The 20 Best Anime Openings of All Time
An anime opening has ninety seconds to make you not press skip. The best ones do more than that — they tell you what the show is about before a single line of dialogue, and they lodge in your head for a decade afterwards.
This is a ranked list of the twenty best. Ranked means arguable, which is the point. A few notes on what I weighted: the song has to be good on its own, away from the show — but the sequence has to be doing something too. A great track over a slideshow of character portraits doesn't make it.
1. Tank! — Cowboy Bebop (1998)
Not a song with an anime attached. A big-band jazz number by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts that opens with a walking bassline, brings in the horns, and never once acknowledges that it's television music.
The sequence matches it — hard cuts, silhouettes, bold flat colour, the visual language of a Saul Bass title card. Nothing before it looked like that, and the number of anime openings since that have tried the same trick and failed tells you how hard it is.
If you only watch one opening on this list, it's this one. It's been the standard for nearly thirty years.
2. KICK BACK — Chainsaw Man (2022)
Kenshi Yonezu, arranged with Daiki Tsuneta of King Gnu, sampling Morning Musume's "Souda! We're Alive" for a chorus about hard work and happiness that lands somewhere between motivational and unhinged. Which is exactly right for Denji.
It became the first Japanese-language song ever certified Gold by the RIAA, and the first track by a Japanese artist to chart on Spotify's Global Top 50. Those aren't anime records — they're music records.
The sequence is the other half: every shot references a different film, from Pulp Fiction to Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the joke is that a show this violent opens with a gag reel of cinema history.
3. Guren no Yumiya — Attack on Titan (2013)
The one people mock and still cannot get out of their heads. Linked Horizon's opening is choral, German-inflected, absurdly overwrought — and completely sincere about it.
It works because Attack on Titan is also completely sincere about it. The show has no irony, and neither does the theme. When the chorus arrives, the sequence hits the wall-scaling shot and the whole thing locks together.
4. Gurenge — Demon Slayer (2019)
LiSA's track did something few anime openings manage: it broke containment. It topped Japanese charts, went platinum repeatedly, and became the song non-anime-watchers could hum.
The reason is structural. It opens quiet, holds back the drums, and detonates on the chorus at the same moment Ufotable's animation goes from stillness to water-breathing. Song and sequence peak on the same frame. That's not luck.
5. A Cruel Angel's Thesis — Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995)
The most-sung anime song in karaoke history, thirty years on. Yoko Takahashi's vocal is soaring and confident, the arrangement is pure 90s J-pop, and none of it prepares you for the show.
That mismatch is the point. The opening promises a heroic mecha adventure. What follows is a psychological breakdown across 26 episodes. The theme is a bait, and it's the best bait in the medium.
6. Unravel — Tokyo Ghoul (2014)
TK from Ling Tosite Sigure sings in a strained falsetto that sounds like it's costing him something, over guitar work that never resolves comfortably. It's genuinely uncomfortable listening, and it should be.
The sequence — Kaneki fracturing, reflections, glass — matches it precisely. Many shows have tried this exact combination since. None have matched it.
7. Again — Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009)
YUI's rock track carries the show's central idea before you know the show: something was lost, someone is trying to go back, going back is not possible.
Brotherhood had four excellent openings and this is the one people return to. The instrumental break in the middle, where the animation moves to the brothers' childhood, does more emotional work than most episodes.
8. Idol — Oshi no Ko (2023)
YOASOBI wrote a song about a performer whose entire public self is a lie, for a show about the same thing, and made it sound like the brightest J-pop single of the year. The dissonance is the craft.
It became a genuine global hit — the first Japanese-language song to top Billboard's Global Excl. US chart. If you want proof anime music has left its niche, this and "KICK BACK" are the exhibits.
9. Colors — Code Geass (2006)
FLOW's opening is straightforward rock, and what elevates it is confidence — the sequence is all chess imagery, falling pieces, Lelouch's face half in shadow. It commits to the show's melodrama without a hint of embarrassment.
10. The Day — My Hero Academia (2016)
Porno Graffitti wrote the most purely heroic anime opening of the last decade. Brass, an ascending chorus, and a sequence that introduces the entire class without feeling like a roll call.
It's not clever. It doesn't need to be. Sometimes a superhero show needs a song that sounds like a superhero show.
11. Crossing Field — Sword Art Online (2012)
LiSA's first major anime hit, and the track that made her the biggest name in anime music before Gurenge confirmed it. The show has aged unevenly. The opening hasn't.
