Virtual duo artist “Marpril” MV With a choreography video as the theme, we also expressed its virtual nature by incorporating a lot of motion graphics.

This music video is for “Tomadoi Telepathy,” a tie-in song for NTT Docomo’s next-generation communications standard, 5G, sung by the virtual singer KAFU. To interpret next-generation communications standard “5G” as a metaphor for high-speed internet, we proposed the concept of “KAFU taking part in a VR racing game.” With future-forward art direction reminiscent of WipeOut and RedOut, and the extreme racing action unique to anti-gravity racing games, the video expresses an image of the internet space of the future. Two perspectives were deliberately depicted in this MV. One is KAFU’s first-person perspective as she immerses herself in a racing game as a metaphor for the future internet space; the other is a third-person perspective, composed like manga panel layouts using graphics modeled after desktop browser windows. An MV can sometimes feel awkward when a manga-like panel structure does not align with the music’s tone, but by styling the panels after browser windows, the direction more strongly reinforces the internet-space theme that is the subject of the MV. The racing scenes using VR goggles serve as a metaphor for the next-generation internet space, while also representing a first-person perspective immersed in that space. The visuals of the racing scenes draw inspiration from WipeOut, whose art direction was handled by Designers Republic, but turning the parody of a specific title into the concept itself could never rival an MV made in MAD style. So while retaining the futuristic feel, we used a vividly primary-color palette reminiscent of web 1.0, and forcibly arranged backgrounds made from 2D graphics and photo collages into a 3D space to create the image of the internet as a circuit course. The racing craft were also designed in an avatar-like style by making the racer visible on a Mario Kart-like vehicle, and by unifying the characters’ base forms into silhouettes that resemble the figure eight. The avatar designs drew on icons symbolizing net culture—such as Mona from 2channel ASCII art, vaporwave-style plaster busts, and emoji motifs—to depict lively racing scenes. In the racing scenes, motion blur was applied to the backgrounds to express an overwhelming sense of speed. If standard After Effects motion blur is used, it tends to suggest the subject itself is blurred due to the lens shutter speed. To evoke a digital space made of accumulated bitmaps, the render settings were set to “Draft” so that the output would not use anti-aliasing. For the blur effect, we used a Displacement Map effect, which is often employed to simulate datamosh. By assigning a striped graphic as the map layer, the motif silhouettes are distorted as if with speed lines, and together with the camera work, a pseudo-motion blur can be created.

I got a very interesting long liner note from Powder himself, and the story was inspired by that. The main concept is based on a social-satirical image of the Tsukiji Market relocation issue, which was a problem in Japan, and it aims to convey as abstractly as possible the idea of being forced to make decisions in your own mind, and in a world where we tend to think in terms of just two choices, yes or no, updating our sense of things by asking whether there might be a new path rather than denying either side—that is New Tribe!