Hiromitsu Kitayama spent close to two decades inside Kis-My-Ft2, one of the boy bands built and sold by Johnny & Associates, and walked away from both the group and the agency to start over alone. His new single BACKLASH takes him somewhere the old system never sent him: the opening credits of Tougen Anki, the dark-fantasy anime whose second season, the Nikko Kegon Falls arc, now airs on Nippon TV. It is his first anime theme, and he wrote the words himself.

The fit is closer than an idol-meets-anime booking usually is. Tougen Anki follows the descendants of the oni of Japanese folklore as they fight the heirs of Momotaro, the demon-slaying hero, and Kitayama says he built the lyric on that clash between justice and evil. In his statement, the song is about feelings and impulses held down until they cross a critical point, then snap back and wake up all at once. He hopes that the moment it plays, it pushes the show’s heat even higher.

Yura Urushibara, who writes and draws the Tougen Anki manga, drew the single’s cover: Kitayama in the uniform of the series’ oni fighters, astride a red motorcycle. The music video keeps to the same red and black, mixing volumetric capture and CG with performance and motorcycle scenes. Kitayama describes it as very fast, the kind of clip that sweeps you through to the end once it starts. It passed 480,000 views on YouTube in less than a week.

The route to the anime slot runs through his label. Kitayama is signed to TOBE, the agency founded by former Johnny’s producer Hideaki Takizawa, also home to Number_i and IMP., and his records now come out on RED ON, a label TOBE set up with Pony Canyon, one of the biggest music houses in Japanese animation. The tie-up arrived within a year of that move.

What it cannot settle on its own is who the song is for. In Japan, much of his audience knows Kitayama from dome tours, variety shows and television dramas. Abroad, the anime crowd that will meet BACKLASH on streaming services knows nothing of Kis-My-Ft2, and will judge a rock-edged opening on whether it sounds like the show, not on where its singer came from.

Kitayama left Kis-My-Ft2 and Johnny & Associates on August 31, 2023, joined TOBE that September and made his solo debut that November with the digital single RANSHIN. The move to RED ON was announced in December 2025. BACKLASH was released digitally on September 28, 2026, with the video posted the same evening. Season two of Tougen Anki began on October 2 in Nippon TV’s Friday Anime Night slot, after a first season from Studio Hibari that ran from July to December 2025, and it reaches Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ from October 5. TRACK15 sings the ending theme, “Te to Te”.

He has said he left the agency because he could not picture who he would be at 50, 60 or 70 inside a big organization. Every Friday night, the first ninety seconds of a show about people refusing the role their bloodline assigned them now belong to him.

Tags: J-pop, anime, BACKLASH, Hiromitsu Kitayama, Kis-My-Ft2, Tougen Anki