Synopsis

You are an apprentice under your Zhakoran father, who happens to be the head mechanic of Cybrris Village. In the heart of the ocean rainforest, a mechanic’s job is quite straightforward: maintain the paddles that churn the ocean’s surface to keep refraction monsters at bay. Following the Era of the Second Lunar Cataclysm, Still Water became a dangerous state. Even the Ark Confederation’s ships dare not venture into tranquil seas, favoring the vicious patches of ocean tempest.

Lyo discovered a passion for storywriting in their early childhood, and wrote multitudes of science-fantasy novels and short stories. These included "Voyage to Gliese/Apocalypse," "Melt," "Spirit of a Griffin," The Fallen Angel Series ("Fallen Angel," "Red Snow, "Time Spiral"), and more under the pen name "Dragon Fang". The worldbuilding aspects from these largely unfinished post-apocalyptic stories heavily influenced the setting of ReversalRain.

Inspired by Andrew Hussie's multimedia Homestuck webcomic, Fang created a fancomic called Mirrorstuck in August 2014. The early prototypes of ReversalRain characters started out as Homestuck fantrolls, hence why many of them follow the 6-letter name schematic (e.g. Llyona, Lukkas, Renaye, Clarus, Juneti, Jeavon). The first four characters' silhouettes were shown in the title page. The creation of Mirrorstuck drove Lyo to learn digital art, practicing with a Wacom Intuous tablet and Photoshop Elements Editor. They also experimented with music composition, creating short soundtrack pieces with MuseScore to accompany interactive Scratch animations. These songs evolved into the ReversalRain soundtrack.

A. L. Harjanto adopted the alias/record label "Llyona Fang" from that fantroll and discontinued Mirrorstuck, using its premise to start a new project called ReversalRain in 2015. Since the "Llyona Fang" alias now belonged to the author, the name of the story's protagonist was changed to "Melody Jiayin," based on Lyo's Chinese name (佳音) and its literal translation into "beautiful sound." ReversalRain incorporates both Fang's artistic and musical works into webcomics, soundtracks, video games, concept art, and stories centered around a group of 6 main characters and their families.

ReversalRain music originated as experimental ensemble scores with computer-generated audio. To imitate the effect of reflection, Harjanto employed techniques such as retrograde combined with reversed sound, so many ReversalRain tracks will retain the same melody when played backwards. These earlier tracks established RPG-like leitmotifs for the six main characters of the ReversalRain webcomic: Melody Rain Jiayin, Lukkas Souta Iocu, Renaye Igni Lopes, Clarus Seco, Expexes Juneti Cypo, and Jevon Jadin. These characters primarily play piano, flute, trumpet, cello, harp, and guitar respectively. Their leitmotifs within the officialReversalRain soundtrack reflect this instrumentation.

After years of creating with primarily MIDI, Fang shifted towards a new "bedroom pop" sound, utilizing raw self-recorded instrumentals and vocals in late 2019 with the creation of The Midst of Silence album, followed by the single Race of Fools in 2020. This shift in style also inspired Marvin Nauendorff's creation of the multicultural indie rock band Tsaitogaisuto ツァイトガイスト , which Fang is now part of as a multi-instrumentalist.