Additional Memory

Additional Memory (アディショナルメモリー Adishonaru Memorī) is the sixteenth main song of the series and is featured on the album Mekakucity Reload.

Background
Ayano has just found out that Snake of Clearing Eyes is planning to sacrifice her and her friends and family to revive their dead mother under their father's wish. Vowing to never let this happen she decides to commit suicide and enter the Kagerou Daze, and prevent the final piece needed to complete the plan, The Snake of Favoring Eyes, from manifesting the real world in hopes of not hurting her friends and family.

Ayano is falling with her life flashing before her eyes. She knows sacrificing herself will only bring her misery, but she is at first too afraid to pursue her own happiness. She ponders upon all of her regrets, and how much it pains her to kill her own emotions and deny her own love for Shintaro, but vows to erase this truth, and remove herself from the story.

Ayano is then trapped in the Daze, sitting alone watching events transpiring in the real world. She realizes she can't go home anymore and starts to question whether she made the wrong decision. During the MV, Ayano appears to encounter Marry, kneeling before her in agony. A snake then briefly appears above Ayano.

The world is reset after Marry had reset the timeline, and Ayano finds out that she played right into the snake possessing her father's plan. The Snake of Clearing Eyes can only exist by possessing people and fulfilling their desires, so if Ayano's mother was to revive instead of Kenjirou Tateyama, it would cease to exist. The Snake manipulated events so that this couldn't come to pass, forcing him to reset the timeline to try (and fail) again, thus being able to "live forever" in a repeating time loop.

Finally coming to terms with having failed her original mission and having trapped herself in the Kagerou Daze, Ayano nonetheless vows to fight on by watching all the gruesome events transpiring and write this story. Thus were she ever to escape she could tell all that had happened and help her friends break out of the time loop, but instead has to hope that Clearing Eyes will not come with another plan to reset the time loop once again, and will not try to hurt her friends and family to bring the snakes to the real world.

Jin said during the August 15, 2018 livestream he gave that "Additional Memory" was directly related to the Kagerou Daze (manga). He also stated it's "a song about regret". Jin stated that he "couldn’t mention it on Twitter", but he had wanted to say that "Ayano isn't just a gentle girl". Jin thought he "had to write" this song, and considered it the saddest one. The song goes like, "Ayano has a so-called gentle girl image, but she also bears these kinds of feelings".

In the alternative 2nd Manga Route, this comes more to light than it did in previous installments in the series. There, a major change in events occurs when Ayano is rescued from the landslide, but her parents aren't. In addition, Marry was very briefly brought into the Tateyama family. However, because of the event of the landslide killing Ayano's parents, and Ayano having witnessed everything that occurred in the Daze, Ayano snapped. She came to the conclusion that in order to stop the Kagerou Daze event, she and the others would have to kill Marry.

However, Tsubomi Kido, Shuuya Kano, and Kousuke Seto do not agree with this plan, and Kido even punches Ayano in her upset, mirroring an earlier incident (from when they were children, meeting for the first time, where that same kind of incident had previously been an accident). Except, this time, Kido and the others are furious, shielding Marry from Ayano. They then leave the Tateyama household.

During a talk with Shintaro later on in the second Manga Route, Ayano realizes, in her memory of when the trio of Tsubomi Kido, Shuuya Kano, and Kousuke Seto left the Tateyama household, it is there when she began to think she was going "insane".

Ayano's unrealized love for Shintaro was what kept her going throughout all the time loops, and despite everything that had happened, she, in the end, attempted to stay optimistic and happy.

In the second alternative Manga Route's Additional Memory (chapter), Ayano ends up instead sacrificing herself, via "exchanging" her life, to become Shintaro Kisaragi's Snake of Retaining Eyes. As the Snake of Retaining Eyes, she would then sometimes speak to Shintaro Kisaragi within the Kagerou Daze, guiding him to remembering events he had "forgotten".

Jin's Comment

 * ‘Conveying feelings’ is an action that requires a lot of courage. 'I wonder why I couldn’t convey those words back then, on that day.’ Even if in different forms, doesn’t everybody have 'regrets’ like that lingering in their hearts? However, 'regrets’ are unexpectedly things that might end up gradually becoming diluted amidst a hectic everyday life. 'It’s because my lifestyle is like this.’ 'It’s because this is my definition of happiness.’ We believe in that, and beyond the life that we rush through, at the very last moment, 'all of a sudden’… What spread itself before the eyes of this song’s protagonist was the bright crimson hue of 'regret’. No matter how diluted it may have become, the 'regret’ nested in her heart would not disappear so easily. If you have any 'regrets’ lingering in your heart by any chance, please do not forget these feelings by any means.

Information

 * Words / Music / Guitar：Jin
 * Movie：Sidu
 * Arrangement：Jin / Hideyuki Gushimiyagi
 * Special Thanks：Highspeed Fujimori, Fanyong Ren Xing AS-02
 * Guitar：Hideyuki Gushimiyagi
 * Bass：Shirakami Mashirou
 * Drums：Yuumao
 * Strings：Shika Udai Strings
 * Violin: Sachiko Oki / Mikiko Ise / Miho Shimokawa
 * Viola: Shouko Miki
 * VOCALOID Edit：Jin / Sakana
 * Recording Engineer：Nagie

Lyrics & Translation
(Unofficial Translation)
 * -|Japanese Lyrics=
 * -|English Lyrics=

Floating, rolling off, I ran into the end credits

The flashing images of my future Warped and changed completely

It’s over, isn’t it? The curtain’s come down on my daydream That was only disguising futility

I remember, unwillingly, The sun setting in the sky, the blurring melody

“Let’s go home, so we won’t get lost” I became cowardly and clung tightly to your hand While looking vacantly into space

I made the mistake of holding you, of wishing; flashing images of luxury Beyond the evening calm, I light a red light to make a note of our love

Disappearing, rotting My true feelings melted In a story where proof that I lived is forbidden

I didn’t want to say “see you tomorrow” The tears I couldn’t wipe and the words were lies, lies

I didn’t want to “still be friends” My feelings surely won’t reach you

I’m sorry, I love you

If this was all a misunderstanding, I didn’t want to know The tears that spill over are swallowed up by the sky

Though I can’t go back, though I can’t return Even now, it hurts

I’ve been turned upside down

Ah, falling, reaching understanding The flashing images scattered Beyond the evening glow, my feelings were stained By a song of regret

Indelible, remembered My remaining true feelings are A story where “happiness” is forbidden

I didn’t want to end up as just friends My tears that you don’t see are swallowed up by the sky

Even if this is a misunderstanding, even if this is a misunderstanding I always wanted to say

Goodbye, I love you

Trivia

 * The "revolving lantern" mentioned throughout the song also commonly refers to the "life flashing before one's eyes" phenomena before death.
 * In the scene of the minute 1:00, there is a reference to the first chapter of the sixth volume of the light novel. "Daze 01", where Shintaro at first is in a completely white space, seeing the final credits of a movie, where apparently the same was the protagonist.
 * During the Additional Memory MV's 0:42 time mark, there is the phrase 再演 after the title, right before the first verse. Which literally translates to "another showing (of a play)".
 * Jin initially announced the song as "a dark work composed by putting the unbearable into shape".
 * It was voted as the #7 Kagerou Project song in the KagePro Song Popularity Ranking 2019.