Shortly after starting my anime journey three years ago (!!!) I created a playlist called “Hello I am Japan” on Spotify. This playlist consisted of my favorite anime opening and ending songs. I found that, not only did I like these songs, but they were good songs to put on while working because I liked the vocal part of it but did not know Japanese and therefore would not be distracted by the lyrics.
In any case, I recently added my 100th song to the playlist. And because I am a benevolent ranker of things, I have decided to provide a taste of my ten favorite songs I’ve discovered along the way.
Ok, here are the rules: these are my ten favorite songs, not anime openings or endings. They are different things, and while a song helps make a great opening, a great opening consists of other elements. Additionally, these are full songs, not simply the snippets seen in said openings or endings or within the show.
I will now present three honorable mentions:
- Sparkle by Radwimps—this does so much emotional work in Your Name and it is perfect. But there is not a “song” version, so to speak, and the movie version includes large sections where it functions as the score, so it doesn’t qualify.
- Literally any song from K-On!—Fuwa Fuwa Time is a big one, but K-On! Absolutely slaps and anything from there could be on this list. I could not choose.
- A Cruel Angel’s Thesis by Yoko Takahashi—classic, and one of the best intros of all time, but by itself doesn’t quite make my list.
Alright, let’s get to it.
10. Giri Giri – Masayuki Suzuki ft. Suu
Masayuki Suzuki’s music is synonymous in the anime world as the catchy openings for Love is War!, the best anime romantic comedy of all time (and I will fight you for it). In any case, Suzuki’s music is pure disco-fueled funk. It is a mood.
Why did Giri Giri end up on this list as opposed to his two arguably more famous Love is War! openings? It’s simple, and it rhymes with saxophone solo. Just an absolute banger that speaks for itself.
9. Stay Alive – Rie Takahashi
Japan’s pop music didn’t quite make the full digital, synthesized transition that American pop music did. As a result, there’s a lot more live rock-based sonic language in Japanese songs even as stuff like Taylor Swift’s 1989 album featured very few live instruments. Indeed, Stay Alive is a rock ballad, pure and simple. It’s propelled forward by a clean electric guitar riff and a memorable melody. Just solid all the way around.
8. Chiisinahabi – Flumpool
I don’t have a lot of sophisticated musical reasons why this song is good. I just really like it. Similar to Stay Alive, it’s a rock song. The chord progression is satisfying, it has the driving open high hat drum sound I like, and it’s got great melodies all the way around. Great vocal harmonies, too. Effective guitar solo. What’s not to like?
7. Pleasure – WARPs Up
Aww yesss, we’ve got a boy band song up in here! In the vein of an N*SYNC or even more modern Jonas Brothers situation, there are four different male singers singing this song at different points. It does a common J-Pop thing where they combine English phrases with Japanese lyrics.
Look man, the vocal harmonies and riffs are on point and it’s catchy as all get out. Just slick pop writing, and listening to it is like unwrapping your favorite candy bar and taking a big bite.
6. Grand Escape by Radwimps ft. Toko Miura
Starting off with a twinkly piano ostinato, Grand Escape is a slow burn that slowly builds a hymnlike verse, with the pre-chorus not coming until two minutes in and the chorus at two and a half minutes. By that time, it adds some electronic percussion and a few synths until pulling them out and starting off the process again – quicker, this time, with added synthesized horns and some other elements.
But Grand Escape really shines in the bridge to the end of the piece, when it explodes with claps and multi-part vocal harmonies and shifts moods to a sort of pure joy. It’s a great song, and fully worthy of being the emotional climax in Weathering With You.
5. Prism – AmPm ft. Miyuna
How do you write a great pop song? I’d say that you need a distinctive intro. You’d also need a killer chorus. Well, this song has both of them. Sung by two female singers, it’s got a groovy R&B vibe and a chorus that you just want to keep listening to again and again and again. The chorus does a great job playing with syncopation and emphasizing the leading tone before quickly resolving back to the tonic in just a very satisfying way.
Also, this is a PSA to watch Fruits Basket, the source of two of the songs on this list.
4. Pride – Harumi
Japanese is obviously a different language than English, and it results in a number of differences in terms of songwriting when lyrics are involved. One result is that Japanese songs tend to have longer, more flowing melodies simply because you have to say more syllables in order to get the same amount of information across.
Pride is nothing super distinctive – it’s just a beautifully melodic pop song perfectly put together and sung by a singer with a beautiful voice. Piano driven, it has synthetic percussion and synths just like English pop songs. Plus, it has a key change!!!!! I love key changes. A+ choice, Harumi.
3. Love Supreme! – fhana
Every once in a while, a song that appears in an anime opening or ending just blows you out of the water when you listen to the full thing. When it appears in Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, it’s an absolutely perfect bop and fits the show wonderfully. It’s fast, features an active trumpet-heavy horn section, and showcases vocals that blur the line between speaking and singing.
But dear Lord does this song go off when it comes to the bridge, one of legitimately the best bridges I’ve heard in any song I’ve ever heard. It transitions to a groovy, disco-esque, cowbell-infused section that somehow ramps up the energy even more. At the end of that bridge section, it switches vocalists and goes through a stepwise chord pattern as the trumpet wails and shakes at the top of the register in a sort of second bridge. That bridge section ends with a highly syncopated vocal and band riff before eventually going back to the chorus.
It is just, look, the rest of the song is great, but its bridge is one minute of some of the most perfect pop music you’ll hear.
2. Avid – Sawano Hiroyuki
A lot of songs on this list are pretty upbeat, but, like Stay Alive, this one is a solid Japanese power ballad. It starts with a memorable piano riff and slowly adds elements–strings, drums, a drumset, electronic percussion, harmony, the works–until it just reverberates with power. Its distinctive feature is the aforementioned electronic snare drum, which slices through the mix like a knife when it hits on beat four of each measure.
This is a great song on its own, but I can’t help but think of it in a special context. The show it is from, 86, centers around a group of soldiers who are forced to fight because they are of a different racial group than the government of the country they’re forced to defend. The leader of the squad, Shinei Nouzen, was voiced brilliantly by Billy Kametz in the English dub, who gave Shin a kind of kindhearted weariness that perfectly fit his character. The song Avid appears in multiple episodes in an emotional fashion, anchoring a lot of the themes.
Kametz died at the age of 35 of colon cancer before he could finish recording the last few episodes, and sure enough the song again appears in one of the most gut-wrenching parts of the show, a part he never got to record. Rest in peace, Billy.
1. Hikaru Nara – Goose House
A remarkably upbeat song that appears as the first opening song for a show designed in a lab to enact maximum emotional damage, Hikaru Nara is nevertheless an absolute delight. Sung by six (6!) of Goose House’s wildly talented singers, it naturally features wonderful harmonies in the chorus. It’s arranged in a driving, energetic pop rock style with a punchy and insanely catchy horn section rounding out the sound.
No song on this list is quite as catchy as Hikaru Nara, which grooves rhythmically and begins and ends triumphantly. No other song do I quite wish existed in English, and no other song style would I rather hear more on the radio than this one.
Something Clever 