yesterday, i attended kaf's virtual live, 不可解参(想), aka fukakai sou. i'm assuming most people reading this won't know who kaf is outside of the music of hers i've pasted around my homepage (if you're on a PC at least, they don't show up on mobile) so i'll give a super brief explanation: kaf (pronounced kafu) is my favorite singer. she represents herself with a virtual avatar similar to a vtuber, but she doesn't really do youtuber stuff, she's just a singer/musician. anyways i would have written about it yesterday but i was SO fucking emotional afterwards i really just had to take the day to rest. even now i don't think my thoughts will be in their cleanest form, i'm kind of using this journal entry just to ramble my mouth off and see where it takes me so at a later time i can structure my thoughts more coherently and properly dedicate a page to my Kaf Thoughts... consider this the messy stream of consciousness version HSDJFKDS

fukakai sou was a completely virtual live event, which means the entire thing was in 3D and viewable over the internet with no real life venue to go to, not that i mind, i'm american and kaf is in japan so it's not like i get to go to her concerts in person when they happen in person anyways. besides the full virtual really gives them the opportunity to go crazy with it if they want because. well. there's no limitation to what you can model and animate in 3D, the places kaf can sing in and stuff. they can be Really artistically expressive. and i was REALLY EXCITED!!

usually when kaf concerts happen, i buy my livestream ticket weeks in advance and then when the concert time comes around, i wake up in the early morning because Timezones and join in with the tiny english speaking fanbase to livepost and watch together. it kind of emulates the feeling of being in a concert hall but not Quite since you can actually have Conversation if you want to without talking over the music and obviously you are probably sitting at home in your pajamas instead of being surrounded by a bunch of sweaty people in a crowd. it's a very different feeling, but it's still definitely a feeling!! it's great!!

that being said this time around i was excited because i convinced a close friend to wake up and watch it with me, which is a new experience i haven't had yet before. while i've certainly infodumped to him about kaf over the past two years, he had never been to a kaf concert either, and i was really excited for him to have that experience too. i ended up being even more thankful for this than i thought i would because Holy shit this concert gets sad at the end. this is a spoiler i guess but more on that later, i just wanted to give some Foreshadowing if you will.

i want to recount my experience with the concert, step by step. i'll also supply screenshots! taking video/audio recording of the concert is illegal but posting screencaps is perfectly fine.

so at 5:30 am i got cozy in bed with water, banana pudding of all things, and opened discord to livepost with my friend. the first 30 minutes up until the proper concert start was a history of kaf presentation where kaf just sort of talks about her career thus far while clips from prior concerts play on screen, and it gave me and my friend a chance to get excited and sort out any technical issues with watching. and then at 6 am it BEGAN

the concert opened with a really dramatic cinematic with orchestral choir music that mirrored the intro used for kaf's real life concert back in august at the budoukan, fukakai kyou, and then an outfit reveal started. during concerts kaf tends to change into multiple outfits/costumes, and each change is represented by an artistic cinematic of that transformation. i expected that she would be changing into "kiji", the outfit we had only seen in 2D art by her character designer PALOW thus far, but she actually transformed into "tsubame (sou)", an alternately colored version of her usual tsubame outfit from the past year. she then went on to sing a lot of songs that she performed at the budoukan months ago, and while it was very good and i was vibing to the music (and even getting emotional over her performance of incomprehensible in particular) i was kind of confused, like, is this virtual live just going to be the budoukan again but in full 3D?? wouldn't they disclose that?? but Thankfully the concert did end up diverging and it turned out the first bit was just to commemorate the budoukan.

suddenly out of fucking nowhere some Rocks come up from the ground and make a path for kaf to walk across. this surprised me because she had been singing on a relatively normal stage so far. the black bars even came down vertically to make it look extra cinematic. i looked on in confusion and i could NOT have expected what ended up becoming of this

on the other side of the path there is a FLOATING PLATFORM backed by a MASSIVE CHERRY BLOSSOM TREE blowing PETALS EVERYWHERE!! it's so fucking pretty dude!! what the hell!! i was having flashbacks to kaf's graduation live, the virtual concert early last year that celebrated her graduating high school, which had a part where cherry blossoms started flowing through the window of the classroom she was singing in at the time. and then she sang uraomote girl, the song performed at the end of her grad live, so it was a really obvious reference and it fucking GOT me dude. holy shit

so yeah this was beautiful and they had been pumping me with the budoukan and grad live nostalgia but WHAT NEXT. WHERE IS SHE SUPPOSED TO GO FROM HERE? my questions don't take long to be answered though because fucking

an inscription appears on the platform she's standing on and she starts RISING INTO THE AIR and a little while of pretty cinematic and suspense later,

