THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WATCHING MILGRAM (as of the end of the 2nd trial)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
INTRO
What's Milgram? Milgram is a multimedia project whose central concept revolves around the audience judging the character's crimes. All of them stand accused of murder after being brought to the mysterious prison of Milgram, but were their actions truly wrong? Only the audience, through the medium of the amnesiac guard Es, can decide that. Vote them GUILTY or INNOCENT according to your ethics or your whims over the course of three trials , and watch how their lives change in response.
You can read a list of trigger warnings here. Who's working on it? The musical and visual components are led by the vocaloid producer Deco*27 and his employees at OTOIRO, with him working on the lyrics and composing half the songs, while the other half is handled by Rockwell. Teddyloid often works in the songs' arrangement as well. Yamanaka Takuya is in charge of all writing in the MILGRAM project, except for the novels and their manga adaptation which were done by Nami Tsumi. His works tend to revolve around trauma and people's inner darkness, and are often music-related multimedia franchises such as the Caligula Effect series, Utagoe wa Mille-Feuille and Boisterous Six. (Fun fact: the last one was prompted by the thought that if he made a collab with the Takuya Yamanaka who's part of The Oral Cigarettes, maybe people would stop confusing them. It did not work.)
For more details, check the wiki's Staff page.
How do I vote? You'll need an account for either Twitter or LINE (Japanese texting app). Then go to the JUDGE page in the official website and click on the icon of a character that's not grayed out. (If they all are, then you need to wait until the new trial starts). You'll be asked to give the site permission to use your Twitter/LINE account. The website should remember your credentials afterwards. You can vote once a day every day for as long as the poll is open. The general rhythm of the project is that a song releases, then another releases next month and the next one takes two months to come out. Since each poll lasts for three months, this means that there should always be two characters available for voting, unless there are delays or you're at the very end or start of a trial.
How does this guide work? / Usage notes Due to Tumblr's restriction on the amount of links per post, this guide will have three parts. They're organized content according to platform/format, but I also paid mind to original release date and overall importance to the plot.
I recommend watching all the first trial content before starting with the second trial. So, begin with the 1st set of voicelines, then the videos and timelines, then double back onto the second set. Everything from the Illustrations and Previews section onwards isn't part of the main game and can be ignored if desired.
I've added some supplementary notes and explanations when I thought it was relevant. Sometimes the information is part of a larger theory post, but please don't take the link as endorsement of any particular theory.
There will be links to the MILGRAM wiki, which is not spoiler-free. If you navigate to the character's main pages, you will immediately see images that spoil developments in the latest trial. This also applies to the official website's character pages. There will also be Youtube links. Since the suggestions can also contain spoilers, you can copypaste the link into Polsy to avoid them. You'll still get videos thumbnails when you pause or when the video ends, but from what I can see they're limited to the videos found on the uploader's channel.
TRANSLATIONS
Official Website
Character Profiles milgrammer (Click "profile" for each prisoner)
Voicelines First trial: milgrammer (Same as above) Second trial: Rochisama (Section: Voice lines)
A different set of translations can be found in the Milgram wiki. It is also the easiest way to access the audio, as old lines get retired from the official website and Wayback Machine is inconsistent in saving them. The quotes can be found in their own subpage, such as https://milgram.fandom.com/wiki/Momose_Amane/Quotes . Substitute character names accordingly, and keep in mind that Muu and Fuuta's names are spelled with two u's.
According to the writer's tweets, the prompts for the first trial's voicelines are: 1) Introduce yourself. 2) You're a murderer, aren't you? 3) Is there something you'd like to tell the guard (me)? 4) and 5) What do you think about Milgram?
And for the second trial: 1) To the awakened guard 2) Regarding the first trial's results 3) Regarding changes in the second trial 4) Comments on the first trial 5) What do you think about Milgram?
Loading Screen During the first trial, the loading icon for the website displayed the message "Sing your sins." When the second trial started, the icon was changed. Now it looks the same as the first one for a second, then morphs into "Doubt your punishment." You can see a gif of it here.
