YOASOBI: ikura Recalls a Two-Song Plan, Now a “SUPER PLANET” Dome Tour
This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
“The project itself was originally planned to end after two songs, so…” (translated from the Japanese).
Those are the words of YOASOBI vocalist ikura, in a 2025 conversation in the Japanese weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun (in Japanese).
About a year and a half later, on October 24, 2026, YOASOBI opened 超惑星 “SUPER PLANET,” a tour of 10 cities in Japan and across Asia, at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
Go back to the very oldest video on YOASOBI's official YouTube channel and you won't find a YOASOBI song. You'll find a song sung by Hatsune Miku.
This article goes through it all in order: the two members' ages and hometowns, the matter of their real names, how the channel began, “Into The Night” (“Yoru ni Kakeru,” 夜に駆ける) and “Idol,” and finally the morning-drama theme song and the tour schedule.
The channel figures are the numbers we measured on November 2, 2026.
YOASOBI Profile: What Are the Members' Ages, Hometowns, and Real Names?
YOASOBI is a duo of composer Ayase and vocalist ikura, and officially it goes by the slogan “novel into music.”
According to the official profile (translated from the Japanese), Ayase was born on April 4, 1994, and is from Yamaguchi Prefecture, while ikura was born on September 25, 2000, and is from Tokyo. As of November 2, 2026, that makes Ayase 32 and ikura 26.
As for ikura, her real name is Lilas Ikuta (幾田りら). She says so herself in that same conversation: “As a solo artist, I work under my real name, ‘Lilas Ikuta.’” Her official site as a singer-songwriter goes by that name too.
Ayase's real name, on the other hand, wasn't on the official profile. That may be a bit of a letdown.
Did the Channel Start With a Hatsune Miku Song?
Let's start with the official channel's numbers. As of 3:30 a.m. JST on November 2, 2026, it had 7.47 million subscribers, about 380 videos, and about 7.15 billion total views.
The oldest public video is “先天性アサルトガール / 初音ミク” (“Sentensei Assault Girl”), dated December 24, 2018 (JST). That lines up exactly with the official profile's line “began posting VOCALOID songs in December 2018.”
More Hatsune Miku songs follow into 2019. “Last Resort” (ラストリゾート), from April 30, 2019, stood at about 26.3 million views at that same November 2 reading.
The info box of a July 2026 article from the Japanese music site Real Sound lists a channel URL containing the string “Ayase0404.” Open that URL and you land on today's YOASOBI channel. Presumably this was once where Ayase uploaded his own songs, and it has simply stayed in use.
Uploads under Hatsune Miku's name have continued now and then since the duo formed. “キラキラキラ” (Kirakirakira), from December 24, 2023, is one of them.
How a Fiction-Posting Site Gave Rise to YOASOBI
A 2020 article from the Japanese site Gendai Business tells the formation story in detail. It began with Monocon 2019, a contest on monogatary.com, a site for posting fiction run by Sony Music. YOASOBI was created to turn the grand-prize story into music.
Yohei Yashiro, who launched the site, had long followed Vocaloid music as a hobby and had reportedly drawn up a list of people he wanted to approach. Ayase was approached right after posting “Last Resort.”
For the vocalist, Yashiro recalls that Lilas Ikuta, then with the acoustic session group Plusonica (ぷらそにか), had stuck in his mind. Ayase's praise for her voice reportedly counted for a lot as well.
The name was settled shortly before the announcement, around mid-September 2019. The deciding factor, apparently, was that Ayase liked the sound of it, which is a pretty instinctive way to name a group. Weverse Magazine explains the meaning this way: “YOASOBI (夜遊び) means nightlife in Japanese.” The magazine says they took the name because “the two members are devoted to each of their respective day jobs, but they come together at night to enjoy the evening under the name YOASOBI.”
The first song, “Into The Night,” is based on Mayo Hoshino's story Thanatos no Yuwaku (“An Invitation from Thanatos”). The music video came out on November 16, 2019. Of the video's release, Yashiro says, “For our part, that was supposed to be the end of it” (translated from the Japanese). There was apparently no plan from the start to release the song itself.
There was a second grand-prize winner, and a song for it was planned too. But statements about the duo's future differ. In the 2025 conversation, ikura said it was “planned to end after two songs.” Yashiro, in the 2020 Gendai Business article, was talking about a stage when it hadn't even been decided who would sing, and he said, “We were thinking of taking our time with it, over three or four years.” From what we read, we could not tell which is closer to how things actually stood at the time.
“Into The Night” began streaming on December 15, 2019, and caught fire in 2020. A one-take performance on THE FIRST TAKE also made big news. According to the official announcement, the song had passed 1.1 billion cumulative streams on Oricon's weekly streaming ranking dated September 28, 2026.
Was “Idol” Once Going to Be a Vocaloid Song?
“Idol,” the opening theme of the TV anime Oshi no Ko, is the most-viewed song on the channel. Its music video stood at about 697.99 million views as of November 2, 2026. Second is “Monster” (“Kaibutsu”) at about 480.52 million, and third is “Into The Night” at about 286.55 million.