THIS BIG TOWER IS SHOWN OFF AND THE CONCERT LOGO APPEARS. OKAY!!!

all of this is to say kamitsubaki played a fucking PRANK on me. the past 30 minutes of pretty songs and that big cherry blossom tree? YEAH that was just the INTRO. now the REAL concert begins. to say that i was excited was an understatement!!!

for a while after this the concert was really fun!!! i was having a fucking blast dude!!! after the concert logo appears and everything, kaf properly transforms into her new outfit, kiji, and i'm super hyped because it looks SUPER pretty... when tsubame, her prior outfit, was unveiled over a year ago now, it took a while for me to warm up to it but i instantly fell in love with kiji. PALOW is absolutely cracked at making outfits with tons of neon colors on them and having it WORK somehow. and not only did they reveal kiji, which i thankfully loved, the first thing she did in that outfit is AN ELEVATOR RAVE?? SDJFIOSDF

i cannot think of any other piece of media that would get me this excited to watch a 3D girl run around in a tiny glass elevator surrounded by flashing lights and video screens during a concert WHILE SHE'S NOT EVEN SINGING THE SONGS PLAYING LMAO but no this was great. someone calculated how TALL this elevator is and it's roughly 4km or 2 and a half miles. my girl just jams out in this elevator for 10 minutes straight. Awesome. she even dances during one of the remixes, like, ACTUALLY dances with pre-planned dance moves instead of just vibing, which is saying something because kaf notoriously does not really... dance. she moves while she sings but she is not a dancer. so me and my friend were CHEERING! he even said he was honored to be there for kaf dancing properly live for the first time LMAOOOO

the next section of the concert is similarly enjoyable! the elevator takes kaf to this big technological looking room with a big screen in the back and a portal on the floor that allows guest singers to come in and perform with her. after a great performance of the song ito, she performs with CIEL, albemuth, ema (humorously depicted as a floating orb because she doesn't have a 3D model), and valis, all other talents associated with thinkr. i definitely don't keep up with all of the people working with thinkr because i only have so much time and energy and i dedicate almost all of it to kaf and a little bit to isekaijoucho, but i still recognized everyone here and was pleasantly surprised to see them since kaf doesn't usually perform with them.

yes, valis broke through the wall in the back. no, i have zero clue how that screen is still functioning to play the shinsei kakumei virtual reality music video while they perform.

after this section is kind of where the pure fun ends, though. kaf's music is emotional and i've cried over almost every kaf concert i've seen, especially over the past year, and that wasn't about to change here.

in kinda ominous silence, kaf gets on an elevator... i remember thinking how pretty the location was and noting how kaf seemed curious about her surroundings as well. like this wasn't a place she knew. and then the screen goes to black...

...and shamo sou is unveiled.

okay so at this point i'm losing my fucking mind. during kaf's live at the budoukan back in august, the shamo outfit was unveiled, and she sang some of the most emotional performances of the concert in that outfit. i LOVE shamo. it's one of my favorite kaf outfits. if it's not obvious from the name and the rooster-looking crest on the hood, it's based on japanese shamo chickens. and now they've brought it back, but sou version, decked out in blue/purple/green instead of warm orange tones. mentally, i was strapping myself in to be emotional, but was excited for it. it's cathartic to be emotional over kaf concerts, it's wonderful to feel the music in every inch of my body, to have the feelings spill from my eyes through tears. but little did i know just HOW fucking much i was going to cry yesterday morning.

the elevator reaches its end and kaf steps out into this dark area. the first thing you can hear is ocean waves, and then ominous music mixed with haunting piano begins to play as kaf does spoken poetry. the mood definitely feels changed. the high energy of the concert has been traded for something more somber. i found myself thinking of the devour the past trilogy of songs, which are heavy on ocean symbolism. my heart was racing just a little.

as she walks forward, more of the environment is revealed. she crosses through the water and a crosswalk and traffic light can be seen. i comment to my friend how cool this area looks. i'm totally lost in whatever transition is being made and my surroundings outside my computer screen practically don't exist while i take it all in.

suddenly the black bars on either side of the screen relent, revealing that kaf is standing in an abstracted 3D version of SHIBUYA CROSSING IN TOKYO! her real life band appears as holograms and the screens covering the buildings flicker to life as the instrumental for devour the past kicks in with a roar. so i was right!! i was right to think of devour the past as she walked through the ocean waves and into the city!! and what ensues has to be one of the most beautiful performances of the devour the past trilogy i have ever seen.

