in Utada's commercial rise in the western market. Background and conception In early 2003, The Walt Disney Company and Square Enix confirmed the sequel to Kingdom Hearts (2002). That July, the creator of Kingdom Hearts, Tetsuya Nomura, aimed to have the game in stores by 2004, but several legal issues regarding the approval of characters and aesthetics from the Disney franchise obscured this, such as the Tarzan world being denied due to a change in ownership. Regarding the theme song, Nomura only had Utada in mind as he felt they were part of the franchise's family, and felt that her music could break both foreign and international markets. But scheduling time with Nomura proved to be difficult, as Utada worked on their second English language album Exodus in her hometown New York City; they had been signed to Island Def Jam the previous year as their headquarters discovered her success in Japan. Kingdom Hearts II was publicly announced in July 2005, and Nomura confirmed Utada's second involvement with the series, "When we were creating the original game, there were a lot of factors that were influenced by Utada-san's theme song. That influence will once again be felt in [our development of] Kingdom Hearts II ..." Nomura's second stance of choosing them over another singer was because he noted that fans from the first Kingdom Hearts associated Utada with the franchise. Regarding the song's concept and connection with the game, Utada derived their inspiration from the worlds and characters in Kingdom Hearts and received in-depth explanations and clues from Nomura. Conversely, Nomura noticed that Utada's theme song "Hikari" influenced several factors in creating the games. Writing and recording "Passion" and "Sanctuary" were already written by Utada prior to the game's release, but re-wrote certain aspects in order to represent elements of the game. Utada noted the game's visual aesthetics and storyline as a major influence towards the songwriting, and that the finished versions would lead up to the ending version of the track—which appears during the credits of the video. Utada made their second song appearance in Kingdom Hearts II as they felt the experience was better than "Hikari", which they believed was difficult to accomplish because of the "soulless vibe" the game has portrayed; though they believed the visual appearance was "crucial", the singer based their thinking process on the characters personalities instead. In a special interview with Oricon Style