2023-06-27 09:00:00
Sound Horizon’s latest 7.5th or 8.5th Story BD “Ema ni Negahi wo!” ](Full Edition) was released.
The stage of the story is a world very similar to modern Japan. The sound and illustrations depict the story of people entrusting their wishes to votive plaques at the “Rotoran Shrine”, which is rumored to have tremendous benefits, that suddenly appeared in a certain town. The listener, who is the “Okami” of Rotoran Shrine, is forced to “choose an interpretation” written on two stone monuments that appear many times throughout the work. It is also a challenging work in which the story, music, and characters change as a result. Also, because there are options, it can be said that it is an eternal work that can never be fully understood.
Let me tell you what Revo, the head of Sound Horizon, said regarding this work. “Pray on an ema! ](Full Edition), it may be one of the clues.
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■ “Wishes” Entrusted to “Live Tour with Options”
──First of all, please tell us regarding the concert tour that was held prior to the Blu-ray release. Not only was it a long tour that lasted for regarding two months and a total of 18 days, it was an unprecedented composition in which the same program was repeated twice and three times with different interpretations on each day.
Revo: The content of this Blu-ray is played over and over once more, and the content changes by choosing an “interpretation” that appears in the middle. That’s why I was thinking of adding some sort of gimmick to the tour, something like a loop as a basic structure.
── So, the stage configuration is such that the purchaser of the premium seat holds the “Okami Interpretation Aggregation Terminal” as “Okami” and selects an “interpretation” on the spot, changing the plot of the next song or story. However, in the case of concerts, there is a sense of loop that is different from the work itself, even in the sense that the tour schedule is “repeating”.
Revo: Right. Between the time axis of the one closed world of the work and the time axis of the real world in which you live, there is a gap in the structure that causes discrepancies the more you try to connect them. In general terms, it’s a part of the promise that I don’t think regarding. Originally, unlike conventional stories that are linear, the horizon of ema exists in the diversity of interpretations, so I put in the feeling of “how many laps did it turn out like this” in conjunction with the concert. I thought it would be interesting. I think there are parts that are different from Blu-ray works. It’s a single concert tour, but each time it’s a different place with different audiences. It may be said that
──At the time of the previous concert
Revo: Anyway, there were a lot of songs. Considering that each song is related to a character in this work, the more songs we have, the more characters we have to deal with, and the more people we have on stage.
──Although you were preparing the next song, the format was such that you didn’t know which song would be played until Okami interpreted it. It seemed that there would be a slightly different kind of difficulty in responding to a request from an old-fashioned guitar-playing musician.
Revo: Including the behind-the-scenes staff, we figured out “what should we do next?” I also made a prediction. Well, there may have been something similar to playing shogi. At first, there are infinitely many options, but choosing one narrows down the possibilities a bit. Selecting the following narrows it down further. This is repeated, and in the end, it converges on the unique form of that episode. It may be close to the world of competitive karuta. The moment you say the first letter “A”, how many ways will the next letter be? The competition quiz people seem to think so too. I found out by reading the novel.
──I think it’s “Kimi no Quiz” by Satoshi Ogawa. In that work, the psychology of the competition quiz answerer was drawn in detail.
Revo: It’s like, “Since the question started speaking in this form, the answer must be this!” It may not be that difficult, but I was doing something similar behind the scenes on this tour. Everything changes in an instant, such as which musical score the instrumentalists prepare, what costumes the actors and singers wear, and where they should appear on stage. I also need to decide where the tools should be so that I don’t lose sight of them.
──I think this kind of live performance is the only one that no one other than Sound Horizon has done.
Revo: Whether it’s unique or not, of course, it’s not that it’s easy if you just do what you set out to do. It is difficult to express the best of the day. However, there are also people with a disposition who seek a different kind of difficulty (laughs). I think that everyone who participates is also a person who has achieved various things by thinking “I want to try my own power more” as they have sharpened their careers. I think that the fact that someone who has built up a career and challenged with such a tension that “If you let your guard down, you might easily slip off your feet”, must have had an impact on this performance. . Even among the people behind the scenes, there are people who say, “This time it’s really thrilling and fun.” There was a unique sense of tension and excitement when there were so many people like that, or rather, the atmosphere that dominated the scene existed in the whole team even before the stage began. In terms of a sense of unity with the audience, I think it has become a different dimension from conventional concerts. I’m getting used to it every time, but it was a concert that no one might afford to be complacent regarding the pre-established harmony.
──Was there anything unique to this live feeling? For example, might Oogami’s “interpretation” lead to a development that Revo didn’t expect? A typical example is that the flow of the concert is determined by whether Okami chooses one of the two “pilgrimages” or one “pilgrimage” at the beginning of the concert.