before i share my photos of just how GORGEOUS this 3D environment is, i want to talk about the devour the past trilogy a little bit, and why this is when i started to get weepy. the devour the past trilogy consists of devour the past, becoming the ocean, and hito wo kidoru, which i'm leaving as romaji because i'm not sure how to express the title in english. kaf started singing as a 14 year old and is now 19 at the time of writing, and the trilogy has been released slowly over that time period of her growing up and becoming an adult. despite the overt and heavy themes of the struggle to grow up and not wanting to become an adult, there are multiple ways that the specifics of the trilogy can be interpreted. i know a popular interpretation is that kaf is expressing not wanting to grow up through the lens of a childhood friend or loved one that passed away and she doesn't want to leave behind. personally, i'm a little more self indulgent about it, and i like to imagine that the person kaf is singing to is actually her childhood self that she doesn't want to leave behind, personified as her own entity. i have DID, so literally talking to your childhood self resonates with me as a theme.

these songs make me cry. devour the past, shown above, is one of the first kaf songs i ever heard back when i discovered her in february 2021, which is unsurprising because it's the most popular video on her channel by a landslide, even now as i write this. it was subtitled before the death of community captions, so i was immediately able to soak in the lyrics without much effort.

devour the past floored me. at the time, i had been going through a massive life transition... i had just turned 21, but all of my plans for getting back to college and becoming an adult were halted when in december 2020, repressed memories of severe and life changing childhood trauma reared their ugly heads. simply remembering it was enough to change the entire course of my life again. my mental and physical health plummeted. i could no longer maintain the relationship i had with my girlfriend of four and a half years, and we broke up despite having just started living together. plans to go back to school or to get a job were trampled on. i was re-evaluating my entire life, and dealing with a heavy amount of PTSD and DID symptoms. despite being an adult, constantly being assaulted by my childhood memories made me feel like a child, stuck in the past. so when i put on a song about not wanting to grow up and being bitter about adulthood, i felt that.

the lyrics, written by kanzaki iori, and the vocals, sung by kaf's delicate yet powerful voice were more than enough to make me fall in love instantly with their music, but the music video in front of me added to it as well. i grew up on the virtual as some of my only comforts through difficult times, first with pokemon, and more importantly here, vocaloid, which i discovered at age 11. ever since finding vocaloid, i had become obsessed with the meaning of the internet, the way that virtual space connects people, and i found myself identifying more with who i was online than who i was in real life as an escape. even now as an adult, i often feel more like the words i write on discord, the images i post online, than whatever body i'm stuck in in real life. so to see the song performed by a 3D girl, someone who was not "real" but had a real voice and could walk around in real space... to be connected with someone in that state of half-real, half-fiction and be driven to tears by it, really moved me. i delved deep into the kaf rabbithole after listening to devour the past (and another song called confused telepathy) for the first time.

as the trilogy continues, the mood changes. in devour the past kaf is angry and resentful about having to become an adult. in becoming the ocean, she is notably less defiant and more sad, while still keeping a little bit of edge to her. it feels like things are beginning to change whether she likes it or not, and she wants the person she is singing about to come back. and in hito wo kidoru, the somber feeling has fully taken over - she's an adult now, and she has to accept it, put the childhood she clung to so hard behind her. it's painful. it's not easy. all of this transition happened while kaf was actually aging in real life. as an adult with one foot in childhood and one foot in adulthood, i resonated with every step of it. it means a lot to me.

so, you can imagine how hard it hits for kaf to perform the earlier songs in the trilogy now that she is an adult. back to fukakai sou, she sings the trilogy in order.

first is devour the past. it's exhilarating. the original music video for the song plays on the screens on the buildings, showing kaf's childhood self. we get some wide, sweeping shots of the location, showing that the sky has a glittering upside down tokyo within it. i am floored by all of this. kaf has had the chance to perform devour the past a million times over, but it had never been presented with this level of artistic care. i was practically gawking at all the camera angles, and of course, kaf's vocals were powerful.

where it really started to hit for me, though, was becoming the ocean. after a band member introduction, laplace, kaf's giant fish mascot, swims into view from the sky. laplace is very present in the devour the past and becoming the ocean music videos, and seemingly represents the person kaf is singing to. laplace is also absent in hito wo kidoru aside from polaroid photographs, which further proves the point. kaf turns and reaches towards the sky almost as if longingly, and with laplace framing her in nearly every shot, she performs a short version of becoming the ocean, quickly hitting the emotional climax of the song, in which laplace then swims away and out of view, leaving her.

