Best Anime Ending: The Credits Song You Never Skipped

The ending theme gets the worst seat in the episode. It arrives right after the cliffhanger, when the next-episode button is already counting down, and most viewers have learned to reach for it. The endings in this bracket are the ones people let run anyway.

Where an opening has to hype a show, an ending gets to sit with it. That freedom is why the slot collects slower songs, odder songs, and the occasional track that has nothing to do with the series at all. Cowboy Bebop closed on The Real Folk Blues; Chainsaw Man went further and gave each of its first twelve episodes a different ending song, and all twelve are here.

The pool is every ending from the most-watched series, so long-running shows bring a whole run of them and can end up facing themselves in later rounds. With close to twelve hundred entries, the smaller sizes are the realistic way in — a bracket of 32 draws from the full list rather than the famous few.

Vote for the song, not the show. A series you dropped can still own the ending you kept on repeat.