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The Most Iconic Anime Openings
The anime opening is a strange format: ninety seconds, made to be skipped, and yet it's often the thing people remember decades later. Part of that is repetition — you hear it twelve to twenty-four times in a season. Part of it is that the OP is where studios put money they can reuse every week, so the animation is frequently better than anything in the episode itself.
This is a guide to the openings that actually earned their reputation, and to why they work, which is more useful than a ranked list of songs you can't place.
Who this is for
If you're new to anime, this doubles as a taster menu: an OP tells you a show's tone in ninety seconds more honestly than a trailer does. If you've been watching for years, the middle sections are the argument — why certain openings function as storytelling rather than decoration.
If you just want the songs, skip to the playlist section at the end.
The ones everyone names
Tank! — Cowboy Bebop
Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, 1998. A big-band jazz piece with a walking bassline and a horn section, over a Saul Bass-style title sequence in flat colour and silhouette. It's the most-cited anime opening in the world and the reason is that it isn't trying to sell you the plot at all — it establishes genre, era and attitude, and nothing else.
Notably, it's performed by a real assembled band rather than produced as a pop single, which is why it holds up as music independent of the show.
A Cruel Angel's Thesis — Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yoko Takahashi, 1995. Still, three decades on, one of the most-performed karaoke songs in Japan. The lyrics were written to sound philosophically heavy without being closely tied to the plot, and the sequence itself is a masterclass in cutting: 130-odd cuts in ninety seconds, most a fraction of a second long, on a budget that couldn't afford motion.
Guren no Yumiya — Attack on Titan
Linked Horizon, 2013. German-inflected chorus, military cadence, and the salute choreography that became instantly parodied. It's the clearest example of an OP defining a show's public identity — for a year, this was what "anime is back" sounded like to a general audience.
Unravel — Tokyo Ghoul
TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, 2014. The falsetto is the hook, but the sequence is what makes it: Kaneki upside down, the sketch-like linework, and a colour palette that drains as the song builds. It's the best marriage of visual and vocal instability on this list.
Openings that do actual narrative work
This is where the format gets interesting. Some OPs are not montages — they're arguments.
Fly Me to the Moon — Neon Genesis Evangelion (ending)
An ending rather than an opening, and worth including because it's the counterweight: after each episode's psychological damage, a lounge cover plays over static credits. The tonal mismatch is deliberate and does more work than most openings manage.
The Rumbling — Attack on Titan final season
SiM, 2022. Notable because the visual sequence directly reframes the protagonist as the antagonist — the same iconography from Guren no Yumiya, inverted. If you've watched the series, the OP is a spoiler and a thesis at once.
Kaikai Kitan — Jujutsu Kaisen
Eve, 2020. The animation is choreographed to the beat frame-accurately in several passages, which is a specific craft skill — the compositing team storyboards to the waveform rather than to a timing sheet. Watch the transitions on the drum hits.
Sign — Naruto Shippuden
Flow, 2010. Used for the Pain arc, and it's the strongest example of an OP being changed to match the story's escalation — Naruto changes its openings roughly every 25–30 episodes, and Sign is the one that arrives exactly when the series peaks.
Openings from the last few years worth knowing
Chainsaw Man's Kick Back by Kenshi Yonezu, which became the first anime theme to hit certain international streaming milestones and whose sequence is built entirely from film references — Pulp Fiction, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jackie Chan. Spy x Family's Mixed Nuts by Official HIGE DANdism, whose sequence uses mid-century graphic design to sell the spy-comedy tone in seconds. Frieren's Yūsha by YOASOBI, which is written from the perspective of a character who is dead before the series properly begins — the lyrics only fully make sense once you've finished the show. And Oshi no Ko's Idol by YOASOBI, which topped the Billboard Global chart excluding the US, an unprecedented result for an anime theme.
Why anime openings are made this way
Some practical context that explains the format. The 90-second length is standardised because Japanese TV blocks are built around it. The sequence is animated once and reused, so studios assign it to strong animators and often to a different director than the episodes — which is why an OP can look better than the show it fronts. And the song is usually a commercial tie-in: a record label pays for placement, which is why openings by major artists appear on shows that couldn't otherwise afford them.
A starter playlist
If you want ten that cover the range: Tank!, A Cruel Angel's Thesis, Guren no Yumiya, Unravel, Kaikai Kitan, Kick Back, Idol, Yūsha, Sign, and Again by Yui from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. That's roughly fifteen minutes and it covers 1995 to now.
Frequently asked questions
Why are anime openings always 90 seconds?
Japanese broadcast slots are 30 minutes including adverts, and the standard structure allots 90 seconds each to the opening and ending. The same songs are then released as full-length singles.
Why do long-running anime change openings so often?
Roughly every cour (12–13 episodes) or arc, both to mark story progression and because each new theme is a new single release for the tie-in artist.
What's the most successful anime song commercially?
Idol by YOASOBI, from Oshi no Ko, is the standout modern case — it topped Billboard's Global 200 excluding US chart. A Cruel Angel's Thesis remains the most enduring in Japan by karaoke performance.
Should I skip openings?
On a first watch of a show with a strong OP, no — several series change details in the sequence as the story progresses, and a few hide plot information there.
I heard a song in a clip and can't identify the show.
Our screenshot identifier works from a single frame if you have the visual, which is usually faster than trying to search a lyric you half-heard.
