A Small Fry Carried by Controversy

Content Warnings:
lolisho/lolibait, and sexual themes.

As some of you may know, earlier today Hiiragi Magnetite released a remake of his song Zaako – for those who don't know, that's the song from last month that was gone as soon as it came because, shocker, people of all languages weren't too fond of the voice of an actual literal child being used in a song full of plausibly deniable double entendre. The remake features a change in visuals and vocalist; instead of 10-apples-tall Kaai Yuki, we have Akita Neru, a somewhat more mature and infinitely more malleable character. At the time I'm writing this, reception to this change seems positively lukewarm. Problem solved, song's good now, right?

Well, hmm. I don't know about that. I'm not entirely convinced the song wasn't entirely carried by Kaai Yuki, and I don't mean that positively. Bear with me for a moment.

According to Castation (the guy who handled the music video), the song was always intended to be a "mischievous high school romcom" sort of thing. Y'know that subgenre of anime where the guy's a pathetic loser who's obviously into her and the female lead bullies the shit out of him over it? Like, she's a total tease but actually she totally likes him back? Nagatoro's the obvious example. That kind of slop. And yeah, Zaako very obviously fits that mold in terms of content.

If we take Castation and Magnetite's word that they didn't intend for there to be any pedophilic undertones, then obviously they should've had the central character be Akita Neru from the get-go. Neru is, conceptually, literally a hater and closet fan personified. Granted, her fanloid status means she has no voice of her own, but traditionally people would simply pitch up Miku or pitch down Rin. Hell, for the Zaako remake Magnetite simply used Miku with no bells or whistles (unless you count Teto's backing vocals) – obviously this is a non-issue.

So why'd they use Kaai Yuki initially?

On the surface to people neck-deep in vocalsynths, the problem might not be obvious. Sure, Kaai Yuki as a character is an elementary schooler. Lots of vocalsynth characters are minors (usually teenagers) on paper, sure, but it's standard practice for songwriters to toss out things like "canon ages" along with the rest of a voicebank's canonical lore. Sure, Hatsune Miku's canonically 16, but she's also canonically an android from a dystopian future with no music, and when's the last time anyone wrote a song about that? Anger by Tripshots, circa 2007? Literally the following year, ryo released Melt, a simple ordinary human love song, forcing everyone to lock in and collectively realize that they didn't have to be All Meta All The Time. Deviating from canon isn't a bug, it's a feature. The vocaloids in most songs are not the literal canonical box art anime characters, they're a producer's original characters donut steel using the mascots as faceclaims. And if I'm being frank with you, that's fine and good, actually.

But the thing about most vocalsynths is that the vast majority of the time, their voice providers are adults when they're in the recording booth. Kaai Yuki is different. Her voice provider was 9 years old when those samples were recorded. Her voice provider may be an adult now, but her child self is immortalized in software. It does not grow up with her. No matter how many bits and pieces of canonical trivia you throw out for the sake of your music, that doesn't change the fact that it's a 9-year-old singing it. Forever. Real Peter Pan type situation there. Hell, even though she's supposed to be "aged up" in Zaako, her 15-year-old self is still only "ten big apples tall".

So basically with the original Zaako, we have an actual 9-year-old musically bullying the listener for being attracted to her and she's both a little bit disgusted and a little bit into it and she's a total tease about it. It adds this weird uncomfortable "LMAOOOO, you're attracted to me 'cause I look like (or am) a little girl! You're a pedophile teehee!!! Hahahahaha! ♥ I'm having such a good time about it!" layer that lolicons are really into for some reason (as a casual observation, chuds are oddly into shame-based kinks). And then when people try to claim that element totally isn't there at all, it kinda reminds me of that part in Jenny Nicholson's video on the final bronycon (a retrospective on bronies, essentially) where she talks about how weird it was that people made dakimakuras of My Little Pony's child characters in the same style as the adult characters (attempting to be sexy, as is body pillow tradition), and if you called a spade a spade they'd simply accuse you of being the pervert and it was a big 'ol mass gaslighting attempt. No wonder that fandom was full of pedophiles, lmao. It's a singing trojan horse, essentially.

But the thing is… that is basically the vast majority of the song's substance. It's pure shock value. That one questionable decision is the only thing worth discussing. If you replace Kaai Yuki with a less risky character, that gross and off-putting element is removed, which is in theory a good thing. No, straight up is a good thing. If being discount Nagatoro really was the sole intention, Neru as the lead role sticks the landing much better. But most of us recognize anime like Nagatoro as slop for a reason. Without controversy, what does Zaako have left to offer? It's mindlessly repetitive both in lyrics and visuals. It's brainrot distilled in its purest form. It's got a cute surface and that's about it. It's a pie with only crust. And honestly, I think that's damning.

Zaako is a vocal waste of space – a song that lives and dies off of controversy. I guess in that sense, it got me hook, line, and sinker. Oh well. Point is the song's mid.