#Post-Utada

[wkbk33]

can you give me one last kiss?

something we don't want to forget

[thequantumranger]

宇多田ヒカル / Utada Hikaru - "One Last Kiss" (2021)

[yrdnzz]

BAROU SHOEI, king of the field AND karaoke

reference image cred to horikoshi kohei

[sadsexysag]

arca & utada hikaru by adriana rosin

for i-D Madazine, 2025

[naux97]

「when i'm alone at night / i sit and fantasize / i gotta make you mine 」

[mintytrifecta]

Ship dynamic of absolute trust in spite of knowing the inevitable betrayal. Of loving someone wholeheartedly but knowing you have to leave them at some point. Of knowing that you're gonna end up alone and so are they. Of holding hands, of desperate pleas. I can't go with you. I can't follow you through this. I can't be there but I can be with you. I know what you have to do and I can't and I won't stop you. But promise me, promise me you'll come back to me alive. Come back to me whole. I'll wait for you and you know this. You don't have to look back. I won't make you. But if you do please look back for me. I will love you with no distance to sway me. Just promise me you'll do the same.

[scarecrowgoat]

i don't fw kingdom hearts but i've just discovered simple and clean and it's a fucking bop

[uwanosorade]

A dress, asleep in the closet; A pair of high heels waiting to be worn; It's been quite some time Since I became a secondary character in the story. It's precisely because we're so busy That we have to spread our wings once in a while-- All the more boldly. For us, who work so hard morning, noon and night-- Here is an escape. There's no time like the present-- Take me away from here right now. A vacation of only two hours-- A rendezvous right by the shore. "Not quite enough" is just right. Pleasure should be taken In small doses.

Nobody wants to hear The sequel to a fairy tale. I love the gentle everyday But the thrills seek me out. For you, who works so hard for your family-- I'm stealing you for a drive. You can blame it all on me So indulge me in my selfishness. A vacation of only two hours-- It always ends just when things are getting good. Get too greedy and it will destroy you So tell me-- when can I see you again? C'mon, start the car Because we only live once. On the sand, give me a kiss that turns the inside of my head numb. Today, let's skip class And walk through the park together And maybe you'll give me A smile I won't be able to forget until the day I die. For us, who work so hard morning, noon and night-- Here is an escape There's no time like the present-- I'm on my way to you right now. A vacation of only two hours-- A rendezvous right by the shore "Not quite enough" is just right Pleasure should be taken In small doses.

[paw--on--heart]

Breaking: female vocalist lowers her voice in song, local lesbian impressed

[kairithemang0]

A Flower of No Color by Utada Hikaru is so curtwen I can’t tell if it’s actually curtwen or if I’m delusional and everything is curtwen to me 💀

English lyrics:

What you gave me is A flower of no color In the not so distant future We will no longer be here But for always

I’m in love with you In it with you In it with you In love with you In it with you In it with you

The sun rises because It promised someone it would According to renowned scholars We are just illusions But today, as always

I’m in love with you In it with you In it with you In love with you In it with you In it with you

But if I can’t believe in myself I can’t believe in anything That’s synonymous with not existing Only the facts that can’t be proven Are called truths

No one can take away what’s inside our hearts There’s no need to protect it so much But if we can’t believe in ourselves We can’t believe in anything

I’m in love with you In it with you In it with you In love with you In it with you In it with you

[thequantumranger]

宇多田ヒカル / Utada Hikaru performing "Letters"

Science Fiction Tour 2024

[greetings-inferiors]

Simple and clean is honestly such a banger of a song. I understand why it’s used in practically ever kingdom hearts game, because it’s JUST SO GOOD

Hikuru Utuda my beloved <3

[subpixie420]

Is it a niche hidden talent of mine to be able to sing all the backwards song lyrics in Sanctuary by Hikaru Utada from Kingdom Hearts?

No? Oh okay

[unnounblr]

So, I've been posting my Kingdom Hearts fanfic, I'm working on it and. Between the last time I posted an update and now I upped the rating, because I remembered. I already had a torture scene in this fic. And. There might be another, and some fucked up dreams, possibly dealing with gender and some body horror shit.

Beneath the tone and vibes of Kingdom Hearts there's tons of things and themes and ideas that are, in fact, really fucked up, and have really fucked up implications. And the quality of the animations. Like, there's implications, in one game, of physical child abuse, of things that they don't show us, even when they show teenagers actually being physically struck by adults, because it's an action video game with elements and the trappings of a battle Shonen Manga anime series.

And, the game in particular that I'm roughly adapting, in the alternate universe I'm working in, was already a tragedy, where the lies and secrets between three friends (one of whom was an Adult, albeit one who was immature and unable to develop and grow properly because of past traumas he suffered, and had the responsibility of caring for two kids thrust upon him, when he didn't think he was capable of caring anymore) drive them apart, and essentially lead to them dying, scared and alone.

And beyond that, viewed from one perspective, the game is also a psychological, existential horror, where, for two characters, they fundamentally don't understand certain truths about the essential nature of their beings, and everyone around them, all the adults around them, are lying to them, and using them.

And, anyway, in this chapter I decided to reference Alien, because I saw Romulus, I like the Alien series, Disney owns Fox, and I think body horror is cool.

