Mili (Music) - TV Tropes

Mili is a Japanese indie band founded in August 2012, consisting of Cassie Wei (vocalist), Yamato Kasai (composer, guitarist), Yukihito Mitomo (bassist), Shoto Yoshida (drummer), and Ao Fujimori (illustrator); additionally, Ame Yamaguchi was a former member of Mili, working as fashion designer.

Mili was originally founded by Cassie Wei (online username momocashew) and Yamato Kasai (online username HAMO) over the internet; both momocashew and HAMO were online music artists involved with Vocaloid music (momocashew was an utaite-type online cover singer), and their first contact came when momocashew covered the song "It's a wonderful world" by HAMO. Since Mili's founding, the band bas been expanded with the additions of bassist Yukihito Mitomo and drummer Shoto Yoshida, as well as artists Ao Fujimori and Ame Yamaguchi.

Mili's music covers a range of genres, including electronic classical, contemporary classical, and post-classical. Their music vocals also cover a wide range of languages, including Japanese, English, Chinese, French, and even Latin-based conlang. The contents of their songs are notable for their fairy-tale-like narrative themes, recurring symbolic motifs, and cross-song lore.

Mili is also well known for their prolific history of contributing music to video games, and (to a lesser extent) other multimedia projects like anime and commercial videos. Video games featuring original Mili music (typically theme songs) include Deemo (and its sequel), Cytus, World Flipper, Promise of Wizard, Library of Ruina, Limbus Company, ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights, and Thy Creature.

Tropes about Mili

Arc Number: The number 617 appears multiple times in Mili's lyrics:
- In "Ga1ahad and Scientific Witchery" the Witch describes Page 617 as dealing with "scientific witchery."
- In "Summoning 101", the book the magician compiles over her life spent searching for her lost companion has 617 pages, possibly placing the song as prequel to "Ga1ahad".
- In "Salt, Pepper, Birds and the Thought Police", the narrator is arrested for violating Act 617: Illegal Thoughts.
Bathtub Mermaid: Mili's song of the same name somewhat deconstructs it with a metaphorical mermaid, who needs to lose parts of herself to make the human let her stay in the tub and becoming trapped once he loses interest in her.
Chinese Vampire: RTRT is about a girl befriending one of these by offering him normal human food. The two get along great, at least until he gets shot.
Driven to Suicide:
- "Nine Point Eight" is about a girl deciding to commit suicide after her boyfriend dies so that they can be Together in Death.
  Swirling winds sing for our reunion, and nine point eight is my acceleration
- In "Boys in Kaleidoscope", after the narrator's boyfriend is murdered, he jumps off the edge of the world holding his lover's severed head.
Humans Are Bastards: The narrator of "Boys in Kaleidoscope" implies as such after his lover is killed.
If I was born in a different body will our lives be easy?
If we have a next life I hope we're not human at all!
Friendship Song: YUBIKIRI-GENMAN (roughly: Pinky Promise), featured in DEEMO, is most likely about friendship between two people who are otherwise troubled and/or lonely.
Kill the Ones You Love: Played with in Ga1ahad and Scientific Witchery, which is about a knight on a mission to kill the witch who created/reanimated him, and whom he had a past romantic relationship with. They seem to reconcile in the end, though...
Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: "world.execute(me);" is a Deconstruction of the trope, which depicts the relationship between a simulation AI and its users as unhealthy and detrimental to the former, which is being seen as a tool and nothing else.
Love Hurts: A major theme of Mili's songs. Many of them are about unhealthy relationships, one-sided obsessions or otherwise loving relationships that ended badly.
Lyrical Dissonance: Cassie's soft, breathy voice makes many of Mili's songs sound cute on the surface, only for the lyrics to discuss dark or macabre topics.
- 'A Turtle's Heart' has very upbeat instrumentals, but the lyrics are about the singer not wanting anything to do with love because Love Hurts, so she tries to retreat from love like a turtle hiding in its shell.
- "Salt, Pepper, Birds and the Thought Police" is a jaunty tune about an ethnic minority being arrested on trumped-up charges and being sent to a concentration camp. Specifically, it references the life of Yun Dong-Ju, a Korean living in Imperial Japan who was arrested for alleged anti-Japanese activity and died in prison, and whose collection of poems were published posthumously.
- "Nine Point Eight". As was stated above, the song is about a girl committing suicide to reunite with her cremated lover, but the melody is nice and pleasant all the way through.
- "From A Place of Love" is a cheery song that seems to be about being happily in love, but as the song goes on, it slowly gets more and more disturbing. Mili stated that it could be interpreted as the horror of an arranged marraige, though it should be noted that this song is from a videogame and the song is far more worse in context. We do not talk about Love Town.
Mummies at the Dinner Table: "RTRT" has the narrator doing this in the song's final verse, heartbroken by the murder of her demon friend. She rebuilds him bit by bit, but even with her skills as a scientist is unable to revive him, so she pretends that maybe with the food and love that they shared he'll eventually come back. The song's image even shows her eating dinner with what's heavily implied to be his stuffed corpse.
I'll stitch you back up
Don't need to show me how
Since I'm the mad scientist, proclaimed by myself
I'll give you plastic eyes
And give you nylon hair
And I'll make sure I get your talisman repaired
Shark fin soup or Dim sum
Dumpling or Peking duck
Nothing I make is gonna bring that charm inside you back
But you're still my retort
But you're still my retort
I'm seeking for retort
I'm seeking for retort
Obsession Song: The singer of "With a Billion Worldful of <3" is obessesed with a Buddhist monk, and desperately puts herself through trial after trial to win his heart all while the monk seems completely unaware that the singer exists. But even this ignorance seems to fuel the singer's love.
I have no place in your mind
It's filled with nothingness
And that's why I love you
And I know that next life you'll love me too
Pun: Often. 'world.execute(me);' plays with the dual meanings of the word 'execute', 'Fly, My Wings' includes several words that are pronounced as 'Yi Sang' in Korean (Odd, That's all, etc.), and 'Grown-Ups' Paradise', created for Arknights has references to its Chinese name in it.
Reincarnation Romance: "Boys in Kaleidoscope" reincarnate as a hydrangea flower and a butterfly, having decided that Humans Are Bastards.
Scenery Dissonance: "Iron Lotus" is a song about a grieving woman setting out to avenge her lover's death and regretting not having expressed her love more clearly when he was alive. Its music video, however, is about one of the Mili mascots doing a silly dance for four minutes.
Take That!: Cassie Wei wrote "Vitamins" in response to encountering self-righteous vegans on an internet forum, though the song isn't so much a Take That! to vegans as it is about people in general who push their beliefs on others.
- What Robots Need, written under Mili's pseudonym AWAAWA, is this to AI image generation, and not-so-stealthily jabs at people using algorithmic tools to steal other people's art.