Discussion topic for Track 5 of Love Song: Hyakunen no Natsu (Summer of a Hundred Years). Please support the official release by purchasing the album from iTunes! You can find a translation of the lyrics on ShiraneHito’s blog.
Please tag references to later songs or outside works with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
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This is definitely my favorite out of the first bunch. I love how the singer puts so much power into her voice in the chorus(?). This song can be twisted and turned a number of ways, but here’s what I got currently. Two people grow up together out in the middle of nowhere. The town never changes, so the narrator feels out of place as from a different time period. Note that the track image appears to illustrate the second stanza with the narrator wearing a modern shirt while the other person has a yukata or something. In the end, they say farewell to that place and that person. This doesn’t really fit with how the narrator uses “bokura” at the end though.
I also want to try and collect my thoughts on the album in general so far. The images we get aren’t very consistent: they have different characters seemingly from different time periods too. All the songs are probably going to be about some relationship told from a first person perspective. I’m definitely noticing a consistent theme of motion usually in the form of a search. Hajimari no Saka has the pedals turning and time moving forward. Ao no Yume has falling and traveling between planets. Hoshi ni Naru Ishi moves through the seasons spring, summer and winter, and in the end the narrator is going on a journey. Hashiru has running(duh). In Hyakunen no Natsu, they’re “riding on summer.” The motion in the first song lack direction and purpose. The next three songs is a search for this other person. In the fifth song, we seemingly move away from them instead.
I feel like this whole song might just be the singer’s memory. Basically the “hundred years” is hyperbole and more akin to how much distance time the singer feels has passed. Now they are walking through the town never changes reminiscing about a young love, one that ended with the singer leaving, and they did not make it back to the town while their love was alive.
But now many years later they have come to the town to make peace with the love and the loss.
I mostly take this from the lines
[quote]I already noticed that I’m no longer here.
I’m living decades in the future
“I’m just glad I met you”
I cam here just to say that [/quote]
But the vivid descriptions of the town the stanza before, and the the phrase ”幻と/ along with the illusion"
First off, this is a very cool song. The slow speed, the chimes, bells, and cymbals, and other ringing elements give this song a very soothing, almost meditative vibe. It feels like sitting in on a prayer or meditation session for much of the song. The simplicity doesn’t leave much to comment on musically, but it’s certainly striking to experience.
If you listen closely, there’s actually a reversed jingle bell hit that comes in every now and then. Because of the nature of bells, it’s very unnatural and gives a sense of time moving backwards. I even listened to the song backwards for a while to see if there was anything else like that (not really, but the rolled crescendoing cymbal hits have a similar effect). Regardless, even that one instrument gives a sense of time flowing both backwards and forwards, which seems to fit with the vague descriptions of time in the song itself. I would theorize that this song is from the point of view of a spirit that lives outside of the flow of time.
I’m with Helios, this is easily my favorite song of the album. I LOVE the haunting church bells at the beginning and the mysterious air this song forms. For a song that (as pi pointed out), is rather slow, it’s quite dynamic with the way it changes tune from point to point.
Adding on to kyuketsukimiyu’s argument about the song’s meaning, the end of stanza 4 mentions the singer “remembered everything”. Considering this is directly followed by the line “That summer is fading away”, I’d definitely concur that the exact measurement of time is simply a way to represent how the singer feels.
The only thing that makes me wonder is the fact the girl he meets is quoted, rather than paraphrased. Maybe just that one word was exaggerated in his memory, but I do find that choice a bit odd.
Considering the main character is holding a bag of some type, and he refers a couple times to “the summer carrying us”, could he be a traveler, perhaps? Someone he hadn’t thought of settling down until he met this person? Since he eventually left, that would be my assessment. Unlike the last song, this artwork directly references a lyric in the song, though I am a bit upset the artist didn’t add a visual indicator that there are fish in the stream, since the singer mentions following them.
In my opinion, I imagine the mention of “town” is just a way of referring to the hidden place he met her. Because the singer thinks about spending all his time with her, and the area might be spacious, I don’t see much more than that out of the use of that particular word.
I stared at the quote for awhile trying to decide who says it. I don’t feel that is clearly the girl he meets saying it and find it more plausible that it it his present self providing commentary on the meeting outside of the time that it actually happened - basically what he thinks as he remembers that meeting.
Followed up with the line on “but I choose you starting today” relates to his current self coming to terms with what happened at that time.
This one definitely touches me the most so far. Parts of it reminds me of Natsukage from Air in a way. And I think it’s intentional considering the theme. I.E listen at 1:17 from Natsukage and 5:23 from this. The similarity is uncanny yet the songs have very different feels.
And it has a really calm and serene feeling. It’s really cute, I like it ^^
