Kairiki Bear - Darling Dance / ダーリンダンス (English subtitles)

[EDIT 2020/11/30: I suddenly really dislike the wording I used at 2:07 so I'll just clarify here: what she's referring to is the belief that the way to get someone to fall for you is to play hard to get/give them the cold shoulder, in response/contrast to the belief that the way to get someone to fall for you is to be all over them all the time (1:04).] [Edit again: I'd change "bare face" to "true face" if YT let me switch video files... But hopefully the point came through.]

Jesus my eyes hurt after staring at a huge hot pink screen for two hours.

You might have seen my translation for this song elsewhere, but I decided to make a hard-subbed version and made some edits to the lyrics so they're more standalone without my excessive annotations.

But just for convenience, here's the other bits of background and analysis that I'd written up because there are just some things you can't glean from the lyrics alone:

This is a song about a self-destructive girl who wants desperately to feel wanted/loved. I am rather sure that the girl in the song is "gachikoi"/"riako," or someone who is romantically into either an idol(singer) or host(just Google this); her entire look is the splitting image of a particular subset of idol otaku/host club-goers who all dress exactly the same, so much so that they're called "mass produced girls" (originally as an insult but they've claimed the label; some people think that the mass-produced-girl fad is keeping girls from expressing their true selves, or pushing an unhealthy standard).

Many of these mass-produced girls are also self-proclaimed "menhera." If you're not familiar, menhera people are said to be "mentally ill," but often the main "illness" other than being depressed is having very non-normal attachment to a certain person and/or being loved. (Some people make a distinction between menhera & yandere by saying that yanderes chase after their crushes because they're inhumanly obsessed with everything about that person, while menheras are not obsessed with that person, they're obsessed with the idea of being loved by that person, & thus being validated as worthy of being loved. So in reality, anybody would do, but they would never admit that.) Menhera is about mental health but these days is treated like an aesthetic, kind of like the older emo culture. I think that this song is undoubtedly supposed to be reminiscent of that crowd of people who have an unhealthy obsession with someone pretty much out of their reach (ie. idols/hosts), and judging by the reaction they ate it right up; menhera people thrive off of romanticizing all the messed up things in their life, even if it's harmful to them. Some people have a bias to assume that a girl with mass-produced and/or menhera aesthetics is also gachikoi/riako.

All the things about losing her innocence are clearly about losing her virginity. She could be prostituting herself (the lines about rolling over like a dog/cat dehumanize and sexualize her), using the money to try to make her love with her darling work out; or perhaps it's even about being a victim of rape at the hands of her darling (it's not unheard of for hosts to sleep with their patrons). Either way, she convinces herself it's for love but in the end all it does it suck the soul out of her.

Kairiki Bear pointed out on Twitter that abbreviating "Darling Dance" makes "DD," which is what people call idol fans who have a lot of favorite idols ("daredemo daisuki"), often implying that loving so many must be an indication that their love is superficial or just not very deep. Some people went with this and interpreted the girl to be an idol who wants to gain the approval of her fans or even a specific fan, but because the fan is a DD she gets depressed that she's not their #1 obsession. He says it's a coincidence, but you never know...

She's also got strings attached to her limbs, and a halo around her head. Maybe has something to do with pretending to be an angel to appeal to other people. Especially fitting for the girl being the idol theory, but also plausible for the other way around.