Kingdom Hearts III x Hatsukoi

Kingdom Hearts III x Hatsukoi | Random J Pop

I can't speak for all o' ya'll. But when I first heard that snippet of Hikaru Utada's Kingdom Hearts III theme, I was like...

'..................Okay'.

I couldn't catch the rhythm, nor the time signature and it just didn't do anything for me. But here's the thing. I never like Hikaru Utada's Kingdom Hearts themes when I first hear them. I didn't fuck with the original version of "Hikari" until YEARS after it came out, and it was the same with "Passion".

But the thing with "Chikai" is that it wasn't done a great justice by the trailers it debuted in. Separate from the game - with the full song now out, I can now say that I like it more than I did when I heard the preview of it in the Kingdom Hearts III trailer. Those who have heard the song in full will know that "Chikai" really flourishes towards the end. But that beginning is iffy and hard to take, and when you slap the least compelling part of a song over random gameplay footage, it does it no favours.

I don't think its a case of "Chikai" not suiting Kingdom Hearts, but it certainly hasn't suited any of the trailers that we've gotten so far. None of the trailers were edited to fit the song and the use of audio was bizarre, because it stripped out all of the sound effects and left only the voice acting.

With this in mind, I decided to cut a Kingdom Hearts III trailer to fit Hikaru Utada's "Hatsukoi". A song that on a first listen I thought would also make a great Kingdom Hearts theme.

I had time. Too much apparently. Because I cut this shit in 3 different sizes for Twitter, Instagram TV and now, my blog.


Of course the lyrics to "Chikai" fit more with the theme of Kingdom Hearts than "Hatsukoi" does. But the trailer hopefully highlights what a difference editing can make to a song. Hopefully the trailers aren't indactive of how "Chikai" / "Don't think twice" are used in the game.

All of the current trailers feel like they would have worked better if they just used Yoko Shimomura's compositions exclusively instead. I bet Yoko Snatchemallgurl was pressed when she first heard "Hatsukoi" and wondered why the hell Hikaru didn't give that to Square Enix instead.

I'm sure when Kingdom Hearts III drops in 2036 and we finally get to see the intro and ending to the game, that "Chikai" / "Don't think twice" will fit like a glove, just as "Hikari" / "Simple and clean" and "Passion" / "Sanctuary" did. We also can't rule out that there's every possibility that Kingdom Hearts III could feature a remix or an alternate version of its theme song, just as its predecessors had done.

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