J-Pop Stars YOASOBI Talk About Capturing The ‘Soul’ Of Overwatch’s Kiriko In Their Latest Song

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Overwatch’s collaborations have taken many forms, but they’re often mostly divorced from the world and story of Blizzard’s hero shooter. As the team has shifted into a narrative-heavy seasonal structure in 2026, however, these crossovers have more opportunities to factor in the stories Blizzard is telling through comics, short stories, and cinematics. Overwatch‘s latest collaboration isn’t with another property, but is instead with Yoasobi (stylized as YOASOBI), a musical act uniquely qualified to help move Overwatch’s story forward, and Kotaku spoke with both Blizzard and the musical duo about how it all came together.

Yoasobi, a j-pop duo made up of producer and composer Ayase and vocalist Ikura, has collaborated with a lot of brands since its formation in 2019. The pair is known for their narrative songs based on stories, ranging from online short stories to professionally written works, and has worked to write songs based on big properties like Pokémon and opening themes for anime like Beastars and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury. As Blizzard was looking for a group to collaborate with in its new narrative-driven era, Aimee Dennett, Overwatch’s Associate Director of Product Management, says Yoasobi was an easy choice to write a song based on one of the short stories from Overwatch’s year-long “Reign of Talon” arc.

“Given how many narratives they’ve told through their albums, short stories, music videos, and performances, we knew they would create something powerful to convey the relationships between Genji, Hanzo, and Kiriko,” Dennett tells Kotaku.

Dion Rogers, Overwatch’s art director, says that the team had Yoasobi fans on staff, and that since the game’s current season is focused on Japan, centering the conflict between the Shimada clan and the Shion-led Hashimoto, the team wanted a Japanese group to set the tone.

“We look for artists whose style, personality, and fan community align with Overwatch, especially those who share the game’s hopeful and aspirational tone like Yoasobi,” Rogers says. “The best collaborations feel authentic, where both the artist and the game bring something unique to the partnership and fans of both can get excited about it.”

Yoasobi’s new song “Orion” is based on the Overwatch short story The Fall of a Sparrow, and is the opening track on the duo’s new EP The Book For, which has an “Overwatch Edition” sporting Kiriko, Genji, and Hanzo on the cover. Though the short story is primarily written from Genji’s perspective, “Orion” is a vessel through which listeners can hear the point of view of Kiriko, who is a very young child through the story’s lengthy flashback. The song’s lyrics go back and forth between Kiriko’s internal monologue and an omniscient narrator.

[All quotes from Ayase and Ikura have been translated from Japanese by an interpreter]

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“I definitely wanted to keep the two perspectives in singing this song,” Ikura tells Kotaku. “One is, of course, Kiriko’s perspective, and another is a perspective as a storyteller from a bird’s eye’s view. I wanted to make sure that the [narrator’s part of the song reminded listeners of] Kiriko’s role in the story, but when the lyrics are talking about Kiriko’s bittersweet feelings, then I wanted to make sure that it sounds as if I’m coming from Kiriko’s mindset. So I was like switching between the two perspectives.”

The song’s title is a reference to the Orion’s Belt constellation, which is made up of three stars called Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. As Ayase describes it, the duo wanted to use the imagery of three stars that appear to be unified, but are actually far away from one another, to illustrate the unity between Kiriko, Genji, and Hanzo, despite each of them having gone in very different directions in the years since the events depicted in The Fall of a Sparrow’s flashback.

“Kiriko, Hanzo, Genji, those are the three stars in Orion’s belt, and when we see from the Earth, it looks like they’re next to each other, but in reality, of course they are from far, far away in the universe,” Ayase says. “From one angle, it’s like they have their own purpose, their own feelings, their own struggles, but from another angle, they look like they’re next to each other side by side. They’re fighting for the same destiny, fighting against the same destiny, or whatever the drama is that they’re dealing with. So that’s the kind of feelings and something that we wanted to embody in the music and in the lyrics.”

Overwatch is the first time Yoasobi has collaborated with a first-person shooter series, so Ayase says that the group wanted to make sure “Orion” would “complement the type of speed of the battle and world that Overwatch represents,” so they learned a lot about the relationship between Kiriko, Genij, and Hanzo through previous lore drops like the now 10-year-old animated cinematic “Brothers” to find the right sound for the song. Dennett says that Yoasobi “understood” the characters on a level that made them a good fit for the collaboration.

