With Kingdom Hearts III finally out, it made sense for today's instalment of Flashback Friday to be linked to the popular video game series, the artist who has since become synonymous with it and the song that started it all and continues to be a mainstay within the series 17 years on from when it first debuted. "Hikari", by Hikaru Utada.
My introduction to Kingdom Hearts was through a friend, who had been following the news of a then Squaresoft game which was going to feature Disney and Final Fantasy characters. IGN had published an article which featured a key visual, a UK launch date and info of the theme song. My friend nudged me excitedly, as it seemed at one point that Kingdom Hearts wouldn't see the light of day in the UK. 'J, you heard about this!?'. My friend had been talking about this game for the past few minutes and I had no interest in it, but I humoured him anyway and leaned over to scan the article and pretend to care. Disney worlds, Final Fantasy, Cloud with a sword in bandages, Squall voiced by Buffy's old side piece, Hikaru Utada.
HIK-ARE YOU, WHAT NOW!?
A year prior I was on vacation and I'd seen a music video on MTV US. It was a semi typical video of the early 2000s and the song kinda was too. But the fact that it was in Japanese, but sounded like something fresh off of US radio really struck me. I liked this song. I liked it a lot. But the song and who it was by was out of my head by the end of that day. Fast forward and the name of the artist pops up in a video game article whilst I'm sat in the college computer lab during a free period. You could call it fate, I guess. But needless to say, it was from this moment on that I started to actively become a fan of Hikaru Utada. And by this point, Kingdom Hearts was out in Japan and so was its theme song and accompanying music video.
I remember watching the music video to "Hikari" for the first time and not questioning it. This girl deciding to shoot a music video of herself washing dishes didn't seem weird to me. What did seem weird was that there was not enough soap on those dishes, but that's a whole other thing we can take up with Marie Kondo and Iida.
Whilst I always liked "Hikari"'s video, I didn't become a fan of the original version song until many years after, when I'd finally bought the game, completed it and heard it in the context of the ending. Up until that point I'd always preferred the PlanitB remix of the song and felt it should have been the original version. But in retrospect I'm glad that it wasn't. The song would have been generic in a J-Pop scene were House, Techno and Club records were common place, and the music video most certainly wouldn't have worked as well the remix unless Hikaru was whipping it back 'n' forth at the sink and popping her pussy up and down the countertop.
"Hikari" was a song full of charm, just as its video was. But when you put the song in different contexts and then take into account the English version of the song; there are a variation of take-outs. The PlanitB remix felt like a defiant statement. Where as the original felt like an admission of acceptance. The original version of the song in the context of the music video was about taking pleasure in the small graces that can make you happy and bring you joy. Where-as in the ending to Kingdom Hearts it was about loss and finding a way to cope with that. And then there is the sentiment of what the song means to Hikaru Utada fans in general, versus what it means to Kingdom Hearts fans exclusively.
As I became more of a Hikaru Utada fan, I began to really adore the layers in her songs from her Deep river album onwards. Even when they're presented at face value, there's often always another side or another take. "Hikari"'s music video was a perfect example of that. It could be about taking joy in the small things in life. It could be about doing what needs to be done. It could be about intimacy. Or it could be about absolutely nothing and be nothing more than a girl washing her dishes.
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