Why I'm crying over a virtual shark facing a door

02 May, 2025

(the title of the present post references this old Vocaloid-themed cohost post which left a strong impression on me)

I have been near the Virtual YouTuber (in what follows, VTuber) rabbit hole for a few years now, but I did not exactly expect to fall into it with the announcement of the retirement of its most prominent icon, Gawr Gura.

If you've never heard of VTubing, I suppose this deserves a few paragraphs of context. Actually, I suppose these paragraphs are deserved even if you do know about VTubing, just to put things into perspective.
(Actually, this helps me too: I still feel new to the VTubing scene, and though I was really invested and wanted to work hard to put all that follows together, I remain a casual watcher with overall sparse knowledge of the topic; and there are definitely more informed people out there as insiders of VTubing communities. Don't hesitate to point it out if I say something wrong.)

(Please don't run away, I know this post is long, but I tried to put sections so that you can pick and choose what you want in it. Also the last section is me becoming entirely unhinged and making a full-on music video analysis. Don't mind it too much; I just needed to get it out there. If you find the time to do so, please do watch the crux of what my post is getting at, though: Gura's final music video Ash Again.
But anyway. Let me tell this with more context.)

Some broad context on VTubers

A VTuber is, broadly speaking, a person posting videos on YouTube (or more generally video-based social media¹) using a virtual avatar as a stand-in for their real-life appearance. This often, but not always², includes live streaming - for instance of video games, but also a variety of other activities, like singing or Q&A sessions among many others. It is notably associated with 3D avatars and real-time motion capture technology to recreate to some extent body language and facial expressions, with augmented/virtual reality elements - though there are 2D VTuber avatars too.

VTubing as a whole is this blend of elements borrowed from Japan's idol culture, notably through things like concerts and the idea of creating a persona with a specific aesthetic; and general streaming practices but enjoying the anonymity³ that a virtual avatar can provide. If this anonymity doesn't exactly reduce the parasocial attachment an audience can develop toward someone they don't actually know, or the risk of online harrassment, it still helps protecting the person behind the screen to some extent.
I've also seen, notably on late social media cohost, VTubing used as a way for trans people or otherkin to present themselves with an appearance closer to what they desire⁴. If anything, this is clearly the one thing that'd attract me to the idea of becoming a VTuber, too.

Historically speaking, the first breakout of VTubing as a trend is dated around 2016 with Japanese VTuber Kizuna AI, though proto-instances of it can be found as early as the early 2010s. English-speaking countries witnessed this phenomenon more significantly when VTubing agency Hololive, which initially had only a Japanese branch starting in 2018, debuted an English-speaking branch in September 2020. Hololive as a whole quickly became a juggernaut of the VTubing sphere, and VTubing itself saw a particular rise in popularity with the COVID quarantine.

More thoughts on VTubing

In the years that followed Hololive EN's debut (more on that below), I would slowly obtain a vague understanding of all this and of the concept of VTubing... mostly through sheer osmosis and YouTube recommendations, I think. It isn't exactly a stretch, to be honest: I had a Vocaloid interest revival around 2021; and this led me to the adjacent utaite scene, singers who sing covers of Japanese songs⁵ and notably Vocaloid ones, as there is a meaningful intersection of the two communities at play here. From this, I started getting covers made by VTubers⁶, and to get a surface knowledge of some of them. There is once again an intersection with the utaite world here, because a sizeable amount of utaite use avatars to maintain anonymity, and because of the idol culture roots of VTubing often leading to covers of Japanese songs. Overall, these are clearly distinct communities, but their edges are blurred and they sometimes blend into each other - and I sure experienced that.

With this, of course, I also fell down the yuri rabbit hole starting 2021, which also meant seeing VTuber yuri cross my feed from time to time.

I would not engage that much with this neighbor rabbit hole, though. This still meant occasionally watching short clips extracted from bigger streams, or a few songs, and slowly piecing together who were some of the characters of this whole ecosystem; but entire, hours-long streams always felt like too much for my brain.

