Japanese superstar Utada Hikaru has announced her grand return to the music industry after a five-year hiatus. Utada is widely known in the gaming community for her work on the Kingdom Hearts series, singing the iconic opening and closing themes “Simple and Clean” for Kingdom Hearts and “Sanctuary” for Kingdom Hearts II.
Utada’s team announced on her website that she is currently working on two projects — sadly, neither of them are video games. The first is for the opening theme of the Japanese drama Toto Nee-chan, titled “Hantaba wo Kibi ni.” The second will serve as the ending song for the Japanese news program News Zero.
Hikaru has been on hiatus since 2010, and in that time has started a family of her own, both getting married and giving birth to baby boy. Since her announced hiatus fans, everywhere have been eagerly anticipating her return to the music industry, and finally the wait is over.
Fans have shown their excitement by trending the hashtags #おかえりHIKKI or #WelcomebackHIKKI. As fans buy her new songs, it will help support a charity event named the New-Turn project. Money raised as a part of this project will go towards planting cherry blossom trees in areas affected by the 2011 Tohaku earthquake and tsunami.
Utada and her team have yet to comment on whether or not they will be contributing to the latest and highly anticipated upcoming title, Kingdom Hearts III. However, hearing that she is releasing new music has made fans of the series hopeful!
Are you excited to hear of Utada’s comeback to the music scene? Let me know down in the comments!
