[30-Week Anime] WEEK 6 – Favorite Anime ED Theme Song

This post is an entry to the 30 Week Anime Challenge series of posts. 

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While I’m in it, I’m doing this post in advance. As much as I love OP, I also love listening to many ED of some favorite anime. And I don’t want to only choose one, so I’m going to present you the top five EDs in my iTunes (the same method used by jstorming of Anime Monographia).

Here they are!

RAINBOW by lego big morl

• Unexpectedly and incredibly good. I literally fell in love with this song the first time I heard it in Blade and Soul, which was one of the recent anime I quite enjoyed (mainly due to the deep quotes of that master character who frequently appeared in Alka’s flashbacks) despite the unreasonable plot and unreasonable characters. I really love every instrument in the song. I could totally immerse myself in the instrumentals. Unlike most of the songs rock bands often produce, each of the instruments—drums, guitar, bass—can be neatly distinguished and identified beneath the beautiful melody in this song. It’s not that I don’t give a care for the vocals. In fact, I find the vocalist’s voice really good. Oh, that CG animation in the ED itself? I like it. That choreography and the smoothness of the animation is something that cannot be easily found anywhere else. I honestly found it beautiful.

Oto no Naru Hou e by Goose house

Note: Video and audio were tweaked. Here’s the official and non-studio recording video from Goose house.

• What talented musicians! This is my first Goose house song! I totally love Goose house because of this song! After I knew about them, I discovered that they were previously called Play You house (and they were just a bunch of college students when the project started) and I even watched their old videos in YouTube. They’re such a happy bunch of talented people, that I can’t help but be happy listening to them. Yay for happy vibes!

Song for… by ROOKiEZ is PUNK’D

• ROOKiEZ is PUNK’D is unquestionably one of my top favorite Jrock bands. They won my heart again with the solid violin slow rock intro. The slow pace of the song went along well with the ED animation for BLEACH that showed SOL-like events in a flashback-like style and Rukia’s point of view. Of course, the butterfly—more like, the symbology for Rukia—is present, making my Ichigo X Rukia OTP feels in this ED stronger than ever.

MASK by Aqua Timez

• Now this brings back memories. This was the time when the hate for BLEACH was increasing because of the drop in the quality of the story the manga readers were looking for (anime-only watchers were only swept along the way by the anime and manga readers’ force). Being an admirer of BLEACH since high school, I couldn’t bring myself to easily hate on something I really love. Of course, I found the Fullbringer arc pretty boring, too, but that didn’t stop me from loving BLEACH for what it already was. I enjoyed all the arcs (even the fillers), so this drop in excitement with the arc that followed the height of butterfly Aizen’s arc only made me a bit sad but not angry or hateful at all.
• Okay, let’s go back to the song. I really appreciate the ED animation for this song as it neatly summarized the Fullbringer arc. In short, Ichigo got lost (due to identity crisis) and his world was monochrome, but when he was found and accepted (by his nakama), his world turns colourful again.

Uso by SID

• FMA: Brotherhood’s first ending is just one of the songs in the solid lineup of OP and ED in the anime. Uso is my introductory song to SID’s music. I’m not really a fan of visual kei groups, but I like some songs by these bands. I somehow fancy the vibrato of the vocalists. The ED animation is also one of the most memorable and distinguishable. Aren’t chalk-drawn chibi characters cute?

These are the top 5 anime ED songs in my music library, with play counts from February 2013.