I also always felt a bit conflicted about the core idea, for the most popular and notably corporation-affiliated VTubers, of marketing a persona of yourself to a point that would sometimes turn you into a brand. There is a mechanism of fame at play here, and the creation of a fanbase devoted to a person, and... I don't know. It's a will for recognition I definitely understand and am weak to; and at the same time the culture of a fandom built directly around a person always feels slightly scary to me (not that VTubing is the only thing that creates that, mind you). I can't help but think that it probably weights the person behind the screen down with the expectations of an entire community - the expectations of entertaining an audience through who you are, or who you try to be - and an unhealthy amount of scrutiny.

Once again, for corporation-affiliated VTubers, there is also often this idea of staying within the bounds of a persona that is somehow deemed "acceptable" and pleasing to a large audience - and susceptible of gathering such an audience in the first place. This is heavily linked to why most popular VTubers are girls, borrowing to some extent from a general cute anime girl aesthetic - though the topic is very nuanced and VTubers have much more leeway, notably to be weird and unhinged, than most of the idol culture the concept originates from. Heck, they are often weird and unhinged; it's also what makes them compelling, and what regularly drew me to them, even only to a surface-level understanding!

But still: being corporation-affiliated may mean being told not to comment certain events, them being political or corporation-related, or to talk directly about your mental health. It may more generally mean a pressure to always stay in-character to some degree.
More generally, fame as a VTuber also means dealing with a sometimes extremely uplifting and wholesome, and sometimes hardcore fanbase that could defend you tooth and nails just as much as it could tear you down⁷.

Introducing Myth and Gura

So, as I said before, in the context of the COVID quarantine in late 2020, Hololive's debuting English-speaking VTubers were brutally catapulted into fame. Hololive has had the custom of naming its generations of VTubers; this group of five was named "Myth", and consisted of, with the Japanese naming convention of putting the family name first, Mori Calliope, Takanashi Kiara, Ninomae Ina'nis, Watson Amelia, and Gawr Gura.

All of them would occasionally grace my YouTube recommendation, and some from later generations too, from time to time. Still, a big amount of videos would involve Gura in particular. She caught the public eye the most, and inevitably mine too - I suppose this is in part due to her fun shark persona aesthetic and unhinged smol gremlin energy. Still, I'm always floored by seeing how absurd her rise to fame was: she reached 1 million YouTube subscribers less than two months after her first stream, and around ten months in she became the most subscribed to VTuber ever, surpassing the "original VTuber" Kizuna AI - and reaching around 3 million subscribers then.

Slowly, Gura herself would become nothing less than the public face of VTubing as a concept. As a consequence, she notably became involved in various more or less absurd partnerships, including with the food chain Taco Bell, the baseball team of the Dodgers, or the city of Tokyo.

Somehow, I kept being vaguely aware of all this, through sparse watching. I sometimes wondered how this sudden popularity surge must have felt, to her and her genmates; and it was surreal to have a honest answer about all that in the past two weeks.

Graduation announcements

What I had less been aware of, as I remained overall an outsider to the VTubing scene, was Gura's decreasing appearances in the last few years. I wasn't aware either of the recent departure, called "graduation", of other Hololive EN members⁸: Myth member Watson Amelia's⁹ in September 2024, and Ceres Fauna's in January 2025.

Announced barely a few weeks before Gura's own graduation announcement was also Hololive EN member Nanashi Mumei's. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but it felt... definitely strange to bask into the feeling of something ending as these two made their final streams - including a collab - during the last two weeks, and both retired within a 3-day interval.
Mumei's announcement has something quietly heartbreaking already, as she mentions how all this "weighed very heavily on [her] for a very long time" and her "frustration and anxiety" that led to her leaving due to both disagreement with management and deteriorating vocal health. Her words about how she was taken aback and hit by the sheer scale that Hololive and VTubing took are heavy and intense and surprisingly upfront, too.

Still, I didn't know all this when I was hit with Gura's graduation announcement.

