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shoutout to my friend vio who suggested i do music analysis of some sort <3 i am not a pro at this but i will try!
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Warmthaholic is genuinely not like any other ZUTOMAYO song I've heard. The opening instantly captured me the first time I heard it two days ago: five seconds of a chaotic, noisy crescendo with every instrument utilized in the song blaring at once, then the instant cutoff into soft, completely isolated echoey vocals from ACAね for another five seconds, and then the layering of both into the sound of the rest of the song.
The instrument choice is incredible to me, as well. Of course, the instruments iconic to the band are present (bass by Ryosuke Nikamoto, piano by Yuki Kishida, drums by Fumihiro Ibuki) carry the song as wonderfully as they typically do. The instruments that really struck me in this song, however, were at at first the harp and violin (both presumably Yu Manabe Strings). The return of the harp from KOKE was unexpected but absolutely wonderful, and combined with the violin it really lends this sort of dissociative dreamlike feeling to the rest of the frantic instrumentation.
Right after the first verse is a 'dirtier' part not heard anywhere else in the song that absolutely intrigues me. The fast pace gives way to a much slower hip-hop/street music segment heavy on bass, with the addition of brief, shrill flourishes of discordant piano, trumpet, and violin, layered with small binaural vocal effects such as hissing, the slurping of a drink, humming, and close whispers. Not unusual for ZUTOMAYO, but completely out of place in this song in a way I am fully obsessed with.
The first chorus is as abrupt a transition as the rest, and is a return to form of the first verse. A new instrument makes its appearance: a goddamn marimba (uncredited)!!! Let me tell you how I gasped when I heard the marimba. It does absolute wonders to fill in the lack of harp in this chorus, and melds with the rest of the song in a way where you have no idea how you didn't consider its addition before. It's my favorite instrument in the whole song.
A small vocal/marimba transition from the end of the chorus to another blaring every-instrument-at-once section, then to a brief drums/harp flourish before the second verse kicks in. A combination you'd never expect to work back to back but ZUTOMAYO, masters of their craft, pull it off incredibly naturally that it's only just now that I realized how unusual the segments back to back are. It almost seems to foreshadow the tail end of the second verse to me, where vocal/piano/whispers lead into a drum/bass only section with the piano/violin slowly coming back in as backing. The final lyric of the verse is repeated twice and seals the next transition into the second chorus.
The second chorus is even more of a burst of sound than the first, but retains the energy of the first, just louder. But then the marimba takes a segment in the spotlight in a way that sounds simultaneously childish yet mature in combination with the bass/violin backing. The instruments begin to share the spotlight as the section leads into the bridge, the harp getting incorporated in a glorious comeback before a completely addicting frantic, plucky guitar comes in on the right ear only and oh my god is it my favorite little portion of the song, even over the 'dirty' section. It's also a one time thing and it's very brief, but it sounds absolutely incredible and gives me the energy of running through a field of tall, overgrown grass as fast as you possibly can on a humid spring day.
The song seems to swell up as ACAね sings a long, drawn out 'kara ma'. It actually, for the first time in a while, calms down instead. It's not perfectly calm, but the instrumentation is cut down to just guitar with backing marimba/bass. This doesn't last long, as the piano returning signals the real swell. Everything is at its most bombastic, but it surprisingly ends as quickly as the small calmer part. It returns to the sound of the first chorus, though with the violin leading the melody. ACAね chirps out one last word in the midst of it all, quickly enough that I mistook it as a cat's meow at first, before the official captions identified it as "っ魔", translated as "demon".
A final loud crescendo ends the song, and as the violin shrieks to a stop, the sound of shattering glass is heard.----------
I want to briefly talk about the lyrics now. I've created a transcription of the official AMV's English subtitles translation here, and I am crossreferencing them with this translation by peachy15.
My personal read is a one-sided childhood romance where both parties are slowly drifting apart as they get older. Not a super deep interpretation, I know, but it's just overwhelmingly what it strikes me as. Both the Japanese and English titles are interesting in this regard. "微熱魔" translates to "a slight fever", containing the kanji for "魔", the aforementioned "demon", which makes me favor peachy15's translation of "わたしから魔▁▂▃▅▆▇█▓▒" and "っ魔" as "holic". Something that embodies the feeling of chasing lovesickness that the English title translates well. "Warmthaholic" is such an evocative term!
I can't go without mentioning ACAね's usual fantastic utilization of similes/metaphors/general flowery language as well. It's something I always enjoy in the songs, even if it makes them harder to translate clearly. My favorite lines from the song are "廊下は冷たいのがいい" and "都市伝説的に いずれ解る". I too enjoy cold hallway floors, and the urban legend simile is so playful!
As an aside, I want to look into the symbolism of the lupine flower mentioned in the song. In 花言葉 (Japanese flower language), lupine is said to mean "imagination", "always happiness", "you are my peace", and, interestingly, "greedy". These all fit into my interpretation pretty well, so I really wonder if ACAね (as the lyricist of the song) chose it intentionally for that reason.----------
alright i think that's all from me for now. i really hope the formatting here turns out fine >_< i had a lot of fun writing this out!! i'll have to do more of it in the future. thank you for reading!!!
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