Music video for Humbert Humbert’s song “Futatsu no Hoshi.” Set in endless darkness, it was created around the motif of two stars that keep sending letters.

This music video is for the lead track from BURNOUT SYNDROMES’ final indie-era album. Built around poetry readings quoting classic works of literature and lyrics by vocalist Kumagai, who spent his school days in a state of frustration and melancholy, the song combines a band arrangement that nonetheless feels uplifting with a wealth of inventive touches that can’t be summed up simply as “downer.” At the suggestion of art director Kawamoto, we were asked to create a lyric video using “letters and a girl motif as the core elements.” So we decided to visualize Kumagai’s gloomy student days, as described in the lyrics, in a straightforward way. Even with typography as the main motif, we wanted it to have a distinctive feel, so we broke down and reconstructed the letter elements to create new characters, and used those elements to depict concrete motifs, putting effort into staging that could captivate viewers through the forms of the typeface alone. The girl’s animation was based on character designs by Kaneko Kaihatsu, then redesigned by Tomoeki Nakauchi, Wataru Uekusa, and koya, with an attempt to change the visual style for each part of the song.