and then oh boy shit goes CRAZY!!!

cracks form in the ground and kaf and her band are lifted into the sky. the physics are changed to be more floaty, kaf's hair and clothes whip everywhere. i cannot even begin to articulate how fucking COOL this was and how lost i was in watching. by the end kaf is practically screaming into the sky and there are tears in my eyes and i am shaking all over, overwhelmed by the EMOTION of it all. absolutely astounding work and every person who worked on concepting this section of the concert and putting it all together deserves a raise. holy shit.

after this, kaf performs mikansoku, which gives me a bit of an emotional break because i don't have as much of an attachment to the song... which i really needed, especially considering what was going to come afterwards. it was still really pretty, though. kaf and band are rising through part of the tower still, but there's gaps where you can see the sky, and the animated typography that kamitsubaki often includes in concerts is super present here.

and then... kyoukankaku, otherwise known as A Sense of Madness. where do i even start.

at the time of writing this, kyoukankaku actually hasn't been officially released yet - it was first performed during fukakai kyou at the budoukan back in august 2022 and doesn't have a youtube video dedicated to it yet, plus the album it'll be on hasn't come out yet. when there's a way for me to link the song here, i'll probably come back and edit this journal to include it. that being said, i was there during fukakai kyou, so i know this song. i know it very well.

kyoukankaku is one of my favorite kaf songs now, but it definitely wasn't when i first heard it. it's the last song in a trilogy of songs that was released over the course of kaf growing up and becoming an adult, similar to the devour the past trilogy. also similar to devour the past, it's about the pain of not wanting to become an adult, and then the pain of finally becoming one. however, unlike devour the past, it's a lot more direct about it, and doesn't have any sort of metaphor with another person being sung to. i have extremely complicated feelings about the first song in the trilogy, incomprehensible, and kyoukankaku, the last song.

incomprehensible directly discusses how adults and society are all about business and money and how depressing that is. it's a very powerful song where kaf wants to reach through the screen into your heart and imbue love into you, to get you to approach the world in a more passionate and human way so that the cruelties of the world could maybe be changed. it's a direct stance against society and adulthood as a whole. over the past couple of years, that messaging has resonated with me. i have been constantly reliving the pain of my childhood and the fear of adulthood, just wishing society was not the way it was so that i could heal myself and others by just my words, just what i feel, so that no one would have to suffer like i did and do. i have been and continue to be pessimistic about society, hateful of money and corporations, hateful of what adulthood brings. i have been trying to continue to be a child, despite over the age of 20. i haven't been able to make that transition into becoming an adult, and i didn't want to.

so you can imagine that when kyoukankaku, a song in direct opposition of those original ideals, one where kaf is like, yeah, okay, i have to be an adult, i have to be a part of society, and maybe those ideals from my past were childish and nonsensical... my first whiplash response to it was to hate it. i mean, how could incomprehensible lift me up and tell me that i can change the world with love, that it's okay to not want to become an adult, and then how could kyoukankaku indirectly tell me that i was childish for every believing in that song? for resonating with its message? it almost felt like a betrayal of something i held so dear to me. i couldn't understand how kaf's vocals were still so passionate and so strong, when she was singing about practically giving up on changing the world. giving up on love. almost irrationally so, i couldn't deal with this song. i wanted to cling to the meaning of incomprehensible and ignore that kyoukankaku existed.

but then... i thought about it. why does kyoukankaku cause such a visceral unease and unhappiness for me? why is kaf still able to sing it with so much heart despite supposedly giving up? i began to sit with those feelings and thoughts. especially in the past few months, i have been making steps towards properly becoming an adult, getting medicated for my chronic illness so that i can go back to school and hopefully get a certification or degree in computer science, unsure of what exact route i'm going to take yet. i've been making changes in my daily routine at home to become more independent and to not rely on my parents as much. i am trying to leave the house more instead of practically being a NEET aside from doctor appointments. i have spent a couple years resting to recover from the suffering of reliving my childhood, and now i begin to look to the future. kyoukankaku, in this time, has called to me more than ever. so, i went back to evaluate the translation my friend vayn did of the song... and i realized some things.