Gura's graduation announcement

I was immediately shocked just to see the news, in the form of YouTube suggesting me derivative videos of VTubers reacting to that announcement. Even with my vague VTubing knowledge, I knew this was a Big Deal - the most popular VTuber ever, leaving. A shark who had been irregularly adorning some corners of my Internet and of whom I knew the fame. It was big news.

And so I found the announcing video itself, less than 8 minutes of talking and soberly titled "important announcement", and I clicked.

If you allow me to say so, I didn't expect to fucking bawl when listening to it.

I did. A lot. Truth be told, I even needed to take some time to recompose myself, because I was on my way to work at that moment and I really couldn't explain why I had been crying to anyone I would've met if I had entered my workplace in that state.

I still don't know how to explain it: there's a depressed, heartbroken sincerity to Gura's voice here, a bleak honesty about the toll this entire thing took on her mental health, that I would never have expected she'd be able to tell her audience.
Here are a few quotes I transcribed from that video (with timestamps, for better sourcing). Their raw testimony on the effects of being this much in the public eye, both in what the joy an audience can bring and how much its expectations can break, makes me tear up just rereading it.

"I debuted in September of 2020 with four other incredibly talented girls, who I respect and admire. I had barely any streaming or singing and dancing experience before joining this company... It was incredibly exciting but also very intense and unexpected to be suddenly surrounded by so many eyes and expectations. I remember there being many days where the stress was so overwhelming that I couldn't eat or keep food down... but the continuous support and patience of my wonderful community helped to lessen that feeling, and pushed me to go on to do things I didn't even know I was capable of..."
(3:47)

"I love singing for you, and performing for you, on stage or in my bedroom... You helped pull me out of my shell, and I went off from being too scared to sing alone in my shower to singing live in front of hundreds and thousands of people..."
(5:05)

"With you, I've been able to achieve what I thought for a very long time would be impossible for a girl like me: to feel a part of something, and to belong."
(5:44)

"Thank you for your compassion, your creativity, and your dedication to me. Thank you for waiting for me-- (voice breaks) Thank you for waiting for me to return when the outside world became too much..."
(6:58)

I just-- I just admire her speaking up about all that, even as it is clear that she's trying hard not to give too many details, too. Her general blanket statement of leaving because of "disagreements with management and company direction" she starts the announcement with, feels like a euphemism for everything that is hinted at afterward - like a broad way of stating her drawing of a definitive boundary to care for her mental health.
It all hit me like a freight train on my first listening, and it made me immediately sympathize with her, seeing the absurd pressure she pushed through to preserve a public façade. I mean, I know it's strange, because I didn't even know this shark much. It's just so, so important to have such a clear cry for better mental health care? I don't know.

I don't know. Somehow, deep inside me, I keep hoping this may help cultivate a healthier, more transparent culture on mental health issues, notably when related to fame. I doubt it will by itself, but at the very least I can hope for the person behind the shark to recover from that.

Final project announcement

At the end of her graduation announcement stream, amidst clearly shaken sentences, Gura announces one last project releasing soon - what would happen to be a heartbreaking musical crystallization of her mental health struggles and decision to leave. It would also utterly break me, but it deserves a few words of introduction first.

"I have one final project to share with you and I can't wait for you to see it... I'm feeling really optimistic for the future, and I hope you are too. Thank you everyone for letting me be your little shark... ... (end of stream)"
(7:40)

And indeed, a few days after that, a new, longer video titled "chat + announcing my final project" saw the VTuber put a few more words on her situation.

With 45 minutes, this second video is much longer than the previous one, so once again and maybe with more relevancy, allow me a few quotes here taken directly from the video. The light it sheds on her mental health feels oh so important to me, both as context to the following song, and as a way of stressing the importance of advocating for mental health care - and notably when you're just, you know, suddenly caught into fame, into a culture with the marketing pressure of appearing fine, and where you cannot say anything of what is happening behind the scenes¹⁰.

