Viewer discretion: This article will include themes related to depression, death, and guilt. If you’re uncomfortable with these topics, feel free to click off and read another one of Xinlei Lu’s wonderful articles.
Introduction
Ghost Avenue is a song produced by the popular Japanese music artist, Eve, who’s most well known for his contribution in creating Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime intro. Now, reading the first sentence, you’re probably thinking; “Wow. This is way too anime weeb core for me, and I barely understand anything!”
Well, do not fret! No knowledge of anime or even Japanese culture will be needed to have a basic understanding of this song. What I recommend is watching the music video at least once with subtitles, which is important to understand this universe better.
ゴーストアベニュー(Ghost Avenue) – Eve Music Video
Welcome back, unless you didn’t watch it. Ghost Avenue is not only a song but also a hand drawn animation that contains a lot of media to debrief. Therefore, I’ll break down the music video into two parts; storytelling and cinematography.
Storytelling
The video follows a red haired man named Hiruma Mahiru, who we’ll call Mahiru.
Throughout the story, we learn that Mahiru isn’t a very honourable guy. He sleeps with several different girls night after night, and steals their money for a living. Furthermore, Mahiru constantly seeks attention and affirmation through his position as a social media creator, maintaining an energetic happy composure outwardly. He also has a bad habit of drinking and smoking, which can be observed through the state of his room if you pause the video.
In short, it’s clear that Mahiru has something that he wants to escape from, possibly a former trauma that he distracts himself with using these substances.
There’s another character that appears quite often in Mahiru’s personal spaces where only he can see her; in his bedroom and in the hallway of his apartment. This girl, who has a similar colored hairstyle to Mahiru is named Lilin.
Lilin acts primarily as a source of comfort for Mahiru when he’s alone, and has an appearance that’s rather irrealistic compared to other characters in the video. She wears a nurse outfit and appears as if her legs were sewed on. This hints at the possibility that Lilin is just a figment of Mahiru’s imagination, existing in the sole purpose to provide company for him. But this raises the question, where did this girl come from? What inspired her existence?
To understand Lilin’s character, you need to know about an entity that exists in the Eve universe called Zingai. Zingai are supernatural creatures that appear only to certain individuals, and manifests as the personification of a person’s heart – what they feel, their thoughts, their beliefs. For Mahiru, his Zingai is Lilin. Between 1:56 and 2:03, we get a look into Mahiru’s heart using Lilin’s silhouette, her being is replaced by alcohol, money, cigarettes and gives a representation of loneliness.
During the flashback with young Mahiru, he runs to a girl with brunette hair who has a hairstyle similar to Lilin’s, and gives her a bunny plush – the same bunny plush that appears in the hallway walking sequence during the chorus.
This girl’s name is Suzuki. It’s clear that they have a close sister-brother relationship by the way they interact with each other, and it’s stated outside of the video that Suzuki was Mahiru’s first love. Not in a romantic way, but in a way that Mahiru didn’t have anyone else to label what affection and care looks like, so he labeled Suzuki as the definition of love.
Very quickly, the scene cuts to Suzuki’s implied death. Blood surrounds the ground she lays on and a couple police officers investigate the situation. Young Mahiru is there to witness the entire situation, picking up the red-stained bunny he gave her not long ago. This scene is the peripeteia of Mahiru’s life, the point when everything changed for him for the worse.
This bunny plush is actually one of Lilin’s forms. She can transform from her human form to the bunny form if she gets a bit of Mahiru’s blood to accompany him when he feels lonely. Funny thing is though, Mahiru doesn’t know that Lilin’s taking his blood. Only when Lilin takes so much blood that he wakes up is when he realizes who the culprit behind all his bandages are.
Then comes the scene where Mahiru’s bleeding out on the pavement, in the same place Suzuki did. This is likely a hallucination, and a manifestation of his guilt for her death.
Lilin obviously isn’t a good character to benefit Mahiru’s mental and physical health – she hypnotizes Mahiru in a way to make him think that she’s the only one he’ll really need. Yes, he goes out on fun one-off date nights with random girls and occasional hang outs with his few friends, but the only person that is with Mahiru every single day is Lilin.
Towards the end of the video, Mahiru has realized to what degree this unhealthy habit of fake companionship has taken advantage of him – he is literally dying because of it. Mahiru stumbling to the exit could symbolize him finally taking control of his own life and walking away from his previous lifestyle of pretense.
Cinematography
Ghost Avenue follows a unique style of showing the audience different representations of Mahiru’s mental state, using a videogame editing style mixed with real life.
The very first scene of the MV is shown in a horror-esque style, setting the tone of underlying anxiety that Mahiru carries but hides.
The bar of eight hearts on the top right represents how much blood Mahiru has left, as during the day he barely loses any, but loses hearts actively when dripping blood in his hallway walking scenes. There’s also a significant drop when Mahiru finds Lilin almost killing him.
Mahiru’s energy he has left to play his happy facade can also represent the heart bar, for he had the most hearts in his appear-to-be-most-happy era, and is surviving on half a heart when the anagnorisis of his situation is felt.
Notice how the video ratio is 4:3, a ratio commonly used for video computer displays. Since the story is told through Mahiru’s perspective, this gives us an insight on the derealization he feels; Only when the focus turns on the black and yellow hoodie guy does the video use its entire screen capacity.
Mahiru’s flashbacks are also presented in the 4:3 ratio, which could point to him not being able to distinguish the past and the present – which is very probable considering his overreliance on drugs and quick dopamine.
Furthermore, there’s a clear distinction between Mahiru’s online persona and what he seriously feels. Two separate but identical versions of him act out the two characters, Digital Mahiru always has some sort of static going on (walking in the hallway, his interaction with Lilin) contrasting to Real Mahiru.
In the hallway walking scenes, Digital Mahiru always drips blood from a heart shaped wound from his chest, with each scene increasing the size of the heart. The two versions of him merge together when the heart wound is too big to survive, and Mahiru’s forced to take into account what reality is.
Ghost Avenue is written on Mahiru’s apartment door, which can be interpreted that Mahiru is figuratively a living ghost. According to Google, a ghost’s definition is “an apparition of a dead person which is believed to become manifest to the living.” The lyrics “Wandering around and living like a corpse” further supports this idea. Lilin can also be interpreted as a ghost, therefore there’s multiple ghosts living in this avenue. Wooow.
As a person who isn’t Japanese, I’d assume that this is a pretty happy uplifting song without reading the lyrics. The lyrics would disagree. This common dissonance between the music and the lyrics in Japanese culture is what makes their songs so deceiving but interesting. This upbeat rhythm contrasting to the depressing lyrics reflect Mahiru’s person in the way where at first glance he appears content, but reading into it more you can tell something’s wrong.
Conclusion
It’s not a surprise that there are dozens of other details I left uncommented in this song, but I’d need to ask for three more extensions for this article before that happens. Feel free to leave any observations down in the comments, I’d love to hear your take!
Have I convinced you that this is a very intriguing, very cool, very deep song yet? If not, that’s okay. Thanks for reading anyways. If I have, I definitely recommend Eve’s other music videos if you want more analyzable pieces of media, especially インソムニア (INSOMNIA) – Eve Music Video, which is directly related to Ghost Avenue.