The misconception of Mafuyu being selfish is just plain stupid to me, like her whole character was her being selfless which resulted in her loosing herself, she's by far one of the- if not the most selfless character in the game, heck her character development was about being more selfish and choosing for her own self which is why I'm confused as to how you can look and read her stories and say she's selfsh its just so so stupid
Now that I think more about it, we dont really know how Kanade reacted after her mother passed away and also how her father greived, afterall Kanade's flashback was either before or already many years after which honestly makes me think that Kanade has unconsiously suppressed those memories as well tho we did get a glimpes of it in wl3 (Which is not talked about enough in my opinion) honestly Kanade's life is just one big whole tragedy
I honestly would love to see a fic where Kanade turns into a child for an unknown reason but instead of Kanade turning before her mother's passing, it would be after, where the others then learned what Kanade had gone through after her mothers passing
Like isn't that a cool concept to read! Especially since we dont really have a clear image as to what Kanade felt after her mother's passing so its all up to the authors creativity and understanding and imagination and the amount of different interpritation with the same concept is just so cool to think about
I might be living under a rock these past few months but whats with the sudden "[Character Name] Diary" fics on ao3 like this might be the first time I've ever seen something like this
Like this is the amount of fics I found in just a few minutes, genuinely whats with the sudden rise of it?? (no hate to the authors tho I'm just genuinely confuse and also when did this even start? Seriously I didn't interact with anything for a few weeks and this started happening)
I might be living under a rock these past few months but whats with the sudden "[Character Name] Diary" fics on ao3 like this might be the first time I've ever seen something like this
We got more Haruka and Kanade interactions! Thats fun and also KanaEmu paralles and also we got to see a glimpes of how they grieved when they lost their grandpa/mother and its just god it made me cry a bit
Also with the song I didn't know what I was expecting but it exceed my expectations, All of their voices mix well together more than I thought and also they have such a fun dynamic!
I dont think I need to point out how all of them suffered from loss they cant control and suffered pain because of it and despite that, they accept the pain, continuing to move forward, look back on fond memories and choosing not to forget it but Im pointing it out anyways
we moved on from ikiru WAY too quickly… the perfect most fitting kanamizu cover ever. a cover where kanade says “daisuki” while singing a line that basically directly says “i want to keep living because i love you”, and you want me to be normal about this??? you want me to forget this??? ESPECIALLY BECAUSE i wouldn’t doubt with the way duets go, mizuki will probably sing the same line in the full version. and thinking how we’ve since had the endless kanamizu parallels being hammered into our heads where kanade now is in the same place mizuki once was, keeping a distance but yearning for connection. AND YOU WANT ME TO MOVE ON FROM THIS???
kanamizu being people who’ve isolated themselves and their burdens and wanted to give up on life but still keep going because they can’t help but love so dearly and they really are afraid of being alone again, even if sometimes that manifests unhealthily, even if sometimes they fall into self-loathing because of it, seeing themselves as selfish. they still love niigo and learn to love life with them.
A thought has been circling in my head for a while now
Isn't it ironic that the two distant people in niigo (Kanamizu) are two of the biggest factors as to why the group as a whole is as close as they are
Like Kanade founded the group and promises that if they ever get separated again (like in wl2) she will find them no matter what and that she makes sure that everyone in niigo is safe or has a safe place to be themselves and also her suggesting that they get to know each other better in that one side story(I could probably explain this better but Im currently running on 2hrs of sleep)
And lets be honest here if It weren't for Mizuki the group would have probably not interact that much outside of music and Mizuki activily makes plans for niigo to hang out and stuff which in turn got them much closer to eachother
I like how both of them due to their lonliness unconsiouly or consiously activily tries and have a deep friendship with them, being lonely for so long does that to you even if you dont realize it
I could go on and on about both of them but Im a few seconds away from passing out soooo yep
Hmmm I wonder why sega keeps deciding for Kanade to cover mmj songs, I mean once is fine, twice is normal but three times? 3/5 times with the other two being a niigo cover and one being mikudemy like surely this is on purpose
Is it a nod for Tomori because she was an idol once (voicing Setsuna Yuki) or smth? Prob not
Phony (April Fools '25 ver.) - an overanalysis of the Fussy Eaters
Okay so I'm very normal about April Fools 2025, but especially when it comes to the Fussy Eaters. Their gimmick—as is in-line with all of the shuffle units' gimmicks for this year—was that they're a group of villains who are seeking to forge a world with the foods they like and get rid of what they dislike.
