Single cover: Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura illustrates Hikaru Utada for "Face my fears"

Just a lil' short post to acknowledge the single cover for Hikaru Utada's "Face my fears". Because it's kinda everything.

Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura has been swamped trying to get Kingdom Hearts III wrapped and struggling to stay alive under the weight of being responsible for Final Fantasy XV (back when it was Versus XIII), Kingdom Hearts (not just III, but the numerous spin-offs) and the Final Fantasy VII remake, all back-to-back and simultaneously; but he still found time to illustrate the artwork for Hikaru Utada's single cover. He a real one.

Two keyblades? Bitch. Kairi wishes.

This marks the second time that Hikaru Utada has been drawn by Tetsuya Nomura, the first being back in 2014 to commemorate the release of Utada Hikaru no uta. The same image would go on to be used for the digital cover for the 2017 release of the Ray of hope remixes of "Hikari" / "Simple and clean".

Interestingly, the song is being listed as just Hikaru Utada and not Hikaru Utada featuring Skrillex or Hikaru Utada x Skrillex. Unsurprising on one hand, because it's not common for the producer of a song to be tagged as a featuring artist. But you would have thought that Hikaru's team would have wanted to capital on Skrillex's popularity in the West and slap his name on the song for digital music stores and streaming platform listings; just to help it index and show for those who search for him. And whilst Mariah Carey's popularity isn't quite what it was, she is still Mariah fucking Carey, and there's a fair amount of buzz on Skrillex right now as a result of him working with her for her latest album. So it almost seems strange that Hikaru's team aren't doing more to piggy back off of his name.

There's no word on whether this song will be available for streaming when it's released digitally on January 18, but it more than likely will be given that "Chikai" / "Don't think twice" are currently available on streaming platforms and have been updated with the above single cover Having Hikaru's Hatsukoi go up on streaming around the same time would go down a treat too.

Read 'em: My thoughts on what I've heard of "Face my fears" so far