In an earlier post, I talked about my favorite anime/manga, Initial D.  I wasn’t able to talk so much about the music, so I figured that I might as well start here.  Initial D’s intro songs were sung by a group called m.o.v.e., which consisted of..  yuri (Yuri Masuda (益田 祐里 Masuda Yuri^?)) on vocals and motsu (Mototaka Segawa (瀬川 素公 Segawa Mototaka^?)) on the rapping. t-kimura (Takashi Kimura (木村 貴志 Kimura Takashi^?)) (producer) left the band in 2008, but still functions as a producer.  Their history is quite long running and they’ve established quite a close relationship with the anime world.  Here’s a very limited sample of their work.

Songs featured in Anime:

Featured in Games:

And recently, with the release of Initial D 4th stage, they finally got their chance to be in Initial D.  Here’s their music video for the song “Raimei – out of kontrol”.

Over the years, m.o.v.e. has continually redefined themselves and now, they stand as one of the longest running J-pop groups in existence.  Listen to their stuff, it’s what I listen to when I write.