“There will be a fire when it all unfolds. We should bury the treasure along with all we know… But I couldn’t save you, I couldn’t make it to you… Trapped in endings I don’t want you to know.
So long to a bursting wave of blinding lights… But we fought the tides, we fought the tides… ‘Til the river dried, we splash velvet dye in the sky, standing still in front of the eye.
So the clock tower bell only struck nine. And we followed every end of the signs. If I heard your voice and caught you in time…
fuck my life, this is officially the 13th reason, what's gonna happen to link click's fire ops and eds...T_T. their music was so good. fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
fuck fuck fhuck there is a KEEP IN MIND version from Lu Guang's perspective?! WHAT
I didn't't know t- folks folks YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO IT OMG I AM LOSING MY MIND
CRAZY CRAZY IT'S ABSOLUTELY CRAZY
I can't breathe through the air
I will end it here
I have been lost, I have fought it back for so so long
I've been drawn to this sensation
Give in to my existence and now
Let it begin
Do you see me?
I won't let you leave
Even if I'm trapped in repeats
Curelity has overtook reality
The truth no longer works for me
Destiny, profanity
Maybe you'll dream of me
Hope locked up among secrets
Underneath my steady gaze
I'm never setting it free
Awakened every night
Surrounded by the devils
Before the shadow's taken my life
Set my mistakes a blaze
I have been so afraid
Holding you tight in my arms
Away from the harms
Though it all went wrong
I leave you the dawn
I will keep in mind
Be brave so that i can find
The path where i took all the pain
And still walked away with a true heart
I've known it all the way
See the world for yourself
Free of these broken shells
Remember every sunlight stars of the night
Honey they all shine for you in the sky
Will you keep in mind
To smile so it all rewinds
Back to when we held your hands where the sun kissed the land
If only i can
I would live it all again
We are with you till the end
The last line is in communication with 'The Eye.' Another affirmation. "Are you with me to the end of the line?"
This song can't get more direct. This is Lu Guang's ode to Cheng Xiaoshi
okay but if i heard your voice and caught you in time, are you with me til the end of the line? huh? are you with me til the end of the line?? are you??? are you??????
director rambles below cut b/c this took so many hours:
I love this song so fucking much
This was much harder than my previous two MVs, because those songs (a) had a clear narrative and (b) only required clips from about four different episodes. On the other hand, for this one I really had to think about what kind of narrative I wanted to convey, and how I could incorporate clips from every story arc. Wish my editor tracked how many hours I spent on this...
I know that flashing through the episode title cards is not very anime-OP-typical, but I thought it was a cool effect, and I'd separately been wanting to study and think about the episode titles for a while. I love how they worked Stray Birds into this whole thing.
AFAIK they didn't release a "TV size" version of the OP, so I just fade out with the full version. I actually half-assed an edit that used the "proper" ending of the full version and it surprisingly didn't sound too shabby, but in the end it felt like the energy it'd built up to was too high for use here.
Although I wasn't too impressed when it initially dropped before the show's release, I think the main trailer is actually quite good in terms of what clips they used (it's well-spread out across the whole series) and how they edited them together (visual and thematic connections). But I do think the BGM they used for it is a little weak, especially in the latter half, and I'm also not a fan of ending on the fireworks like that.
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This is hopefully self-evident if you watch this with context, but I roughly organized this as follows:
intro: darkroom, first meetings, title cards (slow)
verse 1: LG backstory, as the lyrics suit his situation. in general the song seems to be from his POV, so he gets more focus here than CXS.
verse 2: various backstories, light-hearted. focused more on visual flow than lyric matching, but it thematically relates to the "tens of thousands" of faces CXS can wear through his dives (and so this section starts off with the shot of CXS in one such dive)
pre-chorus: "a demon in my view"—something lurks in the darkness behind you... and then "to the sun" is a very specific lyric match <3
chorus: every refrain of "i don't wanna lose you, i don't wanna hold back" is matched to a shot of shiguang; the rest are all shots from their missions. semi-chronological.
post-chorus: we do the title card thing again in double-time, which perfectly allows us to get all 24. then, series of quick shots that all relate to the central case, before ending on iconic shot of our trio. let me say it is such a pain to do quick shots but it's so satisfying haha
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Among many things that I'm bummed I couldn't fit in are the festival mask shots from the final arc. I would've loved an evolving OP where for the final two episodes, instead of the obscured shot of mask man, we get the reveal shot heh
I'm glad to finally make an edit that I can show people without risking massive spoilers :D if you watched this (and read all this nonsense), thank you!
listening to “the eye” while crying bc these lyrics fit with lu guang so well and i still can’t believe we’re losing baishajaws 💔 they’re the ones who’ve been singing peak for 4 years 😔
