The sad Love song
Isn’t disappearing
The night is still
Being ripped down
Fiction and reality
Sway in neon
Illuminated in blue—
Is the sun, a dream that falls
Welcome to the Universe glitters ¹
I pray the loosened thread won’t drift from your finger ²
Is this world UNREAL
“Spectators form a crowd ³
Their standing watch, my jailer
The expansion of the rules—
Break it up! Break it up!”
“Legal underground
Law-evading wonderland
In the decadent city
Bring it on! Bring it on!”
“Spectators form a crowd
Their standing watch, my jailer
The expansion of the rules—
Break it up! Break it up!”
“Sneers that floated
in the thick forests of all creation
A triumphant return in parade—
Bring it on! Bring it on!”
The bracing clarity of the wind will be your voice
Listen to the newborn cry of the heart no one knows
The sad Love song isn’t disappearing
Just like my broken heart
I need your beloved voice more than a drug, so ⁴
Is this world UNREAL
“Come join in the world
Break the silence”
Come here with me
Prayers are insensate, so ⁵
Come here with me
Cut the rudder ⁶
Welcome to the Universe glitters
Crescent moon—orbit for eternity ⁷
No No No, the loosened thread won’t drift from your finger
Is this world UNREAL
Because I need your beloved voice more than a drug
Is this world UNREAL
.
NOTES / INTERPRETATION:
Blue font indicates text originally written in English in the official booklet.
oo1. This line is my best guess at this point. I decided to imagine “Welcome to the Universe” as a sort of neon sign, like what you might see in a dystopian cityscape filled with every sort of colour light in the darkness, but the line really is vague and does seem like pure imagery, so take it however you like.
oo2. Though it is not stated directly, it is implied that this thread is the Red Thread of Fate, which typically connects two soulmates together by their little fingers.
“I pray the loosened thread won’t drift from your finger” sounds a bit stilted in English for the emotion Show is singing the line with, but it is the literal translation. For the phrasing he used, ‘hope’, ‘wish’, or ‘pray’ are implied as the verb, but I chose ‘pray’ because there is a slight chance he meant the phrase to be connected to the bridge and final chorus in a concrete way. For more on that possible link, see note oo5 below.
oo3. These two sections in quotation marks were rapped by Saga, though Show still wrote the lyrics for them. These lines are thick with imagery, which made them real head-scratchers to word in English, but the overall takeaway I think is that convention (I think ‘fame’ would certainly work here too) can be constricting, and that shedding artificially imposed rules is the way out. Taking back control and toppling rules seems to have been a theme in this album! To break things down further, let’s give a thought to the phrase “Legal underground”: This might be the idea of a place where there is an emphasis on legal actions free of conventional rules (i.e. a place where artificial, socially/popularly-mandated rules are ignored). It certainly made me think of the underground created by a certain rock band putting down their instruments to dance earnestly and then daring to pick them back up again and continue on without sacrificing any bit of their musical skill or rock spirit. There’s certainly nothing illegal about dipping toes in both pools that way, but the conventional rule is that rock doesn’t mix with “that”.
On the other hand, placing “Legal Underground” and “Law-Evading Wonderland” side by side, we could interpret it in a more straightforward manner. That is, legality (keeping convention) is underground–dark, constricting, limited–while law evasion (breaking convention) is a wonderland–infinite potential, strange, marvelous. I think we already know in which world a certain band makes their home.
oo4. This and the line that comes after it forms the central question posed by the speaker in the song. Given that pushing back against death seems to be a prominent theme in this album, I would venture a guess that the loosening thread and the statement that they “need” that beloved voice might point towards a narrowly avoided breakup that would have been caused by death. The thread is a well-known metaphor for romantic love, and a loosened thread could represent a relationship on the rocks. “UNREAL” is how the world suddenly appears to the person who was almost left behind, when they realize the person they love was that close to death. How could the world be real if that “beloved voice” no longer existed?
oo5. This phrasing is really interesting, because he could have written that prayers can’t be heard, that they’re useless, or that God (as the listener to prayers) is indifferent, but he describes prayers themselves as insensate. That prayers are inanimate are reason not to rely on them. It is for this reason that I translated the verb in the line discussed in note oo2 as “pray”. If we take that line, and this second one together, we start to form character growth.
In the first line, the speaker prays that the loosening thread won’t drift from their soulmate’s finger. They don’t take any action, are entirely passive, either in shock, or in denial that they could lose their soulmate.
In this bridge, the speaker tells their soulmate to come with them, declaring that prayers (which they previously tried to rely on) are insensate. They have to take action themselves.
Finally, in the last chorus, we get the line “No No No, the loosened thread won’t drift from your finger”, which no longer has any hint of passivity. The speaker is frantic, and taking action, as if confronting the other person directly, and spelling out their intent to prevent that thread from drifting.
oo6. A rudder is definitely an implement that could be likened to “rules”, that is, it’s a way to control movement by restricting and directing the path of a ship (for instance). Without a rudder, you become adrift, and movement in any direction is possible, but you’re also possibly at the mercy of the universe’s whims.
Tora says something after this line as well, but it is unclear what it is, and this part is not included in the booklet. To me, it sounds almost as though he’s speaking backwards, but that may not be the case at all. It doesn’t particularly sound like English, and it doesn’t particularly sound like Japanese… if you have any insight, I’d love to hear it!
oo7. The moon is a prominent image in this album, and for the first part of the associated tour, and here clearly represents the soulmate. You’ll have noticed that, earlier in the second verse, the sun is mentioned as well. I think we can take a guess that the sun might represent the speaker, and that it is around the sun that the crescent moon should orbit for eternity. If you take a look at the logo for the STAIRWAY TO MOON tour, it certainly does look that way!
The word Show used here for the moon, “kaketatsuki”, seems to be most commonly used in lyrics and poetry and rather than “crescent moon”, it means “waning moon” more generally. So it could represent any phase of the waning moon. I chose to translate it as a crescent simply due to the fact that a crescent was in their logo.
Part of what makes the word he used great for poetry is the fact that “kaketa” can mean “chipped” or “broken” in other contexts, which adds an emotional subtext to the word.
oo8. At the very beginning, before the first verse, Show seems to sing “Lose your mind”, though it is not written in the booklet. In the live performance filmed by NICONICO Douga for Hiroto’s Birthday, however, it sounds like he sings “Lose yourself”, instead.
oo9. Much like in ASYLUM, this song features two sets of speech (one in quotation marks, the other out of quotation marks), but my thought is that, unlike in ASYLUM, what is in quotation marks is being spoken aloud, and what is not in quotation marks are the internal thoughts and impressions of the speaker. In contrast, ASYLUM seems to be a conversation taking place either all aloud, or all internally. In addition, the lyrics of UNREAL seem more likely to be the thoughts and/or speech of one person, while the lyrics of ASYLUM seem more likely to be an exchange of thoughts and/or speech–either of two separate people, or two warring personalities within a single person.
アリス九號. ★ UNREAL → PLANET NINE (将・2018)
ALICE NINE. – UNREAL | From PLANET NINE (Show – 2018)
Original text translated from Japanese.
Listen on itunes/Spotify.