dvd commentary ► the story of torment itself is a very beautiful one.
or: my kyoji and satomi mixtape project, at its first stage of becoming.
You probably wouldn’t have guessed this was a derivative work for a character pairing by how rarely a graphic designer appears in an environment composed of illustrators and painters, let alone guessing this was a multimedia derivative work. And I couldn’t fault you if it were merely eye candy, or a busy visual work that perplexes perception. Because these likely impressions are secondary to my pursuit of catharsis, which is precisely what this derivative work is.
You see, I hadn’t designed a poster in a year and I was lost without this mode of creative self-expression. I had been wandering my haunts, both online and offline, with only casual modes of self-expression. I had prioritized securing a source of livelihood that was divorced from this passion of mine, and developed a merch addiction in response to my income. Everything I had wanted to explore—first through experience, and then through reflection—came in bursts that left as soon as they arrived. This, primarily an apt description for the micro-blogging activity you know me through.
When I casually express myself, I live in the moment and leave it, too. In retrospect you won’t find me in my musings with the same degree of immersion, or rather: each reflection had come with limitations that casual self-expression arranged for me. I’d gone so long with micro-blogging as a mode of casual self-expression that I therefore recurrently encountered a wanting for creative self-expression.
I missed producing a creative project and was often jaded by my unchallenged casual mode of self-expression. I grew weary of sustaining a relationship with stories that opened up the world to me by micro-blogging. I approached it earnestly each time, yes, but I discerned it was unfulfilling on its own and at the frequency with which I did it. The fact remains: I had a hunger in me that begged to be satiated and I could only find my feed in the act of creation.
Playlist curation has been a pastime of mine for the last five years, though my eleven public playlists may not be the one to shape your opinion. I make monthly logs, to monthly favorites, to mood playlists and I rarely publicize them. I regard this pastime as a byproduct of my five year old pursuit of forming my taste and knowledge in music. I gravitate to formative artists, albums, periods that I couldn’t have known within the mainstream. Through this, I developed a relationship with music that is private and personal, independent of spectatorship, whilst sporadically indulging in it, as you can see in the eleven public playlists I have thus far.
On the rare occasion that I tune into someone’s playlist for a character or a character pairing, there are tells in their curation that compel me: indicators of mainstream, the curator’s listening pipeline: a pre-extensive formation of their own tastes before it is others’. It is no feat to track the sameness in the countless playlists there is. You can tell the search feature has been put to good use, leading users to each other. I have a propensity to express myself through whatever medium I engage with art in and that’s how my playlists come to be.
Thus brings us to the story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. The playlist preview has three different layouts, depending on whether you're reading this post via web or mobile app. The link stays, so feel free to click away for the full tracklist. Maybe give it a listen as you continue your read, somewhere down the line. I published it as a multimedia work on X and Bluesky at nineteen tracks, failed to include the nineteenth track in the visual work, and to neutralize the odd number, finalized it at twenty tracks, which I plan to reflect visually during the second stage of this project.
When I create, I need just one trigger. It seizes me and I can only surrender to creation. For the starting point of a Kyoji and Satomi playlist by me, it was: Call It Fate, Call It Karma, the eleventh track off the 2013 album, Comedown Machine by The Strokes. I have immortalized this moment of possession and there is only one record of it. This goddamned post (said with so much love) from the 11th of August, 2024 when it occurred to me that the lyrics resonated with pictured sequences from Chapter 9 and Chapter 12 of Let's Go to the Family Restaurant.
I was seized by the relevance of this verse:
Can I waste all your time here on the sidewalk? Can I stand in your light just for a while? I've waited around, oh Having a hard time watchin' you (watchin' you)
Wayama Yama’s comedy seinen manga series, Let’s Go Karaoke! and its sequel, Let’s Go to the Family Restaurant. is a story of waiting and wanting between Narita Kyoji and Oka Satomi. It’s a relationship whose intimacy is identified by the transition of Satomi in totality while entwined in Kyoji’s presence. Kyoji follows Satomi in his Toyota Century all throughout Ka! and its continuity is interrupted by Kyoji getting both his car and himself busted from a collision he maneuvered, which in turn leads to Satomi being the one that follows Kyoji. Because of the motive of the collision, Kyoji cuts off the opportunity of continuity to following Satomi once more when he disappears from his life for four years, only to follow him again at an airport, the image of his Toyota Century long gone as it too changes into transit and walks, mutually pursued by both Kyoji and Satomi.
