(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning VTubers and VSingers, welcome to Day 462 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
It is now scarily close to my Vexpo trip, and after a heart-to-heart moment with my partner last night set right any leftover negative emotions from my breakdown, we are now earnestly planning our trip.
Well, I say earnestly, it is mainly picking out what clothes we want to wear, what sort of activities we want to do, and what supplies we want for our hotel room – including the all important deodorant and shower supplies because good god we do not want to be the kind of people who do not shower at a convention carrying the smell of several days worth of body odour with us.
Even when it comes to activities we are probably going to be very freeform. Outside of the several concerts I have booked myself into over the course of the weekend and my two Meet & Greets, there is a feeling of approaching the trip in a more freeform style. I know I definitely want to meet a fair few people that I either met last year and want to say hello to again and a lot of new people I want to take the opportunity to meet for the first time.
My main goal is to have a weekend where I forget about all my problems for a change, especially considering the difficulties of the past couple of months. I want to cheer for my oshis on stage, I want to spend time with awesome people who hold like-minded interests, I want to eat so much junk food my veins feel clogged up.
That said, I am still going to try pace myself, both for my energy constraints and for the fact that I am not really a massive party person. I like socialising for sure, but when it comes to loud party atmospheres and lots of people drinking, there is a certain amount of discomfort that comes into play that can make it hard for me to branch out of my shell. It is not something I really want to “change” or “fix” in myself, as I am happy with the ways I like to socialise with others, mainly just reflecting on how I may approach this weekend.
Considering my Saturday is pretty much clear outside of any potential meetups and the premium concert in the evening, that may be my best opportunity to meet people, browse Artist Alley, and attend any interesting panels that catch my eye. There is definitely some lingering saltiness over the Meet & Greets I was not able to win or snag during the First Come First Served sale, but I do not want to dwell on it and make the most of the weekend all the same.
I am a VTuber fan, through and through, and I want to make this the best weekend I have ever had. After that, I want to get back to work on making sure I can keep attending events like this in future, and make even more memories that I will treasure forever.
Considering the theme of the article, and that Vexpo themselves posted an official 2026 theme song written by the composer duo of Starlight & Wonder and sung by…
…about one third of the guest list looking at the credits, I think this makes a perfectly appropriate review topic if only because I have not actually listened to it properly yet.
Small side tangent before we start, I hope I am able to run into Wunder Riku outside of his and Daryl’s meet & greet. I saw him briefly in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at right as we were going to leave and would have loved to talk to him if I was not so damn tired, and I would love to get my Sana plushie blessed by him.
It might be my lingering emotions from my breakdown, the residual saltiness from the Meet & Greet raffles, or the fact that music is a massive part of why I fell in love with the VTuber scene in the first place, but my first listen through this song made me tear up a little bit. I am either too young or my general music taste too misaligned to understand the aesthetic Starlight & Wonder were going for with the Y2K theming around the convention as a whole, but it absolutely holds up as a massive group idol song – a mightily difficult task when you have so many different voices all singing together.
The opening lyrics really lend themselves to how the phenomenon of VTubing has spread across the world, with the ability to connect so many people and cultures together through the power of the internet… with a wonderful stealth reference to the two composers as well:
“Open your eyes and see the stars above
In every heart that’s filled with love
It’s world-wide now
We’ll shine wider still
Till this world wide wonder
Of starlight comes our way”
Admittedly I feel a little bad that I have not listened to much of Starlight Daryl’s work on its own, considering I mainly know more of Riku’s work than hers, but given this is my first proper exposure to her talents, I really need to change that because this song is fantastic.
I will apologise now for the fact this is mainly going to be me gushing about lyrics and how much I love the positive messages that idol songs can give out, because I find myself stopping the song every fifteen seconds or so to simply bask in how wonderful and amazing they all are.
“Because the hope you gave me
Somehow saved me
By teaching me to dream”
This one hits particularly hard for me, because whilst my wonderful friends have put in a lot of effort to keeping me on track during my harder days, the VTubers I follow across both corporations and independents have inspired me to carry on, and showed me that dreams are possible with the right work so long as the effort persists across all days. I would not be sitting here right now writing about VTubers if those emotions were not present, and pushing my writing into the wider world would not be possible if I did not believe that someday, something will come from it.
“I hear a voice upon the wind that keeps on whispering
Today’s the greatest day to start”
This one hits way harder than it should do holy shit.
Ahem.
Both the lyrics themselves and who is singing them combine together to make these hit home. Matara Kan is a massive inspiration to myself, and the fact I got the chance to meet her last year still stays with me today (yes I have still not got over her calling me stylish), with her continued resilience in the face of a difficult year being a massive inspiration.
Only to then have all of Densetsu.exe join in with one of the best pieces of advice you can give to anyone aspiring to any goal. Today will always be the greatest day to start any venture, and whilst I do not have full-spread exposure to all of Densetsu.exe that I would like to, seeing the adorable wide eyes of Phoebe-chan’s model accompanied with those words made the tears flow once more.
Also I did want to meet Mint just so we could gush about Ace Combat 8 together.
Finally, I am going to finish off with the some of the lyrics Wunder Riku himself highlighted at the end of a very long Twitter post about the process of creating the song which I absolutely think you should read as it goes into so much detail about how this wonderful piece came together that definitely resonated with me:
“For every broken soul upon the earth
Till every lonely voice is heard
We won’t stop now
We’ll shine brighter still”
I have used the word “broken” to describe myself in the wake of my last layoff. My confidence broke, my spirit broke, and at points my mind has broken as well, and each day is me trying to find the pieces and glue it all back together. It has also been a lonely experience, especially in my field of tech where it seems like everyone is going through similar moments of layoffs destroying lives with zero rhyme or reason.
But that is the wonder of online communities, especially the VTuber community. A lot of us were exiles growing up, for how we looked, for what we enjoyed, and for who we were at the core of our identities. Through the magic of the internet, we all found each other, and so many come together each day to create wonderful works of art that resonate in the hearts of any like-minded individual.
As silly as this will sound, this song reminds me of why I do what I do on this site. Loneliness is one of the biggest challenges facing people of all generations around the world right now, and if it were not for the combined efforts of my friends, my partner, and me being involved in VTubers, I think I would have ended up a far lonelier person. So now I want to use my voice to speak for so many people like me, all of us facing career, financial, and political instability each day, in the hopes that my experiences will help someone else feel less lonely and that they belong in this world, whatever hardship is facing them.
Thank you, Starlight & Wonder. Thank you to all the amazing talents participating in this song. Thank you to Vexpo for facilitating it all and making it happen.
I know I am about to have an amazing weekend.
Thumbnail pic courtesy of the Bandcamp listing for the song, which is the best way to support the artists involved directly.
That will do it for the penultimate review before I head out later this week. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you know you are not alone. There are so many wonderful people out in this world that would love to meet you, and I know you will find the people you relate to most one day.
Stay safe out there.
