#anyway song of the summer | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

project-sekai-facts · 6 months ago

Note

what do you think the "Please forgive me and Purple" mean? considering the Miku (and Teto!) version it could be stand as a prayer like "Amen" yk? I always thought it said "please forgive me Empurple" as if "Empurple" was an entity

please forgive me and "purple", the wavering me dyed purple

So empurple means "to become purple", hence why in the official english lyrics "empurple" is replaced by "dyed purple". I think the 'and "purple" ' in the lyrics is representative of Mafuyu's emotional state, as in, her true and genuine self waiting to be found/freed. The real Mafuyu - her image color is purple after all. I think to understand what it means to Mafuyu at least, we need to look at the SEKAI ver instead of Harumaki Gohan's version. It was written for Mafuyu, so most likely Mafuyu is the origin of this lyric, which was then put into a different context with Harumaki Gohan's MV.

In the first verse where Mafuyu sings "the real me feeling stuck in my throat is empurpling", which gives us an image of Mafuyu struggling to open up about her feelings. The longer she feels stuck and keeps everything in the more purple it becomes. This is confirmation enough that the "purple" that she's asking for forgiveness for is just the things she kept hidden from her parents. It makes a lot more sense if you consider that this is the event where she starts to reconnect with her dad, and truly starts to trust him and open up to him. You don't have to read past this part, I have answered the question.

I think it's worth mentioning as well that we see these red and blue strings throughout the entire MV, obviously red and blue being the colors that make purple. We'll get more on what red and blue mean in the context of this song later, but just briefly I want to talk about this specific frame here. Strings have been a recurring motif for Mafuyu from as early as her first ever event, Captive Marionette. In that event, Mafuyu likens herself to a marionette doll, with the way she feels completely under the control of her mother and like she's being used for her mother's own performance (that will get its own analysis in due time). Her card for that event shows her dressed as a marionette doll bound by strings.

The strings come back for her aptly titled My True Feelings card in her fourth event, Saying Goodbye to my Masked Self. She's seen cutting the threads here, symbolising how she ran away from home and effectively cut off her mother. And now back to Empurple. In the opening shot of the MV, we see red and blue strings wrapped around Mafuyu's ankles, binding her to something offscreen. Behind her, towards the area she's being bound to, we see a bunny plushie and some apple slices cut into the shape of rabbits.

These are taken from her Memories of Warm Affection card, which shows kid Mafuyu being taken care of by her mother. The event Empurple was commissioned for, Reeling in the Lights, heavily calls back to Mirage of Lights, Mafuyu's second event and the event this card originates from. It's pretty clear here that Mafuyu is being bound to her mother, and her memories of her mother's care for her when she was younger. Continuing on with the actual song:

The next part of interest is the first pre-chorus. The first shot here is one of a child's hand holding an adult's, obviously meant to be Mafuyu and her father based on the card for this event (below). The next shot is of kid Mafuyu's eye, much brighter and with a far lighter blue color. These two shots are accompanied by the lyrics "Try to open my left hand and have a look? It's still embedded with blue eyes." (It is in fact her left hand that she uses to hold her dad's hand in her card). Now here's where we get to the meaning of blue in the song and MV.

The blue here is meant to represent Mafuyu's younger self. Her more genuine and innocent self before her parents started setting more pressure and expectations on her. The first line of the chorus is "If I saw that, would I be surprised", which I think perfectly encapsulates how Mafuyu feels when looking back at her childhood. In both of the "Lights" events focusing on her relationship with her parents, she looks back on these childhood memories that are so distant from her reality that she'd almost forgotten them, and yeah, it's surprising how different her life was and how she was when she was younger. The second line of the chorus "I just want to live once with genuine feelings only" plays into this too. And then we come back to the "purple".

If we hold hands, it would be great if you could understand, Please, Forgive me and "Purple", The wavering me is Empurpled

It's very clear here that this is all directed towards her father. In the event, we flash back to Mafuyu's dad comforting her during a thunderstorm, and although its one of her only memories of him because he was very absent from her childhood, she realises that she associates him with being a source of support, and decides to tell him more about how she really feels. She affirms her trust and comfort by holding his hand. In the context of the song, she's asking him to forgive her and all the things she's been hiding over the years.

The next point of interest is the second prechorus, which is very similar to the first, only this time, it's about the "red". Once again we get a shot of Mafuyu holding her dad's hand, only this time it shows the present day, and Mafuyu is using her right hand this time. Like how the first prechorus mentioned her left hand, this one mentions her right, with the precise lyric being "Try to open my right hand and have a look? You'll find a crimson sky.". An aside, her eyes aren't crimson here, I won't deny that, but they can't exactly just give Mafuyu red eyes, so for the sake of this analysis, pretend she has red eyes or something or that crimson and indigo are the same thing. We see the shot of teenage Mafuyu's dull indigo right eye over the lyric about the crimson sky, a direct contrast to her bright blue eyes from the first prechorus.

