The Cosign: ena mori is writing Manila-Tokyo pop that finally gets rough

Some artists get claimed by one country. ena mori sits between two. She is a Filipino-Japanese singer-songwriter, born and raised in a suburb of Tokyo to a Filipino father and a Japanese mother, and her music is written from that in-between spot. This week, she is our Cosign.

The Cosign is ADMC's series on emerging artists we are betting on, from anywhere in the world. Here is the case for ena mori.

Two EPs from one idea

Her 2025 EP rOe, released on 8 August 2025, was the soft, restrained half. It drew wide praise in the Philippine music press. But rOe was never meant to stand alone. It began life as part of a single body of work that she later split in two, and the second half arrived as Ore on 27 February 2026.

Ore runs six songs and about 19 minutes. The tracklist is "Funny", "Insomnia", "Ore", "19 Underground", "La Loba" and "Pomegranates". It is released through Offshore Music and Sony Music Entertainment Philippines. She has framed it as the older, more grown-up companion to rOe, and has talked about wanting it to sound grittier and more energetic than what came before.

What to start with

The focus track is "19 Underground", written from the point of view of a 19-year-old finding their feet, and tied to the year she found her creative community. It and "La Loba" both have official music videos on the Apple Music release page.

Tim Marquez co-produced the EP, Sam Marquez mixed it and Emil Dela Rosa mastered it. Its themes are adulthood, independence and cultural identity: the push and pull of being in your twenties while holding two cultures at once.

Why she is worth watching now

Pop in Asia is usually discussed by country, and mostly by which country exports the most. ena mori is a useful reminder that a lot of the interesting work happens across those borders. Manila has a fast-growing pop scene, with groups like BINI and HANA covered on ADMC, and Tokyo has one of the world's biggest music markets. An artist who belongs to both, and writes about belonging to both, has an audience on each side before she has played a single date.

We have not seen her live, so we will not guess at how the Ore songs play on stage. What we can say is that she has made a clear creative decision, a record that deliberately sounds rougher than its predecessor, and has put it out on a major-label-backed imprint. That is the kind of move we like to see early.

Start with "19 Underground", then go back to rOe to hear the other side of the same idea.