Yamiyo

I'm not sure how much one can say reviewing a 4 minute music video but I'll do my best to do it justice.

I'm not the biggest fan of Japanese music overall. Many anime OPs and EDs are rather irritating or just boring to me personally. But this song is a certified masterpiece. Featuring beautiful instrumental work and vocals and lyrics that really tell a powerfully emotional story. The song evokes a sense of deep melancholy with a strong undertone of hope. It tells of suffering and sadness, but also of a soul that hasn't given up hope and is willing to continue pushing to improve ... it's lot in life.

There are no words that can do the animation justice. The video portion of the music video is truly stunning. The animation is incredibly smooth and really is a unique treat for the eyes.

I've done reviews for an 8 seconds long clip before, I don't see anything stopping me from doing so with this 4 minutes long animation as well.
“Yamiyo” isn't only the second ending song to the fantastic show “Dororo”, probably with how generic it sounds, making it easy to blend with almost anything, and as I've grown used to it being tied with the latter show, I was shocked to see that it had an entirely independent animation that tells a story of its own. It feels like redemption, it cries of regret, but most importantly, it relates to most of us, and we all have ... our own struggle.
The voice chords feel to me like something very interesting the like of which you don't see very often taken advantage of in Anime, most of the time it's all energetic with a great sense of pop, basically the same thing over and over again, but this one makes you feel like wearing brand new socks. They are not the most exciting things in the world, but got does it feel good strap your legs into a fresh pair of socks. But maybe I'm just getting old.
As generic as the song is, the abstract black and white sketch-like drawings help with that a lot, as if you're presented with the foundation (the sketch) and tasked to flesh out your own story surrounding the nameless protagonist at the center, going through several struggles as his body adjusts in different poses almost every frame trying to put off the flaming mess that's covering him. And so he does at the end, it sure took time and many attempts, but he finally did it as you could feel the relief in his eyes as he rests them at the very end.

"Yumiyo" is the second ending song to Dororo, and it's alright. The song itself is a formulaic slow Japanese Pop song, which is sung relatively well. On repeat listens the singer's voice begins to come off as obnoxious. The instrumental is.... interesting? Not bad or good interesting, but interesting nonetheless. The blend of soft violin and guitar with some SICK trap beats doesn't work all that well.
The video is, as all animated music videos seem to be, generic, bland, uninteresting, and overall bad. One or two images stand out as memorable but apart from those it's like watching a 12 year old's edgy fantasy. People ... look to the sky, people grab the sun, and I shrank into my chair.
On top of this, the animation is just about what I was expecting, that being bad. I'm not asking for Ghibli level quality from a music video, but at least make it easy to fuckin watch. I don't want to have my eyes hurting, that's no good.
Not interesting visually, edge fest.
Slightly interesting instrumentally, though overall bland and formulaic.
The singer is annoying and I can't listen to this song without tuning out of his voice.
It four minutes long, who the fuck cares anyway.
3/10