Kumi Koda takes a trip back in time for "Again"

Kumi Koda wraps up the string of digital single drops with her 9th release "Again", just before her album RE(CORD) drops in mid November. And it's nice to finally have a song that isn't completely terrible and has a half decent music video.

I'm sure fans had recognised Kumi Koda recreating looks and moments from two of her previous music videos, "You" and "Ai no uta".

Kumi recreates her 2008's "You"

Kumi Koda recreates her 2007's "Ai no uta"

It's a nice throwback. Kumi has aged like a fine wine and looks better in these looks now than she did over a decade ago. I still don't get this whole thing with visual recreations of moments from older videos and points in her career that's fuelling this new album RE(CORD) though. This nostalgia shit would have been better served with a Best release, which she's probably due now anyway.

The visual throwbacks doesn't seem so weird in "Again"...I guess, given what appears to be the context of the video, which is Kumi Koda reminiscing. And if we're going to take the full context of the music videos for both "Ai no uta" and "You", then she's probably remembering times when she got her heart broken, because a bitch stands in the middle of the street and ugly cries in both videos, and she does the same thing in "Again". She cries in a taxi too. But the taxi tears probably have nothing to do with a man, and everything to do with Namie still yanking that wig from in retirement.

In other Kumi Koda news, her 16th studio album RE(CORD) has encountered an issue which prevents physical copies being sold outside of Japan, due to licencing and sample clearance issues with one of the songs. In light of this, I imagine that whichever song this is will probably be omitted when it goes live on streaming platforms. If Kumi had known about this prior to shooting the video to "Again", we probably would have gotten a scene of her crying in a First kitchen too.