It’s been a while since Important Importables took a peek at Japanese music, so let’s do that this week, yes? That was rhetorical by the way. Don’t worry though, odds are you’ll like this column’s featured group – it’s UVERworld. Sure, you may not understand the lyrics when you listen to their music, but it has the same sort of feel as US popular rock and top-40 music. If you like songs from Anberlin, Relient K, Fall Out Boy, Ellegarden or Boys Like Girls, then you might enjoy listening to UVERworld too.

If you’ve been a loyal Important Importables reader (and I hope you are), you’ve probably noticed this column’s also been used as a forum to introduce you to some Japanese rock and pop stars that, as gamers, you should probably know.

Previously, we’ve looked at some Japanese singers or groups gamers may recognize based on their music appearing in games, like Gackt, Hikaru Utada, Bonnie Pink, X Japan and Ayumi Hamasaki. Today, we’re going to continue that trend and look at Puffy AmiYumi, a rock/pop duo famous for not only their music, but also their TV shows and video games…

Japanese music is starting to get more popular among gamers, thanks to titles like The World Ends with You, Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. In order to recreate the Japanese environment and experience, the soundtracks for all three of these games was filled with Japanese hip hop, rap, pop and rock.

And while these three games seem to be getting the majority of the credit for bringing Japanese music to the attention of a wider audience, there are quite a few other games which include Japanese rock to round out the experience. The majority of games with Japanese songs included are JRPGs, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

Important Importables today is looking at a handful of video games which feature Japanese rock, or JRock songs by well known artists. The context in which the song appeared in the game will be discussed, as well as a little information on the artist and some songs of his, hers or theirs that may be similar to the track in question. Who knows, you may end up finding some new songs for your iPod or mp3 player…