#zuttomayo

[ruumuf]

Zutoctober Week 1!

[torasunex]

New icon 💕

[saiko-is-my-salvation]

A doodle of Nira-chan from ZUTOMAYO'S "Study Me" MV :D

[ruumuf]

Chameleon Nira ily

[polandspringz]

I guess the thing I'm taking away from these two MV incidents (Mafumafu and Zuttomayo) is that even though the utaite community has been growing a lot in recent years and these artists are getting more attention they're still operating at a weird "indie pseudo professional" status? And as such there is an unknown when it comes to how much goes on behind the scenes with the production of the music videos alongside the music. We don't know how or why an artist gets selected for the projects, which is where my interest lies because I grew up with Kagerou Project- where Sidu was the artist on all the MVs until Wannyanpuu made her fanmade MV for Kagerou Days and got asked to join the project. Then Jin worked with Sayuki on a different project and that work carried over into the more recent Reboot MV.

Nowadays we don't really see a slow integration like that. There are so many more animators getting jobs for different music video projects today, which is great for the animators. But the selection process is done largely through Twitter, and we sort of are left to speculate why an artist chose one animator over others. I speculated that the reason Porter Robinson worked with Waboku for "Musician" was because Waboku by that point had been established online for a few years then with Eve and Zuttomayo's works, but I have no idea if Porter Robinson specifically listened to or saw either of those animator's works or if someone who helped manage Porter helped select the animator. Wooma worked on Niru Kajitsu and Hiiragi Kirai and then did Ado's MV. All of these animators are selected likely because of their previous works/portfolio, which is a much more professional way of hiring them. But they're often hired through Twitter or other social media (which although many animation studios have been doing the same during crunch times) is a more unprofessional way of commissioning for this type of work. Although many of these utaites do use the same animators frequently and end up with that animator’s art associated with their own work (like Eve being more associated with Waboku and Mah’s art styles), they still go through many more animators for each music video than was common in the 2010s. (Despite Sidu’s work for Jin, she has always been tied to Neru’s work more so. Compared to Eve who has had a production by Wit Studio, songs sponsored by chocolate companies, small animation studios like Trif, and so forth). 

My question is mainly can we know how much communication goes on behind the scenes? Animators might get commissioned based of their previous works, but how professional are they actually operating at? Does the artist who works with them expect a certain professionalism even if selecting a smaller animator, do they demand more because they expect that professionalism? With cases like Mafumafu, is there a management team that helps select or suggest animators to the artist? (At this point you can’t convince me Mafumafu doesn’t have some kind of management. He had a Tokyo Dome performance). While I don’t doubt some artists still do have friendships or a closer collaboration experience with their animators, I always think about why are artists switching animators so much. What’s prompting the decision to choose smaller artists, rather than consistently sticking with one or two like in the past? With how many new animators I see on MVs, it honestly feels like sometimes they are scouring Twitter looking to extend a hand to someone underrated, which again isn’t bad! It just makes me wonder what is the decision making that led to this sort of massive change in the utaite community.

[miistars]

wanted a gif from one of the new zutomayo mvs

[hoiyanshing]

ZUTOMAYO · CHARACTER