Top 10 Best Anime Opening Theme Songs of All Time
A great anime opening does something a lot of TV theme songs never bother attempting: it tells you what the show actually is, tonally and thematically, in roughly ninety seconds, and then makes you want to hear it again every single episode rather than skip straight to the story.
This list ranks the ten that pulled that off most completely, weighing the song itself, how well it matches its show, and how much lasting cultural footprint it left behind.
10. “Hohoemi no Bakudan”, Yu Yu Hakusho
Matsuko Mawatari’s opening for Yu Yu Hakusho is an irresistibly catchy, upbeat pop tune that sits in genuine tonal contrast with a show that spends a lot of its runtime in dark, violent territory. That contrast is exactly what earns it a spot here: rather than trying to match the show’s darker beats, it captures the underlying warmth and camaraderie between Yusuke and his friends that the demon-fighting plot sits on top of.
It’s aged into a classic specifically because it doesn’t try too hard, a simple, hooky pop song that’s stuck in listeners’ heads for decades after the show itself first aired.
Part of what keeps it in circulation decades later is how well it works completely divorced from the show itself. Plenty of anime openings need context to land emotionally, but this one functions as a genuinely good pop song on its own merits, which is exactly why it still shows up on general best-anime-music lists compiled by people who’ve never sat through a full Yu Yu Hakusho arc.
9. “Butter-Fly”, Digimon Adventure
Digimon Adventure’s opening threads a difficult needle: whimsical and fantastical enough to match a show about kids and their monster partners, while carrying just enough of an undercurrent of real stakes and darkness to hint at how much heavier the show gets than its bright, colorful surface suggests.
The chorus is relentlessly catchy in a way that transcends the show itself, and it’s remained one of the most widely recognized anime openings among viewers who’ve never actually watched a full episode of Digimon, which is its own kind of achievement.
The song’s staying power owes a lot to timing too. It arrived during a period when Digimon and its closest genre rivals were introducing an entire generation of Western viewers to anime for the first time, often as their literal first exposure to the medium, which means it carries a specific nostalgic weight for millions of viewers well beyond the show’s core fanbase.
8. The Lupin III Theme, Lupin III
Few anime openings have aged as gracefully as the various Lupin III themes, built around a distinctive horn-and-saxophone jazz sound that immediately signals the show’s stylish, playful, heist-caper tone before a single frame of animation plays.
Its influence runs deep across the medium: that specific blend of cool jazz instrumentation and playful energy has been referenced and imitated by countless later series trying to capture a similar tone, and the theme remains instantly recognizable to viewers who’ve never seen the source material, which is a rare feat for a theme song this old.
Lupin III has also been through numerous different arrangements and re-recordings of its core theme across its many series and specials over the decades, and rather than diluting the brand, that constant reinvention has kept the melody alive across generations of viewers who each encountered a slightly different version first. Very few anime themes have proven flexible enough to survive that many reinterpretations while still feeling unmistakably like the same piece of music.
7. “Bloody Stream”, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is widely regarded as having the strongest overall opening lineup of any long-running anime, swapping in a new, distinct song for nearly every story arc, and “Bloody Stream,” the second opening of the first season, is frequently singled out as the strongest of the bunch.
It captures the show’s specific blend of over-the-top machismo and style perfectly, and it charted well on music rankings in its own right at the time, proving an anime opening could succeed as a standalone song outside the context of the show entirely.
What makes JoJo’s openings collectively so strong is a production choice worth naming directly: rather than reusing one theme across an entire season, the show swaps openings between story arcs, letting each one carry a distinct visual and musical identity tailored to that specific cast and conflict. That approach means the franchise has effectively produced a dozen or more distinct opening sequences across its run, and “Bloody Stream” simply happens to be the one that’s aged best of the bunch.
6. “Guren no Yumiya”, Attack on Titan
Linked Horizon’s opening for Attack on Titan is frequently cited as the single best fit between a song and its show anywhere in the medium. Its militaristic, driving instrumentation and desperate, defiant lyrics capture the series’ core themes of humanity fighting for survival against overwhelming odds before the story has even had a chance to establish those stakes on screen.
It also helped define an entire subgenre of anime opening, the grand, orchestral, war-scale theme song, that countless later dark fantasy and war-focused series have tried to replicate since, without quite matching the original’s impact.
The visual sequence paired with the song matters just as much as the music itself here. The opening’s imagery, soldiers marching, wings unfurling, imagery lifted from the series’ own recurring symbolism, was clearly built in tandem with the song rather than slapped together afterward, which is part of why the two are so difficult to separate in most fans’ memory of the show.
5. “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis”, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Written specifically for Evangelion, this theme became one of the most widely recognized pieces of anime music ever produced, transcending the show itself to become a broader cultural touchstone in Japan and among anime fans internationally.
What makes it endure is the tension between its bright, almost cheerful pop melody and the show’s bleak, psychologically complex subject matter, a mismatch that, rather than feeling wrong, became part of the song’s own legend. It’s covered, referenced, and performed constantly decades after Evangelion first aired, a level of ongoing cultural presence very few anime theme songs ever achieve.
Its reach extends well past dedicated anime fandom too. The song shows up regularly at karaoke venues across Japan regardless of whether the singer has any particular attachment to Evangelion itself, and it’s been covered by artists working in genres that have nothing to do with anime, a level of crossover that speaks to musical quality independent of the show it was written for.
4. “Tank!”, Cowboy Bebop
Yoko Kanno’s “Tank!,” performed by her band Seatbelts, is as responsible for Cowboy Bebop’s genre-defining reputation as anything in the show itself. A pure jazz and big-band instrumental with no vocals at all, it immediately signals the series’ unusual blend of noir, space western, and cool, unhurried style before a single character appears on screen.