Fa. unfolds in anticipation of meeting each other beyond the events and the environment of Ka!, from boyhood to adolescence, from fixed locations to assorted locations—albeit each time with individual feelings of guilt for waiting and wanting. Kyoji is less impertinent but ever keen on meeting Satomi whose word establishes a meeting or not. “Anywhere is fine as long as it’s with you,” Wayama writes of the mutual sentiment of this pair’s behavior with each other, only for the readers to perceive.
Kyoji and Satomi are a pair whose relationship dynamic beget the questions in Call It Fate, Call It Karma:
Can I waste all your time here on the sidewalk?
Could Satomi want to confirm and distinguish what forms of intimacy he wished to pursue with Kyoji? Where did his sense of duty to Kyoji end and begin again: was it during karaoke lessons as Kyoji's teacher? Was it when Kyoji faced him again after four years with a tattoo of Satomi's name on his wrist, which for yakuza, showed its owner's identity to the world?
Can I stand in your light just for a while?
Could Kyoji bring further turbulence in Satomi's life by his mere presence despite giving Satomi more room to decide on whether they meet or not? Where did Kyoji's sense of accountability begin and end: was it when he never quite gave Satomi a choice to give him karaoke lessons? When he sought after him after four years of no contact, intervening once more in Satomi's life, with a tattoo of the boy's name on his wrist no less? Was it when he put himself within reach and spoke only when Satomi decided?
I've waited around, oh Having a hard time watchin' you (watchin' you)
Kyoji and Satomi, wrestling through varying personal and private degrees of attachment and detachment, grow as a pair. A duo. Partners. They wait on each other, with their wants. The world around them sees the two as a distinct entity, singular: that entwinement of two different lives factual, incontestable.
Ultimately I started putting together the playlist a year after the song left an impression on me, and it was the sole track I added to begin my curation on the 10th of September, 2025, with the succeeding tracks rolling in a month after, on the 16th of October, 2025. I picked up the playlist again three weeks ago from the day I wrote this, which was approximately on the 10th of May, 2026.
Each one of us has a personal canon: of music, and other art. When curating character playlists, I look to my music canon. The majority of these artists whose tracks I've collated, you will find spread out across my public playlists. I've likely initially had other playlists for them in mind and deduced their relevance to the story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. by tuning into them, while others reached me in a timely manner for the first time. I was keen on carving my own path with a derivative work for Kyoji and Satomi, thus the layout, composition and format of my graphic design project.
I'm aware of the likely impressions my work would receive which motivated me to opt for a straightforward format of presenting it: a pair of GIFs. First, the poster design, succeeded by the unabridged quote that I obtained the derivative work's title from. Second, the tracklist that completes the multimedia derivative work.
The poster design is the visual identity of the story of torment itself is a very beautiful one.
The quote is an addendum to the title of the work.
The tracklist is the indication that this multimedia derivative work is a mixtape project.
"The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one," is a phrase I took from this passage I read and annotated for safekeeping two years ago from the 1998 edition of Hélène Cixous' collection of essays, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, published by Routledge. This annotation is the very passage I echo on my graphic, for the purpose of providing a door to the inner workings of my mixtape for prospective listeners who would encounter the graphic design. Kyoji and Satomi endure a torment of their own wait and want, and this quote speaks to the development of their power dynamic across the series. It opens what the tracks tell you of Kyoji and Satomi's pursuit of each other.
I want my audience to embrace my understanding of Kyoji and Satomi's relationship through graphic design, through literature, and through songs. I want my audience to know that these characters that have lived within me since early 2024 move through an extended world I've created for me to engage with the author's world. I want this multimedia derivative work to tell you that I am utterly in love with Wayama's brainchild, and it is personal, and private, even as I share it. And I hope that if this is anything to you, it is my creative self-expression of my two year old relationship with the world that Wayama Yama created for Narita Kyoji and Oka Satomi. And it's still in its first stage of becoming, because the love is a living, breathing thing.
