hi! yes i would definitely agree. similarly to vbs, i think it's partially because both duos (12/34) have relationships that say something specific about the group's overall narrative themes (to break it down further, these are also reflected in their individual characters, too). minoharu's relationship, for example, is unique in that it specifically highlights the way dreams are shared and spread between idol and fan, and the cycle of love and hope (of course) that drives people to want to continue doing what they do (living? that sounds maybe a little more dramatic than i intend, but living is very normal and also very hard). with airi and shizuku i relate both of them and their relationship to being more about the struggle for perfection/difficulties with self image that the idol industry creates and thrives off of (not to mention the commentary on misogyny in idol spaces just under the surface of both of their arcs that i feel like goes unnoticed). these lyrics from hug perfectly tie shizuai/minoharu into one, too: "ah, how many times do i have to worry like this, just by being alive? / i'm only human, so at least for today, it's fine if i look down, right?" IF does a good job at relating these themes together, as does jumpin over, but you're not asking for my comm analysis here, so go seek that out if you want or send me another ask lest i get ahead of myself. the 12/34 split in vbs in self explanatory too so i won't explain that part.

but no the 12/34 split in both vbs and mmj aren't bad things! two duos that come together each to illustrate something very specific with their relationships is simply very methodical writing, the same way each member of niigo other than mafuyu has something important to teach her so she can grow and heal. leoneed are of course going to push unity since their relationship as a friend group is central to their concept in the first place. and with wxs... while i do think there is a lot to be said about tsukaemu and ruinene being very important narratively, i don't get the impression that it's as of much of core importance as more more jump, let alone vivid bad squad.

i am a 12/34 split fan (romantic pairing wise) for all of the units, i don't think that's a secret. that's because i like this approach to telling a story, and the pairings i choose to ship are the ones i feel are the ones that make the most sense. some people might not think like that, and that's okay! you don't have to. but it's not quite as black and white as "12/34 decides everything" or "12/34 means nothing". what would probably fix this problem and following argument on a fandom scale is if everyone stopped acting like acknowledging 12/34 split or lack thereof (depending on unit) means you can't ship things that aren't 12/34, because god, relationships in a narrative are about more than that! but project sekai fans can't talk about story without it devolving into ship wars, so that's not happening.

thank you for the ask :) very nice to put my thoughts on this out there while this seems to be a hot topic

MINOHARU MARRIAGE TTTTTTTTTTT i think it depends if theyre still celebrities they might keep their own names for ease but if youre like me and you think theyd graduate from more more jump and then start an agency themselves they wouldn't have to do that. i feel like at some point minori has probably had a dream or a daydream about becoming minori kiritani LMAO and i could see haruka never wanting to let being "haruka kiritani" go because she has such a strong since of duty. but at the same time i could see haruka letting go of being "haruka kiritani" once she's felt like she's given everything she has to give and is able to finally retire from the public eye. and im not sure about minori staying minori hanasato but i feel like that name becomes so legendary minori might keep it, not because she wants to, but because haruka insists she does. so i guess i'm leaning towards hanasato haruka but i don't think kiritani minori is like completely out of the question either

ohh this is really interesting. i hadn't ever heard i was human before, so i went and listened to both that and shoujo rei before i started answering this.

reminds me of how back in the day when producers weren't as well recognized as creators (this obviously being a bad thing) people would assume songs were related when they weren't. a pretty good example was nem's dream-eating monochrome baku and fummy's why can't i even dream. they both have to do with dreaming, obviously, with the faceless girl (assumed to be miku) at the end of dream-eating monochrome baku being left without the ability to dream after len eats all of her dreams -- both her nightmares and her good dreams -- and then leaving her to see the world without 'color'; color here being an analogy for dreams, since you can't have someone take away your nightmares and choose to live in a world of only good things. miku, during why can't i even dream asks, "where are you, my prince?" as len, who tricked her into falling into love with him, has taken what he needed from her and deserted her. it makes sense, right?

these songs obviously aren't actually related, it's a coincidence resulting partially from the fact that no one cared to really pay any attention to the names of either of the producers. dream-eating monochrome baku has an actual sequel, by the way, nemurihime, in which it's revealed that len is collecting dreams from humans to save gumi, a sleeping princess he's actually in love with, hence the title. but still! what about miku?

if you go back to the root of both of these songs, dream-eating monochrome baku and why can't i even dream (which i will be calling yumekui and yumemite respectively from now on as that is a lot easier to type) discuss this topic of what it means to dream in the face of loss. at the end of yumekui, len sings, "why the painful face? this is reality!" while miku in yumemite laments her inability to look away from what is real. she can't even dream of this person she's lost anymore because their loss is too real. len's song here is more of a cautionary tale on what happens if one spends too much time dreaming and ignoring bad things instead of facing reality. i guess what i'm trying to say here is that both touch on this concept of dreaming as escaping from a harsh reality: trying to do so and failing, the overindulgence in doing so to the point of becoming completely out of touch. i'm sure both fummy and nem had thoughts about this topic while writing both of these songs, and that's why people assumed yumekui and yumemite were related.

