Anime theme song deals with the solitude that can come with learning to care for yourself.

Released in 1999, Utada Hikaru’s major debut, First Love, remains the best-selling album of all time in Japan. The 38-year-old artist has never been one to rest on her laurels, and she’s just released her latest creation, the music video for her song “Pink Love.”

Utada’s last two music videos, by nature of being filmed at the height of the pandemic, featured no one on camera other than the vocalist herself, save a few people in the distant background of an outdoor scene. In stark contrast, “Pink Blood’s” video shows her in the middle of a writhing mass of darkly clothed humanity.

The experience doesn’t really look like a pleasant one, though, and several other shots are of Utada in solitude, including a repeating motif where she’s part of the earth itself, either emerging from or receding into the ground.

The mixture of music and lyrics also reflect the sense of melancholy that can accompany necessary emotional self-reliance. “Being cared for by someone who doesn’t understand my value won’t help me,” she sings, along with “It hurts when you realize that you’re the only one who can heal yourself.”

▼ Though at one point a bunch of horses show up to keep her company for a while.

The bittersweet atmosphere is especially fitting in light of “Pink Blood” also being the opening theme for currently airing anime “To Your Eternity,” the story of an immortal being who emotionally grows through the relationships he forms with people he’ll outlive and inevitably have to part with.

Overall, it’s a much more somber tone than the at-home vibe of the videos for Utada’s “Time,” or the warm sequences of “One Last Kiss” that her son helped film. There’s long been a mixture of sorrow and strength in Utada’s vocals, though, much like there often is in life, and the sights and sounds of “Pink Blood” will likely to linger in fans’ minds for quite some time.

Source, images: YouTube/ Hikaru Utada
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Follow Casey on Twitter, where’s he’s partial to the Planitb remix of “Distance.”