Youtube Channel
Teasers These are brief videos which feature the characters speaking sentences out of context. So far we've seen some, but not all of them pop up in the series itself. Some seem to take place in the past, so it's likely not all of them will show up. Note that these videos contain flashing lights, chaotic visuals and screaming. Translations can be found in comments. - First season teaser - Second season teaser
Voice Trailers These trailers have normal and glitchy lines. The normal parts are taken from the website voice lines, while the glitchy lines aren't featured anywhere else. Translations for the static-filled lines can be found in the comment section, and Rochisama also translated the second-trial lines in their website. - First season voice trailer - Second season voice trailer
PV Technically our first real intro to the series, but given the unstranslated onscreen text and the dodgy subtitles, it can be skipped. There's some concept art not shown elsewhere; A cleaned up version can be viewed here and here. The website features a lower shot of the same art shown in the last link.
Song trailers These feature short snippets of upcoming content: songs and one sentence per prisoner. You can skip this if you've already watched the songs and voice dramas in question; the only difference is that sometimes the translation is slightly different. - First trial - Second trial
Main Songs, Jackalope Videos and Voice Dramas In-universe, the voice dramas take place before the songs. However, up until midway through the second trial the songs were uploaded first and the albums (containing the dramas) would be released 1-2 weeks later, so it seems the intended viewing order is the other way around. The tracklist order also supports this, so I'll be using the song->voice drama order. ES and Undercover are special cases. Undercover doesn't seem to exist in-universe, with the timeline for this one being A Milgram Anybody Can Understand->ES->Website voicelines. For the sake of consistency, I still used the song->VD ordering, with A Milgram being placed afterwards due to being released later.
Lastly, some of the official English titles are different from the Japanese ones. I wrote down both the official translation, marked (EN), and a translation from Japanese marked (JP)
First trial Official song playlist
Undercover (Instrumental) Notes: Milgram's theme song and its first release. The official subtitles were changed during the second trial to reference the song titles, at the cost of being less accurate to the original Japanese: you can see the original lyrics here. The lamp that shows up at 2:11 says 御霊燈, "spirit lantern." This kind of lantern is placed at the house of the deceased for 49 days after death. It serves to both announce that the family is in mourning and a guide for the spirit of the deceased; fire being a way for ghosts to find their way from and to the afterlife is a common motif in Japanese folklore. The kanji above the scratched-out text reads "deceased." Text on the sticky notes on Mikoto's screen. ES (Text)
A Milgram Anybody Can Understand
Weakness (EN) / The Weak are Meat, Eat your Fellows (JP) (Instrumental) Notes: A theory post analysing the title and word choices used. Writhing of the Weak (Text)
Umbilical (Instrumental) Relative Zero (Text)
Bring It On (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation. Cultural context on lyrics. Braze you!! (Text)
After Pain (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation. Crying B (Text)
Throw Down (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation Moloch (Text)
This Is How to Be in Love With You (EN) / It's Love! (JP) (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation Love is Mine (Text)
half (Instrumental) Gouging In The Night (EN) / Night of Exposure (JP) (Text)
magic (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation. (Some corrections: "Happily supporting" is more like "Happiness-supporting" and "Weird Monk" would be "Mysterious Monk.") Apostle and Death (EN) / Apostle and Death and (JP) (Text) Notes: The odd extra "and" in the Japanese title is to make the title sound more repetitive. It's pronounced Shito to Shi to.
MeMe (Instrumental) Notes: The yellow sign at 1:28 reads "WARNING. This is private property! It's not a public dumpster! Don't just throw your trash wherever you like. Anyone caught fly-tipping will be reported immediately. WARNING." The tarot cards (probably) say "MIKOTO TAROT CARD" at the bottom. John Doe (Text) Notes: "Remember your murder" should be "I'll remember that, you murderer!"
Harrow (Instrumental) Notes: Summarized onscreen text translation (highlighted comment). Alternate full translation. TASK (Text) Notes: "Heh, I should be the one thanking you" / "Heh, you’ve gotten the order of expressing gratitude wrong." should be "That's not the kind of face you should be making when thanking somebody"
First trial closing video