The story centers around the main characters of the series, Kagamine Rin and her love interest Kagamine Len, two Vocaloid programs attending Junior High in Japan. Unbeknownst to the two at first, Rin and Len are reincarnations of a pair with past lives in Russia. As their old memories are accidentally returned to them, they have to deal with the consequences of this past life carrying on into the new one. Along with them is the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, an idol who also attends Junior High for being held back, and other more malevolent figures from their past lives.
In part due to poor translations of the songs being the most popular in circulation, the series is known among its English fanbase for being extremely confusing and zany, with some songs that seem to have been made on drugs (drugs, used recreationally and for a more heartbreaking purpose, featuring in the story adds to this claim.) It features liberal references to Japanese, Russian, and American pop culture with modern-day politics at its forefront. As an example, Ronald McDonald and Vladimir Putin both feature as prominent characters in the series.
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Part 1
- It's the End!
- Don't Leave Me Alone.
- Together!
- Let's Dream
- I'll Give You Chocolate!
- Under the Cherry Blossoms☆
- I'm Happy!
- Gimme the Handcuffs!
- It's the Start!
Part 2
- Magic is Heresy
- The Day of the Decisive Battle
- Not Together
- If We Meet Again☆
- Stealing is Wrong?
- No Need to Worryy!!
- The Night that Can't be Seen
- The Eyes that Don't Vanish
Part 3
- Assassin!
- The One Who's Nothing.
- So We Meet Again☆
- Although I Want To Sleep!
- Farewell to the Dream☆
- The Other Side of the Mirror>
- Let’s Go on a Trip!
- To You, To Me.
- Who's the Liar?
- Don't Interfere, okay?☆
- The Voice in My Heart.
- The Voice in My Heart ○
- Illusion Catastrophe/A Place to Chat!
Part 4
- The Broken Mirror
- Goodbye to You★
- With the You I Can't See.
- In Your Eyes./Farewell!
Bonus Songs
- With Big Wings!
- Tippy-toe Type.
- I Don't Wanna Hear It!
- Sunny Spot!
- You Wanna Eat, Right?
- The Heart that Can't be Seen.
- A Sheep is One Animal!
- Anchor
- Flourishing Scent
- My Heart Is Pounding♥
- Kalpi!
- The Twisted Emperor ○
- Yukkiina
- Star Garbage
- Russian Last Emperor!
- How Russian☆
- A Man of Few Words.
- The Endless Survivor!
Albums
- Don't Leave Me Alone.
- The Night that Can't be Seen, The Eyes that Don't Vanish
- Putin Album 2.5
- Yukkiina!
This song series contains examples of:
- Arc Words:
- From the very start, the words "don't leave me alone." "Today is our Sunday" and "lalalala happy" are also a few.
- Certain characters are given reoccurring nicknames in the songs, such as Miku being the "one who's nothing" and Rin being the one "with eyes that don't vanish."
- Art Evolution: The series' first videos were just images of Rin from her box art when she was first released. When Shiuka started illustrating the videos in Part 2, the pictures were somewhat simplistic in terms of shading and content, often featuring only two pieces of art for the entire song. Compare that to Part 4, where there's semi-realistic shading for each character and several pictures and splicing effects that make it seem like a movie rather than static images.
- Art Shift:
- Once the shading becomes a bit more detailed near the end of Part 2, the final song, "The Eyes That Don't Vanish", briefly brings back the more two dimensional style with thicker and darker lineart. It's also formatted more like movie scenes than the others.
- The final song of the entire series has no shading with the characters fully animated on videos of the real world. There's also an art shift in the song itself when Len starts reminiscing on his time with Rin, wherein the memories are shaded, static images with drawn-in backgrounds.
- Bittersweet Ending: Leaning heavily on the bitter, as by the final song Irina's data has been completely erased and she comes out of the data-world as a blank slate Kagamine Rin; she did, however, go out happy that she was able to share her story with the world. Meanwhile, for the other characters, Miku stays behind in the data world to stay with Ronald, most if not all of the characters involved in Russia are dead, and Len exits the data world left with only the blank slate Rin.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The most popular translations of the series made when they first came out, due to lack of interest by more fluent translators, were done by those inexperienced with Japanese or using a machine translator for much of the work. As expected, this led to many misconceptions. One of the more casual mistakes was translating "the world's most pure machine gun" as "the world's number one machine gun of purity".
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Very often, and it even becomes a minor plot point in the latter half.
- The characters in "A Place to Chat" remarking on how confused the audience must be.
- Rin thanking her audience for watching her story in "Goodbye to You★"
- The bonus song "I Don't Wanna Hear it!" has the characters remarking on their own PV images.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The text of the characters are colored so as to indicate which one is singing (and which version of themselves is singing). For example, Rin sings in yellow, Red Rin sings in red, and Irina sings in white.
- Disguised Horror Story: Most of Part 1's songs. "Together" in particular, being a somewhat cute song about Rin's frustrations trying to get Len's attention and ends with Red Rin saying over and over again that she hates children.
