is a song recorded by Strawberry Flower for Japanese TV commercials of the Nintendo GameCube game ''

Pikmin is a real-time strategy and puzzle video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto, and published by Nintendo. The games focus on directing a horde of plant-like creatures called Pikmin in order to collect items by destroying obstacles, avoiding ...

''. It was written and produced by band member Takeshi Tomozuma. The song was later included in the “Pikmin World” soundtrack album, in three different versions. The song is a pop ballad driven by guitar and harmonica, with soft vocals by Tomoe Watanabe. Lyrically, the song talks about the ''Pikmin'' game from the own Pikmin’s point of view, describing their actions, sacrifice and devotion to the game’s protagonist,

Captain Olimar is a main character from Nintendo's ''Pikmin'' video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto. He first appeared in ''Pikmin'' (2001), which led to the development of three additional games; two of them featuring Olimar as the protagonist. Olimar ...

, although neither Pikmin nor Captain Olimar are mentioned by name on the song’s main version. "Ai no Uta" became one of the biggest singles in Japan in 2002, reaching #2 on the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

Weekly charts and managing to be one of the best-selling singles in the country that year. Internationally, the song received a French cover version titled "" (''Your best friends''), and was included in the 2008 crossover fighting video game '' Super Smash Bros. Brawl''. The music video was shot September 26, 2001.

Sales

Initial shipments of the record exceeded 200,000, with 30,000 additional being ordered by 7 December 2001. By 20 December, it had exceeded 460,000 units sold, and by June 2002 900,000. "Ai no Uta" debuted at #2 on the

Oricon Weekly Singles Chart The Oricon Singles Chart is the Japanese music industry-standard singles popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Chart rankings are based on physical singles' sales. Until 2017, Oricon did not track download sales. In J ...

, which is the highest the song reached.

Other versions

A cover of the song was released in France with the title " - Songs of Love".

Track listing

Retrieved from Oricon: # # # (Instrumental)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ai no Uta (Song) Pikmin 2001 singles Strawberry Flower songs Video game theme songs 2001 songs Songs written for video games Nintendo music