Music video: Hikaru Utada serves housebound realness in "Hatsukoi"

As all fans know, the word 'Hatsukoi' is Japanese for 'First love'. So it immediately puts the song in the position of being a full circle moment from the original song, and in effect acts as a reflection of where Hikaru stands now on the subject almost 20 years after she first sung about it.

Whenever I sing ♪ I neeeed you ♪ along to this song, I'm singing to my missing wig, because Hikaru snatched it with this shit. The strings on this song are gorgeous. I may eventually get tired of Hikaru giving me live orchestrated strings on every song. But for now, I'm all for them. Hearing a richly arranged song with live instrumentation takes favour with me over the 'my first GarageBand' beats of "Oozora de dakishimete" and "Play a love song".

If you were thinking that this video reminds you a little of "Manatsu no tooriame", that's because it's directed by the same guy, Yasuhito Tsuge.

The video is pretty much "Manatsu no tooriame" and "Sakura nagashi" inter-cut with a colour version of "Hanataba wo kimi ni". I couldn't help but think 'I've seen this from her before'. But all things aside, it's a beautifully shot video for an equally beautiful song. A song which I think would have made a much better Kingdom Hearts III theme than "Chikai" / "Don't think twice". An opinion that I'm sure will change once I see how the song is utilised in the intro and ending to the game.

If truth be told, I never like Hikaru's Kingdom Hearts themes at first. It took years for me to warm to "Hikari" / "Simple and clean" and "Passion" / "Sanctuary".