Discussion topic for Track 9 of Love Song: Shinwa (Myth). 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.
0 voters
This song is weird!
The image I’m getting here is our MC thinking to himself right before the girls dies. To explain myself, I’m gonna hone in on some small details. In the first and forth stanza the final lines end with ね. This is a particle used to ask for confirmation. It’s commonly compared to adding “,right?” to the end of sentences. That indicates the lyrics are a personal narrative even if there are no first person pronouns used. other than that, the last lines of the song describe the now as a “warm dream” while the previous stanza’s describe the world ending in multiple ways.
Curious phrases
冷たい土に埋もれても ただ守っていくんだね
I was really confused by this line. In context, it’s like he’s talking about burring the wind which makes zero sense. But if we ignore the wind and just think about the world ending as a context, the world ending is easily connected with the girl dying, and when people die they’re buried. It’s also custom to have shrines for deceased and make offerings to them; I’m sure a part of that relates to them protecting you. So we can translate it like this, “Even if your buried in the cold earth, you’ll still protect me, right?”
真っ白な手が描く夢も この世界と消え
“The dream painted by the white hand…” Remember the painting from Bokura no Koi.
遠い遠いで神話となり語られていくんだね
This still just confuses me. He’s asking about if their story will be told as myth on another planet. I don’t even know where to begin.
It feels like to me that the further into the album we get, the closer we get to the girl’s death. Like, we’ve heard about before and after a lot, but here in 8 and 9 it feels like we’re right after and just before shit hits the fan.
I like the sound of this song compared to the others. Specifically, I find myself loving the prominent guitar. There are a couple times I thought I heard it develop a vaguely rock-type melody.
As for the song, I agree that this song likely takes place in the extremely tense moments before her passing. Numerous points in the song feel like the boy is fearing her passing, equating it to what are essentially natural disasters that cause the world (or more accurately, his world) to collapse in various ways. Be it the disappearing wind, the scorched earth that appears during summer, and the fact he emphasizes the world disappearing. I take that as him equating this girl’s existence to every facet of his being. Without her, his life literally means nothing, and considering Bokura no Koi, and like you mentioned, track 8, I can definitely believe that to be the case. On a side note, I feel the lines “It’s a dream too painful to watch / It’s gonna be for a little while longer” strongly suggest that she is fading away.
As for the “warm dream”, I could see that being the point where the girl is finally fading away. After all of this emotional build-up and concern, the actual event numbs him because he had been so thoroughly expecting it.
I’m a bit curious about what the “dream of blood stream” is. Does this represent her sickly condition, perhaps?
The image, most definitely of the girl, I see as the boy’s mental picture of her. She seems almost a divine figure, with the mysterious emblem on her top and clouds swirling behind her. It connects to song’s emphasis on how tantamount she is to the boy’s feelings of happiness and contentment.
The concept of summer popping up here again, especially presented as something made by the girl but ultimately ephemeral does, once again, make me begin to think more on the side of these songs being about one specific romance from various stages and views. So that leaves me feeling like this song moves the POV from the kind of 3rd person POV and puts it back into the hands of the boy.
The girl is the one who names “wind” and “summer” - naming things give them shape and when she dies the boy feels they will gone. This whole trembling world will disappear with the girl.
I don’t have a lot to add to to Helios or DangoDD’s thoughts, but
I’m actually wondering if we are moving backwards in time through the love story? Hill of Beginning was actually the point where the boy tries once again to live without the girl. Ao no Dream, Hashiru, and Hyakunen no Natsu are about the boy after the girl has died as he tries to come to terms with it. Haiiro no Hane and this song, Shinwa, deal with the moments more directly around her death.
I’ve been trying to analyze these songs from a very independent perspective, but the more I read about you guys connecting the dots, the more I find everyone else’s theories making sense. I had something in mind when I first listened to this song, but all that loses ground compared to the theories posted here (it being about the guy preparing for his loved one’s death)…
So instead let’s talk about the music! The best word I can think of to describe the music is simply: raw. There’s so much dissonance and discord in the way the guitars, drums and bass all sound, but the vocals drag it along to a proper melody. It’s like… whoever is playing the guitar is letting his entire heart and soul out. Could this be an interpretation that the man feels discord as the girl remains calm about her impending doom?
Either way, this seems like it might be one of Maeda’s first forays into post-rock. Intense guitars yet mellow vocal melodies makes it sound so different from the usual notion we have about rock music. It’s a great song filled with emotion by everyone participating, thus I give it a 5/5
Love this song so much, it’s a proper banger. I gave it 5/5 for sure. The instruments are just so wonderful, every time THAT BASS kicks in at the start it’s just so chill.
The little jingly synths in the background of all the instruments really make it dreamy, and they’re more unpredictable than the rest of the instruments.
I really feel it they fit the “half-dreaming” state discussed in the podcast. The steady repetitive melodies of the bass and guitar, but in the background the slightly distorted and strange synths.
I think this song fits in right as the girl’s condition is worsening significantly, or she’s about to die. She’s in a delirious dream-like state and it seems like she even gives up on courage at the end, accepting her fate.
