Märchen's Stream Has Evolved One Step Further
Me, Eunha, and Yeryeong.
What, exactly, did the three of us have in common?
For one thing, we were all women in our twenties. For another, on NewTube we weren't only consumers — we were producers, too, and that was where the three of us overlapped. On top of that, the video glowing on the projector was one of my own NewTube videos, so the conversation at the start of the team dinner drifted, naturally, toward NewTube.
But people can only chew on a single topic for so long before they get sick of it. Rehashing the memories of the 400,000 celebration was no exception. Say oh, right, that was when this happened a few dozen times, and even that loses its spark. So we went looking, just as naturally, for other subjects. Other videos.
Which brings us back to the first question.
Me, Eunha, and Yeryeong. Set aside the part about being women in our twenties and NewTube producers, and what else did we share?
The answer was simple. We were otaku.
I was a veteran otaku warrior who had stubbornly gone on living as an otaku back in the Otaku Minor World. Eunha had gotten to know that veteran, taken her anime recommendations, and accepted merch gifted under the guise of missionary work, until she was terraformed into an otaku almost without noticing. She still only watched anime lightly, of course... but they say even the dog at the village school can recite poetry after three years. She had watched my streams for more than sixteen months. She was probably at the level where she could call herself an otaku in public. Probably.
And Yeryeong had once been a let's-player who made TTS playthrough videos — content that belonged, squarely, to otaku territory. The chance that someone like that wasn't an otaku? Fair to call it nearly zero. Probably.
Three otaku gathered in one place? Watching anime together was the most natural phenomenon in the world. If we didn't watch anime, the sun might very well rise in the west the next morning.
"Yeah... no matter how many times I see this scene, it still gets me."
"...I'm certain this is my first time watching this anime. So why do I already know this scene?"
So we watched it. Anime.
"Boss...? Exactly how many times have you seen this scene?"
"Mmm... this one, I feel like I've replayed it a hundred times at the very least..."
The theatrical film of Can the Artillery Girl Fall in Love?, that is.
Watching the movie of Can the Artillery Girl Fall in Love? with all of Medongbu? That alone was enough to say we had casually surpassed the last team dinner.
Today's dinner was worth it!
And then, the next day.
I told the story of the dinner, and that was the response I got from the viewers.
...Why?!
Monday, September 4.
And today, sure as ever, the Märchen stream came on.
Everyone assumed it would go the way it always did. The cam would flick on as usual, and Märchen — in her usual custom-ordered T-shirt, seated in her usual fifteen-hundred-dollar chair — would greet them as usual.
And to a certain extent, it was the same as usual.
The cam came on as usual, and she was wearing the custom-ordered T-shirt as usual.
But to a certain extent, it was not.
She wasn't in her usual track shorts. She was in jeans. She wasn't sitting in the fifteen-hundred-dollar chair. She was on her own two feet, holding herself up.
And the decisive difference—
—was the place she was standing.
It wasn't the streaming booth everyone was used to seeing.
It was the sort of hall where a company president delivers a major announcement. And at the very center of that hall stood Märchen.
She opened, as usual, with a greeting.
"Hello. I'm Märchen, the streamer still carrying on a broadcast equipped with an eye-catch."
But unlike usual, there was an echo in the greeting. Keeping the concept of a presentation hall, then. That was what most of the viewers thought.
And a few of them—
—tried to send something, realized the donation window was shut, and started howling in the chat.
Whether they howled or not, Märchen simply went on with what she had to say.
"All this time, while I've been using an eye-catch, I've wondered. Does my stream really have the qualifications to use one?"
There was, of course, no guarantee that any of this was a sane thing to say.
"And so I made a decision. If I don't have the qualifications, I'll make them. Let's make the qualifications. Let's build a stream where using an eye-catch wouldn't look strange at all."
The moment Märchen said it, an anime BGM swelled up — the kind that makes your chest feel grand. If you had to classify it, it was the sort of track that plays when a protagonist awakens.
"Here and now, I declare!"
Matching that heart-swelling BGM, Märchen pitched her voice a little louder than usual, a little lower, and went on.
"That Märchen's stream has evolved one step further!"
Her right index finger pointed at the sky.
"That it has become the Perfect Märchen Stream!"
Her gaze faced straight ahead.
"Then let us begin the newly reborn Perfect Märchen Stream."
She struck a pose you might see at least once in some anime or other, then blew away the atmosphere she had worked so hard to build with a bright, shameless grin, and shouted.
"Opening, let's go!!!"
The heart-swelling anime BGM cut off.
And the instant the screen changed———
Rolling around in bed
Outside the blanket it's dangerous, my phone is my friend
Wasting my life at full power, live and in progress
At least it's a relief my belly fat isn't growing
Märchen's first original song, newly reborn at one minute and forty-five seconds, began to play.
The moment the opening ended, I turned the cam on.
"Man... having an opening really does change the feel of it."
I smiled, satisfied, and nodded a few times.
Right. If you've got an eye-catch, you ought to have an opening and an ending too. It felt like I'd finally tucked the red-bean paste, neat and proper, into a steamed bun that had been empty inside.
"If I put Dogs and Pigs on as the ending, you guys would just leave without listening."
Yeah. I know. Skipping the opening and the ending is the law of the land.
But I'd gone and made them, and I had one small, selfish wish — that people would watch both.
Dogs and Pigs: lyrics and composition by Märchen, sung before I ever took a vocal lesson. And Märchen-tic You: lyrics and composition by Loe, sung after I had. However much taste is supposed to differ, more people, generally, would prefer the latter to the former. So between the two, I made Märchen-tic You the ending. Arranged so that even one more person might hear it on the way out.
"Oh, and the eye-catch changed a little, too. You'll be able to see it later, when we switch from part one to part two, so please watch it live?"
Ah.
"...Was that too easy?"
"Our Editor No. 1 is a kind person. She'll give the slave a moment to savor freedom. ...Probably."
Graduate students were still treated like slaves, whether you lived in the Otaku Minor World or the Otaku Major World. Even so — just as there existed a world where otaku culture had become mainstream — surely there was also a world somewhere where graduate students reigned as masters and kept their professors as servants... right?
...Should I change the subject?
"Anyway. We've got an opening now, and an ending, and an eye-catch, right? Doesn't it feel, hard, like the broadcast of a ten-year veteran otaku? ...So in honor of the opening and the ending being born, today's stream is going to be an otaku special, for the first time in a while!"