Resident Evil Karaoke Adventures: Yume de Owarasenai

A look at the Japan-only ending theme of the original Resident Evil

During September and October, I had the pleasure of meeting Moni Alves of Brazil’s Resident Evil Database, as well as her husband Matheus, in person for the first time after being online friends for many years. It was her first visit to Japan, a trip that was originally scheduled for early 2020 before being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moni has been studying Japanese for several years at this point, partly driven by her interest in RE, and her trip coincided with Tokyo Game Show and Biohazard The Extreme+ at Universal Studios Japan. For RE fans like Moni out there who also like to travel internationally, Japan is honestly worth a visit for RE-related activities alone (on top of everything else amazing about the country).

On their last evening in Japan, I took them to a karaoke box, a quintessential social activity in all practically all Asian countries. And as luck would have it, the karaoke box’s music selection contained none other than Yume de Owarasenai, the original ending theme for the Japanese version of the 1996 Resident Evil for PlayStation. Most RE fans outside Asia probably have never heard of this song, given that the North American and European versions of the game instead had Still Dawn as the ending theme, which was eventually featured in every global version of Resident Evil: Director’s Cut, as well as the Sega Saturn and PC ports.

Did we decide to sing it? Of course we did. Moni uploaded a video of us singing Yume de Owarasenai on her Instagram, and against my better judgement, I’ve linked it for anyone to watch. Cover your ears.

So what’s up with this song, anyway? Why was it only featured in the Japanese release and never translated into English? Why was it dropped from all re-releases? Let’s take a deep dive into this elusive theme song.