#hikaru utada icons

[tokyicons]

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[kiwd]

making love underneath the cherry leaves

[letsmakefingerfive]

Utada Hikaru, Traveling.

[ourmoodwaves]

‎ ♬ ₊.🎧⋆ ‎♪ ⋆⁺

[sputnikstars]

it's automatic

[uhmjvnghwa]

utada hikaru in a commercial for NTT docomo's FOMA (2001)

[kuromi-hoemie]

that first episode of To Your Eternity gets me every time

[cosmicrhetoric]

feel like shit AND have simple and clean stuck in my head???? nothing has changed its 2009 up in here

[rikotoriko]

Hikaru Utada - Somewhere Near Marseilles (live at Sea Paradise)

[lake-lunvik]

TIGHT JEANS NO PANTIES ON OOPS DID I TURN YOU ON?!

[ninelivesastrology]

I'm gonna give it to you,

I'll get a room with a view

[letsmakefingerfive]

UTADA HIKARU, First Love. 1999.

[transrikuu]

Top Reason for Nomination

Skuld

“Trans girl icon :)”

Kairi

“Hikaru Utada. Need I say more?”

[cypress-punk]

Finished replaying Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. Kingdom Hearts is kind of a fascinating game to me because i'll be honest, the gameplay is bad. its crude, blunt, and grasping at something that it simply cannot achieve. But you can read the intention of that design so clearly. They wanted an action game with RPG style menuing mixed with melee combat. They wanted a game with fast, free flowing movement and platforming. They don't achieve these ends, but they do make a really strong attempt. The result is a game that can be pretty brutal when it wants to be, and deeply frustrating and ass backward a lot of the rest of the time.

I am really captured by the vision of the game though, and by its narrative. There is something so bizarre and open ended to the story of that first game, before the series kind of bloated and got really, really complicated with lore and background info. Its like a dream, half remembered. Its like the incoherent fanfiction i would dream up when i was ten about Gargoyles animated series crossing over with Sonic X and Dragon Ball Z. And it lands that bizarre sensation while also having a strong emotional core to its story. I was really pleased to find that the big narrative beats still hit for me. "My friends are my power" and "Kingdom Hearts...IS LIGHT!" have been rattling around in my head for most of my life at this point, ever since i first played this game at my cousin's house. Its nostalgic in a really nice way, i'm glad i decided to take some time to replay this. I am also curious to see how the other games in the 1.5+2.5 collection will hold up.

Also I want to gush for a moment about the visual design of this game. Tetsuya Nomura is a genius when it comes to character design, there's a reason he's been the THE guy they go to for Final Fantasy ever since he became involved with that franchise, and I think you can feel the passion he had for Kingdom Hearts. The designs are iconic, the cover art and promotional art are just incredible. The Heartless are some of my favorite monster designs ever and there's something endlessly iconic about the Organization XIII coats that start appearing past the first game.

The music is also incredible. Hikaru Utada's Simple and Clean is one of my favorite songs ever, its captivated me since childhood and it still hits so hard in the opening cinematic and in the final cutscenes.

[kairidaily]

I was looking up old, Nomura interviews. I was going to use the english Ultimania but I forgot they didn't leave in his commentary. So I'm using KHInsider's A Look Back: KINGDOM HEARTS Ultimania Gallery Comments Part 1 article. Here's what he said about Kairi (circa KH1) and her design:

With the heroines of the other titles I’ve worked on so far, since I wasn’t the only person in charge of the plot, I had to be more careful with them than other characters, and it was difficult to have full control - but this time I was allowed to draw exactly as I pleased.

And instantly came up with something iconic :)

During development we floated the idea of having Kairi be playable, and I wanted to depict Kairi’s personality even more eg. against Sora, against Riku, and her past. But due to circumstances we had to postpone those ideas for now.

and proceeded to postpone for over a decade. some 👀 say he still is! 🙃

Her hair is a secret homage to Utada Hikaru, who provided the theme song.

Ooh neat! Here's the confirmation of the 'Kairi's hair is inspired by Utada's' thing. I'm less sad now :)

[lilly-chou-chou]

Japan's youth's

voice Hikaru Utada.

.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.

Hikaru Utada for her debut album First Love released in 10th March of 1999. Despite being her debut album the singles from this album "Automatic" and "First Love" were revolutionary and sold more than 10 million copies since it's release all over the world.

First love also inspired a Netflix series of the same name released in 2022 starring talented Hikari Mitsushima and Takeru Satoh which was equally successful and reminded many x gen and millennials about the nostalgia revolving around that iconic song.

Hikaru has also been very open towards same sex marriages and came out as non binary and uses she/her and they/them pronouns. In one of the interview she stated "It makes me uncomfortable to be identified so markedly by my marital status or sex, and I don't relate to any of those prefixes. Every time, I feel like I'm forced to misrepresent myself."

.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.