''Love Cook'' is

Ai Otsuka is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit "Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player ...

's third album released on 14 December 2005 under the Avex Trax record label. It was released in four formats: CD only, CD+DVD, CD+Photobook and CD+Picture Book. The latter two are limited to 150,000 copies each, and feature different sleeve case covers. The picture book illustrations are hand-drawn by Ai herself. Three singles were released before the album: double A-Sided " Smily / Biidama", " Neko ni Fūsen" and " Planetarium". "Smily / Biidama" and "Planetarium" were the first two Ai Otsuka singles to reach the #1 spot in

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 Singles Chart, and, having sold more than 300,000 copies each, are among her best-selling singles. All three singles are in the Oricon Top 100 Singles for 2005. On the other hand, "Cherish" had already been released as the final track in the various artists album '' Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute'', a homage to the

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

. Many songs from ''Love Cook'' were used for commercial purposes as part of the artist's endorsements. "Smily" and "Biidama" were background songs in two TV commercials of Lion, a personal hygiene products company. "Neko Ni Fuusen" was featured in the

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...

W31T commercial. "U-Boat" was image song for the 2006 TV advertisement of Meiko Gijuku, a

private school Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

. 'Cherish' and 'Planetarium' were used in music.jp TV spots. 'Planetarium' was also an

image song An image song or character song is a song on a tie-in single or album (often called an image album or character album) for an anime, game, '' dorama'', manga, or commercial product that is sometimes sung by the voice actor or actor of a characte ...

of the 2005 TBS live-action

dorama , also called , are television programs that are a staple of Japanese television and are broadcast daily. All major TV networks in Japan produce a variety of drama series including romance, comedy, detective stories, horror, jidaigeki, thr ...

Hana Yori Dango , is a Japanese ''shōjo'' manga series written and illustrated by Yoko Kamio and set in Tokyo, Japan, and the fictional "Eitoku Academy" (an elite school for children from rich families). It tells the story of Tsukushi Makino, a girl fr ...

. ''Love Cook'' is Ai Otsuka's best-selling album to date and her first album to pass the 800,000 mark, which was accomplished once the promotional "Love 9Cook Tour" started. On March 9, ''Love Cook'' won an award at the

Japan Gold Disc Awards The is an award presented by the Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Associa ...

for being one of the best albums of 2005. Total sales now stands at 835,333 units and the album has stayed on the Oricon TOP 300 weekly chart for more than 52 weeks.

Track listing

References

*Oricon Style (2006)
Oricon Web Site
{{Authority control Ai Otsuka albums 2005 albums Avex Group albums