Akari Kaida
Akari Kaida (married name Akari Groves) is a video game music composer who has mostly been associated with Capcom, but she is now a freelance composer. Originally a jazz pianist, Kaida's composition style is fairly distinctive, tending towards a light Jazz+Funk feel.
Video Game Music
- Breath of Fire III: (1997, along with Yoshino Aoki): Akari Kaida composed the majority of this game's music, and also sang the ending song with Yoshino Aoki—this soundtrack is one of Kaida's most memorable works. When BoF3 was released, its music was a somewhat controversial point—some people lauded the creative use of jazz+funk music in the fantasy setting, while others thought jazz had no place in any fantasy RPG. Kaida did not return to compose Breath of Fire IV, which was composed entirely by Aoki (though with an arrangement of a song or two Kaida had composed for BoF3). As years have passed, the music of BoF3 has aged fairly well.
- Samples: "Casually", "The Champion", "Country Living", "Everyday Battle", "Technology", "Travelling Wishes". Also "Pure Again", the Award Bait Song where Kaida and Aoki sing the lyrics.
- Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (1994, along with Takayuki Iwai, Masato Koda and Naoaki Iwami)
- Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1995)
- Dino Crisis (1999, along with Shun Nishigaki and Makoto Tomozawa)
- Luminous Arc (2007, along with Yasunori Mitsuda)
- Luminous Arc 2 (2008, along with Yoshino Aoki, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura and Shunsuke Tsuchiya)
- Mega Man and Bass (1998, along with Naoshi Mizuta and Toshihiko Horiyama)
- Samples: First stage, Ground Man.
- Mega Man 10 (2010, along with Minae Fujii, Yasuaki Fujita, Hiroki Isogai, Ryo Kawakami, Manami Matsumae, Yu Shimoda, Yuko Takehara, Makoto Tomozawa, Shusaku Uchiyama, Ippo Yamada and Mari Yamaguchi): A different composer (all of whom were Mega Man series music veterans) composed the stage music for each of the game's eight robots. Akari Kaida composed Blade Man's theme.
- Mega Man Battle Network (2001): She composed 1 and 5, but 2, 3 and 6 were composed by her Breath of Fire III co-composer Yoshino Aoki. Toshihiko Horiyama composed 4. The sequels however featured arrangements of recurring songs Kaida had originally composed for the first game.
- Samples: "Fire Field", "Home Town" (also very similar to "In the Morning" from Breath of Fire III also by Akari Kaida), "Net Battle"
- Mega Man Battle Network 5 (2004 Game Boy Advance version only)
- Mega Man Star Force 3 (2008, along with Yoshino Aoki)
- Okami (2006, credited as Akari Groves, composed along with Hiroyuki Hamada, Rei Kondo, Masami Ueda and Hiroshi Yamaguchi)
- Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (2004, along with Hideki Okugawa and Kota Suzuki)
- Resident Evil (1996, along with Makoto Tomozawa and Masami Ueda)
- Trick N Snowboarder (1999)