YOASOBI's whole premise is turning short stories into songs — Ayase, the producer half of the duo, got a commission in 2019 from Monogatary, a Sony-run fiction website, to write music based on stories posted there, and went looking for a vocalist afterward, eventually finding Ikura's music on Instagram.
Their debut, 'Yoru ni Kakeru,' adapted a short story called An Invitation From Thanatos and hit No. 1 on Billboard Japan's Hot 100 in 2020, eventually passing 700 million streams.
'Idol,' their 2023 single, works the same way — it's built around the first chapter of the manga Oshi no Ko, following a doomed idol navigating fan obsession, media scrutiny, and jealous bandmates, translated into a song that became a global anime-driven hit far outside Japan's borders. The 'novel into music' idea, which could have stayed a gimmick, turned into an actual songwriting method they've stuck with since.