Ed Sheeran drops “Bad Habits” animated music video in collab with Manga Artist Rui Ikeda

This week, Warner Music Japan has revealed the animated music video for singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran’s new song “Bad Habits”. The video is made in the collaboration between Ed Sheeran and manga artist Rui Ikeda, where mangaka drew the art featured in the video. The story of the video features a tragic romance between a naive human woman and a vampire man in the night of Tokyo. 

Here have a look by yourself:

This is the first time Ikeda and Sheeran are working together. Ikeda’s animation is also quite popular on TikTok where she admits being a huge fan of Sheeran’s work. “Bad Habits” (animated music video) is directed by Naomi Izumida and animation is done by CALF studio, the video started streaming on Wednesday, August 11th. 

However, it’s not the first Ed Sheeran has collaborated with Japanese artists, back in 2019 manga artist Yoriko Hoshi worked together for the music video for “Supermarket Flowers”. For the video, Hoshi drew over 600 frames, and the video described Sheeran with his cats Calippo and Dorito. 

In past, other stars also included animated characters in their music videos, like Katy Perry included Pikachu for her song Electric’s music video. The move also helped to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Pokemon franchise.

Even Ariana Grande also recently teamed up with Epic Games for the Fortnite’s Rift Tour followed by concerts from Travis Scott, Marshmello in past.

“Bad Habits” is the first song from Sheeran’s fifth album and the second new song from Sheeran since 2019’s No. 6 Collaborations Project.