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X Japan Performs Song for Tezuka's Buddha Film

The Japanese rock band X Japan wrote and performed the theme song for next year's anime film based on the Buddha story by the acclaimed manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka Osamu no Buddha - Akai Sabaku yo! Utsukushiku-, the first film in a planned trilogy, will open in Japan on May 28. The band's leader Yoshiki Hayashi wrote a new ballad called "Scarlet Love Song" for the film, and the song will premiere during the trailer that will play in over 200 Japanese theaters on December 23.

Director Kōzō Morishita, screenwriter Reiko Yoshida, and Toei Animation are adapting the life of the young prince Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism. Sayuri Yoshinaga will voice the mother of a slave boy named Chapra and provide the narration for the work. Masato Sakai and Junko Takeuchi will play Chapra himself in different stages of his life, and Hidetaka Yoshioka and Ai Orikasa will also jointly play Siddhartha. The first film alone has a production budget of 1 billion yen (about US$11 million).

X Japan's previous contributions to anime include songs from the X² music video collection and the Madhouse-animated film adaptation of CLAMP's X manga. The band was founded under the name X in 1982 and disbanded in 1997, a year before the band's original guitarist Hideto "hide" Matsumoto passed away. The group reunited in 2007.

Source: Sankei Sports