what i previously thought was a song about giving up no longer read to me like a song about giving up. yes, she has become an adult, and she's accepted that she can't simply change the world through love, through her music. there is no running away. quite literally to survive, one has to be a Part Of Society. but that doesn't mean she's given up on being happy, on expressing love, on being human... kyoukankaku is deeply sad and somber feeling as kaf sings about the destruction of her old childish ideals, but as she transitions into telling the listener they aren't the only one experiencing the agony of this transition into adulthood, the madness of it all, wishing that they could change things for the better but being stuck, that they aren't alone... as she transtions into asking the listener to "come and dance for one more spell", to still smile, to "keep falling in love with ever one more stupid thing", to go mad with her, i understand it. kyoukankaku is about still holding onto love and compassion even when things seem hopeless, even when life is difficult and not the escapist ideals we thought of as children, even when we can't change the world... it's about still being human. surviving. being happy. loving one another. going mad with one another. and as someone going through growing up, albeit a few years late, that's the message i need to hear. things are hard, but i am human, and i still experience love and joy and connection with others. that's worth something, and i refuse to let go of the heart my childhood self had, even if her ideas weren't perfect.

i started sobbing pretty much the instant kyoukankaku started playing, because it's the first time i had listened to it since i came to all these realizations about it. like, ugly crying over my keyboard. i was experiencing every emotion at once, all of the pain and change i had felt over my life at once. kaf was still in the sky, but was surrounded by abstracted 2D imagery that shattered, revealing a sunset, or a dawn. it was the ultimate catharsis, like i could finally let go of some of that pain, that i could hope to still be happy.

as the emotional peak of the song begins, and kaf is practically screaming the words, the background goes white and a huge 2D illustration of herself in her casual dress fills the entire screen, dominating the frame. at this point i can barely see from how much i am sobbing and i'm desperately fumbling for tissues because my nose is running out of control.

the performance ends with the 2D flowers and vines surrounding kaf dissipating into petals, and upon that platform in the sky, she simply bows and thanks you for listening and the screen fades to black.

now you aren't going to believe this considering how long i've gone on already, but things are about to get a whole lot more emotional, and more importantly, sad. fukakai had one more thing left in store for everyone, something that was both surprising and also something i've been anticipating for a while.

kaf emerges into an area called the shrine of departure and changes into her casual dress with a quick glowing animation as she walks. soft piano music plays as she does more spoken poetry. it feels oddly sad, and i'm left wondering what the name of the place means.

it doesn't take long for it to be revealed why the place is called the shrine of departure, though. kanzaki iori, kaf's songwriter, appears to kaf, represented by a black, featureless humanoid figure constantly giving off black particles into the air. they reminisce on the past years of their work together and kaf's career together, and then kanzaki drops the news to the audience: he's departing from thinkr/kamitsubaki.

after the announcement, kaf and kanzaki sing two duets together of songs he has written, one being devour the past, and the second being hated by life itself. i don't want to linger on the performances themselves too long despite how beautiful they were because they're still too raw and painful for me. if i had been crying hard before, i was certainly crying hard now, practically hyperventilating and struggling not to make awful noises that would wake up my parents in the early morning. i was a total wreck. i could barely handle this after everything i had just experienced with hito wo kidoru and kyoukankaku prior. it didn't help that kanzaki and kaf sounded like they were crying as well as they sang - kaf's usual controlled and powerful emotional voice felt... off. more fragile. sometimes her voice broke in unexpected ways. it hurt, a lot.

kanzaki iori is the man who wrote all of the songs i have talked about at length in this journal entry. he is the man who wrote the songs that have held my hand over the past 2 years of my life, which have been some of the hardest years of my life. his words, his lyrics, have guided me through reliving my terrible childhood and guided me to slowly but surely becoming an adult despite the pain, despite the fear. to say he has had a deep impact on my life would be an understatement. he is present in all of kaf's old music - kaf has said in interviews that she is bad at expressing her emotions, but kanzaki's lyrics give her a way to express them. when she bends her voice in such a way that it makes me cry, it's kanzaki's words that she is screaming. as well as any of her own, it is his sorrow that she is expressing. i don't know kanzaki in real life, and i don't know what he struggles with, but he has said that his music is a way for him to vent his own emotions, and i do, from far away, relate to being an adult who cannot completely move on from how painful childhood was, but has to.

