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Emedo Ashibeze
Published 17 minutes ago
Emedo Ashibeze is a tenured journalist specializing in the entertainment industry. Before joining ScreenRant in 2025. he wrote for several major publications, including GameRant.
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Anime soundtracks have long been one of the medium's more underappreciated elements, despite their profound ability to elevate storytelling and create lasting emotional impact. Though admittedly, casual viewers might focus on animation quality or plot developments.
Regardless, it is the music working tirelessly in the background that often determines whether a scene is merely good or truly unforgettable. At the same time, the making of these works relies on composers who understand how to support emotion, character, and scale through carefully built themes.
The results are soundtracks that don't just accompany their stories; rather, they become inseparable from them, with certain melodies instantly transporting fans back to pivotal moments years after their first experience. For this reason, the spotlight falls on the best anime soundtracks, which represent the pinnacle of the craft.
Samurai Champloo - Nujabes, Fat Jon, Force of Nature & Tsutchie
Jin, Mugen, and Fuu in Samurai Champloo key art.
In Samurai Champloo, Mugen is a break-dancing vagabond whose fighting style is as erratic as his personality, while the four-eyed Jin is an unemotional ronin who lives according to the strict discipline of traditional kenjutsu. Oddly, fate intertwines the pair with a waitress named Fuu, who recruits them to search for a mysterious samurai who smells of sunflowers.
What follows are the details of how the trio traverses an Edo-period Japan that is historically and traditionally fluid, infused with graffiti, beatboxing, and modern slang. However, the real masterstroke is the emotional specificity and production finesse of its musical composition.
Produced by the late, legendary Nujabes alongside Fat Jon Tsutchie and eventually Force of Nature, the score infuses lo-fi type hip-hop beats with traditional Japanese instrumentation, creating its instantly recognizable "chill-hop" atmosphere. Through this anachronistic blend, the show creates a mood that draws on hip-hop culture and music to ground its traditionally medieval, gritty, and soulful reality.
Akira - Geinoh Yamashirogumi
Akira movie poster featuring Kaneda walking towards his iconic red bike.
Akira’s Neo-Tokyo is a sprawling, neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia built on the ashes of World War III, plagued by corruption, terrorism, gang violence, and anti-government protests. The central character, Kaneda, a brash gang leader, finds himself embroiled in a government conspiracy when his friend Tetsuo acquires telekinetic powers that threaten to destroy the city once again.
Away from the global sensation the series became, Composer Shoji Yamashiro and the collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi crafted a score that stands firmly as a singular achievement in music history. Drawing heavily from Buddhist chants, traditional Indonesian gamelan music, and Japanese noh, they opted to avoid the synthesizers that defined 80s sci-fi.
Instead, they relied on the "sonic architecture" of the natural human voice to build an immersive ritual quality. The result is a score that actively composes the film’s psychic formation, delivering measured impact, note after note. It hits the viewer on a physical level, turning the psychic destruction of Tokyo into a religious experience rather than just a simple action scene.
Naruto & Naruto Shippuden (2002–2017) - Toshio Masuda / Yasuharu Takanashi
Naruto Shippuden manga cover depicting the series' cast with Naruto holding a finger up.
While there are many things iconic about the Naruto franchise, none is quite as distinct as the anime’s sonic composition. From its premiere in 2002, Naruto’s musical identity shifts from Toshio Masuda’s early video-game-like themes to Yasuharu Takanashi’s subsequent epic arrangements, tracing the series’ evolution from youthful adventure to mythic conflict.
Masuda’s initial work privileges melody and regional colour, grounding character growth in memorable patterns that carry modern rock and punk elements. Later, Takanashi expands the palette into choirs, broad percussion, and soaring string lines that accompany major battles and revelations. Between the two composers, the anime presents a masterclass in the fusion of traditional Japanese instrumentation with rock and heavy metal, functioning like a cumulative symphony.
Spirited Away (2001) - Joe Hisaishi
The 2001 animated fantasy film by Hayao Miyazaki details the life of Chihiro, a sullen ten-year-old girl whose anger at her parents’ relocation is dispelled after the family inadvertently wanders into an unknown world of spirits, gods, and sorcerers. The film is a surreal Alice-in-Wonderland tale that explores themes of environmentalism, consumerism, and the difficult transition from childhood to adolescence.
As a consequence, the musical score is as grand as its central themes. Composed by the legendary Joe Hisaishi, it perfectly combines innocence and eerie otherness, evoking feelings that move from the intimacy of a lullaby to the wonder of an orchestra.
Through the score, Hisaishi creates a sonic tapestry that is at once intimately melancholic and immensely profound. In the end, Spirited Away relies on its carefully placed orchestral gestures to amplify human feeling, and it is that musical precision in serving narrative psychology that gives it lasting resonance.
FLCL (2000) - The Pillows
FLCL’s soundtrack is anchored by The Pillows, whose alternative rock anthems shape the series’ pace and adolescent energy. The protagonist, Naota Nandaba, is a cynical twelve-year-old adult-wannabe in a town where nothing spectacular ever happens. Nothing, until a pink-haired alien woman on a Vespa runs him over, effectively plunging his mundane life into surreal chaos.
