thinking about THE SEVEN COLORS again

2024/07/27

about a year ago now i put out a highly passion-driven video about the work of masaya matsuura, spotlighting the mac game THE SEVEN COLORS: LEGEND OF PSY-S CITY based on his band, PSY-S. at the time i was awestruck at how such a game existed and went largely undocumented & unnoticed even by fans of the guy's successful work, and i got caught up in a weird chase for answers that i feel i went too far with on a personal level.

i had a dream lastnight that i went to some enormous department-grocery store hybrid, with shelves that reached up to the ceiling, and in a labyrinthine aisle of merchandise i picked out a lone PARAPPA THE RAPPER figurine sealed in a cube of plastic wrap. before even thinking of buying it, i opened it, only to realize the figure was only a few centimeters tall and wouldn't be worth getting despite its apparent rarity in an ocean of other licensed goods. dreams don't tend to mean a whole lot, but i was pretty certain the dream was my mind reflecting on that project from a year ago, even if subconsciously with the symbolism of a tiny obscure figurine.

truthfully, i have a deep respect for masaya matsuura's body of work, even if much of my reasoning is "holy crap, i feel like i'm the only person paying attention to this." i'm still not really sure how to explain why i've felt so attached to his work -- i think it's something to do with the pure optimism of it, or the passion for music as a way of universal communication, i don't know. since discovering them i've championed PSY-S, who primarily sing in japanese, because the sound of their music feels closest to what my heart would translate to in audio form. it could literally just be that! i don't need a reason! i've struggled with the concept that i don't find much literal meaning in their music, or matsuura's work as a whole, and it's been a lesson for me to figure that out in the time since.

when i put out the PSY-S video a year ago, i was a much more naive person. don't get me wrong here -- i STILL am -- but it was made at a time when i barely knew what i wanted to do with video creation, and when my understanding of art was comparably limited. in the video i made a big stink about how much of matsuura's earliest music isn't publicly available, but a few months later on the insert credit podcast he described contractual obligations that restricted his ability to personally release it under sony, which made me feel like a huge sucker in hindsight. my video, at least in my eyes, has been weakened by my lack of understanding of the artist's perspective here. i'm just left feeling like the video was a hasty mess, despite my overwhelming love for the subject matter.

i could be misremembering entirely, but the way i felt about the subject matter was less of a relentless passion and more of a fear that i misunderstood it all. it took me some time to realise that it's, uh, really not a huge deal at all, i just couldn't articulate my feelings properly at the time. the power PSY-S CITY has over me is really strong, and still stands tall as a heavily influential piece of media on my life, because over a year after familiarizing myself with it i'm still questioning what about it i'm so attached to. maybe that kind of thing doesn't really have to be put into words, something i learnt more recently after the emotional magnitude of TRUE STORIES, KINGDOM HEARTS II and TWIN PEAKS barrelled into me like a meteorite in the time since. sometimes, perhaps, you just feel the vibe.

THE SEVEN COLORS: LEGEND OF PSY-S CITY is an unfortunate victim of language barriers that perpetuate its obscurity (the only english patch Still isn't out yet!) and the fact it's a macintosh exclusive CD-ROM from the year 1993. statistically, you have never played it, and i hope someday that'll change because it is one of the most important pieces of software out there, to me if no one else. however i feel about the video i made on it, it's perhaps the most emotionally charged thing i've worked on, and my drive to go forward with what i do can be attributed in part to the influence of masaya matsuura's legendary artistry.

i really only went down this huge reflective spiral because of the next video i'm in the very very very early stages of producing, about a topic tangential to one in the PSY-S video, and i'm looking forward to making it and providing extra context for another often overlooked part of game history. for now, if you haven't played any nana on-sha game, i seriously recommend each and every one. my relationship with their lineage is one of hazy intimacy. it hasn't been documented much elsewhere that matsuura's wife and nana on-sha co-founder kiri is an expert CG artist, or that the two worked together on another japan-only mac game, PARADISE RESCUE, and i feel weird that i'm one of very few that looked far in enough to even know this stuff, though it's just one of those language barrier issues i guess.

please listen to masaya matsuura's music, too, especially PSY-S and his random uploads on soundcloud. listening to the paradise rescue theme again singlehandedly got me to write this whole reflective article. maybe someday i'll make a video about SWEET HOME, just to have an excuse to talk about another influential project this guy was inexplicably involved in.