Best Anime Opening

The anime opening is a strange format. Roughly ninety seconds, sitting in a slot designed to be skipped, and instead people rewatch it on purpose.

That happens because the OP is doing several jobs at once. It sells a mood before the show has earned one. It hides half the cast in silhouette so a reveal can land twenty episodes later. And it commits to a song that has to survive weekly repetition without wearing out, which is a much harder brief than most singles ever face. The best ones outgrow the series entirely — plenty of people can hum an opening for a show they never watched a single episode of.

The rule is narrow enough to state twice: you are judging the opening, not the show. A masterpiece with a forgettable OP loses to a middling series whose ninety seconds were perfect, and that upset is most of what makes this bracket worth running.

This is by far the largest bracket on the site, over a thousand entries spanning four decades. Running it end to end takes a while, which is why the smaller sizes matter here — a bracket of 32 pulls a spread from across the whole catalogue rather than skimming the famous top of it.