"What the heck do I say after dropping that kind of freaking announcement on you...? Hiiii..."
(2:20)

"It's my final project here in The Company... It wasn't supposed to be! [...] But the way this ended up turning out... is beautifully heartbreaking? I don't know how to explain it..."
(9:14)

"What did I eat today? I actually felt really bad today. I had a tummyache all day. Just one of those days... The body knew that I... that I was going to... something was coming. This stream. This stream. It was probably anxiety. That's probably what it was. That's what I'm saying. It was anxiety. Anxious tummy. No but I've been eating uuuh, candy! I'm sure that doesn't help the situation... of me feeling... like utter garbage... (long silence)"
(12:02)

"How long have I known... about leaving...? [...] It's been a very... long... time... and it's been hard... not to... speak about it? Cause you guys would ask me "Hey Gura how are you?" and it's, "Oh, you know, it's ok..." But in the background, I knew... [...] Not only did I know about me, but I knew about, you know, the others that wanted to leave... And I was just like gah, this is getting really... this sucks, this really sucks having to come on here and say "Oh everything's fine guys, it's good", when it was not ok! "Everything is ok!" Everything was not ok... It was not, it, it sucked... Now, I was lying in bed the other night, with this... I don't know if it feels right to say "a sense of peace", but it kinda did because it was like, ok, "Everybody... Everybody knows, now. They know. I don't have to... I don't have to hide it anymore?" You know? Like they know. They know now. They- They know. Aaaaah, like all of the weight, the steam, would just pfsshhhh out of me. It felt very nice. A weight off my shoulders, exactly. Yeah... ... A sense of, a sense of relief. Hmm. The elephant in the room that only I could see was no longer... in the room."
(16:38)

"The final project... It's been a long time! It's been another thing that I haven't been able to speak of for a long time... It started out as a-- I mean it still is, but it started as a "I'm gonna ask if I can do this, I doubt it will ever be approved, I doubt it will happen, but it would be a dream come true", and then it happened. And it... kinda altered my brain chemistry... in the best way possible... and got me through... a lot of... stuff... (silence)"
(28:30)

"So, my final project... It is a song, it is one song, you know, but I... have never put... I have never put my heart on the Internet like this... if that makes sense."
(29:32)

"How long has this been cooking? Ehhh... Over a year. Over a year. Maybe... a year and a half. Or maybe two. I am not sure. It's been a very long time."
(34:20)

"This is a very... emotional piece, for me. This song... I... How do I say this? It makes me ugly cry... [...] It's not necessarily... sad, did I say it was sad? I don't think it's sad, it's just-- It's the whole sandwich that the song is, it's the story that it tells, the people that worked on it, and the fact that it's now, like, The final thing..."
(37:30)

"Working with Casey was awesome. It was so awesome. He listened to my story... He listened to everything I had to say... Quick little Trauma Dumping in the Discord in the meeting, Traumadump Meeting, and he... took everything that I said... and turned it into... turned it into... a piece of music that is so meaningful to me and so powerful that I-- [...] I'm a bit speechless I guess is what I can say. Casey took the, the storm that was in my head and in my heart... and just turned it into a piece of music that... I will cherish for the very rest of my life."
(38:50)

"This song was very hard to sing? An extreme emotional battle with myself? Everytime it came time to work on the song, whether, you know, vocals or meetings, about lyrics or anything like that, I had to like... prepare myself mentally because I was like, "Ok, I'm gonna cry! I'm going to cry in front of staff members and also somebody who I think is really cool, which is really embarrassing but here we go! haha!""
(41:02)

"This song is a piece of my soul that I get to leave with all of you forever, thanks to... Casey. And Mazu, of course, Mazu and his team. They are both masters of their craft and I am just... speechless? Yeah."
(42:12)

Ash Again

I suppose this is the part where I just drop the song, like Gura did right at the end of the previous video. So, without further ado, here.