On-paper, the group is quite silly (and they are). However, the song they were chosen to cover was "Phony" by Tsumiki, which is a song about deceit and the obfuscation of oneself. So let's talk about the MV and how the song relates back to the Fussy Eaters.
Small note: I wish I could tell you I understand these characters as much as I'd like to, but the truth is that out of every unit the only group I am fully read on is N25. I've read the main story for every unit at the bare minimum, so I'm going to be making some assumptions based off of others' observations about some of the characters here. Feel free to correct me on anything!
First, these are the character's we're going to be dealing with: Rui, Ichika, Kanade, and Empty SEKAI Rin. While I don’t have a lot to say on Rin unfortunately, I do have a decent amount of thoughts on each of the other characters present. We’ll have to understand the specific context of the song before we can get into the details about that, though.
In a 2023 interview with Billboard Japan, Tsumiki talks about “Phony” and his thought process behind its creation. He says the following:
When I wrote “Phony,” in 2021, social networks were really taking off, and everyone was masked up because of COVID. I felt like, at the time, there was a strong and growing shift toward anonymity throughout the world, both mentally and in a real-world sense. It felt like people were putting on masks. Japan’s “ronpa boom,” that fad of shooting down other people’s arguments, was another example of it. It was like people were brandishing justice as a weapon. I was recoiling from that a bit. I started writing “Phony” to put those feelings into music. […] That’s why I felt [KAFU] had a connection to the situation at the time, where everyone was wearing ‘masks,’ and to the themes of deceit and falsehood.
Now I can talk about the characters, keeping this quote in mind as we move forward.
All three members of our cast here are outcasts in some way, shape, or form; Rui’s personality and interests cause people to “other” him, Ichika’s whole situation with the Leo/need divorce that happens in middle school, and Kanade imposes isolation upon herself due to her guilt over her father’s current physical condition.
This is what’s so interesting about a key part of the MV for the April Fool’s cover: their props. Each of them, throughout certain parts of the MV, hide their faces from the viewer. These props each tie back into their character and what exactly they all choose to hide behind.
Rui’s prop is a hat. The way he holds it, for lack of a better way to describe it at the moment, feels very much like a showman. It’s directly in line with how he positions himself as the director for performances held by Wonderlands x Showtime. It can also be interpreted as him hiding behind show itself, his feelings and thoughts and ideas filtered through his artistic medium of choice. While I have not yet read Deeper And Deeper (Rui5), I’ve heard that this is actually a big theme in that particular event.
Ichika’s prop is a bouquet of flowers. In the song, she’s given multiple lines that talk about artificial flowers, likely indicating that the bouquet is comprised of the same kind. I ended up consulting my mutual lylacynth13 on the subject due to me lacking the knowledge I feel I need to understand Ichika’s character properly, and they said the following:
For starters, they give her the first line “There’s no flower in this world more beautiful than an artificial one” which I feel is somewhat significant when you take into account the fact that she canonically is very familiar with flower language. This fact only becomes relevant again when they give her the very last line “Only the artificial flowers know this secret phony”
I feel like giving Ichika, the character who understands just what flowers are saying, these lines was very purposeful and was in fact meant to highlight her connection to flowers.
Kanade’s prop is an umbrella. An umbrella is a type of tool that’s typically used to protect oneself from the weather outside, which is why I think it’s super interesting that she has one. While the song does mention rain (I’ll get to that in a moment), an umbrella would also keep her out of the sunlight as well, which would parallel how she physically shuts herself away in her room. In a place like that, the only way that the sun can reach her is through a window she never opens. Much like the song’s origin as well, she hides behind her anonymity online under the username “K,” and in earlier N25 stories she very much kept herself at an emotional distance from the rest of her unit. There's more I have to say about her, but we'll get to that later.
Interestingly enough, Rin doesn’t have a prop at all—instead, she hides behind her hands. She has nothing to hide herself behind, instead being able to reveal her true self much more freely than the other members of the group. From what I remember about her, she isn’t really one to hold back on her thoughts and feelings.
I don’t have anywhere to mention it aside from here, but I would also like to point out that the MV has a mask that appears in some sections of the video. The mask resembles the one that KAFU wears in the original song’s MV. While nobody in this version of the song actively wears the mask, the idea of covering one’s face is clearly important to the themes. The mask acts as a piece of key symbolism throughout most/all iterations of Phony for these reasons.
