Racing into the Night

I don't enjoy the fact that this music video exists at all, let alone it being so popular and highly rated, with over 250 million views and 2.7 million likes on YouTube since its premiere in November 2019. The song it's based on tells the story of a young man who fell in love with a mysterious woman possessing an aloof personality and suicidal tendencies. Although they seemingly enter a relationship, she keeps pushing the man away and shuts him out, wanting to "end it all". The man is frustrated at his powerlessness but chooses to believe in a good resolution until he caves and developssuicidal tendencies of his own—and that's when the two finally manage to connect for real. The video ends with both of them happily falling down from the roof and the woman reaching to kiss the man. Of all the topics to romanticize, the authors chose suicide. This is a deal-breaker for me because I think anything that glorifies suicide in any way or form can go eat a dick. My grandmother committed suicide when I was a kid; she did it in the bathroom, drunk, while I was in the same apartment, and I hadn't realized what happened until many years later only thanks to sheer luck and my parents' quick thinking. I had friends and acquaintances who had committed suicide and still have more who are on an active watch. I dated a woman whose first love committed suicide and who had suicidal tendencies of her own. My father doubled-down on various forms of self-destruction in the recent years. I went through many years of debilitating depression myself. I am *extremely uncomfortable* with the idea of romanticizing self-harm and suicide because it's been chasing me for most of my life, I know very well how horrible it is and how every bit of media normalizing it and making it look glamorous isn't helping the situation but is rather making it worse. That being said, I'm not against featuring the topic of suicide per se, or any other sensitive topic, really, as long as it's treated responsibly. For instance, the portrayal of suicidal mindset in Welcome to the NHK or Goodbye Punpun (both among my favorite works of fiction) were wonderful—and also painful because of how unglamorous and true to form they were. Itoshiki's character in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei didn't feel offensive, even though the whole thing was framed as a morbid comedy, because the other characters were aware that he was a broken person who needed help and reached out to him in their own ways. Hell, take the quintessential example: Romeo and Juliet, which ended in a suicide of both lead characters. Except... they didn't want this ending—they wanted to be together while ALIVE, and only chose to end their life in an state of crushing despair over the [presumed] death of their loved one. You can make the topic work very well and deliver the impact you want if you serve it for what it is: a uniquely human tragedy, something to avoid and help prevent. What makes this case different is that it makes suicide seem more like a solution than a problem, offers an idea that instead of seeking help or trying to otherwise tackle the underlying issues that inform death-seeking behavior, ending one's life is a valid option, which it decidedly isn't. It's essentially encouraging suicidal people to take the step over the edge because that—and ONLY that—is how its characters achieve happiness. This is the exact opposite of what a responsible person should be doing. And people still dare to complain in YouTube comments that it's age-restricted and forces a confirmation dialog on them! It's restricted for a perfectly valid reason—its very existence is actively dangerous to people who are at a low enough point in their life to relate with suicidal characters and be nudged in the wrong direction through no fault of their own. It's been seen by millions of people, and if even one life was saved by the confirmation prompt, then it was worth the minor inconvenience of any number of random J-pop fans who don't care. One could retort that this isn't the first song on YT on this topic—indeed, not by a long shot, but while I'm similarly unhappy hearing someone like Ville Valo famously asking his "baby" to "join him in death" or any other such drivel, at least the video directors at the time had the common sense and decency not to depict the physical act of doing so—let alone in a fittingly glamorous fashion. Although it's still an issue, it's not as quite egregious. Besides the thematic payload, the video isn't even particularly well-made, so I have nothing specific to fall back on in terms of artistic merits. It looks like an art student's end-of-year project as represented by stilted animation mostly based on loops and pans, where facial expressions only change on a scene cut and editing makes every shot linger just long enough to make one's mind start wandering—perhaps intentionally. There are, of course, amateurish attempts at visual metaphors: knives and butterflies and drops of blood and blotches hiding the eyes; not exactly the most original set, although it still gives the more enthusiastic reviewers some trouble in deciphering them for some reason. Visual continuity could also be better: as an example, take out the first scene of them falling together at 1:43, and it instantly makes the final scene (where that happens again) rhyme with the beginning where the woman falls alone, with the narrative coming full circle without the unnecessary refrain in the middle. I do like the use of the blue-pink color palette, however. The music is the only truly redeeming quality of this work in my opinion. The song is well-made—I can tell that much even not being a fan of J-pop or Yoasobi in particular—but it didn't sell me on the genre nor made me want to listen to itself again, so... meh. I'd say just avoid it entirely. Even if you're in sound mental health, you lose nothing of consequence by skipping it. And with that, this music video receives the dubious honor of getting my second ever score of 1 (after Kuma Miko) to signify its net negative value.