Egoist began in 2011 when Ryo, the vocalist of j-pop band Supercell, was given the opportunity to voice a band in the anime Guilty Crown. That year, Ryo held auditions to find the person who would be his partner in the then-fictional band, Egoist. Nearly 2000 people applied, but the chosen singer was a 17-year old girl named Chelly. Thus Egoist was born as a band within Guilty Crown (though Chelly performed for a while under the persona of the character she voiced in the band, Inori Yuzuriha). Egoist released both opening and ending songs for Guilty Crown as a fictional band, but that was only the start.

When Guilty Crown finished, Egoist wasn’t done. The duo went on to become a real band, producing music for other anime series as well as releasing a few of their own singles. Most of their music, though, has been used as either an opening or an ending song from an anime - but we will get into more of those details in the next section. The band has had enough success in the last decade that as of late 2018, Chelly has been slowly rebranding Egoist into her own solo career. A lot of Egoist’s social media has thus been changing, but Chelly remains the voice behind the band these days. We will have to wait and see what happens in the future!

There’s no shortage of anisong bands who got their big breaks through anime songs which helped make them famous and boosted their career. There’s also quite a few anisong bands that have huge careers outside of the otaku world, and just have a few anisong numbers to add something special to their discography. Few bands, though, have the same story as Egoist. After all, they started as a band specifically to make music for an anime! If it hadn’t been for Guilty Crown, we likely wouldn’t have Egoist at all. Luckily for them, Guilty Crown did give the duo a reason to exist - and even more luckily, it was just the start of an anisong career.

But let’s back up and look at Guilty Crown in more detail first. Within the anime, Egoist produced “Departures (The Love Song for You)” and “The Everlasting Guilty Crown” in 2011 and early 2012, which served as ending and opening themes for the show. That helped Egoist break into the anisong scene, and from there they released “Namae no Nai Kaibutsu,” the ending theme for the wildly famous detective anime Psycho-Pass in late 2012. Early the following year, “All Alone With You” was Psycho-Pass’ next ending theme. Then came “Fallen” two years later, which was the ending theme for, you guessed it, Psycho-Pass 2.

Moving away from Psycho-Pass and closer to the present day, Egoist released “Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress” in 2016, the opening song for the anime of the same name. After signing with Sony Music Entertainment Japan, "Eiyū: Unmei no Uta" was released in 2017 and served as the opening theme for Fate/Apocrypha. Finally, in 2018 Egoist was back to working with Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, releasing the theme for the anime’s film called “Sakase ya Sakase.” Since 2018 Egoist hasn’t been making as much anime music while Chelly gets her solo career sorted out, but we will be looking forward to hearing what the future holds!