It’s frequently cited as proof that an opening doesn’t need lyrics, or even a conventional pop structure, to become one of the most iconic pieces of music the medium has ever produced, and Kanno’s work on the show’s wider soundtrack only reinforces why this specific piece is remembered as a landmark.
Yoko Kanno’s broader reputation as one of anime’s most respected composers rests heavily on this exact piece of work, and “Tank!” is frequently the first example cited whenever her name comes up in conversations about the medium’s best musical talent. It’s a rare case of a single track effectively launching a composer’s entire anime-scoring career into a different tier of recognition.
3. “Sora ni Utaeba”, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
Openings built around mecha and war epics have a long, crowded history in anime, and this entry regularly gets singled out from that crowded field for how effectively it balances the show’s brutal, morally complicated conflict with a soaring, emotionally direct melody. It works as both a rallying cry and a lament, which mirrors the show’s own refusal to present its young soldiers’ war as straightforwardly heroic.
The Gundam franchise as a whole has a decades-long tradition of pairing its various series with strong, distinct theme songs rather than defaulting to a generic mecha-anime sound, and Iron-Blooded Orphans’ entry is frequently held up as one of the strongest examples from a more recent generation of the franchise, proof the formula still works even as the specific stories and casts change from series to series.
2. Naruto Shippuden’s rotating opening lineup
Rather than picking one single Shippuden opening, it’s worth recognizing the run as a whole: across its five-hundred-episode run, Naruto Shippuden cycled through dozens of distinct openings, several of which, “Blue Bird,” “Silhouette,” and “Sign” among them, are still cited individually as some of the strongest theme songs the shonen genre has produced. Few long-running series have maintained this level of consistent musical quality across such an enormous episode count, and the sheer variety on display, ranging from driving rock anthems to more melancholic ballads matched to specific arcs, is itself an achievement.
Part of what makes Shippuden’s musical run stand out specifically is how the openings track the story’s own tonal shifts. Earlier entries lean into a lighter, more adventurous energy matching the show’s mid-series arcs, while later openings, arriving as the story pushes into the war arc and its aftermath, shift into a noticeably heavier, more urgent register. That willingness to let the music evolve alongside the plot, rather than settling into one static sound for five hundred episodes, is a big part of why so many individual entries in this lineup still get singled out on their own merits.
1. “The Hero!! ~Kibou no Uta~” and the Dragon Ball franchise’s opening legacy
Dragon Ball’s various openings across Z, Kai, and Super occupy a unique place in anime history: instantly recognizable even to people who’ve never watched a single episode, thanks to decades of cultural saturation. “Cha-La Head-Cha-La” in particular has become iconic well beyond anime fandom specifically, covered, remixed, and referenced across pop culture for decades.
What earns Dragon Ball the top spot on this list isn’t any single song’s individual craft, though several are excellent, but the sheer scale of its cultural reach: these are anime openings that non-fans can hum, which is a level of crossover recognition almost no other franchise on this list has matched.
That reach also spans generations in a way few other entries on this list can claim. A viewer who grew up on the original Dragon Ball Z dub, one who discovered the franchise through Kai’s cleaner re-edit, and one who came to it fresh through Dragon Ball Super can each name a different opening as “the” Dragon Ball theme, and all three would be correct. Very few franchises have managed to keep reinventing their signature sound across that many distinct eras while still feeling instantly identifiable as the same series each time.
Also worth hearing
A handful of other openings deserve real recognition even outside the numbered ten.
- “Again” (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) captures that series’ blend of adventure and emotional weight about as well as any theme song on this list, and its driving rock energy matches the Elric brothers’ journey closely.
- “The Day” and “Peace Sign” (My Hero Academia) have become genre-defining themes in their own right for an entire generation of newer shonen fans, carrying forward the tradition Naruto and Dragon Ball established for the previous generation.
- “The World” (Death Note) shifts deliberately from a fairly conventional rock opening into something genuinely unsettling by its final seconds, and it remains one of the most distinctive mood-setting openings the medium has produced.
Why these ten
Three things had to line up for a song to land here: it needed to work as music on its own terms, fit the show it introduces, and still be recognizable years later. This list leans toward openings that succeed on all three fronts rather than ones that are well-produced, which is why a few technically well-made but less culturally resonant openings didn’t make the cut. Regional and era bias is also worth naming honestly: older, culturally dominant franchises tend to have had more time to build the kind of broad recognition several of these entries carry, which any list built partly around cultural footprint will inevitably reflect.
Several of the series behind these openings also appear in the ranking of the best anime of all time, where the shows themselves rather than their music are what is being judged.
Common questions
What is the best anime opening of all time?
Dragon Ball’s openings take the top spot here for sheer cultural reach, since they are recognisable to people who have never watched an episode. On individual craft, Guren no Yumiya from Attack on Titan and A Cruel Angel’s Thesis from Evangelion are the strongest single songs.
Why are anime openings so good?
Because they do a specific job: establish a show’s tone in about ninety seconds and make viewers want to hear it again every episode. That constraint tends to produce tightly written songs paired closely with purpose-built visuals.
Which anime has the most openings?
Long-running series like Naruto Shippuden and One Piece have cycled through dozens. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure stands out for swapping openings between story arcs, giving each arc its own distinct musical identity.
What is the most famous anime song?
A Cruel Angel’s Thesis from Neon Genesis Evangelion has the broadest reach, remaining a karaoke standard in Japan decades later and being covered by artists with no connection to anime at all.
