Written by: Jei Beltrano | Published on: March 2, 2021 at 2:28 PM PHT (GMT+8)
The official website of Japanese local channel NHK has revealed on Tuesday that the theme song for the upcoming TV anime series adaptation of Yoshitoki Ōima's "To Your Eternity (Fumetsu no Anata e)" manga series will be performed by singer and songwriter Utada Hikaru titled "Pink Blood". The anime series is scheduled to begin broadcasting on April 12 on NHK's E-TV.
The iconic singer is also performing the original soundtrack titled "One Last Kiss" for the final film of the Evangelion series "Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time" which is scheduled to premiere in Japanese theaters on March 8 after multiple delays due to COVID-19.
Utada Hikaru is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer born in the United States to Japanese parents, record producer Utada Teruzane and enka singer Keiko Fuji. Utada is well-known to perform and compose R&B and dance-pop songs and was deemed "the most influential artist of the decade" in early 2000s in the Japanese music landscape by The Japan Times. Utada's commercial success has made her one of Japan's top-selling recording artists of all time with over 37 million records sold since launching her career in the late 1990s.
She performs classic hits including "Automatic", "Time Will Tell", "Movin' On Without You", "Addicted to You", "Wait & See (Risk)", "Can You Keep a Secret?", "Traveling", "Hikari", "Sakura Drops", , and the all-time favorite "First Love" which was became one of the best-selling records of Japan's music history along with her albums "Distance" and "Deep River".
Additionally, Utada is best known by international audiences for writing and producing four theme-song contributions to Square Enix and Disney's collaborative video game series Kingdom Hearts: "Simple and Clean", "Sanctuary", "Don't Think Twice" and "Face My Fears"
The "To Your Eternity" anime series will consists of 20 episodes and Crunchyroll will stream the series outside Japan. Masahiko Murata is directing the anime, Shinzou Fujita is in charge of series composition, and Koji Yabuno is designing the characters. Animation studio Brain's Base is animating the series. The anime is scheduled to begin broadcasting on April 12 opn NHK's E-TV.
The cast includes:
Reiji Kawashima as Fushi
Rie Hikasaka as March
Aya Uchida as Parona
Rikako Aikawa as Pioran
Satsuki Saiga as Hayase
Kenjiro Tsuda as Observer
The anime was originally scheduled to premiere last October 2020 but has been postponed due to the effects brought by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to the production of the series as reported by the anime section of Japanese news giant NHK.
The series is based on the Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshitoki Ōima which was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine since November 2016. It has been collected into 14 tankōbon volumes as of December 2020 by Kodansha.
Author Yoshitoki Ōima is best known for her manga series A Silent Voice (Koe no Katachi) published in 2013. Her work for the manga has been awarded by the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Award as the New Creator Prize in 2015 and the Rudolf-Dirks-Awards as the Best Scenario (Asia) in 2017.
Kodansha comics describes the series as: A new manga from the creator of the acclaimed A Silent Voice, featuring intimate, emotional drama and an epic story spanning time and space…
A lonely boy wandering the Arctic regions of North America meets a wolf, and the two become fast friends, depending on each other to survive the harsh environment. But the boy has a history, and the wolf is more than meets the eye as well… To Your Eternity is a totally unique and moving manga about death, life, reincarnation, and the nature of love.
Source: NHK Anime Official Website
