Back when I did “Nagai Yume no Owari ni,” I mentioned that miko had written a blog post about that track where she said that song had actually been performed live before WORLD MAKER‘s release as part of the story of Little Mary. The first release to include that track, “Ritoru Mearii to Utsukushiki Nikushimi no Donau,” was the 2011 EP The Last Daybreak.

miko had also written a blog post about that specific show, the one on July 6, 2013 at Shibuya Glad, but she didn’t say what songs were included in “Act II” of said show, which expanded on this character’s world. I was really curious about all this and wanted to find out what all the songs were!

Luckily, I found a concert report by Kawaii girl Japan on Japanese music news site Barks which gave the sequence as “Deai” and “Yogen” (meaning “Meeting” and “Prophecy,” songs which, as far as I can tell, have never been included in a recording), followed by “Ritoru Mearii to Utsukushiki Nikushimi no Donau,” then “Nagai Yume no Owari ni” and “Lost in Helix” (which had been released on Vanguard – Of the Muses – back in 2009, and which, by pure coincidence, I’ve already translated as well).

Below I’ve translated the relevant portion of Kawaii girl Japan’s concert report, starting from about the fifth paragraph of the original article (linked to above) through the seventh. After reading it, you can grab your headphones, put on a mask, and try to recreate this iteration of the world of Little Mary yourself. : )

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The title of this concert is “[SOUND THEATER] ~Beautiful Trilogy of Hate~,” which is fitting given that this show is brilliantly divided into three acts.

The atmosphere changes completely for Act II. “Ritoru Mearii to Utsukushiki Nikushimi no Donau” had become a bit of a theatrical play within exist†trace concerts, but this time only, it served as the key song in a special suite built around it. The new songs “Deai” and “Yogen” can be considered prequels to “Ritoru Mearii~,” which is then followed by “Nagai Yume no Owari ni” and “Lost in Helix,” for a total of five songs performed. During the suite’s prologue, a young man proclaiming to be a servant appears at the side of the stage. He reads from a scroll written by his father, who had also been a servant, thus narrating the story.¹

The song “Ritoru Mearii~” depicts the love-hate relationship between Mary, a princess who has a lover, and her mother the Queen.² But “Deai” and “Yogen” show us the Queen in her youth. Jyou, who always plays the role of the mother, appears onstage as a young woman in a pure white dress. In “Deai,” she falls in love with a musician from an orchestra, who is played by Mally. Then, during “Yogen,” a prophet (played by Naoto) gives her the terrible prediction that she will kill her daughter. Eventually she marries a prince from another country.

Fast forward to the time of “Ritoru Mearii~,” where the Queen breaks up a dance between her daughter (played by miko) and a prince (played by Omi).³ She kills her daughter herself with some poisoned wine. The final pieces of the suite, “Nagai Yume no Owari ni” and “Lost in Helix,” are sung as if to express the overlapping emotions of the mother and daughter as they think of the people they loved.

^1. In miko’s blog about this show, we learn that this “young man” was the actress Mami Minamori (水森まみ), who had worked on exist†trace’s staff for a long time prior to this. ⤴

^2. I don’t know the fine details of royal titles. What I’ve rendered as “Queen” was お妃 (okisaki) in Japanese, the dictionary definition of which lists “empress” first and “queen” second. On the one hand, given the reference to the Danube I thought of the Hapsburg Empire, and thought “Empress” would be best. But on the other, I associate knights on white horses more with king/queen/princess type set-ups and ended up going with “Queen” after all. As for Mary, here the author uses 姫君 (himegimi), which means “daughter of a person of high rank,” which includes both royalty and aristocrats. In contrast 姫様 (himesama) would have been simply “princess” (though it too can mean “daughter of person of high-rank,” but that’s the secondary definition). What’s more, if I’ve understood correctly, a woman can have both the title queen of her country and empress of her country’s empire. So. ⤴

^3. miko refers to Omi’s character as ナイト (knight), presumably the same 白馬の騎士 (hakuba no kishi “knight on a white horse”) who appears in the lyrics to “Ritoru Mearii~”. But the author of this concert report refers to the character as 王子 (ouji, “prince”). ⤴