AZKi's voice carries the full weight of something unsaid, and Shimada animates that silence into geometry and color. One episode is all it takes because the song already knows what it wants to break inside you. This is what happens when a musician and an animator both understand that melancholy isn't sad, it's the space where everything true lives.

Real Melancholy is a music video built around AZKi's song of the same name, animated by Shimada. The track comes out of AZKi's "Virtual Diva AZKi" campaign, a run of songs released regularly over eight consecutive months. The song is a statement about holding onto a sense of self while performing online, and pushing through the doubts and pressures that come with that kind of work.