The six-episode OVA is a frantic, metaphor-laden coming-of-age story that uses giant robots and alien conspiracies to represent the confusing, violent, and sexual awakening of puberty, and its soundtrack is the glue that sticks it all together. By integrating pop-rock performance with narrative rhythm, the songs serve as foreground commentary rather than background with edited rhyming animation.
FLCL was the perfect music video for the band. On the other hand, The Pillows' score provided garage-band authenticity, perfectly mirroring the emotional chaos the series conveys through its characters.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019) - Yuki Kajiura & Go Shiina
Tanjiro and the rest of Demon Slayer's main cast in season 1 promo art
Yuki Kajiura’s melodic clarity is paired with Go Shiina’s textural daring to bring to life music that supports both intimacy and swordplay spectacle in Demon Slayer. In the story, Tanjiro Kamado is the kind-hearted charcoal seller whose life is destroyed when a demon slaughters his whole family, turning his sister, Nezuko, into a demon.
Filled with hope and anger for revenge, he joins the Demon Slayer Corps, mastering ancient breathing techniques to hunt down the progenitor of all demons, Muzan Kibutsuji, and find a cure for his sister. Regarding musical quality, the synergy between composers Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina birthed a sonicscape that elevates the monuments of Tanjiro’s tale into operatic tragedies while simultaneously capturing both tradition and modernity.
The juxtaposition of Kajiura's signature gothic, haunting choir melodies with Go Shiina's preference for soft vocals creates scenes that feel both intimate and cataclysmic. The effect of which gives the series a distinct enough identity to rival major cinematic franchises for sheer emotional force.
Princess Mononoke (1997) - Joe Hisaishi
San rides on the back of her mother Moro as they move through the forest to speak to other animal gods in Princess Mononoke.
Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke is a story following Ashitaka, the prince of a dying Emishi tribe, who is cursed and is forced to leave his home to find a cure. He travels to the west, where he gets caught in a war between Lady Eboshi of Iron Town and San, a human girl raised by wolves who defends the forest.
Succinctly put, the film is a morally complex epic that refuses to paint either nature or industry as purely evil, presenting a brutal conflict where every side has justifiable motivations, and a soundtrack that portrays every bit of it. The score alternates delicate tribal woodwinds with thunderous brass and percussion, perfectly conveying the forest’s majesty and the violence of industrial encroachment.
Also, Hisaishi’s harmonic choices balance consonant beauty with unsettling dissonance, perfectly reflecting the film’s moral ambiguity and emotional stakes. In the end, Hisaishi’s ability to translate Miyazaki’s environmental message into a musical narrative creates a score comparable to the finest of any storytelling medium.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009) - Multiple Composers (including Akira Senju)
Ed as featured on a poster for FMA: Brotherhood.
Primarily composed by Akira Senju, the score for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood combines an equal measure of military marches, melancholic piano pieces, and Middle Eastern influences to match the series' themes of equivalent exchange and transformation. The series follows Edward and Alphonse Elric as they search for a way to restore their bodies after a failed act of forbidden alchemy.
Senju's compositions brilliantly underscore the brothers' journey, with a diversity that reflects the narrative's scope as it travels from small-town tragedy to nationwide conspiracy. Nevertheless, the score's true iconic quality lies in its thematic complexity and moral ambiguity. Villains are treated sympathetically with musical accompaniment, while heroes face harsh consequences underscored by darker, dissonant soundscapes.
Fortunately, Senju's background in classical composition allowed him to balance action spectacle with emotional depth and philosophical substance. The result is a soundtrack that influenced countless subsequent shonen anime, establishing templates still followed today.
Your Name (2016) - RADWIMPS
A member of Makoto Shinkai’s ‘Disaster Trilogy’, Your Name revolves around the high school girl, Mitsuha Miyamizu, living in a rural town in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, who yearns for the excitement of Tokyo. On the other hand, Taki is a boy in Tokyo, juggling school and a part-time job.
After consistently wishing to be one another, they inexplicably begin swapping bodies in their dreams, and living each other's lives. The soundtrack by Japanese rock band RADWIMPS is integrated so deeply into the film’s DNA that the movie effectively functions as a narrative musical.
The score’s emotional effectiveness rests on its seamless fusion of pop songcraft and cinematic scoring, ensuring that the songs become character voices and narrative catalysts. As a result, the soundtrack is in perfect synchronicity with Makoto Shinkai’s visuals, to the point that iconic scenes from the film have become inseparable from the music.
Attack on Titan (2013) - Hiroyuki Sawano
Within the boundaries of Hajime Isayama’s world, humanity is penned inside massive concentric walls to protect itself from the Titans. Mindless giants that devour people for no apparent reason. After a century of peace, a Colossal Titan breaches the outer wall, unleashing a nightmare that drives young Eren Yeager to vow the extermination of every Titan in existence.
Alongside the mind-boggling plot, Hiroyuki Sawano’s soundtrack hits like a physical assault. Opening with primal screams and the beats of war drums, the score redefined what an anime soundtrack could sound like, creating a genre he calls "Sawano Drop," where tension builds to an explosive release.
The score doesn’t just support the narrative; it elevates to near-mythical proportions. The sheer wall of sound Sawano produces hits with the force of a Titan, culminating in a soundtrack that is aggressive, loud, and unapologetically epic.
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