I know I’m not the only one who enjoys anime ops and eds. This isn’t a cutesy way to start the post, I’m actually sure as in I know it. People constantly post about their favourites.
I recently came across a YouTube video that quizzes you with a series of OP clips. I really had fun with that video despite being devastatingly bad at it. Honestly, about halfway through I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Maybe I don’t actually watch anime…oh I got AoT as well! I have watched ONE anime!
I tried to give myself an excuse by saying that I often skip over OPs when I binge watch shows and I binge most shows. Also I appreciate both OPs and EDs on visuals and narrative integration as much as (if not more than) music. So I might not be as prone to memorize the song without the images. I’d like to say all these things. They’re true. But they don’t excuse my dismal performance. I have often seen the majority of anime featured in those quizzes. Some are very dear to my heart. Yet, the OP didn’t even spark faint recognition. It’s sad.
Not only that but I have an anime music playlist. I listen to it regularly… And that’s when I noticed something weird. Something that’s always been the case but I oddly didn’t connect with the present situation. As a rule, I prefer EDs. I really do. It doesn’t seem that common though. I’m sure I could explain it logically in some way. My brain, having just finished an episode is in a better place to take and appreciate music. Something like that…maybe…. But I honestly don’t know why.
I noticed it years ago when reading posts about bloggers favourite OPs (love those by the way. Great job to all of you who put them together) and when I tried to come up with one, I could only name EDs. That has changed since but I still have a preference.
I’m sure there are plenty of anime fans who enjoy EDs and that everyone has a favourite or 23, it’s just that in my experience, posts, videos and top lists are more often about OPs. Not saying that no one talks about EDs just that you’ll usually get two OP posts for every ED one. Or at least that’s been my experience. Maybe people just skip outros more. Also, why do we even separate the two?
I tried to dig around a bit. I asked Google if people were more likely to enjoy or remember openings of tv shows rather than endings. I got a bunch of studies on psychopaths… I’m a bit worried about Google, guys. This seems like a cry for help. Eventually I found an irrelevant article about Netflix and how binge watching shows gives you a dopamine reward and that’s why you end up watching an entire season of something you find boring in a day or two. I decided to just wildly speculate on that and assume that most English speaking viewers of anime will watch it on a streaming platform and in order to get that sweet sweet dopamine quicker will in fact skip to the next episode\show as soon as the story seems to be at a natural stop point.
Whether we actually “like” the EDs less or more than OPs is less important to whether we remember them. Since I skip OPs as well, it evens out the impact they make on me. Huzzah!
This may be pure bs. (I’m generous, it certainly is) I gave up on researching the topic embarrassingly quickly and just started on the guesswork. Not even particularly educated guesswork. But it *sounds* like it *could* be sort of right. Maybe.
Or maybe it’s just because anime music quiz videos are all 95% OPs! How unfair! I want to fix that. But I’m lazy. I’m not going to make a video. What I can do is a playlist. I’ve actually had a playlist of Japanese music for a very long time. I added some stuff and more importantly I tried to make sure to find original artist performances of the songs.
Basically the playlist below are all anime EDs or OPs. Whenever possible I’ve tried to pick videos that will give you no sign of what anime they belong to. I could have made the playlist on a purely audio platform and saved myself some trouble but I like seeing the videos and I thought maybe some of you would as well.
If you want to play along, you can go through it and see how many you guess. These are 29 full songs so the full playlist is way longer than a normal guessing game and of course you could cheat and Google each song individually. Although Google seems to be going through some stuff right now…. Or you could just read the comments, first one is usually the name of the show. Some of them have the show in the title but I just liked the song too much to leave it out…
I’ve put the answer key on a separate page which I hope will not show up in people’s reader app… If you play along let me know how many you get right! The winner gets EPIC BRAGGING RIGHTS. I have no way of knowing if you lie…
Enjoy!