This is where I wanted this blog post to culminate, because this song evoked indescribable feelings within me as I watched it for the first time. I actually just kept crying when rewatching it in the days that followed, and it's still lodged somewhere deep within me nearly two weeks after its release. I don't expect it to budge from there.
It's just-- so full of significance and weight regarding parasociality and mental health. It crystallizes to an absurd extent what it feels like to tear oneself apart over an impossible choice, the one to leave to preserve oneself, and to sink into depression in the meantime, too.

With a bit of introspection regarding fictions I like, I suppose I'm also just weak to some of the song's broad themes due to my own background: symbolic depictions of the difficulty of leaving hurtful situations¹¹; and battling with self-hate and depression and the struggle toward embracing self-love¹².

But it's also simply that-- mental health matters to me so much. Seeing such a sincere expression of so many topics surrounding it, like metaphorical self-fight and self-harm over heartbreaking dilemmas, or being saved from depression by friends and your own self, and reaching acceptance, is--
I just feel like it's something that deserves to be seen, and listened to better.

A casual observer of something ending

As a last actual section before delving into an unhinged music video analysis of Ash Again for the people who may be needing someone dissecting it further, I simply want to state how interesting it's been to take a first real long dive into watching VTubers (though mostly Hololive VTubers) in these past two weeks, finally spurred by all of the above. It's been overall a genuine pleasure to become a less casual watcher and lurker, though I suspect it will still be a scene that overwhelms me with regular new hours-long streams and interactions - not counting how worried it sometimes makes me about the mental health of the people involved, now.

As an addition to the previous Gura streams, I suppose I can redirect you to tidbits of her followup interview by her genmate Kiara. There are interesting additional mentions in there about her creative process to make Ash Again with Casey Edwards, and the sheer pressure of being "the n°1 VTuber". She talks again of literally traumadumping to help Casey Edwards develop the lyrics of Ash Again, of having trouble eating and sleeping. She also indirectly describes depression as "water without buoyancy" in which you can only sink; and shares how surrealist it felt to have silly little mental health walks before streams with dozens of thousands of viewers. Hearing her say upfront that being the epicenter of attention was terrifying and that it never subsided or even started slow - that there never was a time even at the beginning when she was in a joyful high of her debut - kinda breaks me.

All this also lowkey makes me think of some posts I saw on late social media cohost, which was made to be without metrics, about the relief of not being considered "famous" - about being interacted with as a normal human being instead of this renowned and influential person with a huge follower count. See for instance this post by kuraine that I find really good on the topic and that's kept living in my brain since.
VTubing to the level of Hololive is still made to market a persona, though, so I'm not sure what can be done in terms of mental health in that context... But it's clear to me some things should be done within such companies - at the very least elements of care and prevention against emergency signals as blatant as eating disorders and depression stemming from the job.

Aside from these heavy topics, the general feeling of an ending, with Mumei and Gura graduating within 3 days of each other earlier in the week I've been writing this, was quite something to witness. I hope these two will be able to take care of themselves after their plethora of ending streams, including more or less unhinged collabs, group relay streams, karaoke, or heartfelt final thanks.
It's also been a joy to see some sincere tributes from fans.

Ash Again notably allowed me to catch up on the incredibly good Myth's Bad Ending fan-animation by Mazu, who was later hired to animate Ash Again itself. The combination of epic fight scenes and meta, time-travel-related elements, and overall the end-of-the-world this gives to the Myth members definitely left me amazed by this fan-creation.

So, yeah. I'm not sure I'll stick around much more within this rabbit hole; I kinda hope I won't fall into it too much for my own sanity, because I have too many things I want to do and catching streams at undue hours was not on my bingo list. But even like this, the past weeks have sure been a ride.
I hope these people can take care amidst this whirlwind.

Extra: an Ash Again analysis

So. Uh. As I said, I’ve been ugly crying almost each time I’ve been watching the Ash Again music video since its release, so I ended up writing a looooong analysis for people interested in that sort of thing, and just because I myself also wanted to articulate better WHY this song wrecks me as much as it does, so consistently.
This was originally planned as a loooong YouTube comment (did you know YouTube comments had character limit? :')), but I thought it'd be better to rework it a little and post it here, too.

