Interest Stacks 245453

AIR's soundtrack is not as large or even varied as its successor, CLANNAD, but it is a very flowy, peaceful soundtrack that whisks you off into the clouds to stay. "Tori no Uta" in particular is a strong introduction into this soundtrack with Lia's heavenly vocals taking you back to your childhood summer days.

CLANNAD and CLANNAD: After Story is famous for tugging at its viewers' heartstrings, and what definitely contributes to it is the soundtrack. The copious use of string instruments to convey the emotion of joy and sadness (with a twinge of nostalgia) as symbiotic is rivaled only by the king of heartstrings, 'Adagio for Strings'.

Same as CLANNAD, but cranked to eleven with stunning visuals and better narrative execution. Some pieces of music have reprises, or a second version that gets played only in this season.

For an adventure series of a group of kids getting sucked into a digital world, the soundtrack by the late Takanori Arisawa cleverly mixes your typical "Let's go exploring!" beats with digital synthesizers to remind you this isn't your typical world. On top of it, nearly every single character has their own leitmotif, sometimes two versions or even a character song, that perfectly encapsulates who they are as a person--or Digimon.

Special mention goes to "Butter-Fly" for being one of the best anime themes and "Brave Heart" for bringing the concept of Digivolutions to life.

And oh fine, I personally have a soft spot for the dub soundtrack. By themselves, the tracks are fine, but the dub slapped them on at random. But when they get it right, it hits home. Hey Digimon, hey Digimon, monster friends to the boys and girls, hey Digimon, hey Digimon...

Yoko Kanno is a musical genius, a goddess. While her most famous soundtracks are Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: SAC (excellent soundtracks, but just about everything she's done is perfectly listenable), Escaflowne has just as much of her signature talent, if not more-so. It perfectly balances out fantasy, romance, tension, and mystic that spirits away the listener into the world of Gaia along with Hitomi.

Special shoutout and brownie points goes to the fact nearly the entire film consists of new, original tracks. "Dance of Curse" gets a second version that is more like an abridgment, but hits just as sharply as the original. And personally, this is the very soundtrack that introduced me to this wonderful woman's work, so it holds a special place in my heart.

A good psychological-horror needs a moody soundtrack to scare its viewers, and Higurashi succeeds, no matter if it's the anime or the original sound novel. To surprise the listeners by getting them to let their guard down, its emotions are all over the board from happy-go-lucky to eerie suspicion, and nightmare-inducing to melancholic. But it never forgets to remind you, subtly, that Oyashiro-sama is there in the background in spirit.

"Making of Cyborg" is iconic and haunting that it's practically the main leitmotif throughout the movie.

Yoko Kanno, duh. But it has a lot of insert songs from The Seatbelts that adds to the somber mood about existentialism.

One of the most flexible soundtracks I have ever heard, and probably will ever hear. It's a large soundtrack that covers just about everything, but it all stems from the same root: intangibility. Just like the mushi in the series, the music can't be fully comprehended by mortal senses, but deep down you can feel each track tell a story that's otherworldly but... familiar.

This is minimalistic repetition at its finest. Using leitmotifs to manifest the psychology of character(s) while enhancing the mood of the scene, Shirou Sagisu knows how to get in the viewers' heads without a single bit of dialogue. And he milks it for all its worth.

Same as NGE, just add more classical pieces to the mix. Also, "Komm, süsser Tod", enough said.

For a long-running series, it's fitting the One Piece soundtrack is vast and flows between multiple emotions like the sea that inspired it, sometimes all at once. If you're looking for the perfect score to get you pumped and excited for adventure on the high seas (or road) and experience the world at its most harsh, most pure, most enjoyable, look no further.

I WANNA BE THE VERY BEST

Okay, for reals, this mostly goes for the first series' soundtrack in that it masterfully remixes the game's soundtrack into a gorgeous orchestra (long before Ruby and Sapphire did it, hi-yooo!), and adds its own original pieces into the mix to better help make it its own. This is the epitome of childhood, a time when everything was new and awesome and you just wanted to go on an adventure with magical creatures that could easily kill you and you'd be at your happiest. And let's not forget that "Team Rocket Motto" is one of the most iconic villain themes in television history. I dare you to prove me wrong.

Oh, and the 2.B.A. Master soundtrack was the bomb, and if you had memorized the entire soundtrack as a kid and can still it all by heart, you can consider yourself a Pokémon Master. It was also so good, it went platinum in Canada, Austria, and Switzerland. Seriously.

The soundtrack is unique enough to guarantee its own entry in that both its Japanese and American soundtracks (the score, not the one with the pop songs) have nothing but positives, but no matter how different it feels from the Pokémon TV series (can be much more dark and sinister, justified given Mewtwo's character), it's still ultimately Pokémon. 4KIDS must've been so proud of the original score they made that they reused pieces of it in the TV series and even in Pokémon Puzzle League during the time when they started to slowly drop the anime soundtrack for their own. Same goes for the Japanese OST of the anime, some music that debuted in this movie ended up in the show proper.

However, including this entry was an automatic given because "Tears of Life" is one of the best pieces to come from Pokémon, from 4KIDS period, and not just because it's directly connected to one of Pokémon's most emotional moments. Also reportedly, it brought the Japanese director to tears.

It's not often a soundtrack can haunt you long after its reverberations fade, but there's something eerily beautiful about ambient gothic music, and Shiki embodies that. And not just because it's a show about vampires, and vampires are typically associated with classy gothic music, but it's an existential experience.

This is more for the original visual novel soundtrack than the anime, though the anime rendition puts its own little spin into the tracks. Similar to CLANNAD, ef's soundtrack conveys emotion, but is much more romantic and atmospheric in nature, with an (over)abundance of violins spilling its heart and gutstrings out to the listener.

There's something supernatural afoot with the Sohmas, but the mysticism and fluffy exterior of the music hides a melancholic secret that fills the room. The cherry on top is Ritsuko Okazaki gracing us with her soothing, gentle vocals in both the opening, ending, and insert songs that will wrap your heart up in a warm blanket.

Ya like jazz? Ya like the blues? Ya like the moods and brass solos? Ya like simplistic mood pieces about the ghosts of your past? Yoko Kanno's got you covered in her most acclaimed work to date.

An early work of Yuki Kajiura, this is one of the few times where I can say the anime doesn't entirely do the music justice due to placement of said-tracks in the show itself. It's best to listen to the soundtrack by itself to get a good feel for the atmosphere it actually wanted to present instead of coming off more like the kind of background music you'd hear walking around a mall.

Say it with me:
O quam sancta, quam serena,
Quam benigma, quam amoena,
O castitatis lilium

The use of a haunting Gregorian choir, bells, cello, and the lone somber violin and music box brings the despair and dying inkling of hope to life in one of anime's darkest, melancholic pieces in living memory. There are a couple of tracks that are odd upbeat bangers since there's still some slice-of-life moments to be had, but deep down, no one re this show for that.