BODY: The producer who arguably made Hatsune Miku a household name in Japan has returned to Pokémon — and he brought two songs.
On October 22, the ongoing collaboration between The Pokémon Company and Crypton Future Media, Pokémon feat. Hatsune Miku Project VOLTAGE High↑, released "LEGENDS," a new track by ryo of supercell, alongside a full music video. A second ryo-produced song, "1996," premieres the following day at 18:39 JST.
That timestamp is not arbitrary. In Vocaloid culture, 39 reads as "Miku" — a pun on san-kyū — and 18:39 is the kind of wink the franchise has used throughout the project's run. The title "1996" lands just as pointedly: Pokémon Red and Green shipped in Japan in February 1996, making the song's name a straight-faced nod to the series' origin year rather than a cryptic one. "LEGENDS," meanwhile, arrives with the Legends subseries fresh in players' minds.
Project VOLTAGE began in 2023 as an unusually ambitious crossover: eighteen songs from eighteen different producers, one for each Pokémon type, each paired with a type-themed Miku design. The concept worked far better than a typical mascot tie-in, and the "High↑" phase extends it rather than rebooting it — new tracks, same architecture. ryo's involvement raises the stakes, since his 2007 track "Melt" is widely credited with turning Hatsune Miku from a software product into a cultural phenomenon, and his anime work on Guilty Crown and Black★Rock Shooter carries its own following.
Both songs are rolling out through the project's official YouTube channel, with the MV for "LEGENDS" available now.
The insider take
What makes Project VOLTAGE quietly remarkable from a Tokyo vantage point is how little it behaves like licensed music. Japanese publishers usually treat Vocaloid collabs as promotional filler — a theme song bolted onto a release calendar. Here, the producers were given real creative room, and the result is a catalogue that Vocaloid listeners actually stream on its own merits, not because Pokémon is attached. Pulling in ryo at this stage reads less like a marketing beat than a prestige booking: the project is signalling that it intends to be remembered as part of Vocaloid history, not Pokémon's merchandising footnote.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).