So, if you'll indulge me.

A few precisions first

In what follows of my Ash Again analysis, I'll name the regular-looking Gura, the one in the shark suit the VTuber tends to wear the most for her avatar and the one she's the most recognizable with, Blue Gura. She’s associated with water and waves and the will to care and to continue streaming as Gura.

Meanwhile, the video also features Red Gura, the one who wears clothing reminiscent of the mythical city of Atlantis (from where she comes, in her lore). That outfit is similar to an outfit Gura also wears from time to time, but still ultimately unique to the music video; from what I can find, it was only recreated afterward in her last 3D pre-recorded graduation stream during her performance of Ash Again.
Red Gura probably doesn't have a red color palette in actuality, considering both Atlantis outfits have a blue hue; but she's so associated in the music video to fire and anger and destruction, and often slightly red-tainted in her grey colors, that I can't picture her differently.
Note also her hurt shark tail, wrapped up in bandage. This is the Gura who struggles.

Both Guras are two sides of the same person – a content creator and a content "destructor" if you will – fighting each other, both internally and externally, over what to do, and tiring themselves out in the process; heck, near-killing themselves in the process, which is heartbreaking and unsurprisingly highly significant metaphorically.

The setup also reminds me a little of one of Gura's older songs, Reflect, which does feature an antagonist Red Gura. Reflect talks, to my understanding, about accepting this inner voice that always downplays everything you can do, and still trying your best, without the exact ability to leave that voice behind. I’d encourage you to watch it if you haven’t, as a kind of prequel to this one, I suppose.
Ash Again is much more intense, though.

All of the above, Gura's sincerity about her mental health and graduation and this project's production process, should I think be kept in mind while watching Ash Again.

Now for the song!

The music video opens with an ominous, foreboding shot of Red Gura killing Blue Gura; and then it immediately jumps to a white room in which Gura is enclosed. To me, this room feels like a recording room and a trap¹³: the audience is set up as the fourth wall, as if we're always watching what she's doing, constantly observing her through a one-way mirror - note how "burn it down" is written on the wall that is our screen, too. It is a wall to her, though she clearly knows she's observed.
And so, Gura's stuck there and expected to stream. She seems to be taking it well as her Blue persona, but there's this occasional worrying cut of Red Gura smashing a guitar, tearing drawings apart, writing BURN IT DOWN on the walls. There's this will to present a cute and happy part of oneself - not necessarily a façade! but a part of oneself - with the anger and feeling of being trapped boiling underneath.

Among the first few lyrics are these:
"Waves can't put out my flame, Death will never write my name"
To me, these can be interpreted two ways: first, as a broad declaration that all this painful situation may hurt her but will never kill her, will never extinguish her determination to live, no matter how harsh it may get - see later the part on the deep sea that is a clear metaphor for depression. But also second, considering the recurring themes of water = Blue Gura and fire = Red Gura, the first part may also be read as the idea that her will to stream and to care and to conform to her audience's expectations and wishes will never be able to silence her rage underneath.

A few particularly significant lyrics here support this interpretation about the audience's pressure:
"They say the memory of me is fading, I've heard it all before
Don't tell me everyone around is waiting"
This is-- this is such a compact and efficient way of telling the constant pressure of having to show herself online to keep existing, to not fade away from her audience's memory and the world as whole marketing-wise; of evoking Gura's long breaks and the sheer anxiety of everyone awaiting her next return... Seriously I'm on the verge of tears each time with this part.
The instruments' intensity increases here, and as we get to the end of the verse, the strain is getting to Blue Gura too: she's more and more clutching her head and prostrated and in pain, while Red Gura is trying everything she can to tear down the walls.

The first chorus IS Gura tearing off these walls, and then sinking underwater as she struggles internally about effectively tearing and burning everything down. Her two personas end up emerging amidst the ruins of Atlantis (from where she comes, from her lore), Red Gura determined and uncaring, Blue Gura exhausted but trying her best to care. To this end, see how Red Gura crushes a flower without a second thought, and Blue Gura hops around it at the last minute right after. I live for this kind of little character establishment shot, gosh.