- Doing In the Wizard: In Part 3 it's eventually revealed that the reincarnation issue is actually incredibly detailed data files on the entire incident reconstructing the personalities of each person involved that were created by Elena, and ended up uploaded into the Vocaloids. Bringing back their memories was really just rebooting the program.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Rin's constant beating up of Len is portrayed as comedic and something Len looks back on endearingly by the end. Since they're computer programs it's probably not a big deal, though.
- Driven to Suicide:
- In her past life, Irina killed herself after killing all her comrades as a result of her dog being shot.
- Elena. "The Voice in My Heart." reveals that her side story was set in the past, and that she'd killed herself to escape from her pain and guilt.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first part sticks out quite a bit from the rest of the series, being the most confusing. It's also the only installment without actual PVs.
- Gratuitous Russian: Given that Rin is a nerd for Russia—and, as we later learn, lived there in her past life—she occasionally interlaces her speech with Russian words.
- Important Haircut: Miku cuts her pigtails off after "To you, to Me" as she goes through her Character Development.
- Ironic Echo: Miku's line from "If We Meet Again," "If we could meet again/Surely we'll be happy," is repeated to ironic effect twice:
- The first time is in "We Met Again, eh?" which features Camui Gackpo, who was once Irina's comrade, meeting Rin who was once Irina and remarking on how they've met again. Miku sings her lines right after Camui shoots Rin.
- Although the words aren't spoken, the lines are given a musical Call-Back in the first "The Voice in My Heart" when Elena meets Teppanov again, her childhood friend. The music is playing over a picture of her having just committed suicide.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Miku comments that she knows people are watching her song in "With the You I Can't See" (the video even moving out to look like it's playing on a computer screen). Eventually its revealed that she wasn't talking about the audience, but the fact that Teppanov was watching.
- LEET Speak: Used liberally in the subs, with "orz" and "w" note and other emojis added to the ends of a lot of sentences.
- Love Redeems:
- Back in Russia Irina slowly turned good as she raised her dog; in particular, she didn't need to take drugs anymore to deal with the terrible things she'd done.
- Teppanov, who quits his job as an assassin to be with Elena, and when he loses her dedicates his life to ending the regime that caused her so much pain.
- Morality Pet: Irina's dog was hers, and she loved it so much that she went on a rampage after seeing him shot.
- Red Herring: In their past lives in Russia, Kagamine Len is actually not the character who looks like Len—he's Irina's dog. Even other characters in the series did not expect this.
- Reincarnation: A huge theme in this series, although not every character is a reincarnation. Kagamine Rin and Len are the biggest examples, being respectively a Russian agent serving under Putin, named Irina, and her beloved dog. Although in another twist, it turns out reincarnation is impossible and they're actually programs made to remember the lives of real people.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Multiple characters' eye colors change red when they start acting malicious and more cruel than usual. Camui's eyes are red by default.
- Reincarnation Romance: Seems to be the case for Rin and Len, who have "reincarnated" together after their tragic past and struggle to have a relationship. Funnily enough Len's love starts being the unconditional love of a dog, and part of his character arc is how it transformed into a partner-based love between humans.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The Vocaloid characters, who despite being explicitly programs on a computer are able to get high, eat, drink alcohol, and get sick, not to mention their sentience.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: The PV for "In Your Eyes." features real-life footage with Len and Rin being roughly animated over it.
- Shout-Out: The series is positively filled to the brim with visual and audio shout outs to various elements of Japanese pop-culture.
- "Let's Dream" has Rin referencing the Miku song "Melt."
- In "Together" Rin plays as Zangief from Street Fighter (the Russian character, of course.)
- Len's ringtone is "Yaranaika", to the tune of "Balalaika."
- The Vocaloids often make several references to Sazae-san, with the character's heads showing up in some videos or speaking through sound clips.
- In "The Other Side of the Mirror>" Len mentions attacking Gakupo with a "Misawa style elbow" while his text briefly turns green.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Len gives one of these to Gackpo during the final confrontation, responding to his despairing monologue with "Whatever!!!!!"
- Source Music: Usually provided by Miku—characters will occasionally listen to her songs from the radio or MP3 players during a PV. Although Rin gets a turn with her broadcast of "Assassin!" on TV.
- Stock Sound Effects: Many of the songs, particularly early ones, use stock sound effects spliced in with the music. Snippets from Ronald McDonald's ad campaigns is one of the most common.
- Suicide by Cop:
Word of God suggests that Teppanov's failed assassination attempt against Putin was at least partially because he wanted to die. - Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Len in his past life was this, accidentally triggering the whole tragedy that prefaced their deaths. As a dog he stole a yellow scarf and was going to show it to Irina. Her comrade, to whom the scarf belonged, pursues and then shoots him, and Irina goes on a massacre in response.
- Len becomes this in Part 2 as well, giving Rin her memories back and unwillingly causing her eventual demise.
- Yandere: Red Rinnote . In one song she forces Len (at knifepoint) to eat chocolate filled with gunpowder so he gets sick, as just one example.
