In which I spend too many words talking about n-buna’s Snow White. (cw for discussions of suicide)
n-buna’s “Snow White” starts with a breath. I may not have noticed this if it weren’t a vocaloid song. Obviously, vocaloids don’t need to breathe—it’s an optional sound that creates the illusion of life. But that’s where n-buna chooses to start this song. A breath backed by nothing. Then the guitar comes in, but slightly muted, giving deference to the vocals. And we get our first line:
“Before swallowing the poison in that small room,
Looking over summer, I remember that day.”
“Snow White” opens with a quick breath and a suicide attempt. It creates the illusion of life, then immediately contemplates ending that life. Arguably, this alone makes it one of n-buna’s darkest songs, which may contemplate suicide, but never show the act itself. And yet, everything else about the song, from its blaring guitar to lyrical imagery, is overwhelmingly bright. From the cramped, lonely room, there is a morning “like forgetting the night.” There is a riverbank in spring, and Miku’s voice floats airily over a tangle of guitar and drums. There is a deep pain here, but also dynamic beauty. It’s a terrible thing. It’s a thing that blooms. (“Terrible” and “bloom” are homonyms in Japanese, and “Snow White” uses this wordplay liberally.)
“Brightness” is a quality shared by all n-buna songs. So many of them feature heavy subject matter. Someone has died or wants to die (“Meryuu”), and grief hits either all at once (“Transparent Elegy,” “Sayonara Wonder Noise”) or is parceled out in agonizing measure (“First Train and Kafka”). And yet a n-buna song never feels heavy. Like being hit in the face with a train, maybe, but they do not wallow. There’s always light—from sunsets, fireflies, or lanterns.
Pain, too, is a bright thing in n-buna songs. In “Transparent Elegy,” his first big hit, he utilized cutting synths and Gumi’s choked vocals to create a sound that reflect its lyrics’ unheeded cry for help. His early songs in particular used harsh instrumentals that could be difficult on the ears. But given their subject matter, shouldn’t they be? “It hurts,” Gumi’s mechanical voice shrieks, and it does. But it’s the pain of catharsis. In recent years, n-buna’s songs have taken on a more polished sound that is impressive in its own right and certainly more suited to mainstream success. But these early songs were bright like a wound, not a sunrise. As is “Snow White.”
In the first verse, the singer remembers a spring day in which they saw “someone,” Snow White, sleeping on a stone bench by the river. The poison in their heart pains them—it is like going mad. Then the chorus hits with the intensity of that memory. The verse was measured, as if the singer were carefully reconstructing the cherished details of that memory. But the chorus blooms with sound that propels the singer into the present. It’s chaos held together by the vocals, but only just. The singer implores Snow White in laughter and tears to pretend that they’ll live and for another kiss. But while simultaneously longing for Snow White, the singer wishes for the strength to forget. Because the memory is as terrible as it is beloved.
And then there is, in my opinion, the most defining part of this song—a vocalization with a fairytale-like quality. It’s a yearning refrain, somewhere between sobbing and laughter, that expresses as much without words as the chorus’s lyrics do. n-buna tunes a distinctive Miku—a little husky, and her throat full of tears—and she’s used to great effect here. I don’t think he’s made a melody like it before or since.
In the second verse, we learn that the singer has given up. They have forsaken their future and are starting to forget the past. The face of “that person” they met in spring blurs, though it’s something they should remember. In the second chorus, they bid farewell to their memories of Snow White and plan to die. At the bridge, where the singer is at their lowest and the instrumentals tangle even further, you can still pick out n-buna’s signature guitar trills in the noise. The singer writes a note and swallow poison. But then they remember that sleeping face.
They remember, and the instrumentals melt away. Here is the moment of quiet the entire song is built around. The frenzy and desperation clears sonically at the same time it clears narratively. And then, another artificial breath. The guitar and drums creep back in. “It’s terrible,” the singer declares. “It’s terrible. It’s terrible.”
It blooms.
The singer cannot banish that person’s memory, and in the final chorus, they implore Snow White for another kiss and to pretend once again. But it’s different from the first chorus. They key modulates on the words “one more time,” vitalizing the words with forward momentum instead of nostalgia. The singer acknowledges that it’s indeed terrible, yet they decide to look for that person a little longer. They cough up the poison.
“Snow White” opens with a suicide attempt and ends with survival. Still, the song’s narrative leaves many things undefined. We don’t know who Snow White is to the singer, or what happened to them. n-buna has written a few songs about missing someone implied to be dead, and that could be the case here. But ultimately, I think the narrative details matter less than the intense emotions the lyrics evoke. Whoever Snow White is, they are the center of the singer’s joy and grief. They are the person at the root of the singer’s despair, but they also provide the means for overcoming that despair.
What sticks with me is that “Snow White” ends so decisively on hope. Many of n-buna’s other songs deal in grief, but few resolve the feeling. And I’m not of the opinion that they should. Grief in n-buna songs is powerful, but often shapeless (though he would later assign it a shape in “A Hole Opened In My Chest”). It is not a feeling that can have the door shut on it after three and a half minutes. And yet, it feels fitting that “Snow White,” his song with the most tragic opening, should have a relatively happy ending. It’s not quite a fairytale ending, but survival rarely is. “Like coughing up poison,” indeed.
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
andulkaphoto
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
