SongBook

I chose the song “M@HФU 少女。。” by Mariko Gotou, it is written using special characters but the real title is “Mahou Shoujo,” which means magical girl. Mariko Gotou is famous for being in the band Midori, as well as singing the opening song for the anime Flowers of Evil. She’s a performance artist who prioritizes emotional delivery over perfection, clashing genres such as jazz and punk to construct chaotic and manic-like songs. It is the third song in the album 299792458, released in July 2012.

I first came across her many years ago when I read the manga Flowers of Evil, which later adapted into an anime. I fell deeply in love with her vocals and started researching her discography.

Mariko Gotou expresses her distaste for fruitless roles and concepts of love with lines like, “I don’t care, worldly desires☆freedom!!! I crave it.” “Synchronizing, motives, synchronizing, DOKI, pounding.” I absolutely love all of her works, from her songs produced in the now-defunct band Midori to her new music project, DJ510mariko.

[I] think this song feels personal to me because I also, as much as possible, desire to escape the disgusting boundaries that society inflicts. To me, normalcy is uncomfortable—I despise being restricted, being perceived, or put inside a box. I grew up privileged in the competitive suburbs, which although they had their perks, felt incredibly dull and confining. All of the days spent there were homogenous.

The best way I can describe how isolating the suburbia feels is by comparing it to The Truman Show. The only thing that could help compensate for the mundanity of the suburban lifestyle were the novelty of buying new things and the temporary dopamine stimulation I got from playing video games. Highschool didn’t help either.

The toxicity that brewed from the academics made it impossible for me to form genuine friendships, instead, I had ‘filler friends’. People whom I didn’t really treat like real friends, but were enough to make the day go by faster and fulfill that basic need for belonging.

At some point, I concluded that I actually would much rather abandon that desire entirely than force myself to hang out with people who repulsed me, so for the majority of junior and senior year, I stuck alone. I felt like, and even still feel like, I am just being tailored by conformity, so I long to discover my own sense of self. Something either physical or formless that completes me, but I realized long ago that those desires won’t be fulfilled by following traditional life’s steps.

I decided to represent the song using Futura, a geometric sans-serif typeface. It’s round, clean, and seemingly has no imperfections. I thought this font would be best to use because of Mariko Gotou’s common juxtaposing themes, her contrasting vocals, the unsettling instrumentals, and her unhinged stage performances. Using this font intentionally clashes with the abnormal song title that uses a combination of languages and characters. It’s visually synonymous with the song’s emotional instability, and reinforces the song’s duality between an idealized life and freedom from conformity.