I'll admit, I'm not sure of what to make of the lyrics of the chorus itself. I don't exactly know who exhorts her to "tear it down, burn it down" until she precisely does so as revenge against these people - but there is a definitive vengeful edge to that part.
I don't know either what to make of the "While you all pretend, If this is the end, I'll do it again". I really want to read it as "if this was the end, I'd do it again", meaning she has no regret about how it all went through despite everything¹⁴... But it's not exactly the phrasing, and so I'm left wondering whether this is an announcement of returning to the VTubing scene under another form¹⁵. It may make sense read as "everyone around her is pretending it's all fine and she's decided she's gonna quit and start again", or something. I don't want to speculate too much on what the person behind Gura wants to do - I just hope she's ok.
Because there's this overall feeling that something ends and it's like it's the end of the world, at least. That much is clear.

(as a break toward the second verse, allow me a small appreciation paragraph for Gura shaking herself to get dry during that first chorus)

The start of the second verse, notably mentioning "Voices [...] in my head, The hands that pull at my thread" and using a striking imagery of hands overwhelming/manipulating her that is also the video's thumbnail, makes me think either of self-deprecating voices, just like Red Gura is to Blue Gura in the song Reflect, a constant cloud of anxiety and doubt that paralyzes her... Or it may refer more directly to directions given by her company, people who effectively pull at her thread in some way, because she ultimately works for a brand and is expected to comply. Both options sound likely, considering what Gura herself said during her streams, though I lean a tiny bit more toward the second considering her leaving for reasons being "disagreement with management and company direction". Note how she uses both "let them drown" and "burn it down" here to shake these hands off, reflecting both of the Gura personas' efforts to silence whatever these lines embody.

What follows introduces The Door, which will be of heavy significance as Gura considers leaving and starting something new - I think this holds whichever layer of metaphor you are in. What I mainly want to draw attention to here is the beautiful way a cello or contrabass rises at that precise moment, evoking the depths of the tide and the abyss.

We get another pre-chorus toward the next chorus; notice here how the "Don't tell me everyone around is waiting" starts leaking and melting, to me a creepy sign of overwhelming pressure, as Red Gura invokes her trident and SPLITS A BOAT IN HALF. This is the part where the song starts leaning hard into pure visual epicness. It also serves the purpose of showing how Red Gura won't stop at anything to reach the door, and will just break everything in her path. It's intense, and a little bit gore: there's actual blood mixed in with the boat debris.

As the second chorus ends, Red Gura reaches for the door, and Blue Gura - the one who wants to stay, the one who wants to care - rushes in to stop her... and suddenly has a flash of the very opening scene, the premonition of her body getting pierced by Red Gura's trident, and this is exactly what happens-- except she tries to stop the blade, and so the recoil doesn't literally kill her, but sends her toward The Depths.
The metaphor here is unequivocal to me: we (literally) have Gura hurting herself over this momentous decision of leaving, near-tearing herself apart, near-dying, and instead reaching the furthest depths of what is a common stand-in for depression. And, you know, if what had come before wasn't enough to make you think on her words that this MV is heartbreaking and put her under extreme emotional strain, well. Personally, this part just destroys me. There's self-hate and self-fear and internal struggle and depression all wrapped up in this scene and that's a stab to the guts for sure.

The bridge slows the song down as Gura sinks. Everything is pretty clear here: swimming against the current's aim, an impossible struggle, in sunken depths and debris. Seriously, these lyrics capture depression so intensely, it makes my heart ache.
I particularly love "In dark, we change, as smoke returns to rain", first because the grave notes send a shiver down my spine, but also because gosh is depression a chrysalis where we slowly change in the dark until we emerge again, and this kind of sentence is once again an extremely compact way of capturing how depression feels. I, ouch.
Extra admiration for the smoke and rain part, which captures brilliantly Red Gura and Blue Gura's elemental themes and the overall idea that the anger and pain and fire subside and leave only some kind of softer sadness as time passes.