(a note: fummy also created the witch's house which seems to have to do with the central themes and message of yumemite, but i haven't ever played it so i wouldn't know. just a fun fact, i guess.)

now about the two songs you specifically mentioned: i was human and shoujo rei.

flowers are a pretty universal and commonly used symbol for time, and with it, death, as these two concepts are essentially inseparable (as the passage of time implies decay and death the same way it implies growth and life). the speaker in shoujo rei compares her "friend" to a flower because of the way she delicately lives, grows, dies, and decays, right in front of her. like most of the lyrics of shoujo rei, it's a kind of cruel comparison under the guise of being a gracious one. and the lyrics of i was human very blatantly connect flowers to death: "the flowers, the flowers, the flowers are falling / my beautiful days have died just the same." from these lyrics we can assume the falling flowers are dead (which i know is probably obvious, but when you write analysis and theory, clearly stated reasoning is important) and when someone's days 'die', i can't think of any other possible explain other than said someone having died too. reminds of me of this lyric in shoujo rei: "a flower vase placed on the next target, and the one who started it... was me."

forgive me if you already knew this, but in japanese schools flowers are put in a vase and placed on a student's desk in the event of their death, and it used to be a form of bullying to put flowers in a vase on a living student's desk as if to say, "i wish you were dead." (this doesn't really happen as much anymore, as far as i can tell.) this symbol pops up in a lot of different japanese media. from this i can only assume the speaker in shoujo rei has placed a flower vase on the desk of her "friend" anonymously, the beginning of her driving this girl to her eventual suicide while pretending to be her friend. (vocaloid lyrics wiki has a note about this which i didn't even realize til right now.)

but you didn't ask for analysis, and i'm sure the nem/fummy example seems pointless right now.

what i'm trying to say ultimately is that vocaloid music is uniquely philosophical in a way that a lot of other music isn't. vocaloid producers write music without any kind of filter. it follows that a lot of vocaloid music is raw, honest, and vulnerable and comes from very personal places and lines of thinking. (i am reminded of kenshi yonezu during this interview which i highly recommend reading if you haven't, i reread it often.) it makes sense that somehow, in response to their surroundings, vocaloid producers end up following similar lines of thought and writing music about similar things, with similar symbols and words and images. it's not out of the question that these producers were inspired by each other, either. this maybe sounds dismissive ("we're all human and we're all going to end up thinking the same thoughts somehow") but i think of it more as being very sacred common ground shared between people.

shoujorei and i was human both exist in the aftermath of death. in shoujorei the death is obvious, the suicide of the "friend", in i was human, it seems to be more of a spiritual death or perhaps a physical death that has left the speaker a ghost (whether this is metaphorical or literal is up to you), just like the one in shoujo rei. death is unquestionably the most common of all human "experiences" (philosophically speaking, death is not something one experiences, because you can't experience something and be dead at the same time, but i digress). feeling lost and alone because of the actions of someone you once trusted is another quite common experience, and i'm sure that someone who has experienced that might think "what was going through that person's mind when they manipulated and betrayed me like that?", and so they might write a song about either one of these things. the end result is a sort of never-ending, spiraling discussion that characterizes vocaloid music as a whole. two songs by two different people connected simply because both people happen to be alive. i think it's very beautiful.

first of all good cards and cute cut ins TT please...

i'd also really like the extension of their sekai to not be a new stage. the only way i could possibly enjoy this is if it looks like the budoukan because performing at the budoukan is their next goal but even then i'd rather it be something else.... like a backstage area or dressing room or practice room kind of thing. i can't decide if because they have more more house this is more or less likely, it might feel repetitive since minori5 was all about the physical and theoretical space of the practice room, but it also might be a nice reflection of them sharing a space to grow together. it would be cute if there was some kind of personal touch to this new space in the sekai. i'd also really like something outdoors like a field of flowers or a garden or something like an outdoor stage even but i don't think that'll happen :( side note it'd be fun, if it's a stage space, for it to have more to do with the lights in the sekai... i wish they played with those more. it was really cool how they turned blue to reflect haruka's feelings in mainsto and i feel like they could do more with that but i'm not sure how

as far as the story goes i'm really not sure... i'm kind of bad at general story predictions, i'm better at character predictions. i could see it having something to do with their budoukan live, actually! practicing and planning for the budoukan (as they haven't done much prep for it yet), maybe haruka starts doing choreography (i really really want this to happen - maybe they continue this in haruka4?), riho returning and writing them a new song or two, shizuku working on new costumes, airi working out logistics with ayaka.... etc. some kind of backstage area would make a lot of sense for an event like this..!! or if it's a budoukan type stage even..!!!!! to be honest that's about all i've got here because i haven't gotten around to sitting down and reading any of the world link events in full so i'm not entirely sure what they typically entail. i've read about half of niigo's and that's about it, and from what i know they're heavily connected to the extensions of the sekais whether that be exploring it or whatever... we'll see...!!!!

i wrote a whole fic about minoharu sun/moon dynamics (minori as the sun, haruka as the moon who is able to glow thanks to her) and i think it works quite well, but in general i don't think that really exactly communicates their dynamic. what i like about it though is that the moon is surrounded by stars, and the sun is but a star: minori is ordinary, one of haruka's fans, but she has a special quality that makes everything glow, and is positioned just right across from haruka so that haruka can glow because she's there, and so haruka is so grateful and touched by her presence.

i think the sea is an important symbol in their relationship, with the obvious imagery of "the sea of blue lights" in the main story/minori3 as well as that being their 3rd kizuna rank title. haruka looking out over it, and minori being part of it. that "sea" that has connected them since before they even got to know each other personally (hence it being their 3rd kizuna title), having already been by each others' side somehow. that being said i think of them on either side of this "sea" rather than one of them being the sea because really, both of them are. i guess if i had to choose it'd be minori as the sea but in that case, what's haruka? land? the sun? the sky? none of these jump out at me.

to be honest, i've been thinking about this for like ten minutes, and i don't think there's really any celestial assignment that fits them absolutely perfectly. i think more more jump might be like a constellation, four stars connected by invisible lines that together form an image representing a myth. minori might be the brightest star in this constellation, or maybe the star in the middle. maybe. minori is also an angel, and i'm sure haruka is something in comparison to that: someone she's been sent to protect, someone who looks up to her somehow whether that be something akin to religion or not, et cetera.

if anyone has any theories, feel free to let me know! i'm curious