Throughout the MV, as each member of the Fussy Eaters sings, we get brief glimpses of the faces that they hide from the world.
Kanade sings the line “The rain of despair pelts my umbrella [and],” followed by Ichika singing “Dampens my bangs and the hidden side of my heart / Oh, it’s all so troublesome.” I find their lines being linked to each other like this very interesting considering their friendship with one another in canon. I would like to elaborate more on the specifics of that, but unfortunately I have not read enough to go into much detail there. For now, however, I would like to go further into Ichika’s character here. Quoting mutual once again:
Pre-leo/need divorce, Ichika was in fact a decently confident and reckless kid. […]
Post divorce, she loses her confidence. She hesitates, she lowers her voice, she fades into the background. She does try to reach out to Honami and Shiho again but she just doesn’t have the same headstrong nature she used to.
But she doesn’t acknowledge this. In fact, she tries to cover it up, and not just from Saki. This is technically a scene from main story, but at some point Ichika has a conversation with a classmate who points out that Ichika has a sort of “somber air” to her. In response, Ichika laughs it off and deflects, asking about the math homework in an effort to change the subject.
Knowing this, on top of how Ichika is hiding behind the artificial flowers, emphasizes that the “self” that she shows the world isn’t the truth of her heart.
Rui’s lines are intriguing, but I am particularly drawn to the line he sings that says “A ‘makeup’ and the loss of oneself.” This is immediately preceded by Rin singing a line that says “Painting lines upon the mirror’s reflection.” These two lines in conjunction could be interpreted as dressing up the “fake” self with the intent to present it to the world. The idea of makeup as something that people actively choose to wear in their day-to-day lives when going outside into the world is what’s important here. The reason why I think it’s interesting that they had Rui in particular sing this is because he’s very much notable for not making himself “presentable” in the sense of what is socially expected of him. In doing so, however, he puts himself in an incredibly precarious situation in terms of his societal standing. He finds himself rejected by his peers for being strange, people even saying outright that he’s dangerous at times.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t struggle when it comes to his internal conflicts. Consistently, Rui has shown that he believes that people shouldn’t be blamed for the way they see him. Stand-ins for himself in the shows he preforms are often outcasts, but society at large is portrayed as not being at complete fault for not accepting something that is so different from them. Mentally, he has resigned himself to this position of dehumanization (this post from friendsinsolitude puts it in better words than I can, which is why I am partially paraphrasing alongside my own thoughts; everyone say thank you to my mutual). Hence, the idea of the “loss of oneself” is akin to the loss of one’s perceived humanity. Additionally, Rui has a habit of not really being in-tune with how he feels sometimes, so that is another way the line can be interpreted. This alternate interpretation matches up well with some analysis that will come later.
I’ve been kind of neglecting talking about Kanade, which unfortunately has to do with the fact that the line I mentioned her singing is her one line in the first verse before moving on to the pre-chorus. She sings “Let’s all play a game where we count all the riddles,” which may sound peculiar at first until you connect it with why she makes music. It’s been explicitly stated in canon that Kanade makes music in an attempt to “save” other people, but no matter what she does it never feels like its enough—this is because this is an entirely guilt-driven behavior. After this goal of hers becomes tied directly to Mafuyu, Kanade then proceeds to spend a lot of time and multiple events figuring out the particulars of Mafuyu’s heart. While some parts of this may seem like it’s her making progress, she’s still trapped within her own mind and her self-imposed goal. At the end of the day, her own heart is still imprisoned by the guilt she holds on to.
Throughout the MV, we are shown the environment the characters are placed in: a structure that resembles a labyrinth. There are stairwells stacked on top of each other, and halls of seemingly endless doors and corridors. This place is, purposefully, a confusing mess and difficult to navigate. This is because the labyrinth is representative of the world. Or at least, it represents the world society has built—mazes like this one are not naturally occurring structures.
The halls are filled with mirrors and picture frames, and what little light sources that are present in the complex highlight only the characters. The ways they could go forward are bathed in darkness, only furthering the confusing nature of the labyrinth. The only view of the outside is through a small handful of windows, and on the other side of the building’s walls is nothing but the aforementioned pouring rain of despair.
Something I find interesting about Rin here before the first chrous is that, while she is the last to show her face, she’s the first to fully uncover it. I talk about it a bit later as well, but I’ll also mention it here that the role of a virtual singer in the structure of Project Sekai is to help the people in SEKAI find their true feelings. She prompts them to think about what will lead them to their truths, asking them the question when she sings “Why, oh why, do we dance in this place?”