“We were so impressed to learn about the whole lore of the Overwatch series, and then we got to learn so many different stories and also the characters and how even the cities had stories and connections between the characters that they built as if it’s the real world,” Ayase says. “I’m very honored to be part of this world of Overwatch.”

Ayase says that he always wants to pay tribute to the work of the creatives that Yoasobi collaborates with, because he believes that there’s a “soul” to the characters they’re representing in their music. That comes with some pressure, but the duo has learned to take that in stride.

“It was more fun than difficult because I definitely understood the complex relationship between Kiriko, Hanzo, and Genji, because they’ve given us so many materials and stories beforehand,” Ayase says. “So what was more exciting than challenging was [figuring out] how I can compliment the world of Overwatch with the music that I’m creating. So I was more excited than nervous.”

Overwatch may be different from the stories Yoasobi has told through music in the past, but the duo says that constant collaboration with different teams has given them a wealth of experience and perspectives to draw from when writing songs.

“We definitely create music based on stories, but every time it’s with different types of creators, it’s like different narratives, different novels, different stories, and we get to collaborate with so many different creators,” Ayase says. “So, yes, of course, creating music based on narratives is an interesting thing, but another even more exciting thing is that we get to learn new expressions or get to learn new characters or thoughts behind the characters that we wouldn’t know about [otherwise].”

For Ikura, the spread of stories the duo tells through their music has given her more opportunities to find ways to embody characters through her vocal performances. “Orion” showcases her range, with the juxtaposition of its soaring chorus and its edgier, almost rap-like pre-chorus. Yoasobi’s musical stylings have been heavily inspired by vocaloids like Hatsune Miku, but Ikura says that finding the right delivery for each character in the stories each song tells has been an exciting part of the duo’s songwriting.

“It’s definitely a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge because it’s also based on the idea of creating music based on the stories, right?” Ikura says. “So, each time it’s a different type of character and we have to make sure to find the emotional core of the stories or the characters and find out what it means to express that emotional core of the character and then what kind of vocal can complement or match with that. So every time we speak or sing about a new character, it’s a new discovery about some part of my vocal ability that I didn’t know about. So it’s a fun challenge that I keep encountering with new talents and new aspects of my vocal ability that I never knew about.”

The song is one part of the equation, with Blizzard also releasing new skins for Kiriko, Hanzo, Genji, Anran, Juno, and Mizuki as part of the collaboration. In most of Overwatch’s crossovers, the game’s characters are essentially cosplaying as characters from whatever property the collab is with. For collaborations with musical artists like Yoasobi and k-pop group Le Sserafim, Blizzard has to capture the aesthetic of the groups’ music and fandom, which usually means finding a look for each character that, while maybe not as practical for a firefight, shows the hero in a new light.

“Collabs like these are our chance to focus on the fashionable side of Overwatch Heroes,” Rogers says. “It gives us the opportunity to imagine what these Heroes would look like in their everyday wear, and we can even explore what our Heroes would look like if they were super fans of these musical acts. It’s fun to see Heroes in less combat gear or armor to see what they wear outside of combat.”

Rogers says that Overwatch’s art style has “always been a marriage of Eastern and Western inspirations,” so capturing the j-pop aesthetic came naturally in the streetwear you see characters like Kiriko, Hanzo, and Genji wearing as part of the collab. The skins are all available in Overwatch now, and Yoasobi will be releasing an animated music video for “Orion” from A-1 Studio, the animation team behind Sword Art Online and the Nier Automata anime, at a later date.

As for what’s next in Overwatch’s music collaborations, Blizzard is open to working with more musical acts from around the world as a way of highlighting different cultures both in and out of its games. The Yoasobi collaboration focuses primarily on many of Overwatch’s Asian heroes, and Dennett says that “there are no cultural or global boundaries” to whatever the team does in the future.

“We’re always looking for partners that feel like a natural fit for Overwatch, and our Heroes come from all over the world, so there’s no shortage of possibilities,” Rogers added.

Yoasobi, meanwhile, is promoting their new EP, but looking forward, Ayase says he wants the group to collaborate with more international storytellers such as Blizzard after working with so many creatives in Japan in the group’s lifetime.

“Definitely we want to continue working with different creatives, but, you know, we’ve done anime, we have worked with novels in Japan,” Ayase says. “So now we would like to move on to—I mean, of course we’re going to continue working with the Japanese creatives—but the anime and movies from overseas. And then by doing that, we can expect some kind of great synergy between the Japanese scenes and overseas scenes, and we would love to make that happen.”

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