Music is a big part of modern culture. We love it, we need it, we worship it and those who create it. We all know that the Japanese take their Anime seriously, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the best anime also utilize some of the best music ever written.

I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite anime Original SoundTracks (also known as OSTs). The compliations in this list truly enhance the mood of their accompanying Anime series, though they really can stand alone as well.

Wolf’s Rain
“There’ll be sad songs to make you cry”, as BIlly Ocean sang in his eighties classic (yes, I’m a child of the eighties). That pretty much sums up the Wolf’s Rain soundtrack. It has plenty of beautifully written, haunting tunes that just make you wanna hug somebody. The music in the series really does hit an emotional note with the Wolf’s Rain series, which I included in my list of Anime that (almost) made me cry. Heaven’s Not Enough and Gravity are two songs in particular that are just beautifully solemn. There aren’t just sad songs here though. Tunes like Strangers and Mouth on Fire are seriously upbeat, driven by catchy percussion and a full range of orchestral instruments. One of my favorite tunes is Could you Bite the Hand a solo acoustic guitar performance by Steve Conte. It’s one of the most complex and amazing guitar tunes you’ll ever hear.

Genius composer Yoko Kanno was responsible for the music for the series. She is a god amongst otaku, and she is referenced several times in this list.

Samurai Champloo

Quite different from the Wolf’s Rain soundtrack, Samurai Champloo’s tunes are heavily influenced by House, Hip Hop and Techno. The series itself was meant to have a more “urban” feel to it, and the soundtrack really does help establish that mood. DJ extraordinaire Fat Jon developed many of the tracks. Notable tracks include Sneak Chamber, YOU, Mist, and the beautiful piano-based Mystline. This is a soundtrack you can quite easily find yourself bobbing your head to. If these tracks were released on US radio, they’d instantly displace RnB crap like “My Humps” from the top of the charts (I love you Black Eyed Peas, but seriously….WTF?!?).

Cowboy Bebop
No list of anime soundtracks is complete without mentioning this gem. Well, I should say “gems” because the soundtrack spans a pack of CDs. Every single one of them is worth their weight in gold though.

Most of the tracks fall in what I would call the “Jazz Fusion” genre. It’s an ecletic mix of big band, jazz, and techno in some cases. It’s all beautifully performed by a band called The Seatbelts with a few other artists sprinkled in, including the aforementioned Steve Conte. Once again, ultra-mega-superstar composer Yoko Kanno shows her musical prowess here. Some of my favorite tracks include Green Bird, the legendary song from episode #5, which is sung in a language Yoko Kanno apparently just made up. Other favorites include the Cowboy Bebop theme song Tank!, Mushroom Hunting, and Words that we Couldn’t say where Steve Conte sounds a lot like Sting.

That’s it for now. In Part 2 of this list we’ll visit some other favorites of mine, but you can definitely expect more Yoko Kanno.

Tags for this posts: Anime, Manga, Soundtrack, OST, Samurai Champloo, Yoko Kanno, Wolf’s Rain, Cowboy Bebop

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