In a May 2023 Billboard JAPAN interview, Ayase talked about how the song began. About a year and a half earlier, he says, he happened to come across Oshi no Ko, read it straight through, and went right on to write the song. “There were no plans to release it as YOASOBI either, so I was thinking maybe I'd put it out as a Vocaloid song or something,” he said (translated from the Japanese).
It ended up as “Idol.” The announcement says the song was based on 45510, a newly written novel by the original author, Aka Akasaka.
According to Billboard JAPAN's announcement, as of November 2023 the song had logged 21 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, the most ever, and it hit No. 1 on Billboard's Global Excl. U.S. chart dated June 10, 2023, a first for a Japanese-language song.
In an interview about that year's year-end charts, Ayase spoke of the frustration of finishing second two years in a row. As Billboard Japan's English report quotes him, “we came in a close second both last year and the year before, and it kind of felt like defeat.” Then, with six No. 1s on those charts, he went on: “Looks like my gears will start to move at last.” Relief may well have been a big part of it.
YOASOBI songs turn up often in cover videos (“utattemita”). In our own articles, too, they appear in VTubers' videos, as with Elu's “The Blessing” and Hakase Fuyuki's “Blue.”
Morning Drama Theme “Sakihokore” Comes From a Novel Too
In fall 2026, YOASOBI's music began playing on TV every morning in Japan. “Sakihokore” (咲き誇れ) is the theme song of NHK's morning drama series (asadora) Blossom, which premiered on September 28.
According to a July 2026 announcement, chief producer Shunpei Murayama made the request point-blank: “For the theme song, no one but YOASOBI, who creates music based on novels, came to mind” (translated from the Japanese). The source novel, newly written by novelist Risa Wataya, is titled Hana no Inochi wa Fumetsu nari (“The Life of the Blossom Is Immortal,” our translation).
The protagonist is modeled on the novelist Chiyo Uno. Ayase reportedly studied her autobiography Ikite Yuku Watashi (“I Go On Living,” our translation) closely and visited her hometown of Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture to write the song. Ayase is from the same prefecture, and he himself mentions the connection.
This music video, released on October 14, is fully animated. So the “novel into music” idea that started on a fiction-posting site about seven years ago became, unchanged, the very reason the morning drama came calling.
According to an official announcement in October 2026, the next new song, “KILLA,” is made the same way. It is scheduled for release within the year, and its source is Senpai o Koroshitai node Josō Suru (“I Want to Kill My Senpai, So I'm Dressing as a Girl,” our translation), the debut work of Yoa Mabyo (魔猫よあ).
Which Cities and Dates Are on the “SUPER PLANET” Dome Tour?
The Japan dates we could read in the official concert information and in the descriptions of the duo's own videos cover these five cities:
Osaka: Kyocera Dome Osaka, October 24 and 25
Aichi: Vantelin Dome Nagoya, November 7 and 8
Hokkaido: Daiwa House Premist Dome, November 14 and 15
Fukuoka: Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka, November 28 and 29
Tokyo: Tokyo Dome, December 5 and 6
As of November 2, 2026, the tour is still under way. According to the official opening-night report, on the first night they performed “Sakihokore” with a band for the first time and also played “KILLA” for the first time.
Outside Japan, the announced plan is five cities across Asia. Of those, the official concert information gave us dates for two. They are the Taipei Dome on January 9 and 10, 2027, and the National Stadium in Singapore on February 20.
The official side says all 70,000 tickets for the two Taipei shows sold out immediately. The Singapore venue holds about 55,000, and the official side describes YOASOBI as the first Japanese artist to headline a show of its own there. We could not confirm dates for the other three cities this time.
Do the Members Edit the Vlogs Themselves?
The channel seems to have changed a little in recent months. We found 12 videos, from August 8 to October 24, 2026, whose descriptions carry credits like “Shot and edited by: Ayase” (撮影・編集 : Ayase). Going by the titles, many seem to be from the North American tour, such as “YOASOBIのお仕事デイ in NY” (“YOASOBI's Work Day in NY,” our translation).
The video description of the Lollapalooza episode reads, “The edit didn't make it in time, so the upload ended up a day late. Humble apologies” (translated from the Japanese).
It's hard not to warm to a globe-trotting composer editing a video himself and apologizing for the delay.
Then, on October 31, it was ikura's turn: an episode was released in which she “took on shooting, editing, and subtitles.”
According to the video description, this is a behind-the-scenes look at the first installment of the new project “Spotted:” in which ikura gave a street performance with just one guitar at Soseigawa Park in Sapporo.
Playing on the street was the rule of the project YOASOBI was invited to, which carries the banner “NO STAGE, JUST MUSIC.” What they themselves chose, apparently, was Sapporo. The video's title also carries the dome tour's name, so a street show sits right alongside the big venues, which is part of the fun.
The project that ikura recalled as “planned to end after two songs” marked its seventh anniversary in October 2026. As of November 2, 2026, the next stop on the tour is Nagoya on November 7, and the Japan dates are scheduled to continue through December 6 at Tokyo Dome.
