Me! Me! Me!

I had absolutely no intention to blog about Me! Me! Me!, the music video accompanying the single of the same name by Japanese Electro Pop DJ Teddyloid until the urge to do so came over me all of a sudden. Me! Me! Me! is a short film/music video animated by Studio Khara that's picked up a lot of heat and attention due to it's perceived controversialness and shock value. The reactions of those viewing it as cheap and shallow is perplexing me a little and I took a while to think about why some people found the video this way whilst others have found it to be extremely deep and thought provoking.

The first big barrier seperating the two aforementioned groups is the maturity of the content. Despite being a 5 minute music video for an electronic pop song, it contains a lot of mature images including nudity and gore. What sets Me! Me! Me! aside from other things controversial for containing these things however is that none of these things are used for the sake of it. The sexual explicitness is a key plot point in the story the song and video is trying to convey and the more gruesome action scenes are to be taken as metaphors. From being naturally exposed to peoples opinions on the short, and from listening to the lyrics of the song and thinking about the animation, I've pieced together a few interpretations of it.

Whether you've seen it or not, I'll go through the entire thing giving my thoughts on what is going on. Shortly before the music kicks in, we see the protagonist lying in his room visibly depressed. Cigarette butts litter his desk, which is also adorned with model kit pieces. On his shelves you can see figures and statues, with his TV paused on some animated scene of some kind. The TV resumes and takes full focus as two copies of the same girl squeel in excitement and the happy first phase of the song plays. This blue-haired girl who we see cloned and copypasted throughout the short probably is the personification of the antagonists addiction with anime, video games, and the whole "Hatsune Miku" side of Japanese animation. It's his idealised version of a woman, one that lacks an independent personality of her own and is designed to be a sexualised, constantly happy and supportive doll. A form of anaesthetic for his feelings and his apathy towards taking part in the world outside of his room.

The army of blue-haired clone-girls begins to dance in a section what I imagine a trip on acid is probably like (though the rest of the short is probably quite like a psychodelic trip too) and it's in the lyrics here that we learn the song is sung from the perspective of a different girl, She speaks of the feelings she felt for the antagonist and her devotion to him. At this point the music takes a more electronic feel (I hear the cool kids call it a drop) and we're introduced to a second, erm, "girl". This new pink-haired person sits cross legged on a chair naked as if to look down on the guy in question, this new girl is characterised by her alien-like menacing face and four demonic eyes. The clone girls are now much more sexualised in a scene not unlike the video for Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, albeit a little more uncomfortable to watch. I'm going to go ahead and translate the lyrics throughout my interpretation because I feel they really help to explain the story a little more and are probably my favourite part of the short.

You told me

I am the depth of your being

I am your hatred and sadness

What you created cannot be a lie

Am I the one you've created? The true me?

My heart changed at your convenience

False memories and a narrow mind

Clearly this is the freaky alien-girl speaking, and as the verse comes to an end, the protagonist is crushed within the TV world, waking up on his bed to the alien-girl frozen on the TV. In this interlude from the song, the naked alien-girl jumps out of the TV and takes off her irregular four-eyed mask to reveal a more human face behind it. She climbs up and pins the protagonist down, and (in a way I can only describe as gross) proceeds to vomit a white substance into our lead's mouth causing him to fall into another hallucination.

In this segment, the music is less electronic heavy and more emotionally heart-felt. The pink-haired girl is seen again but this time not behaving like some kind of demonic succubus, here she is obviously extremely upset and in distress. Here we see a scene from the protagonists view, watching himself in third person in a memory he now sincerely regrets. In the memory, pink-haired girl (henceforth labelled "the girlfriend") is in tears on the floor in front of the protagonist, she appears to be begging him but he couldn't be more apathetic. He turns and walks away as she cries. Watching girlfriend in pain causes the viewer version of him visible pain as he falls back and we cut to a scene of demon-girlfriend eating his intestines. Thinking about how he treated her is metaphorically eating him up, he feels dead inside. A couple choice lyrics that play during this segment include:

Extreme dissatisfaction; your life was covered with distress

A direct blow divided my days into two

Return and love me. We came so far

Please recall my heart, please recall my love, please come back

Thinking only of yourself made us distant

Since that day, dreaming of a flower I couldn't stop thinking about you

Please remember, please remind yourself

I was sadder than you thought

I'll wait for you

If the music video was unclear, listening to the lyrics of the song spell the situation out a little more clearly, our protagonist is a lazy shut-in obsessed with his "otaku" lifestyle and wasn't able to commit to a real human relationship. He let himself drift from his girlfriend and broke it off with her, breaking her heart and as of shortly before the video starts, he has realised the error of his ways. His addictions that once fuelled him have lost their meaning and he finds himself sick and depressed, his guilt and regret eating away at him as he smokes cigarettes and plays video games in his room.

No more, he decides. He screams aloud with tears in his eyes as in another metaphorical phase, he suits up into some kind of anime-styled power rangers/metroid suit. This is an experience we've all had when distressed by something. We decide that enough is enough and we can't go on doing things this way, whether it's about dieting, study or anything like that. After suiting up, a more drum and bass phase of the song begins and we watch as he is determined to tone down his obsessions and get his life in order, he guns down several aggressive clone-girls as they explode into green goo like something out of an arcade shooter.

Overcoming these waves of clone-girls. we see images of both the pure-girlfriend and demon-girlfriend as though the former is trapped and held captive by the latter. Taking damage, our protagonist loses his arm, and trying to grasp for his girlfriend with his other, he fails and she falls into pitch black. Cut to demon-girlfriend seemingly DJing in the room of the final confrontation. Demon-girlfriend absorbs pure-girlfriend in what I feel could be interpreted in two ways from here, either showing that he still has more personal growth to make before he can earn the heroine back, or that despite our heroes efforts to win her back she cannot take him back, fusing the two representations of her as if to say that she is who he must overcome in order to get over the break up that is tormenting him so. Listening to the lyrics again I think the last theory might in fact be the case.

What will you do with your life?

What will you do for a living?

No matter how you live, you'll always be a loser

Fear stops, builds and accumulates inside of you

Your memories begin to overlap

She was a good girl

Envy, envy seems fun

I tried my best, what are you going to do?

I want you to realise they're just shards of a shattered mirror

I'll talk about those some more in a bit, but as for the conclusion of the video, it's not a happy ending. Our mecha-enhanced protagonist is shot down once more, unable to defeat the demonic pink-haired girl, and wakes up in the same position he was in at the very beginning, creating a loop and bringing him back to his apathy and pain. On the official website, the entire video will repeat from here continuously, showing that, like a lot of us, he will struggle with his problems over and over, making hollow efforts to draw a line in the sand and sort his life out.

Whilst I feel like the animation is enjoyable and entertaining, and I like interpreting the story in ways that may or may not be the true tale, the song truly is the more interesting point for me. I'd heard of Teddyloid before from some of his earlier work, but hadn't listened to much of it. As I said before, listening to the lyrics in the first few phases was catchy, but in the final phase is where they hit me at a personal level. The verse up above really invoked a lot of feelings and memories I've experienced in my own life, whilst not experiences like that in the story, memories that really p**** me off, remembering the people who have said those exact same things to me. Overbearing concern and doubt that you're not living your life to the fullest, that you're going to be a loser and not accomplish a thing, and that you just aren't trying when in reality you're giving it your all. It gives the video that much more impact, putting me in the protagonists shoes, whilst not through his problems but at anger of being told that he'll never succeed. The song does an incredible job of making you feel for the two main characters through the music and symbolic scenes. I felt awful for the girl who was crying out in heartbreak, and I felt anger alongside the guy who was told he was worthless and unable to change anything.

The short really does an amazing job of leaving an imprint on you, you want the hero to get his life back under control and be there for the pink-haired girl, it hurts when he fails and returns to his debilitating depression because you've done it too. Everyone has failed to change something they felt they needed to change. I think there are lots of other ways to look at the short, and I think it's quite rich in a lot of ideas that I haven't even thought about yet.