for a while now, it was kind of easy to tell he was in a bit of a slump. weeks ago, i realized that kaf's music was changing and probably not going back to how it used to be. the past year, during the "tsubame era" as i like to call it, kaf has not done very much music with kanzaki despite that being almost entirely what she used to sing. she has branched out, which is good! but kanzaki's trilogies had wrapped up and it seemed like he didn't know where to go next. at first, this realization really hurt me, as i held onto kanzaki and kaf's music as a duo for comfort, and this is actually what spurred me to reread the lyrics to kyoukankaku and come to some acceptance about it. that is to say, i kind of knew this was coming and i was partially emotionally prepared as a result, but barely. not being completely caught offguard eased me into accepting that it was happening, but it was still very, very difficult. i am still struggling with this somewhat as i write. it's one of the reasons i started writing this journal in the first place.

in nearly a full minute of complete, solemn silence, kanzaki evaporates, leaving behind a glowing, diamond shaped object, that kaf walks forward, takes into her hands, and puts to her heart as it disappears. the shot lingers on her just standing there, keeping her hands to her chest.

and then kaf sings a song she wrote herself, called Remember. it's emotional, but much happier sounding than the duets before kanzaki left. as she sings it, she begins to walk towards a portal that has opened up at the top of some steps.

the portal is the only location in the concert without a proper name, simply written as ??????. kaf talks about the past and the future and reminds you, the listener, that she loves you, all of the people watching, and that her journey is only just beginning... and she steps into the portal. the unknown. the concert ends with a wide shot of the empty altar, with only the sound of the ambience of its magic, and then the screen turns black. and it's over.

of course, there's advertisements and other things afterwards for other kamitsubaki projects, but i'm not here to talk about those. after they were over, i spent practically the whole day thinking about, and talking about this concert. i had other plans for things to do yesterday, but they all fell by the wayside due to how much fukakai sou consumed me and my thoughts. i was very glad to have experienced the whole thing with my close friend, who was also deeply emotionally affected by the concert. i think if i had experienced it alone, or only with people who didn't know me as well as he did, i would have gone crazy trying to explain to someone what it felt like to just go through all of that, to be there as it happened. i cried on and off for the first few hours and forgot to eat until a little later in the day. by the time i went to bed i was exhausted and my face still felt strange from crying so much nearly 12 hours prior.

i took to twitter to send a message of support to kanzaki and eagerly read the note he put out about why he was leaving, with the help of DeepL and the rest of the kamitsubaki english fandom, since my japanese is not near good enough to read something of this complexity and length. it nearly made me cry again. i can only hope that kanzaki is able to rejuvenate his artistic passion and finds peace with his work as he moves down his own path. i am deeply appreciative that he was given the time and space to say goodbye to kaf during a concert and perform a couple of songs with her, that they turned his goodbye into art, because kanzaki is deeply important to everything that kaf was as a work of art, and him leaving will have massive effects on the future of kaf. he has touched so many lives. he deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated and remembered, and he deserves to be happy wherever he goes next.

what is there left to say? i could probably go on for even longer than i've gone on here, for paragraphs and paragraphs. i didn't include any of the parts of the concert where my alters were crying with me - in fact i didn't talk about my DID that much at all. i didn't dig into the meaning of hated by life itself as performed by kaf and kanzaki. i could have talked at length about many other songs during the concert. but i think i've done a good job of reliving yesterday and what it meant to me here, enough to keep it close to me for a while and not forget, and solidify my thoughts at a later date when the wound is less raw.

i can't quite say that i'm "over" it yet, even though i kind of knew this was coming, and even though i experienced a sense of closure and moving forward with kyoukankaku and everything that came after. it's not that linear, it's definitely more complicated. but, i can say that it's not all sad: kanzaki and kaf will continue to make music that i love and hold close to my heart as i move into a proper adulthood and grow up, just like they taught me to do. it is almost uncanny how well the timing of kanzaki moving on matches up with me moving on. and of course, the prior parts of the concert were super fun and ever since i have been rewatching bits and clips from the official archive that make me happy. oh, and there were encore songs that i got to watch for pre-purchasing a ticket! so i got to leave off on a bit of a happier note after all.

i am deeply, deeply appreciative of kaf, kanzaki, and everyone at kamitsubaki the past couple of years for making music that has held my hand through so much suffering, and fukakai sou feels like a culmination of that and a final push for me to change, joy and sorrow and love and pain and all. i will probably be crying over this experience for weeks to come. hopefully my friends can put up with my rambles lmao

anyways, i took commissions to afford my ticket and merch, so i have those to start this week, plus i am working on projects for this site as usual, so i guess after eating some food i'll get on that stuff now. if you actually read this far, i really appreciate you listening to me ramble and reliving the concert with me. i really needed to do this to move past yesterday and start doing normal daily tasks again. thank you very much!!