Kōji Wada (和田 光司,
Wada Kouji; January 29, 1974 – April 3, 2016) was a Japanese singer. He made his debut in 1999, performing his first single,
Butter-Fly, the opening theme of
Digimon Adventure and later provided other opening and ending themes, in addition to insert songs, to subsequent
Digimon anime series up until his death. His nickname was the "Immortal Butterfly
Anisong Singer" (不死蝶のアニソンシンガー,
Fushichou no Anison Shingā).
Wada was born in
Fukuchiyama,
Kyoto, Japan. In 2003, Wada released his first original album,
All of My Mind, which included many of his previous works. He also collaborated in Michihiko Ōta's self-cover album
Mirai e no Message: Ōta Michihiko Self-Cover, featuring in two tracks – a cover version of "Hontō no Tsuyosa" (本当の強さ) (
Ken &
Wormmon's Theme) and in "3 Primary Colors" (the
Tamers theme), along with AiM. Later, he released an album called
The Best Selection: Welcome Back!.
It contains several of his earlier works as well as two new songs,
titled "Pierce" and "Kimi no Keshiki." On August 1, 2008, he debuted a
mini-album titled
Ever, which contained five brand new songs. An album titled
Kazakami no Oka Kara
(風上の丘から), was sold at his live concerts in Japan throughout the end of
2009 in commemoration of his 10th anniversary in music, and it was
released worldwide on January 11, 2010.
Wada had contributed songs to six of the seven
Digimon anime series (with one of his songs reused for
the seventh,
to which he contributed no new songs), including opening themes for the
first five of them. He also performed two songs used as ending themes
for
Digimon Frontier, "Innocent: Mujaki na Mama de" (イノセント～無邪気なままで～) and "an Endless Tale" (with
AiM). He starred in various other songs for the series, such as "Bokura no Digital World" (the "memorial" theme for the
Adventure series), "Yūki o Uketsugu Kodomo-tachi e" and also several Christmas songs. He also performed a song for
Transformers: Robots in Disguise.
In July 2007, Wada made his first show in
Brazil, doing a solo presentation and singing along other invited Japanese singers on the "
Anime Friends".
This happened one year after
Ayumi Miyazaki visited Brazil in another convention "ExpoAnime Brasil". He also visited the state of
Rio Grande do Sul
in Brazil on October 14, 2007, during the Anima Weekend event. On
December 15–16, 2007, he made a live presentation in the "Anime Festival
XL" event in
Santiago,
Chile. In August 2008, he released a mini-album named
ever,
which contains five original songs, with four of them composed and
written by himself. In December 2008 he was performing in the "Animeku
08", in February the "AniCon", and in July the "Anime Friends" (both in
2010) Events from "Yamato", in Brazil and
Argentina. On June 5–6, 2010, he did 2 concerts in
Monterrey,
Mexico in the Santa Lucia Arena at the "Dengeki Live", a
J-pop event and anime convention. In response to his metastasized cancer in 2011, he cancelled two appearances planned for Chile and
Peru.
On October 4, 2011, Wada announced via his blog that he was putting
his career on hold in order to deal with a sudden metastasized
cancer which had previously seen treatment in 2003.
On April 3, 2016, Wada died suddenly from complications related to
nasopharynx cancer.
His last single, "Seven〜tri. Version〜", was released only five days prior to his death.
"DISCOGRAPHY" in this Blog
Albums :
- [2001-12-05] all of my mind
- [2006-09] 永遠の宝物
- [2007-02-28] The Best Selection〜Welcome Back!
- [2008-08-01] ever
- [2010-01-11] 風上の丘から
- [2015-03-25] re-fly