Ken'ichi Maeyamada Japanese Singer From Osaka

Early life

Ken'ichi Maeyamada was born on 4 July 1980 in Osaka, Japan. He started playing the piano at the age of four and wrote his first music on a synthesizer while still in middle school. He went on to study at Kyoto University, and after graduating he apprenticed under the lyricist Gorō Matsui.

Career

Maeyamada is a composer, lyricist and musician who is also known by the pseudonym Hyadain. Most of his work consists of writing anime theme songs and music for J-pop performers. His first notable break came in 2007, when he wrote the lyrics to "Don't Go Baby", a song featured in Initial D Fourth Stage.

In December 2007 he posted his first piece under the Hyadain name on the video site Nico Nico Douga. It was a remix of Crash Man's theme from Mega Man 2 with lyrics added. At first he faced criticism and accusations about how faithful his remixes were to their sources, but his videos gradually won an audience. The best known of them were his treatments of "Battle with the Four Fiends" from Final Fantasy IV and "Western Show" from Super Mario World. In May 2010 he revealed that Hyadain was a pseudonym. His remixes of anime and video-game music have been viewed more than 20 million times across YouTube and Nico Nico Douga, and he has also released original songs.

His own releases from 2011 to 2013 include the singles "Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C", "Hyadain no Jōjō Yūjō" and "Christmas? Nani Sore? Oishī no?" in 2011; "Million of Bravery", "Samba de Toriko!!!" and "Start it right away" in 2012; and "23:40" and "Warai no Kamisama ga Orite Kita!" in 2013. The album 20112012 sits alongside these singles in his catalogue. For his own songs he performs every voice, male and female, with the help of a digital voice modifier. Two of these voices, Hyadain and Hyadaruko, appear as characters on his blog and in the music videos for "Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C" and "Hyadain no Jōjō Yūjō". On screen, Hyadaruko has been played by several actresses, including Natsuko Aso.

Both his original songs and his fan-made arrangements have a reputation for humour and nostalgia. Maeyamada names Yasuharu Konishi of Pizzicato Five as a major musical influence, along with Shoichiro Hirata and Yusuke Itagaki. His approach to game music owes something to Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy, Koichi Sugiyama of Dragon Quest and Kenji Ito of Romancing SaGa.

In 2014 Maeyamada worked with Gummybear International and Avex Trax on a Japanese version of "I Am a Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)", which was originally sung in English by Maci Schneider, known as Tonekind. In 2023 he was invited to arrange a version of "Battle with the Four Fiends" for Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, with lyrics by Takashi Tokita. The resulting track, "Forged in Crimson", plays during the boss fight against Rubicante, the Fiend of Flame.

His filmography lists one television credit, the series Wanwan25 (2021). He also maintains a presence on YouTube, where his channel had about 141,000 subscribers in January 2025.