The choirs grow, and we get hit by more amazing sentences, like
"No more hands upon my words, they only speak for me"
and I mean! I mean! If this doesn't embody the sheer pressure of having to weight your every word because you represent a company - of lacking actual control of your choice of words because your contract forbids you from saying so and so and your phrasings are monitored and some of your scripts prepared - well, I don't know what does.
There may also be the additional idea that people will always interpret what you're saying and you live under this constant pressure of your words being twisted by others; but I'm speculating here. There is, in any case, this underlying idea that so far, there have been other people forcing words for her because she speaks for an entity bigger than herself. That much is crystal clear here.

The next part is the thunder part, and it has the same vengeful edge as "and they'll all pay". I'm also fascinated by the imagery here, of hands-wings deploying behind her... it just stays with me a lot as the video ends, each time. And it's also simply notable to have a reference to thunder, which is special since so far we've only got fire and water, and this briefly introduces a third element to make this part particularly memorable.

Then, we get a particularly emotional moment: as the bridge comes to an end, we see a visual shuffle of all of Gura's genmates from Myth, including herself, all of them hugging her with their weapons drawn, ready to protect her. This is what helps her break out of the depths. Togetherness, companionship, and herself within that group. It's a very, very beautiful tribute to that, honestly.

And now for the final chorus, we have the epicness going through the roof, Blue Gura pumped up again, emerging from the water, ready to fight her red double! This is just a wonderful fight scene, which is not particularly surprising from the person who animated Myth's Bad Ending (which is SO MUCH fighting epicness, among other things). There's even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot, when the two Guras clash, of them briefly forming sharks. I love that.

And then we get to the end of the song, with an extremely satisfying narrative cycle with a twist: Blue Gura disarms Red Gura, and we find back the opening scene... except it's Blue Gura who can stab Red Gura in the end. It's Blue Gura who can end all this. And time metaphorically stops for a few seconds, and she--
she doesn't. She doesn't do it.
She doesn't stab herself.
She takes back her trident, and the sun rises like hope, and Red Gura looks at her with a mixture of incredulity and relief and resolve, and she rushes to Blue Gura, ready to-- hug her? kiss her? attack her?
and cut

and Red Gura - Red Gura - is the only one left in front of the door.
Blue Gura let her go.
Or they both fused, somehow, and they're ready to go.
There's only ever been just one Gura, after all. Alone to tear herself apart over this choice; and alone to make it.
Because she's the only one who can.

And after all this--
after everything--
she's finally ready to go.
She's finally ready to leave.

And the music ends, and the waves lap at her feet,
and she opens the door.

And as the credits roll, her past room is left empty, with the title burning on the wall, Ash again.

Conclusion and a few more moved words

I have been tearing up just writing this ending. There's just the perfect amount of visual and lyrical and musical storytelling packed within these 5 minutes, not to mention the cinematic vibe of the entire piece, and the sincere testimony of poor mental health it alludes to. And it ends in this almost-cyclical way that scratches the perfect itch in my brain--
and it ends with self-acceptance, after so much struggle--
and I--
I don't know what to say.

Thank you, maybe, to people that won't read this. Just thank you. This is something special. It captures a specific experience, of course; but it also capture a broad experience. The one of tearing oneself over a decision that feels like the end of the world, something that you could probably get over with if only you could kill a part of yourself, whichever it is. But after so much, after so, so much, you don't.
And instead you accept it. You accept all of your parts. And you reach a decision.
And finally, finally, you unlock something new.

Thank you.

Reader, I just hope you can feel it too. And I hope you take care. Ultimately, this is the main thing I wanted to convey, aside from the surprising way I was pulled into all this rabbit hole in the past few weeks.
I hope you take care, and that this kind of art may at some point help you through rough decisions or decaying mental health in turn. I know it does for me.

#vtuber