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X Japan's Yoshiki Performs Saint Seiya CG Film's Theme

YOSHIKI, the 48-year-old leader of the rock band X Japan, is contributing the theme song for this June's CG film Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary. The song will be heard in every country that is releasing this first Saint Seiya film in a decade.

YOSHIKI wrote this new song "Hero (YOSHIKI Classical Version)" specifically for this film. Katie Fitzgerald, the female vocalist of the Violet UK unit that YOSHIKI leads, is singing the ballad while YOSHIKI himself performs the piano work. A self-professed anime fan, YOSHIKI watched the film before producing the song and remarked on its sense of amazing, grand scale. He wondered what kind of song would match the film before deciding to write this ballad. He added that the song carries the hero's motif with a very beauitful melody that strikes the heart with much impact.

YOSHIKI will unveil this song during "#YOSHIKI Classical World Tour part 1," his 10-country, 13-city tour which will begin on April 25 at Costa Mesa, California.

The film will adapt the popular Sanctuary arc from Masami Kurumada's original Saint Seiya mythological fantasy manga of "Bronze Saints vs. Gold Saints." The website and the trailer have the following quote from Kurumada: "The Seiya legend began here."

The voice cast includes:

• Kaito Ishikawa (Nobunaga The Fool, Golden Time, Tokyo Ravens) as Pegasus Seiya
• Momoiro Clover Z member Ayaka Sasaki as Athena and Saori Kido
• Kenji Akabane‎ (Meganebu!, Star Driver) as Dragon Shiryū
• Kenshō Ono (Kuroko's Basketball) as Cygnus Hyōg
• Nobuhiko Okamoto (Tiger & Bunny, Yozakura Quartet, Blue Exorcist) as Andromeda Shun
• Kenji Nojima (Psycho-Pass, High School DxD) as Phoenix Ikki
• Mitsuru Miyamoto (Tiger & Bunny, Fruits Basket) as Aries Mu
• Rikiya Koyama (Ninja Scroll, Witchblade, High School DxD) as Taurus Aldebaran
• Hiroaki Hirata (Tiger & Bunny, Space Brothers) as Cancer Deathmask
• Gō Inoue (Kuroko's Basketball, Tiger & Bunny) as Leo Aiolia
• Mitsuaki Madono (Bleach, Gintama, Inuyasha) as Virgo Shaka
• Shinji Kawada (Nodame Cantabile, Attack on Titan) as Capricorn Shura
• Daisuke Namikawa (Persona 4 The Animation) as Aquarius Camus
• Takuya Kirimoto (Summer Wars, Darker than Black) as Pisces Aphrodite
• Masumi Asano (D.N.Angel, Hyōka) as Scorpio Milo
• Toshiyuki Morikawa (Line Town, Gundam Wing, Hyōka) as Sagittarius Aiolos
• Kouichi Yamadera (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sword Art Online, Gintama) as Gemini Saga

Toei Animation confirmed in February 2011 that production on a new computer-animated film of Saint Seiya had been green-lit. Keiichi Satou (Tiger & Bunny, Ashura), is helming the project, and Kurumada is credited as the original creator and chief production supervisor. (He also coined the film's title.) Tomohiro Suzuki, a scriptwriter for six episodes of Tiger & Bunny, is writing the screenplay.

The manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1985 to 1990, and it has 34.4 million copies in print worldwide. The manga quickly inspired a 1986 television anime series that was popular not only in Japan, but also in France, Italy, other parts of Europe, Brazil, other parts of South and Central America, and Asia. The anime aired in more than 80 countries. It has been a decade since the last Saint Seiya film, 2004's Saint Seiya Tenkai-hen Jōsō ~Overture~.

The film will open in Japan on June 21. It will also play in Mexico and Peru this year.

Source: Oricon