Reunion (Music)

Submerged deep within the hidden realms of the website Niconico lies a forgotten disaster created by music duo ClariS. It's rare when a music video can actively make a song several times worse despite how little effort went into it. But if you have the courage to traverse back in time to the year 2013, dust off the remains of a time lost, and decide to waste 5 minutes of your limited existence then go ahead.

Why did this video need to exist, who in their right minds are behind something so wasteful? Produced by one of the big three monopolies of music Sony Music ... Entertainment or SME for short are absolute juggernauts in music. Having revenues of nearly 9 billion USD last year alone, budget is the least of their concerns. Being part of Sony they have endless subsidiaries to their name. Let that resonate through your soul for a minute, the Sony Music Entertainment produced this lousy music video. It's difficult for me to fully grasp that, honestly it's comical to believe such a large force of nature had anything to do with this.

Musically the music duo compromised originally of two high school girls, ClariS blew up with popularity originally on Niconico around 2010. Best known for Connect (コネクト) an opening song for the anime Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica, their peak was in the early 2010s. In spite of this, Reunion is best described as a amateur half-assed excuse of a music video. It looked aged even in the year 2013! My expectations were low from the first music video Nexus, but they couldn't even match that.

What's the definition of laziness? Whatever you think it is, Reunion's character animation is a textbook definition. I understand that music videos aren't full team operations usually, but it pains me when the person animating this had the apathy to not work or use even a sliver of energy to properly lip sync. The characters have zero pose variation or a hint of emotion shown. Reviewer's commonly use the term cardboard stiff to describe bland characters, this is another level of pessimism.

It would be harder to antagonize Reunion if it showed even an inkling of improvement over it predecessor, Nexus. To my dismay the CG is the same level of saddening as before and is the most commonly criticized part of Reunion. The CG could be redeemed if it was relevant to the music but it's not. Instead of getting Oreimo visuals with a mix of CG like in Nexus there's only CG. It wouldn't even take effort the visuals would already be animated for them! What the hell were they thinking!

Let's go back to 2013 to relish how bad the visuals are. I'm not going to dive back years to present older great animation, no simply stuff that aired in 2013 too. Wit Studio's famous Shingeki no Kyojin aired the same season as OreImo 2, there's Shaft's wonderous Monogatari Series: Second Season, or even the highly creative Kill la Kill to mention too. The nail in Reunion's coffin is CoMix Wave Film's Kotonoha no Niwa, which aired the same season as Ore Imo 2. There's no excuses for SME to fumble the visuals, budget shouldn't even be a concern. I wasn't expecting CoMix level quality art either, just a sliver of improvement over Nexus. There is no emotion or feeling worth giving here, all that's left is disappointment.

ClariS is idolized for their works in anime and it's well deserved. It's fun going back to the heavily electronic influenced 2010s of Jpop. The wave of electronic music was a worldwide phenomenon and ClariS rode it stardom. The original song which is called reunion is your stereotypical Jpop song of the time, but is well executed by ClariS. Ordinarily a noteworthy music video elevates a song with visuals that better define the song by presenting symbolism to further understand the song. Reunion is a rare example of diminishing the impact of Reunion. There is a filter on the vocals that are lousy and unnecessary. Initially I thought I was playing the vocals through my putrid laptop speakers. That is to say, it sounds tinny and compressed, almost with a faint echo. What a bizarre way to butcher a song for zero reason, I recommend listening to the original opening over this one.

There is no value to be gained from this music video. It has no reason to exist, even Nexus had tie in visuals with Oreimo! There isn’t a single visual from OreImo here! ClariS is well known for there great anime music, too bad their music videos for OreImo were complete failures. It's a sad reality where I probably spent more time researching and writing this review than the animator spent making this excuse of a music video. Let this forgotten excuse be lost to the depths of time. There's good reason why time moves forward so things like Reunion can be nothing but a cliff-note on our anime list.