Uemura Tatsuaki
I KNEW SHE WAS tricking people.
This was Tatsuaki’s reaction after watching the old video of Gotou Julia. It had only further reinforced his view that popular people based their whole lives on a performance built of lies. His body was trembling, partly from joy, but he mistook it for pure rage. Under this misconception, he gleefully went about criticizing Julia for creating a false character with which to milk her fans. Her mannish appearance and body language were just another costume.
By stating in her public profile that she used to sing to her own accompaniment, they had clearly misrepresented the truth to make the fans picture something masculine, he argued. No one would ever imagine something as saccharine as that.
He expected them to quickly trot out some kind of half-assed explanation, but then a full day went by, followed by a second, and the Impatiens account still hadn’t addressed the video directly. The only thing that could be interpreted as a response was a tweet from the leader, Takatsuki Sakuna: “The girl I love will always be both cute and badass.” But though Sakuna continually presented herself as a fellow otaku, she too remained silent in the face of the demand for answers.
With each passing day, the anger Tatsuaki felt toward their negligence grew stronger. They should have had some reaction to this leak, be it positive or negative, and the fans wanted to hear it. But no, they were too afraid of being politically incorrect.
What annoyed him most of all, however, was that most of these sheeple were still buying into the lie, even when the mask had slipped right in front of them. All day long, no matter how many of Gotou Julia’s own statements he pointed to as proof of her apathy toward her fans, outside of the redpilled few, the vast majority praised the old her as an adorable ingénue and celebrated this rare pre-persona glimpse of her.
You’re being conned, you idiots!
Unfortunately, those who lacked the ability to conceptualize on their own would need even more obvious proof thrust under their noses. Compelled by a sense of duty, Tatsuaki entered a drawing to win a ticket for a movie showing where Impatiens would hold a mini-concert and talk show. Why? Because it said that attendees, not just reporters, would have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A segment.
I’ll rip that mask right off!
In the days leading up to the event, he decided he would read through interviews with the author and director—not because he was interested in the film itself, obviously, but in order to find and criticize any discrepancies between the original creators’ views and those of Impatiens.
As for the source material, he’d already read it back when he first found out Julia was in charge of writing the theme song lyrics.