My Top 5 Anime Opening and Closing Songs

One of the things that hit me early on as an anime fan were the great opening and closing songs for anime series.

It was my introduction to J-pop music. Since then, through the years, I’ve had too many favorite opening/closing songs to count.

I read somewhere that the songs used for anime opening or closing numbers are actually popular hit songs in Japan. I don’t know if they are popular first and then get licensed for anime series, or if it’s the other way around – they become hits after people watch the anime.

In any event – the music used for anime opening/closing credit sequences is an added source of pleasure for me when I watch anime. The right song, along with a credit sequence that captures the series’ atmosphere, can put me in a mood that lingers long after I’ve finished watching the episodes.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Number 5:



Naruto Shippuuden – Opening 1
Song: Hero’s Come Back
Band: Nobody Knows
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1hz_dnQWvs

Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden had a lot of great opening and closing songs. This one, “Hero’s Come Back,” was perfect for the start of Naruto Shippuuden, which takes place after a three-year time skip when Naruto is away from the village training with his ninja master Jiraiya.

The song and credit sequence truly set up the theme of a hero’s return. I remember watching the first episode of Shippuuden and being excited to see what the characters looked like now that they were teenagers and no longer children.

I especially like the confident look in Naruto’s eyes at the end as he strides forward to join Sakura and Kakashi. That look tells you everything about how much he matured when he was away.

Number 4:



Mobile Suit Gundam Seed – Ending 1
Song: “Anna ni Isshodattanoni”
Band: See-Saw
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYcERWBQCXA

Gundam Seed remains my favorite Gundam series (though Gundam 00 is a pretty close second).

Most American fans list Wing as their entry point to the Gundam universe, but for me it was Seed. Seed was the first Gundam series I saw, and I watched it early on as an anime fan, so all the typical themes found in shonen mecha anime were unfamiliar to me: the violence, the harsh treatment of the young pilots, the horrors of war.

I recall being riveted... and at the same time aghast at how graphic many of the scenes were. At that time I still had the bias that anime was just another form of “animated entertainment” – which for me as an American meant Disney and kid’s stuff. Gundam Seed made my jaw drop many times and changed my mind about that pretty quickly.

I love the haunting tones of this song. They often started playing the opening notes of it during the final scene of each episode, and it was a great way to finish the episode while maintaining the melancholic mood.

Number 3:



Kuroko’s Basketball – Ending 3
Song: “Walk”
Band: Old Codex
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBA48XcpcV8

J-pop music is sometimes compared to 1970s American bubblegum pop music – a comparison that seemingly condemns both as being something that’s inferior.

There’s absolutely a place in life for happy upbeat music. I always looked forward to hearing “Walk” at the end of Kuroko no Basuke’s second season episodes because it never failed to lift my mood. The driving rhythmic beat, the group harmonies in the chorus, the music playing over still shots of the characters that captured their unique personalities – “Walk” is just pure fun in music form.

Number 2:



Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – Opening 2
Song: “Ash Like Snow”
Band: The Brilliant Green
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d_for2jnQ0&list=PLXDqpIyz4Nl03V9d9ItqJbTOZl-yZeYh_

Something I realized when I became an anime fan was just how much awesome music there was in anime – not just the opening and closing songs, but the soundtrack and incidental music in each episode.

I’ve never made a study of J-pop, but then – I don’t have to. It’s music that does the only thing music is supposed to: it makes you feel things. It does that very well, and when it’s used effectively to complement the action on the screen, it adds another dimensional layer to the experience of watching anime.

“Ash Like Snow” is an example of a great rock song, period. If it had English lyrics instead of Japanese lyrics it would be a hit here in the west. Listening to it makes me realize there are countless J-pop songs like it that I’ll never hear because they’re not attached to any anime series, and that kind of makes me sad.

The song fits the Gundam meta theme of the futility of war, “ash like snow” invoking images of nuclear winter:

Ash like snow
It’s falling down from your sky

Ash like snow
Ash like snow
Ash like snow
Let me hear why I have to fight

... And finally, Number 1:

This was my favorite opening song for this series, and here it accompanies one of the best AMVs I’ve ever seen.

That’s my opinion... and the opinion of over twenty million others.



Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – Opening 4
Song: “Period”
Band: Chemistry
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vx69Pe7Ncs

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood remains number one on a lot of fans’ top ten lists even now, and for good reasons. If you’ve seen the anime—you know why.

Hiromu Arakawa’s manga story received a beautiful execution in anime form. When non-anime fans ask me what the best anime series is in my opinion—Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is still my answer, ten years after it came out.

As of today, this AMV has logged a staggering 20,067,325 views on You Tube. Cut together from the opening credit sequences, it’s a fan masterpiece, evoking feels and chills (especially the final shot).

If you’re an FMA:B fan, I hope it does for you what it does for me: bring alive the genius that is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood all over again.

Ten Years Later

Once upon a time, there was a young American girl.

Her grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Japan, making the girl a third-generation Japanese-American.

She grew up in a white neighborhood in Southern California, a child in the 1960s and a teenager in the 1970s. Not that long after WWII, with Pearl Harbor within living memory of most people.

She felt American inside, even if some people she met saw her face and considered her a foreigner. Her parents, who spoke both English and Japanese, only spoke English at home, perhaps to ensure that she would be seen as American as possible by other Americans.

They never taught her anything about the culture of her grandparents and ancestors.

She didn’t mind. After all, she was American.

Many years passed.

One evening, she was watching the Starz Network and saw something she’d never seen before.

It was something called anime — animation from Japan.

It blew her mind.

Not only was the story adult in tone, but it was what she knew as slash — a romance between two men. She had no idea that entertainment like this existed outside of fandom, and from a foreign country too.

Japan. A country she was connected to by blood made shows like this. She was staggered to find this out.

But that wasn’t all. The Starz Network also had other anime series.

Slowly, as if being drawn in against her will, she began to search out more anime to watch.

It was her first exposure to Japanese manga and anime art styles, and what she saw changed her whole view on art.

She particularly loved how some anime series created entire universes one could lose oneself in — the setting, characters and stories forming whole worlds in themselves.

She fell in love with so many characters... and the seiyuu who played them.

She attended many anime conventions, discovering the love her fellow fans had for anime.

... And that sometimes, one could meet a Shonen Jump editor in real life that you’d seen in an anime.

She started a blog so she could write about her love for anime and manga.

And she began taking Japanese lessons, finally starting to learn the language of her grandparents — and discovered what her name was in Japanese (ジャン 鈴川).

Since she’d worked as an editor before, she began freelancing as a translation rewriter/editor for the U.S. companies that published manga and anime-related books.

She edited many books in the field:

Even the yaoi light novels she loved to read... she became the editor of some of those books as well.

The world she entered when she became an anime fan expanded her sense of storytelling and setting, and inspired her first published novel.

That novel set her on the road to other fictional worlds, and other series that she is still writing today.

Her love for anime and manga gave her a second career in editing, as well as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream — to be a published fiction writer.

It brought her full-circle in terms of acceptance and appreciation for her heritage as a Japanese-American.

So be open, and stay curious as to the world around you. Because one day, you may be watching television or surfing the Internet and not expecting your life to change, but — it can.

A gift that takes your life in a new direction can come to you, unexpected, sent to you by the universe with hidden hands.

Thank you for reading this blog for the past ten years.