continue in this timeline or if we’ll move to a completely different one. It’s hard to say where this story will go. After all, for 18 chapters we thought we were in the main timeline, and then Kuroha appeared.

Which I have to say is genius. Jin made us comfortable, stable. Then suddenly Kuroha appears and everything shatters, it’s exactly how Mary feels; happy and content, surrounded by her precious friends, then she’s watching Kano, Seto, and Kido be murdered.

Genius, Jin knows the art of story telling.

Speaking of Jin, he’s a little liar!

Moving onto a completely different note, after Outer Science came out, he said he wouldn’t be making anymore videos, then Summertime Record (which I’ll review in a different post soon) came out. He announced once again there would be no more videos, stating a Shounen Brave MV would have too many spoilers and that they needed to focus on the anime (Mekaku City Actors), and I was heartbroken because I love the song Shounen Brave, its so sad and cute, its fits Seto perfectly.

But then on December 9^th, he announced it would be included in Mekakcuity V’s. On Christmas Day, a screening of the PV took place in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka.

And now, we have a Shounen Brave MV!!!!

I was happy when I saw it, I was freaking out and texting Ms. Lee Min Ho.

I love how older Seto was watching his younger self, remembering his painful past and how he met Mary.

Anyway, here is the PV, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. That’s all for now, bye-bye

 ~Nadeshiko-chan

Kagerou Days: Takane and Haruka ~ Ene and Konoha

Konnichiwa~

Sorry I didn't post on Thursday, I've been pretty busy with school and well to be honest on Thursday I did have time but I got distracted by some adorable Kagerou Day doujinshi. Hehe I guess that's a kind of a lame excuse. But its really hard to find non-perverted simply cute doujinshi for free and in English. 

Anyway, here's the Takane "Ene" and Haruka "Konoha" post I mentioned before. Lets begin:

The first song was part of the Kagerou Projects last album and has only been recently been made into a mv. Jin describes it as a  ' sort of a love song" but thinks its more of a story "recalling a past tragedy". You'll get what that means after watching it. The song takes place when Ene was still the human Takane and Konoha was still the human Haruka. They were both plagued by a disease that left them in a special class for handicapped students. It was a class with just 2 students and they spent a lot of their time together. Takane was someone who was easily irritated and bored, she liked playing video games(especially gory ones), listening to music, and didn't really care about romances. That's why it was so hard for her to accept the fact that she was falling for the cheerful and friendly idiot sitting next to her. She's a complete tsundere and just wants to "glare at the sun" she's found. But in the end, she knows she loves him, she knows he makes her happy. Its a sweet and cute song about her feelings for him, there are also cute chibis of Konoha and black Ene, which were originally the game characters Haruka designed. (When Takane saw black En she asked him to change the colors to look less like her, thus we got our blue Ene). At the end of it, we see pictures of Shintarou, Ayano, Haruka, and Takane hanging out, they were fairly good friends before Ayano passed away and Shintarou became a shut-in. 

Anyway, as cute as this song is, it made me really sad. Mainly because of the scene of Takane running, saying she wants to see him, that she wants to tell him not matter what how she feels. Haruka and Takane both die, Haruka from a spasm and Takane from poisoning. That's what I've read at least. But there are other theories, one that seems to be supported by two other songs here. Either way, it really is a tragedy; she loved him, she really loved him, but she never got to tell him how she felt, she never got to be with him. Even though she got to see him again when he became Konoha and recognize him, he he doesn't remember her. 

