Unlike the majority of Western, English-language shows — with the exception of certain cartoons — an anime's opening theme song is still a major aspect of the viewing experience. Thanks to anime production being largely based around 13-episode cours, most anime will regularly get updated opening and ending themes. On top of that, plenty of anime have been lucky enough to get talented composers who genuinely care about creating quality background music for the episodes themselves.
Although several anime on this last are iconic classics of the medium, the fact that they have such strong soundtracks may often by overlooked thanks to the other reasons for their popularity.
The original English Pokémon theme set the tone for the next three decades
Thanks to the mind-boggling popularity of the Pokémon anime, right from the very beginning, the words "I want to be the very best" got burned into a generation of young minds. In a lot of ways, the original English-language Pokémon theme typifies the state of anime in the '90s. It's a completely different song from the original Japanese opening that doesn't show much regard for the original script. For comparison, Sailor Moon used the same melody but changed the lyrics. Ultimately, Pokémon ended up with an endearingly cheesy but instantly memorable theme. In the intervening decades, anime fans have come to except more fidelity to the original Japanese scripts in dubbed series. It's becoming increasingly rare for anime series to get new English theme songs, and given any songs within individual episodes tended to be played in the original Japanese, rather than translated. Notably, Pokémon remains an exception to that.
Likely thanks to the approach of the first English Pokémon theme being grandfathered in thanks to its enduring popularity, subsequent Pokémon themes have been redone in English, with the same cheesy-but-sincere tone. The first opening of Pokémon Horizons is a glorious example of how this approach is still going strong.
English-speaking fans missed out on some great Dragon Ball music
Much like Pokémon, the initial English dubs of the Dragon Ball franchise changed a lot in terms of both the script and the soundtrack, adding both new opening themes and new background — although the dub's soundtrack does have its fans, it was markedly different from the original. Notably, the original English dub was popular enough for Funimation (since merged with Crunchyroll) to release the original version of the dub on home video at one point.
Even so, after acquiring the rights to the series, Funimation did begin to shift towards maintaining the original Japanese soundtrack, a trend with has continued since the Crunchyroll merger. Although the version of Dragon Ball Z on Crunchyroll uses a different instrumental opening theme and the original Dragon Ball using English-language versions of the Japanese openings, Super and Daima have used the same openings and endings as the Japanese version. The Dragon Ball franchise has pretty consistently used bombastic and kind of goofy theme music. In a way, that fits perfectly with the series. Although the franchise did get progressively more serious (especially during Z), it started out as a light-hearted adventure romp and Super and Daima especially did a lot to return to that original spirit and tone. Honestly, "bombastic and kind of goofy" is also the perfect way to describe Goku himself.
Susumu Hirasawa has provided unique soundtracks to several iconic anime
Susumu Hirasawa's music is hard to pin down. Most simply, he's an experimental electronic musician, but his music involves a lot of instruments he invented and built himself, draws on a lot of intellectual and philosophical themes and his live shows are special-effects heavy. Hirasawa has composed instantly recognizable and utterly unique pieces of music, including contributing soundtracks to several major anime and helping elevate the viewing experience of those anime into something truly remarkable.
On the surface, synthesizer-heavy electronic music seems like a weird fit for a dark, gritty, brutal medieval Fantasy series like Berserk, yet Hirasawa's soundtrack for the series is a major contender for best anime soundtrack ever. Even in a soundtrack with some classic tracks, the battle theme "Forces" (linked above) stands out as an instant classic. Despite the surface-level stylistic clash, the Japanese lyrics of "Forces" actually perfectly capture the hero Guts's sense of grim resolve and relentless forward momentum.
Notably, Hirasawa also provided the soundtracks for several works by late anime director Satoshi Kon: the movies Paprika and Millennium Actress and the anime series Paranoia Agent. Many of Kon's works deal with deep psychological and philosophical themes and are presented with elaborate, psychedelic visuals that are perfectly complemented by Hirasawa's music. Highlights of his collaborations with Kon are the main character's theme from Paprika, "The Girl in Byakkoya" and the hallucinogenic "Parade" from the same movie.
Hirasawa's music clearly has fans within the anime industry itself. The main character from the music anime K-On!, Yui Hirasawa was named in his honor.
The Vision of Escaflowne is an anime buried treasure in more than one way
The Vision of Escaflowne is probably one of the biggest anime cult classics of the '90s, thanks in part to never airing in its entirety in the US (though it was a staple of the anime line-up on popular Canadian network YTV). Predating the isekai genre boom of the 2010s and onwards, Escaflowne follows the high school student Hitomi after she is magically translated to a parallel Fantasy world where our Earth is visible in the sky as a second moon, crosses paths with the heroic prince Van and becomes embroiled in the war between Van's kingdom of Fanelia and the expansionist Zaibach Empire. It's a fairly typical Fantasy premise, but the world of Escaflowne is weird, straddling the line between Sci-Fi and Fantasy as much of the series's action unfolds via fights between giant mechas that are essentially the Fantasy version of Gundams.
Thanks to the series not being available in its entirety until 2016, fans missed out not only on a fantastic story, but also on its phenomenal soundtrack. Composed by Hajime Mizoguchi and Yoko Kanno, Escaflowne features a booming, orchestral soundtrack, supplemented by a lot of Gregorian chant-influenced pieces, that's suitably epic for a series focusing on Fantasy-Gundam combat.
Unfortunately, Escaflowne hasn't been available to stream since Sony merged Crunchyroll and Funimation. The silver lining is that the Blu-ray version put out when Funimation acquired and re-released the series is still pretty easy to find via online stores. It is also available for digital purchase via Apple TV.
This past year saw some tight competition in anime music
As the Bam Smack Pow team previously reported, the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards saw some big wins from the most popular anime of the past year. Solo Leveling, Dan da Dan and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End were all nominated in many of the same categories, including the music-related ones. In the end, no matter who won, a lot of fans were bound to be going home disappointed. Solo Leveling was the big winner overall at the Anime Awards. Most relevant is the fact that it took home the awards for Best Score and Best Ending Sequence. Meanwhile, "Otonoke:, Dan da Dan's instant classic of an opening theme took home Best Opening Sequence and Best Anime Song.
Although Frieren didn't actually win any of the music-related awards this year (taking home the awards for Best Director, Best Drama, Best Supporting Character and Best Background art), the soundtrack has received numerous nominations and awards elsewhere and it's definitely worth a shout-out from us and a listen from you. Although the opening song feels very modern for a fairly traditional Fantasy series, the rest of the soundtrack is a lot more in line with what you'd probably except from a Fantasy anime, with a lot of Celtic instrumentation and pieces accompanied by epic choral vocals. Frieren's personal theme, titled "Frieren the Slayer" (also a possible interpretation of the series's Japanese title) is a major standout.