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2025 has almost fully come and gone; another year of history has passed, and the tides have shifted many times. How have you been?

On my side, it has been quite busy. I spent most of it stressed, and a lot of my time working on things that I didn't love, but I had some quiet moments of respite occasionally. Despite how awful it was, it was still a year where I feel like I finally managed to get myself onto my feet after many long years.

I wrote a lot, even though I won't talk about it here, and I took some first steps to make things that I'm truly interested in. Even though I had my own failures, I felt like I managed to get all my ducklings in order. I hope that 2026 continues this trend.

This isn't exactly how I want this blog to be used, but with a year in reflection now, I think it would be nice if I could spend a little bit of time delving into the various pieces of art that I found myself fond of here, just as a small recollective piece explaining my own feelings; of course this isn't comprehensive, I don't have the capacity to talk about absolutely everything that happened over the course of this year.

Ave Mujica was somewhat inescapable for me; I was in Japan for the turn of the year, so I had to deal with the full onslaught of the anime's promotion. It was basically everywhere: I saw it in Animate Ikebukuro, on the train, it's gachapon capsules littered in small corners of stations. I was a fan of it's prequel, MyGo, so, naturally, there were some expectations and hopes attached to the work even before I had seen it.

It was largely a disappointing experience, trying to take the series into a new realm with a more fantastical psychological drama and trying to capitalize on harsh emotions with each of the cast being placed in difficult situations, but it fell short. It's nearly impossible to watch sequels without comparing them to what came before (in most cases at least), but it was especially the case for avmj as it's story centered itself around the drama of a band broken up before either of it's stories were told, so in some senses, it also serves as a proper conclusion to MyGo's much more grounded conflict.

Somehow someway, I'm still somewhat fond of the show for various reasons; I was really sick during the time when Avmj was airing, so I was drained of energy and couldn't really do anything for much of it's air time. I had a lot of fun watching it with friends, and texting or talking about the show during the few moments where I felt well enough to do so.

Around this time, I came across a fan song for the vtuber 月ノ美兎. I have been on and off into the subculture ever since I had known about it around 2018, but only in the last two years did I really start to properly even start to dip my toes into participating. While I wouldn't by any means consider myself a huge fan, I still have merch of my oshi (戌亥とこ) and own some merch of her.

Tsukino Mito was one of the larger vtubers that was part of the initial "corpo" trend of the vtuber era, defined via the companies Hololive (Cover corp) and Nijisanji (Anycolour), and was one of the vtubers that I had occasionally kept up with when I first started learning about the subculture. She was particularly known for her weirdness, with her kigurumi mascot (which recently appeared with multiple staff members dressed in kigurumi masks at last year's Niji fes), and for largely leading with her personality rather than leading into the more idol routes of vtubing (a la Kizuna Ai).

Of course, she does occasionally sing, and even has some releases out, with her most recent album that came out earlier this year having songs produced by multiple well known Vocaloid producers, but that ultimately isn't her main appeal. While not exactly the most popular streamer (given her relatively middling subscribers for a supposed titan of the industry), her status as one of the first-gen streamers of one of the largest vtuber corporations does mean that it cannot be underestimated just how well loved she is in Japan. Thus, with that, each anniversary presents an opportunity for various fans to pour their hearts out for for their Oshi, and coordinate elaborate projects surrounding the event.

In the case of this song, it was written by 篠沙季ナユタ and performed by 綿菓子かんろ (who, notably, herself is a vtuber/vsinger!). All of the stems were provided, along with sheet music, and a full write up for the lyrics and creative process exists out there too.

Despite the troubling aspects of idol/parasocial/streamer culture that no doubt exists, these passion projects still aim for the stars, and every once in a while, they hit their mark.

At the end of April, there is an event known as "Music Media-Mix Market" otherwise known as M3 in Japan where many musicians, particularly those who are indie, release works and sell physical CDs. While the event trends a bit towards EDM in general, there are albums of many genres sold at the event and one of my favourite artists, 高城みよ(hereafter referred to in english as Takashiro Miyo), is a regular participant.

I have always been fond of Takashiro Miyo's melody writing; she is particularly fond of writing in the 6/8 time signature (this album, if my ears are correct, has 3 6/8 songs and one in it's distant cousin, 3/4), and has been very effective at crafting interesting lines that have the sort of signature "swaying" feel that this time signature holds. I do hope that in this coming year I can spend some more time transcribing and learning bits of her music so that I can internalize the parts of her writing and arranging that I have loved for so long.

With spring passing by, I developed a bit of an interest in bullet hells this year. While I was always aware of Touhou and the much beloved (and influential!) games of Cave, I had never properly given the genre a serious try. I dabbled a bit with Blue Revolver, and I played some of the old Touhou's (with Th08 being one of my favourites), but it wasn't a genre that I thought about too much.

At some point, I somehow came across "RefRain - prism memories -", an old doujin game from 2011 that was rereleased on Steam. With a heavy focus on it's early aught's anime aesthetic, the gameplay was quick and engaging as I have come to expect from the genre at this point.

One of the specific strengths of RefRain lied with it's pattern design; there was a heavy usage of these swirling comet like clusters, and very often the game employed usage of bullets that would be deployed forward and then travel back up the screen.

I had a lot of fun, I particularly loved just how "beautiful" each of the patterns felt, and it has very quickly risen up in my own personal rankings.

This first post is something of an anomaly, and I don't wish for readers to think that this is how this blog is going to go; after all, I am merely playing catch up here, trying to give a sweeping overview of some of the works that defined my year for me. In it's process I have missed out on a lot of albums, movies, games, and shows that have left a bit of an impact on me (particularly sad that I don't have the time to write about the recent 綿菓子かんろ release).

But rather, it is a small invitation to understand my own interests, so that I may let you understand what my tastes are, and perhaps, get to know me, understanding some of my future posts where I actually have the space to dig into the works that I am talking about a little bit deeper.

For now, as I set my sights on the future, I'd like to say: I would like to bake some more tarts next year, and to spend more time writing music, and to knit, and to draw, and to-

Yours Truly,
Cecilia