“It was strange, they contacted me through my agency. They looked for Cristina D’Avena and they found me”. Talking about the first approach with HoYoverse, the house that publishes the video game in Italy Genshin Impact, is the queen of cartoon theme songs who has now also entered the videogame universe with the song I will look for you (Genshin Impact).
The videogame Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action-RPG of the gacha-game genre, developed by the Chinese software house miHoYo, set in an open fantasy world, with graphics reminiscent of Japanese cartoons. As of 2022, all non-Chinese language versions of the game are published by HoYoverse, a Singapore-based subsidiary of miHoYo.
“The team wanted to celebrate the Italian version of the game with a specially packaged song and I wrote and performed the song I will look for you as a tribute to the Italian public. So it’s a song that’s not in the game but it’s a tribute to the game and its fans.”
Although, as Cristina D’Avena herself reminds us, in her long career she has sung several theme songs for videogame-inspired products such as Super Mario, i Pokémon o Sonic “In this case it’s different because I’m interpreting the imagery of one of the videogames of the moment, with an important following of players”.
Cristina D’Avena is not a gamer, but she is a scrupulous professional, she explains that for the realization of the song I will look for you first of all he read the synopsis of the game: “After reading the synopsis I studied the characters, which in any case are very similar to manga, to my cartoons. And I must say it was exciting to meet me. Obviously it wasn’t very easy right away, for the simple reason that unlike the cartoon, the plot of the video game is complex and non-linear and then every gamer has his own way. It was quite difficult to grasp the essence, I hope you like the final result”. To support D’Avena in the enterprise of stealing the soul of Genshin Impact we also find the composer Cristiano Macrì responsible for the epic music of I will look for you.
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Cristina D’Avena is a nerd icon, but also a piece of Italian pop culture. In forty years she has seen it grow and transform, she tells us: “In the Eighties most Japanese cartoons were heavily censored. For our cuts we were hated. Today it would be unthinkable to modify works by great authors in this way. The nerd subculture has established itself over the years, it has become stronger and stronger”.
Let’s take for example i cosplayer: “I can say that I was the first Italian cosplayer, I disguised myself as Lycia in the eighties, from that moment many dedicated events were born. The cosplay culture is very glamorous and serious, you have to enter it to understand its importance. When I go to give my concerts at events, we talk about big events like Lucca Comics, I realize how much this audience has expanded, how much nerd culture is now generalized”.
D’Avena has interpreted all shades of pop and nerd subculture, now she has also entered the world of video games, but there is still something she hasn’t done: “I would very much like to bring a musical to the theatre. Theater is a world I haven’t explored yet and would love to. I would like to bring a good story that hasn’t reached me yet, I have had many proposals but still very far from what I would like. It could also be a reimagining of a cartoon as well as a reimagining of a classic fairy tale. I would like a modern fairy tale”.
To explain herself, Cristina D’Avena mentions the Smurfs, the strange little blue men as a life lesson, capable of transmitting positive and important messages lightly, but without trivializing their meaning. The ability to be resilient and finally to find a way to serenity, a serious story, declined in a modern fairy tale.
And, speaking of cartoons, let’s go back to Genshin Impact: the title is so loved by Generation Z, with over 130 million downloads on mobile devices alone, in addition to PC and console installations, that at the last Tokyo Game Show it was also announced the production of an anime series inspired by his universe. The project that expands the miHoYo brand was entrusted to the Japanese studio Ufotable, already responsible for highly successful series such as Fate/Zero e Demon Slayer.