| "I Wanna Be Your Ghost" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Gen Hoshino | ||||
| Language | Japanese | |||
| Released | July 18, 2022 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:45 | |||
| Label | Speedstar | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Gen Hoshino | |||
| Producer(s) | Gen Hoshino | |||
| Gen Hoshino singles chronology | ||||
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| Music video | ||||
| "I Wanna Be Your Ghost" (feat. Ghosts) on YouTube | ||||
"I Wanna Be Your Ghost" (Japanese: 異世界混合大舞踏会, Hepburn: Isekai Kongō Dai-butōkai, lit. 'Grand Stage of Parallel Worlds')[note 1] (Japanese pronunciation: [iseꜜkai koŋgoː daꜜi bɯtoꜜːkai]) is a song by Japanese singer-songwriter and musician Gen Hoshino, released as a digital-exclusive single through Speedstar Records on July 18, 2022. It was written and produced by Hoshino, who co-arranged and programmed it with Mabanua. A J-pop and dance track with electronic instrumentation, the song was used as the main theme to the film Yokaipedia (2022), a live-action adaptation of a children's book series by Kodansha. Lyrically, Hoshino sings of breaking the barriers of the worlds of humans and ghosts. The song features background vocals performed by Yokaipedia actors Rie Kugimiya, Hiro Shimono, and Tomokazu Sugita, who voice the film's ghosts.
"I Wanna Be Your Ghost" was received positively by Japanese music critics for its production style and drew comparisons to Hoshino's preceding single "Comedy" (2022). Upon release, the song debuted at first place on the digital download component charts of both Billboard Japan and Oricon with 12,000 sales, while it reached numbers six and twenty-six on the parent Japan Hot 100 and Combined Singles charts, respectively. The animated music video—featuring a boy dancing with ghosts—was produced by the studio Outline, led by director Yūki Igarashi, who had previously worked on the first ending sequence to the anime series Jujutsu Kaisen (2020–23). Its choreography gained popularity on the video sharing service TikTok, which made the song Hoshino's only entry onto the Billboard Japan TikTok Weekly Top 20. Throughout 2022, he promoted the song with performances on the Spotify video series Go Stream and on the Christmas special of CDTV Live! Live!. Dressed as his alter ego character Akira Nise, Hoshino first sang it in front of a live audience as the closing song of his Reassembly tour in 2023.
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