Next video is Headphone Actor. I believe this was Ene's first appearance, because of this before her name was revealed she was called "Actor" by many of the earlier Kagerou Day fans. This song supports the theory that Kenjirou (Ayano's father, adoptive father to Kano, Kido, and Seto, teacher of Haruka and En's special class, and Momo's current teacher) was involved in an experiment. Him and other researchers want to understand the Heat-Haze. It would explain why he specifically adopted Seto, Kido, and Kano. He used Haruka and Takane as experiments, killing them and having them enter the Heat-Haze. If this theory is true, then my guess is that since both Ene and Konoha were given new bodies, they weren't able to study them. Headphone Actor begins with Takane being bored on an average day. Suddenly, the president in tears announces on the radio that "the world is ending today". Scared and trembling, she puts her headphones on to calm herself. In the middle of her song, a voice asks her if she wants to survive and if she does, she needs to cross a hill. Takane believes that the voice is hers, but she doesn't really question, she just listens to it and begins running. In the chaos of the town, she runs and runs until she reaches the top of the hill. There she finds out that her home, her town had just been one big experiment faculty. She watches in horror as a scientist callously throws a bomb and kills everyone below because they weren't needed anymore. The voice tells her "Sorry" and we see an outline of Ene.

So was Ene trying to save her past self from dying? Possibly, Ene has the ability to travel to technology, for some reason it makes sense to me that Ene could travel to the past and take over her human's self mp3 player. If she did do so, that would mean that the Takane she saved belongs to some parallel universe. The only problem with this theory is that Kano, Kido, Seto, Momo, and Shintarou lived in the same town as Takane, and they're all still alive.

But Takane and Haruka being part of some experiment is still a solid theory. After all, she was poisoned! You usually don't get poisoned by random people, you get poisoned by the people close to you.

The next song is Jinzou Enemy, the very first song of the series! Takane passed away, she's entered the Heat Haze, was possessed by the snake with the "Eye-Opening" ability, and thus gained her virtual and immortal body. She entered Shintarou's computer. As I said earlier and as shown in the video, Shintarou, Takane, Haruka, and Ayano were friends before the later three died. Ene understands the pain of losing the one you love, she lost Haruka after all. In this video you see both Shintarou remembering Ayano and En remembering Haruka. But, unlike Shintarou, Ene wants to move forward. It hurts, but she's ready to stand back up again and help him. As she says throughout the song, living your life stuck in that depression and in that agony isn't a good plan. Now, in Lost Time Memory we saw two Shintarous, the red one that moved forward (the one that we see in the manga) and then the one that didn't. In this video we mainly see the one that didn't, the one that "killed" Ene. Here he tells her she's just a bother, a boring toy that can only talk. But at the very end, we see our Shintarou wearing his red jacket, ready to venture the world with Ene beside him. Ene loves pulling pranks on Shintarou and teasing him, but I think this video shows that she really does care about him, that she entered his computer to help him move forward, maybe even to help herself move forward. I really do like their friendship, and its thanks to Ene that Shintarou was able to grow. 

I've mainly talked about Ene so far, but this one's all about Konoha! I contemplated putting this song in my Hibaya post since its basically about Konoha witnessing the accident that killed Hiyori and Hibaya and him trying to save them. But I decided against because even though its about that event, it says more about him than it does Hibaya. Now Haruka died due to a stroke, he entered the Heat-Haze, was possessed by the snake of the "Awakening Eyes", which gave him the ability to remake his body into one that he considers to be his "ideal". Thus he became the cyber-being Konoha, the game character he'd made when he was human. But since it puts a huge strain on his mind, he's lost most of his memory, which is why he doesn't recognize Ene. He began living with Hiyori's sister's house a foster child, spending a lot of his spare time playing baseball with the neighborhood kids. He met Hiyori and Hibaya there and see's them as younger siblings. So this song is about him desperately trying to save the people he loves and sees as his little sister and little brother, but never making it in time. We also see more evidence that Haruka and Takane were experimented since we see Konoha in some sort of lab. Konoha hasn't come out in the manga yet, i can't wait to see his interactions with the rest of the Mekakushi Dan! 

After Konoha's story, we see something else about the Kagerou Day characters. I freaked out when I first saw, well really whenever I see it. 

There's another song dealing with Konoha, well  all the Mekakushi Dan members really. A character named Kuroha, the dark version of Konoha that was created when he was becoming is ideal self. How? To be honest I don't know. All I know is that he's the villian of this story and he plans on using poor little Mary. His song Outer Science is going to the be the next song made into a mv, I'll review it more in detail when comes out, but check it. Bye-Bye

~Nadeshiko-chan