The "red" in this song references Mafuyu's current state of being. A girl struggling with expectations and appearances to the point she lost her sense of self, her emotions, and her will to live. All of this has been kept well hidden until the mask finally came off in her previous event, and now her father is seeing this completely new side to his daughter too. It's far more impactful though with the knowledge that he was an absent father, and never really got to spend any time with Mafuyu due to his work schedule. Like he never really knew Mafuyu to begin with in some ways. All he knew of her would've mainly come from how other people saw her, which is what caused this in the first place.

The first line of the second chorus is "If you see it, will you be shocked?", obviously referring to how she has her worries about telling her dad these things about herself. He is, in fact. shocked by the situation. He's completely stunned when he finds out Mafuyu can't even taste the food he's been buying her back in The Tone Played on that Day, because this is nothing like the Mafuyu he thought he knew. At that point he knew Mafuyu had been struggling, but he had no idea of the severity of it because Mafuyu had been holding these things in her throat.

The second line interests me quite a lot though. "The crimson sky is so beautiful, yet you'll never know." I've been trying to think about what quite we're looking at here for a few minutes, but here's what I've interpreted it as. Where we are right now in the story, the crimson is the closest we can get to the real Mafuyu. It's her true self as much as her current emotional state will allow, and obviously there's some beauty in that. It's far more authentic that the manufactured facade of blue that she'd been putting up for the previous few years. "yet you'll never know" could refer to three things in my opinion. Number one: Mafuyu's unwillingness to open up before the end of this event. No one gets to know her real self, because she won't let people see it. Number two: Mafuyu's father missed out on a huge amount of her childhood, and missed many of the signs that Mafuyu was going through mental anguish. Obviously, this ends up being remedied at the end of the event. And number three: This is aimed at Mafuyu's mother, who doesn't understand how this has happened and refuses to accept that this is who Mafuyu is.

And the last part of this chorus is "If we hold hands, it would be so warm... Please, Forgive me and 'Purple' ". Warmth is something that comes up a lot in Mafuyu's story. It's a sign of comfort for her. Her mother, or even just her presence, physical or not, is consistently described as cold and icy. It's unnerving and chilling. However, being around Niigo, holding their hands, brings her an unfamiliar warmth. Mafuyu associates this warmth with how she felt around her mother when she was younger. She can't quite place it, but it's a feeling of safety, comfort, and happiness. As I mentioned earlier, although Mafuyu has very few memories of her father from when she was a kid, what she does remember of him brings her that same feeling of warmth. And it's different to how her memories of her mother give her warmth, because he's still here, now, trying to help her.

I particularly like the bridge and final chorus too. There isn't much to say about the MV here aside from the fact it gets darker during the bridge, connecting with the "crimson sky that was hidden at all costs" lyric. Mafuyu is the last person to sing, and as expected it's darkest then, though it does get brighter as she finishes her line, probably because she's going to be more open from now on. I like the "still tinged with blue, these eyes" part too, because obviously, her happier and genuine "blue" side is still a part of her, she's just lost sight of the genuine manifestation of it over time. Blue and red make purple after all, and you can't get the true purple form of Mafuyu without combining her blue and red sides.

The final chorus refers to the event story again. "The important things, I'll keep them with me" obviously references the memories of her dad comforting her that she never let go of, "Inside my body, something is still broken" because Mafuyu isn't fully healed yet, and "If we hold hands, please fix me" because she is going to let her dad help her from now. Them holding hands was a sign of trust between the two of them, and a sign that Mafuyu is going to be genuine with her father because it is what's best for her, for real this time. He says in the event that he's been looking into getting her seen by a hospital (therapy), so he truly does want to help her.

The MV ends with the same shot as we started with, only this time, the camera has moved over to the left a bit, fitting with the fact that her "blue" childhood happiness was said to be on the left. The strings binding her also fade away, and allow her to step towards a new person whose feet have appeared in the frame, who is obviously meant to be her dad (Mr Asahina canonically wears sliders). We're finally seeing Mafuyu make some significant progress following her running away. Even after she ran away, she was still bound to her mother, and the warm memories she had of her, but now she's found someone who can give her that support and love for her genuine self in the present. She's freeing herself little by little.

#i saw this as an opportunity to vaguely use my media gcse for its intended purpose. didnt even mention any theory but wtv. hope this is ok #asks #songs #summer vacation analysis 1/4 (?) i'm gonna tentatively say 4 #anyway mr asahina's a good character or something like that and his relationship with mafuyu is incredibly well written and interesting

141 notes · View notes