12. Rewrite — Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Asian Kung-Fu Generation at their peak, and the moment a lot of Western viewers realised Japanese rock was worth following on its own terms. The band went on to do openings for Naruto and Bleach; this is the best of them.
13. Blue Bird — Naruto Shippuden (2008)
Ikimono-gakari, and the one Naruto opening that transcends the show's enormous run. The sequence is airy and light — sky, feathers, falling — against a series that is mostly shouting. That contrast is why it lasts.
14. Kaikai Kitan — Jujutsu Kaisen (2020)
Eve's track is jittery and fast, and the sequence uses that speed properly — MAPPA cutting between characters at a rhythm that matches the syncopation rather than the beat. Modern anime openings are often over-edited. This one is edited to something.
15. We Are! — One Piece (1999)
The most joyful opening on this list. It's a sea shanty pretending to be a J-pop song, and after more than a thousand episodes it still sounds like an invitation.
One Piece has had over twenty openings. This is the one that defined what the show feels like.
16. Sono Chi no Sadame — JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012)
Nothing else sounds like this. Operatic male vocals, a rock backing, and a sequence that renders the cast as if they're statues in a gallery. JoJo's openings are a genre unto themselves and this is where it started.
17. Odd Future — My Hero Academia (2019)
Uverworld, and the best of the later MHA openings — heavier, more urgent, arriving at the point where the show stopped being about school.
18. Cha-La Head-Cha-La — Dragon Ball Z (1989)
Hironobu Kageyama's opening is thirty-five years old and still immediately recognisable to people who have never watched an episode. Pure momentum, zero subtlety, and the reason a generation associates anime with shouting and energy beams.
19. Inferno — Fire Force (2019)
Mrs. GREEN APPLE, and one of the best-choreographed sequences of the last ten years — the animation is timed so precisely to the track that it reads as a dance number.
20. Departure! — Hunter x Hunter (2011)
Deliberately unpretentious. A bright, brass-led adventure theme for a show that gets progressively darker than almost anything on this list. Like the Evangelion opening, the gap between promise and delivery is part of the appeal.
The best anime soundtracks (not just openings)
Openings get the attention, but a few composers are doing work worth listening to on its own:
- Yoko Kanno — Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Escaflowne. The most versatile composer in the medium; jazz, orchestral, folk, electronic, all done properly.
- Joe Hisaishi — every Ghibli film. His Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke scores are concert-hall music that happens to be attached to animation.
- Hiroyuki Sawano — Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, 86. Enormous, choral, unsubtle, extremely effective.
- Kevin Penkin — Made in Abyss. The best anime score of the last decade, and the one most likely to be mistaken for a film soundtrack.
- Kenshi Yonezu — not a score composer, but "KICK BACK", "Spinning Globe" (The Boy and the Heron) and his Final Fantasy XVI theme make him the most significant artist working in and around anime right now.
Where to listen
Most anime openings are on Spotify and Apple Music, though full TV-size versions are often missing — the released single and the 90-second broadcast edit are usually different cuts.
For soundtracks, physical releases are still the only way to get some scores in full; a fair number of anime OSTs have never been licensed for streaming outside Japan, and import CDs remain the only complete versions.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most popular anime opening?
"A Cruel Angel's Thesis" from Neon Genesis Evangelion has the longest cultural reach — it's been a karaoke standard in Japan for thirty years. For recent releases, "KICK BACK" and "Idol" have the strongest chart records.
What is the best anime song of all time?
"Tank!" from Cowboy Bebop, if you judge the song independently of its show. It's a genuinely great jazz recording that happens to be a TV theme.
Has an anime song ever charted internationally?
Yes. "KICK BACK" was the first Japanese-language song certified Gold by the RIAA and the first by a Japanese artist to reach Spotify's Global Top 50. YOASOBI's "Idol" topped Billboard's Global Excl. US chart.
Who is the biggest anime music artist?
LiSA and YOASOBI have the biggest anime-specific followings. Kenshi Yonezu is the biggest artist who works in anime without being defined by it.
What's the difference between an OP and an ED?
OP is the opening theme, ED the ending. Endings are usually quieter and often better songs — they're written to follow the emotional weight of an episode rather than launch it.
Why are anime openings exactly 90 seconds?
Japanese TV broadcast slots are rigid, so the opening, ending and episode content are cut to fixed lengths. That's why the streaming single often differs from the version you hear on the show.