Japanese artist Kocchi no Kento looked back on the massive success of his single Hai Yorokonde, which recorded over 17 billion views and 200 million streams in 2024, with strong popularity in Indonesia.
“It was like I was in a dream all the time,” Kento said. “It wasn’t that I was busy, but rather that everything was a new experience for me, and I felt like I was going to a theme park I had never been to before and saying, ‘I’m going to conquer all the rides for now!’”
While the hit brought him joy, it also made him question himself. “I also developed a lack of confidence. Of course I was happy, but was I over happy? Whenever I had time, I wondered if I should go to the gym or push myself harder,” he said.
Kento revealed that Hai Yorokonde, his sixth track, was first written for himself before realizing it could also help others. The song’s reception encouraged him to write more while his creative drive was fresh.
Kocchi no Kento’s latest release, Kekka Orai, is the opening theme for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, marking his first anime opening. The title means that perseverance through hardship can lead to good outcomes — a theme drawn from both his own life and the story of protagonist Koichi Haimawari.
“First, I laid out in words the love and images I felt for this work, and then I wrote down the tune, BPM, worldview, and sounds that were playing in the background, and gave them to GRP to create the track,” Kento shared. “I told him that I wanted to ‘save people at random’ or have a ‘back-alley kind of feel.’ The resulting track was too perfect for my image, so I added the lyrics and lead vocal melody to it.”
Kento said he likes to “raise a problem and offer a solution within a single song.” For Kekka Orai, the solution became: “I am still inexperienced, but the result is for the benefit of others, so I am happy with the outcome.”
Relating to Koichi’s many failures, Kento added, “There was a moment when I felt that those failed experiences were also ‘good enough,’ and I felt that when I was able to be on the side of saving people. I put in the title Kekka Orai that although I failed a lot and had a lot of troubles, they were also connected to my experiences and would someday help others.”
Kekka Orai is now available on music streaming platforms.
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