Some summer songs soundtrack a season. Others become part of the memories we return to long after the fireworks have faded.
With “Kienai Hanabi” (消えない花火), timelesz delivers its first pop ballad since becoming an eight-member group—a gentle, nostalgic single released as the theme song for Shori Sato’s first starring animated film Kimi to Hanabi to Yakusoku to. Officially, the song compares miraculous encounters to fireworks: beautiful, fleeting moments that disappear into the night sky. Yet its message reaches beyond romance. Fireworks may fade, but the memories created beneath them continue to live on, making “Kienai Hanabi” less about loss than about cherishing the moments that shape us.
Perhaps fittingly, the group experienced the song’s biggest moment the same way everyone else did.
Ahead of the YouTube premiere, the members revealed they hadn’t watched the completed music video themselves. Rather than previewing it privately, they chose to experience its first screening alongside viewers, filling the livestream with playful banter, terrible puns, and excited guesses about which scenes would make the final cut. For a song built around shared memories, it felt like the perfect way to introduce it.
That feeling of shared experience extends naturally into the music video itself.
Rather than centering on romance, the MV leans into the bittersweet nostalgia of youth that exists somewhere between carefree laughter and the quiet realization that moments like these never last forever. The story follows the eight members through an ordinary summer spent running along riverbanks, grilling together, jumping into pools, and watching fireworks paint the night sky. It’s simple by design, allowing the beauty of everyday moments to become the story itself.
The chemistry onscreen never feels carefully manufactured because, in many ways, it isn’t.
When the members reflected on filming, they hardly spoke about choreography or camera angles. Instead, they laughed about the barbecue, remembered turning a casual game of tag into an all-out sprint that left one sandal destroyed, and wondered aloud whether any of those unscripted moments had even made the final edit. That carefree energy carries directly into the finished MV, giving it a warmth that feels lived-in rather than staged.
Even the fireworks are real.
To bring the title to life, the production launched nearly 500 actual fireworks, creating breathtaking scenes that required little embellishment. It’s a simple detail, but one that reflects the video’s overall philosophy: if the memories are meant to feel real, the fireworks should be too.
Visually, “Kienai Hanabi” feels like a natural evolution of timelesz’s recent work.
If “Rock this Party“ celebrated the excitement of new beginnings, “Kienai Hanabi” feels like its reflective counterpart. The laughter is still there, but it now carries the quiet awareness that every summer eventually becomes a memory. The group’s playful chemistry remains at the center, yet this time it is framed by silence, lingering glances, and the kind of nostalgia that only arrives once a moment has already begun slipping away.
Its cinematic storytelling even prompted the members themselves to compare it to “Innocent Days,” one of the group’s earlier narrative-driven music videos under the previous name Sexy Zone. “Kienai Hanabi” unfolds less like a traditional idol MV and more like a coming-of-age short film, with Shori opening and closing the story in a performance that anchors its emotional core. His final smile—arriving only after he turns to find the other seven members waiting for him—becomes one of the video’s most quietly unforgettable moments.
As timelesz’s first pop ballad as an eight-member group, “Kienai Hanabi” doesn’t rely on dramatic vocal climaxes or elaborate production to leave an impression. Instead, it places its confidence in restraint. The arrangement unfolds gradually, allowing each member’s distinct vocal color to emerge before weaving back into layered harmonies that feel warm, intimate, and unmistakably collective.
The beauty of the performance lies less in individual showcases than in how naturally those voices come together. Shori’s wistful, expressive tone anchors the song’s emotional core, while Masaki Hashimoto’s clear upper register, Takuto Teranishi’s resonant warmth, and Fuma Kikuchi’s fragile sincerity each add their own texture without ever pulling attention away from the whole. Rather than competing for the spotlight, the members sing as though they’re finishing one another’s thoughts.
That philosophy mirrors the group’s evolution. “Kienai Hanabi” isn’t interested in proving what each member can do on his own—it quietly demonstrates what only these eight can create together.
The music video follows the same approach. Rather than emphasizing choreography, it prioritizes atmosphere and connection. Even when the choreography appears, its movements remain understated, flowing naturally through the scenery instead of demanding attention.
It isn’t simply a showcase of vocal growth or polished production. It’s another reminder that timelesz’s greatest asset has become the space they create together, where eight distinct voices blend into something that feels complete.
There is no dramatic speech or sweeping conclusion. Just the reassurance that even if a season ends, the people who filled it with meaning can remain.
It’s easy to admire the melody, the performances, or the breathtaking fireworks, but what stays with you is something much smaller: eight people sharing a summer that already feels like a cherished memory.
There’s also an almost charming contradiction at the heart of the release.
Only minutes before the premiere, the eight members were talking over one another, arguing about barbecue, laughing over broken sandals, making terrible puns about fireworks, and filling the livestream with the wonderfully chaotic energy that has become part of timelesz’s identity. Then the music video begins, and all of that gives way to silence, longing, and quiet gratitude.
Knowing how much laughter existed just outside the frame somehow makes the tenderness inside it feel even more genuine, and that quiet confidence may be what the song captures best.
More than anything, “Kienai Hanabi” feels like another step in timelesz discovering who they are.
There are unmistakable traces of Sexy Zone throughout the song and its storytelling, and there should be. The group’s history has never been something to erase or outgrow. In many ways, respecting and carrying that legacy forward was at the very heart of the timelesz project itself. That foundation still exists, but what is becoming increasingly clear is that timelesz is no longer defined by the act of inheriting it.
Instead, they are beginning to sound—and feel—like a group with an identity entirely their own.
That transformation hasn’t happened through dramatic reinvention. It has happened through accumulation. Each release has added another layer to their character, from the rebellious energy of “Steal the Show” to the feel-good anthem of “GOOD TOGETHER.” Together, they paint a picture of a group becoming more comfortable in its own skin, discovering what only these eight members can create together—at their own momentum.
There will always be lingering questions about the paths that could have been taken, and for many, those feelings remain part of the group’s history. “Kienai Hanabi” doesn’t ask anyone to leave those emotions behind. Instead, it offers something gentler: a reminder that carrying the past forward doesn’t prevent new memories from taking root.
Little by little, timelesz is no longer introducing itself as the group that reformed after Sexy Zone. They’re truly becoming “Hello, we are timelesz.”
“Kienai Hanabi” offers something rarer than just a summer anthem—a reminder that the brightest moments in life aren’t the ones that last forever, but the ones we carry with us long after they’ve disappeared from view.
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