Revo: Nothing unexpected happened. Even if you think, “There will be many chances to go this way” or “It won’t happen very often”, I’m also preparing for the case when it doesn’t go as expected. To be frank, there was a timing when I didn’t want you to choose “Pilgrimage auction”. Due to various physical conversion problems, it may not be smooth. To put it in extreme terms, if you don’t want people to choose it, you can just make it impossible to choose from the beginning. This will make it easier for the performers. However, while it seems that both the audience and the performers can freely choose, it makes me feel that this is a concert that is decided to some extent by adult circumstances, and the tension is not a little lost. In the first place, with Blu-ray, you can choose that option, but I thought it would be wrong to restrict it at a concert.
──The same conditions and choices as Blu-ray are allowed.
Revo: However, we did not allow more than two pilgrimages in one performance. I affirm that the length of the MC time stretches and shrinks as a live feeling, but the fact that the performance time of the song itself varies greatly depending on the choice of the day cannot guarantee fairness to everyone who came to see it. That’s what I thought. Even if it was your choice. It usually changes in regarding an hour. Once Okami understands the structure of this concert to some extent, I expect that the number of irregular “pilgrimages” will decrease, but I have prepared for the case that doesn’t happen. As the person who created the system, I don’t know when the timing will be, but I will ensure that such a thing can happen and have a degree of freedom. If I think regarding when it will come, it’s complicated like shogi, so I won’t do it, but even if that happens, I’ll just prepare a vessel that can accept it.
──Revo-san always says that you are free to interpret the work, and that the story of Sound Horizon can be interpreted in many different ways. The 9th Story CD “Nein” released in 2015 was also a work with that theme. (Full Edition)” itself, in that it leaves the “interpretation” up to the audience, it seemed to convey a similar message in a different way.
Revo: I think it’s the best out of all the works I’ve done so far. “Nein” was a work that told us that if we tampered with the works we had released so far, we might create a different story. However, since there are preconceptions and attachments to the story that everyone loved from the beginning, it was a structure that was prone to bias that the conventional interpretation was “correct history” and the falsification was “wrong history”. This time’s ′′ make a wish on the ema! (Full Edition)”, even if there is a choice, in the end neither is the correct answer, and both can be accepted as official history. I am sending it out at the same time. Interpretation may be seen as an intellectual game of reasoning, separate from emotion, but what does the world look like to someone else? Instead, what do you want the world to be like? It may be a mirror that reflects that desire. Well, there are actually more options than just two choices, but the work itself has various reasons such as the capacity of the Blu-ray, and basically it branches out with two options.
──As expected, it would be difficult to prepare “all options” in advance.
Revo: Actually, I wanted to hit the listeners with an overwhelming amount of information. It’s probably too early for humanity to have more degrees of freedom (laughs). There are too many options and the scope is too wide, so for the time being, the story this time is also in the form of “The events following Himeko came to Rokuran Shrine”. However, if this is to control “everything”, it would be completely prefaced by saying “Himeko was never born in the first place”, “Humanity was not born on this planet” or “There is no earth-like thing in the first place”. , because you can do as much as you want. It’s dangerous to be able to choose from that stage. That’s interesting in its own way, but I don’t know what will happen if I start from that stage even though I’m still saying that the Blu-ray capacity isn’t enough. However, in the case of concerts, it might be possible to make people feel a little more expanse of interpretation, breaking away from the curse of capacity for just a moment. I feel like that kind of alternative interpretation has become more and more adopted.
──With “Nein,” the theme was falsification of what is strongly believed to be the canonical history. On the other hand, “Wish on an ema! (Full Edition)” has the implication that all destinies can be manipulated. If it’s regarding “manipulating fate”, I personally think it’s a work that can be compared to the 6th Story CD “Moira” released in 2008. In this tour as well, there was a scene where the audience, who tried to see all the options and toyed with the fate of the characters, yelled resentfully, “I guess that’s what you’re looking at.”
Revo: Right. There may be some similarities in terms of the appearance of temples, shrines, and gods, who have powers beyond human knowledge and can influence various destinies of humans. This made me think, but I’ve been doing “questioning God” since “Moira”. There’s a scene where a black eleph-like person says, “Mira, is this the world you wanted?” However, in the case of “Moira”, the gods are mysterious, and of course the listeners are also human, so I was watching from the side of Eleph, the human side. However, this time, the interesting point that is very different from that is that the listener can act as God himself, as if he is standing on God’s side.
──In addition, depending on which side you stand on, your perspective on the story will change, so there is something in common with the story following “Nein” earlier.
Revo: But this time, I was somehow put in God’s position, but even so, I think that you probably have human hearts, so I don’t think you can interpret it purely like God. I have a tendency to empathize with people. However, there are times when the characters who are humans throw such lines at me. When you say that at the concert, there is a wall or chasm that you can’t overcome no matter how much you say “I’m on your side.” Recognizing that is entertainment, and I think it’s interesting.
──I think everyone in Okami will want to make choices that are humane and gentle. But sometimes what you think is good can backfire.
Revo: I think there are a lot of things that backfire. It’s a work that seems to only backfire (laughs).
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