Top 10 best anime songs of 2025

‘saikai’ – Vaundy | The Summer Hikaru Died opening

Premiered: July 6th

Written, composed, and arranged by Vaundy himself, the unsettling yet exhilarating pull of ‘saikai’ locks neatly into the series’ countryside romance gone horror premise. Released digitally on July 13th, its hook carries Vaundy’s youthful rock optimism across the show’s calm summer surface, while the surrounding verses latch onto the story’s simmering dread.

‘Summer Time Ghost’ – WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA | Kowloon Generic Romance opening

Premiered: April 5th

WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA‘s ‘Summer Time Ghost’ draws on retro-futurist pop and early-2000s club music to reflect the sweltering atmosphere of Jun Mayuzuki’s sci-fi romance. Written by Kenmochi Hidefumi during a particularly oppressive Tokyo summer and shaped by imagery from a recent trip to Hong Kong, its hazy electronics, muted grooves, and Utaha’s quickfire bars make it one of the more immediately accessible anime openings of 2025.

‘CASANOVA POSSE’ – ALI | Dr. STONE: Science Future opening

Premiered: January 9th

Opening theme for the first cour of Dr. STONE’s final series, the funk backbone and brassy horn lines of ‘CASANOVA POSSE’ soundtrack Senku and the Kingdom of Science’s voyage to North America. Folding in rock and big-band touches, it’s an on-point introduction to the series’ trans-Pacific push into new territory.

Complementing the group’s multinational identity, ALI described the track as a “jazz trip around the world”, resulting in one of 2025’s bounciest anime openings.

‘INERTIA’ – SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:Rei | TO BE HERO X opening

Premiered: April 6th

Well known for his dramatic orchestral scores across some of the biggest anime of the last two decades, Hiroyuki Sawano’s heavy EDM cut ‘INERTIA’, released under his SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] project, lands squarely within TO BE HERO X’s systemised view of heroism, where power is dictated by public trust rather than virtue.

Fronted by English-language vocals from Newspeak’s Rei and paired with visuals that jump between animation styles, it drops the viewer straight into a darker, more compelling reset for the franchise after the previous entry’s mixed reception.

‘HUGs’ – Paledusk | GACHIAKUTA opening

Premiered: July 6th

For their first anime tie-in, Paledusk went all out. Written at the direct request of GACHIAKUTA creators Kei Urana and Hideyoshi Andou, ‘HUGs’ was built to suit the series’ warped scrap-heap world and its revenge-at-all-costs narrative.

With lyrics by vocalist KAITO and music led by guitarist DAIDAI, the track is unmistakably Paledusk; deliberately unstable, jittery, collision-heavy metalcore that makes no attempt to tone itself down for anime. Released on July 28th as the band’s major label debut, it channels a decade of underground craft into a story about people society has already discarded.

‘Happy Lucky Chappy’ – ano | Takopi’s Original Sin opening

Premiered: June 28th

The whiplash between the childlike innocence of ano’s ‘Happy Lucky Chappy’ and the brutally heavy themes of Takopi’s Original Sin stands as one of the year’s biggest curveballs. Its springy pop instrumental and lyrics circling abandonment and the desperation of wanting to ask for help still stop well short of preparing you for where this six-episode gut-punch ultimately goes.

Written with middle-school feelings in mind, ano designed the track as a form of comfort for people who struggle to say they’re in pain, later appearing on her 2025 album ‘BONE BORN BOMB’. It’s comfort music that knows it might not be enough, which is precisely why it works.

‘Carmine’ – ELLEGARDEN | ONE PIECE opening 28

Premiered: August 10th

For a band as long-established as ELLEGARDEN, it’s surprising that ‘CARMINE’ marks their first anime tie-in. Used as ONE PIECE’s 28th opening, the track sidesteps the series’ usual maximalist instincts and settles into a controlled, guitar-led J-rock groove that suits the heavier atmosphere of the Egghead arc.

Written by frontman and long-time ONE PIECE fan Takeshi Hosomi, who accepted the offer on the spot (“If it’s for ONE PIECE, I’d be happy to”), it’s a clean, confident song from a band with nothing to prove, offering both a strong entry point into a seasoned catalogue and a welcome tonal shift for the series.

‘On The Way’ – AiNA THE END | DAN DA DAN Season 2 opening

Premiered: July 4th

AiNA THE END had tough shoes to fill, stepping up after Creepy Nuts’ chart-topping opener for DAN DA DAN’s first season. Written by AiNA alongside producer Shin Sakiura, ‘On The Way’ is a restless electronic pop track driven by quick-turning arrangements and anchored by her unmistakable husky vocals, mirroring the series’ constant lurch between offbeat comedy and full-tilt yokai-versus-alien action.

Centred on the feeling of being in love while fighting and running to protect something important, its pace and sticky refrains make it a strong successor that managed to avoid direct comparison, while pushing AiNA further into the global spotlight.

‘Fly to the Galaxy!’ – Candies | Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express theme

Premiered: July 3rd

Not every “best of 2025” list makes room for a 1977 idol cut, but Milky☆Subway’s use of Candies ranks among the year’s smartest musical gestures. Originally an album track rather than a single, written at the trio’s peak just months before their sudden disbandment, its disco-inflected groove and wide-eyed romantic lyric, “let’s run off through the galaxy”, land perfectly against the indie CG short’s quirky sci-fi plot.

Even in short bursts each episode, it’s enough to send curious listeners straight down the kayōkyoku rabbit hole. The series has since passed 150 million views, giving the song an unlikely second life in 2025.

With no official single release available, check out solo live footage of Ran Ito — Candies’ former centre vocalist, who returned as a soloist in 2019 — performing the song on her Over the Moon concert tour.

‘IRIS OUT’ – Kenshi Yonezu | Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc theme

Premiered: September 19th

The year’s biggest anison by far, Kenshi Yonezu‘s ‘IRIS OUT’ is dense with design choices, from pounding bass to glitchy techno accents and ragtime-like touches, all aimed at matching Reze Arc’s emotional misreads and violence-as-romance tension.

Yonezu has said he wrote the song while staring at Reze scenes, chasing the misunderstandings at the story’s core and framing the track around “lust”. The result became Japan’s fastest song to surpass 100 million streams, holding No.1 for four consecutive weeks and reaching the Billboard Global 200 Top 5, the highest position ever achieved by a Japanese-language track.

Having already made history earlier in the year with ‘KICK BACK’, the first Japanese-language song to earn RIAA Platinum in the US, ‘IRIS OUT’ emerges as a somehow more unhinged follow-up, not a simple repeat.