News

New Evangelion Film's Team Make Video for Hikaru Utada's New Cover Album

The official website for Hikaru Utada's new cover album Utada Hikaru no Uta revealed on Tuesday that the team behind the new Evangelion films will create a video for the album.

The new album will feature other artists covering Utada's work. The album is the second one the artist is releasing this year to commemorate her 15th anniversary. The first one was a remastered version of her debut album First Love that shipped on March 10.

Utada has also set up a special website that will feature works by different creators with a theme of one of Utada's songs. Aside from the Evangelion team's video, Square Enix designer and director Tetsuya Nomura (Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy franchises) has also drawn a collaborative art piece for the project.

The website also has a work by Kumamon designer Manabu Mizuno (Utada released a single in 2006 with a song titled "Boku wa Kuma" or "I Am a Bear").

Utada Hikaru no Uta will ship on December 9, and will feature the following artists:

• AI
• Yousui Inoue
• Trio Ōhashi
• Yasuyuki Okamura
• Miliyah Katō
• KIRINJI
• Ringo Sheena
• Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis feat. Peabo Bryson
• tofubeats with Bonnie Pink
• Hanaregumi
• Ayumi Hamasaki
• Kazuya Yoshii
• Love Psychedelico

The official website has not yet announced which songs each of the artists will perform.

Utada has been on hiatus from the entertainment business since the beginning of 2011, although she returned to host a monthly radio program called Kuma Power Hour with Utada Hikaru on the InterFM station starting in April 2013. She did contribute the song "Sakura Nagashi" as the ending theme for 2012's Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (Evangelion Shin Gekijō-ban: Q), but her management emphasized that the song did not represent a full-fledged return from her hiatus.

Utada's father Teruzane Utada had originally said in a Twitter post in October 2013 that he and his daughter would be involved in the Kingdom Hearts III theme song, but he took back that comment the next day, saying that "as of now it's undecided." Utada contributed the two theme songs that have been used for every game so far in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Source: Natalie via Minna no Eva Fan