And, while there are a lot of things I want to talk about, and I want comments about on the fic (hint hint), and justifications I can make about choices I made, which I worry might have been the wrong choices. The thing I want to talk about most is actually about what I intended to be the brightest, happiest scene of the chapter. And its the scene I actually had the hardest time with, and feel I got wrong the most:

In a scene in this chapter, I have 5 disney princesses, Alice from the 1951 film Alice in Wonderland, and the Kingdom Hearts original character Kairi, all singing, and they all sing the song "Simple and Clean", by Utada Hikaru.

It's a song I think most Kingdom Hearts fans are familiar with, especially in the English community. And, English is basically my only language I know, (I've taken other languages, but they were romance languages, it was years ago in college, when I was attending instead of teaching like I am now, I'm Jewish but i was never good at Hebrew or Yiddish, and never been devout or practicing and if you don't use it you lose it,) and I write my fics in English.

Now, Kingdom Hearts is partly Disney, an American company, Utada Hikaru is American-Japanese, and I know for a fact series director Tetsuya Nomura does consider the English version of the series a bit, because he handpicked Haley Joel Osment, Christopher Lee, Mark Hamill, and Leonard Nimoy for roles in the series. But he's still a Japanese man, and the series is written in Japanese first.

I'm not getting into the series translation here though, just, the music. Because the most impressive thing Utada Hikaru does in the entire series is that, because she knows both English and Japanese, she writes the opening and ending songs for the mainline numbered games, which people hear for the first time when they start a new game, and are the first impression the series leaves. She writes them to the same melody, so the English and Japanese songs can be considered the same.

And I'm not a songwriter, and I don't speak Japanese, but she has said in interviews that one of the difficult parts of the series, even if she does love it and is proud of her contribution and her role, is that doing that is really fucking hard.

However. My understanding is that, that was mainly true for KH2 and KH3. For KH1, however, when the game first came out in Japan, it used the song 'Hikari', (meaning "Light") which was a song Utada had already released, in Japanese, in Japan. Nomura asked her permission to license it. And, there's even some acknowledgments in places that Hikari, because it wasn't actually written for the series. Has the least to do with the series and its story and themes? Though, then again, it's plausible Nomura directed the first game with Hikari in mind, so maybe it's more that the causal relationship is reversed. The KH2 and 3 songs are based on the games, while KH1 the game is based on. The Japanese version. Of the song.

After KH1 was released in Japan, and they got to work on the North American release, Nomura asked Utada to write an. English version. Of Hikari. And that ended up being the song Simple and Clean that we all know and love today.

What I'm getting at, though, is that. Simple and Clean and Hikari are more different to each other than any of the other songs. And I mean that not in terms of the lyrics, but in terms of the. Melodies. The actual rhythms. The notes. The beats. I don't actually know anything about music, I just. Have ears.

It's mostly the beginnings of the songs, and they get more similar towards the end, but. The opening parts, where she sings "When you walk away," in English, and "どんな時だって" or "Don'na toki datte" in Japanese (I copied those lyrics from the KHWiki) sound so radically different from each other.

But, Kingdom Hearts came out in Japan first, in March of 2002, and the North American version came out in September. And when it released it had an amazing soundtrack and score composed by Yoko Shimomura. And part of that score, was an orchestral, (or the nearest equivalent for the PS2 anyway) and instrumental version of. 'Hikari'. It mainly played during the 'attract movie' or 'attract screen' when you left the game on the main menu, without selecting 'new game' or 'load' or 'continue' for too long, but. To my knowledge, Hikari is unique in the entire series, because while other games have attract movies, where instrumental versions of their main themes play. Hikari and Kingdom Hearts 1 are the only instance where it plays during the game's actual runtime, in an actual cutscene.

This is one of the most important scenes in the Kingdom Hearts series, ultimately, that has knock-on effects for multiple other games, and while this isn't aspect as relevant to those other games. One of the focuses within that scene itself is the hearts, the light of the group known as the 'Princesses of Heart', which includes Kairi, as well as the six Disney characters. This is a moment where all of them are saved, and. It's a sad moment, of sacrifice, that makes people tear up and cry (I was already an adult when I first saw it and didn't even know the characters yet and it still got to me, it's why I even like the series) but there's also. A sense of. 'Light' to it. Where the princesses get saved, from eternal sleep, at the climax, by the story's hero.

Setting aside the gender implications and criticisms of that, and I think maybe more importantly the way one of those princesses, specifically the original character theoretically most unrestricted by Disney's guidelines gets handled by the series after that. It's still a genuinely beautiful, amazing moment.

And, I wanted to call back to it, which, is probably futile of me. To do it justice, I'd need, like, to be able to do blender animations, and character models, and be able to do impressions of the singing voices of seven fucking characters. Or hire people. I sure as shit wouldn't do ai, ever.

Or I'd have the moment be silent with an instrumental of the song playing over it. That would be better, if it was audiovisual and not a purely written fanfic.

And, I'm a single parent to a child whose 8th birthday is coming up, and I teach full-time. It's a goddamned miracle I have been able to post anything at all, ever. And I've probably been irresponsible and maybe shouldn't be doing it, I don't know.

But, I wanted the reference to land, and make sense, in the language I'm actually writing in. But the problem I knew, that I know, in my own heart and mind, that bothers me the most about my decision is that it's the wrong song.

Because "Simple and Clean" wasn't the song that played in that scene. "Hikari" was.