With no better place to mention it, I will say that the choruses of the song’s MV show off the infinite and dark hallways of the labyrinth really well. Additionally, the first chorus has some really interesting line distribution choices at play. Rin sings for the majority of the chorus, so I’ll be omitting her for brevity, but I think it’s really interesting that they have Rui and Ichika sing the line “What even am I?” Later, Kanade and Rui sing “I cried, still unable to say even goodbye.” The decisions made here are pretty blatant when it comes to tying into each of their characters, the specifics of which will be elaborated on here soon.
From here, I’ll talk about the final chorus. While I would like to talk about the bridge before it, the post flows better if I do it in this order.
It's very quick in this gif, but you can see here in the final chorus they all reach towards a light, which is likely symbolic of each of their their truths.
Let's pull up the full illustration to see each of their poses, and talk about from there:
Rui almost appears to be blinded by the light; he's likely reaching toward it while also trying to cover his eyes. His truth is bright, and it's one he struggles to grapple with. He cannot face it head-on and must filter it through his work. Even then, there is no denying to himself that the desire does exist. Once you think about something, the thought stays.
Ichika actively strides towards the light, reaching for it with the most urgency out of the whole group. From what I can tell, she’s likely the most self-aware out of all members of the group when it comes to acknowledging the ways she has changed over time. Once again quoting from lylacynth13, from both the main body of text and the tags:
She’s not herself anymore, but she’s not willing to dwell on that fact. She tries to cover it up and ignore it, becoming a “phony” of the person she used to be.
#I think there’s something to be said about what this implies for the Apf2025 universe #considering there’s not necessarily a reconciliation between Leo/need here #She becomes a villain #joining in the ranks of the leader of the villain league herself #striving for a goal shared between herself and the other Fussy Eaters #And it’s still not who she truly is
Rin holds her hands behind her back, taking a more passive role. After all, she doesn't need to reach towards something she doesn't quite need. As a virtual singer—within the frame of Project Sekai and as a piece of vocaloid software—it is her responsibility to help others find their feelings and to express it with them through song. She is sure of herself and already certain of her feelings.
Kanade stands there with the light within arm's reach, but appears hesitant to take hold of it. This is where I said I'll talk more about how she hides herself. While she does hide from the world and on occasion from others, she also struggles to face the truth of her own heart directly. This is very evident in her sixth focus event, which has Luka directly calling out this behavior of hers and prompting her to think about it. Honestly, it's just a consistent theme with Kanade's character. Confronting the self for her would mean challenging what has become (at this point in the story) three years of logic she's been working with. She could take a hold of her heart, but what would that mean for her?
All of these feelings are present as well earlier in the MV during the song's bridge. All of their confidences and hesitancies are present as they face their reflections. Earlier in the song, Rin sings the line "Painting lies upon the mirror's reflection." This visual is a direct call to that imagery.
The lines they all sing during this segment of the song all express their current view on the world around them, too. Things cannot change no matter what they do, and the rain won't let up. They cannot bring themselves to say goodbye and are tangled up in their falsehoods.
When trapped by such a miserable world, stuck in a place that refuses to let them reach the truth of their hearts, what is the logical solution? Well, to break free of that framework entirely.
Their wish could never be achieved within the framework of the world, which is why they are villains. Heroes are supported by the world since they tend to be the ones maintaining status quo. Villainy is what groups like the Fussy Eaters then turn to, as their hearts can only exist in full outside of society's bindings. This, of course, makes them "evil" by default. Modern society has a bad habit of trying to destroy anything that does not fit into the boxes it tries to force everything into. They are trapped in the labyrinthine network of the world. If they were to try and fit in, it could very well kill them.
Their wish for a world with the foods they like and without the foods they dislike therefore becomes an extension of their true desire: a world of the authentic self. To be one’s true self means vulnerability, and therefore the chance of real connection. They can find it where they can, but being able to take the mask off entirely would mean absolute freedom.
"Phony," as a song, is all about those kinds of ideas and themes. The rain won't let up and the true heart stays hidden from the world, drenched in the despair of it all. A world without that rain—a world without the need to hide their hearts—is their ideal one. It’s a world where they can be free.
But for now, the truth of the heart stays locked away. Until things change, the selves they show to the world aren't filled with their true feelings.
"Only the artificial flowers know this secret phony."
