Wixoss Music: Kanon Wakeshima

Tom Smith doesn’t forget the joker.

Anime Limited come up trumps again with selector infected WIXOSS, a series from Steins;Gate director Takuya Satou and Fate/Stay Night writer Mari Okada that’s based around a fictional card game craze with a twist.

Like all good card games, WIXOSS packs its fair share of rarities. Yet, unlike a £7.5k shiny Charizard, these bad girls (these cards are all female) come not only with a will of their own (heaven forbid you get a grumpy one), they also have the power to grant wishes. Winning battles gives the player a chance to have a wish granted, while losing just three battles will activate the proverbial trap card, and the wish becomes a curse.

The series also comes with a card themed opening song, entitled “killy killy JOKER”. The track is written and performed by Kanon Wakeshima, and is part of a very small selection of the artist’s music available in the UK on iTunes and Spotify.

Kanon Wakeshima is an artist in every sense of the word. She’s a singer, a songwriter, a cellist, a costume designer and an illustrator, even going as far as designing her own album and single artwork, as well as contributing art to the WIXOSS franchise where she has her own card. Some of her artwork even graced publicity materials from a Scotland Loves Anime festival a while back.

Wakeshima grew up surrounded by classical music and began playing her instrument of choice, the cello, from the age of three. From there she found her passion, and continued to develop her skills in expressing herself through writing lyrics, composing music and illustrating until she landed a major record deal in 2008 which allowed her to do all three, and get paid!

At the time she was heavily influenced by Gothic Lolita fashion and rapidly gathered worldwide attention for her look, musical style and her track “still doll”. The song was her major debut single and also the closing theme to the anime Vampire Knight. It quickly led to invitations to perform at conventions across the globe, including an appearance at London’s Hyper Japan. She even pulled off her own European tour, performing in ten cities across seven countries as a two-piece unit named “kanon x kanon”, consisting of herself and the bass player of popular visual kei group An Cafe, who was also called Kanon. They also came to London, with a show at the O2 Islington Academy, where lucky fans even had the chance to have a tea party with the cellist before the show!

Now, getting close to her tenth anniversary, Kanon Wakeshima is going stronger than ever. This year has seen her conduct her biggest nationwide tour so far, as well as head to France from the convention MANGA’AZUR. Then there’s her latest album, Tsukinami. It’s her highest charting so far and includes WIXOSS theme “killy killy JOKER”. Check out the song on Spotify, it’s her most popular track on the streaming service.

selector infected WIXOSS will be released in the UK by Anime Limited.