Ranking of OPs & EDs 2022
That's right, I'm back on my bullshit. Yet another year has passed, and like last year I'm here to brighten(?) your Christmas Eve with this list of my top 10 favourite anime openings and endings of 2022. Lots of good ones this year, so buckle up!
Top 10 OPs
While it had its shortcomings, some of which made it a surprisingly controversial series, from start to finish Shikimori always looked fantastic, and the OP is no exception. Whether it's a series of photograph-like still images, fluid imaginary sequences with the camera spinning around, or just Shikimori herself looking at Izumi with her hair swaying in the wind (the window's open), the visuals are top-notch all the way through. The energetic song is also a lot of fun, and in particular I love the part where the emphasized syllables in the lyrics spell out "a-i-shi-te-i-ru" while the editing of the OP follows the rhythm. My personal standout sequence, however, would be the one with Shikimori and Kariya meeting on the roof followed by dissolve cuts to Izumi and a clock on the wall. In part because it's a reference to my favourite episode of the series, and in part because I like that style of editing.
LycoReco ended up becoming an unexpected viral hit especially in Japan, and this OP - or rather a certain part of it - is one of the many reasons why. I'm of course talking about the funny shot where Chisato playfully almost-kicks Takina in the ass, only for Takina to respond in full force. It's an amusing visual summary of their character dynamic, which is in many ways the central theme or red string of the entire OP. There's quite a few sequences sprinkled throughout the OP where Chisato and Takina are contrasted - be it with mirrored shots of them running up stairs, being on the other sides of a pillar at a train/subway station, or walking away from each other with each sequentially turning back to look at the other. Of course there's lots and lots of more here too, such as cool action sequences and a charming little fashion show which then neatly transitions to the aforementioned subway station scene. The song is a certified ClariS banger.
While this isn't quite as much of a banger or as visually stylish as Komi's first OP, it's still very good in its own right. The first half's concept of having the class be shooting a music video which Komi stars in is clever and creates a lot of fun blink-and-you-miss-it background moments, and the second half makes up for the loss of that "plot" with many cool-looking and/or thematically appropriate introduction shots for the new characters. The song's build-up towards the end is downright exhilarating.
I fell in love with this song the moment I first heard it, and it's now up there with the first Your Lie in April OP as a song that I can listen to when I'm feeling down and it'll instantly brighten my mood. To say it's energetic would be an understatement. The OP visuals are also beautiful... just ignore that feet shot. You know what I mean.
The second season of everyone's favourite(?) fucked-up fantasy horror ride made an interesting narrative decision to follow two storylines concurrently, both Riko, Reg and Nanachi's current-day adventure and the one of a group of travelers from millennia earlier. The OP reflects that by spending the whole time from the title card to the chorus drop mirroring these two groups and their respective journeys down the Abyss. Following that there's a sequence of rapid dissolve cuts (oooh yeah) previewing various more or less action-y scenes from the season, culminating in that final, heartbreaking moment of Vueko and Faputa hugging each other. (Did I mention that this season is tragic as hell?) Riko Azuna's ED song for Astra: Lost in Space is one of my all time favourites, so I was excited when I heard she would do this OP, and the resulting song does not disappoint.
Kaguya-sama is actually a relatively new series for me, as I only started watching it a few weeks before this 3rd season begun airing. Its openings have been consistently great, and this one is no exception. The song of course is another banger from Masayuki Suzuki, but the visuals here are particularly interesting. This level of playfulness with physical space is not super common in anime OPs, but it does fit well in a series like this where taking the visual conventions of anime to their extreme is a core part of the humor. It's also chock full of foreshadowing for the entire season and especially its finale - there's a good breakdown here (spoiler warning obviously).
Tetsuro Araki might be best-known for directing dark, high-tension action thrillers, but his range is not limited to that. This OP for SpyFam's second half is a good example of that, as it focuses more on the small aspects of the Forger family's daily life while still seamlessly weaving in their secret identities and the overarching espionage plot. And it makes it all look ridiculously good: the autumn leaves flying in the air, the light reflected from metal surfaces, the colder tones of interior spaces contrasted with the warmth of sunlight. It's just beautiful. You know who else is beautiful? Yor Forg--
... *ahem*. Anyways, as I was just saying, it's a fantastic-looking OP, and the song is nice too, both pleasant in its verses and fun in its rhythmically neat chorus.
As expected from a music-themed anime, Bocchi's OP is an excellent rock song, and its lyrics feel like they come straight from the series' socially anxious protagonist's heart. Visually the OP is also quite stylish, be it in the wonderful, surrealistically colored sequence from 0:45 onwards, or the more normal-looking shots that still do lots of fun stuff with the compositing, often integrating the credits in clever ways. (Bocchisaurus just straight-up breaking the sound direction credits apart is one of my favourite instances of that.) The way the OP ends with a hyper-fast shot of a guitar falling to the ground followed by a cut to black never fails to make my heart jump a bit. In a good way.
There's no questioning that Chainsaw Man is the biggest new anime of 2022, and so far it has definitely been delivering on the hype. After he directed the two Jujutsu Kaisen OPs, Shingo Yamashita has become a household name in a way that is unusual for anime OP/ED directors, so him returning to studio MAPPA for CSM was a foregone conclusion. The OP has already been analyzed to death by people far more knowledgeable than me, so let me just say that it slaps. So, so, hard. All-around incredible both visually and musically. And yet, it wasn't enough to claim the number one spot. That went to an another Yamashita work, namely...
This right here is amazing. The sheer visual bravado, with Yamashita's iconic way of maintaining forward momentum between shots using dissolve transitions, and the breathtakingly beautiful way those shots look and move even in isolation, would already make this one of the greats, but when you set it to a Vaundy song that hits the perfect sweet spot between fast-paced and soft and moves forward at that pace for the whole 90 seconds without stopping almost at all, keeping that forward momentum going and completely engrossing the viewer, you get the best OP of the entire year, and a potential contender for the best of the entire decade.
Honorary Mention: Pop Team Epic TV Animation 2nd Series Opening "PSYCHO:LOGY"
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Top 10 EDs
I'm still not sure why I even started watching Engage Kiss, but I don't regret it - the series itself was decent, but the most important thing I gained from it was a new Akari Nanawo song to add to my playlist. It's been a couple of years since Warlords of Sigrfrida but her OP for that series still never fails to get me hyped up. This ED is also quite nice visually, the phone messaging concept is interesting even if I can't read what the messages actually say, and seeing Kisara and Ayano make funny faces at each other while competing over MC-kun (what was his name again?) never gets old. I also like the "virtual world" imagery that culminates with the strings at the end joining and then transitioning to the final shot.
This ED is definitely the most conceptually unique on this list, and also very visually distinctive. Representing Shikimori's constant struggles to keep Izumi safe from literally the entire material plane of existence as a video game is really clever, and the character drawings in transitions to and from that game setting are very cute. Accompanying the Hurray! team's visuals is a song that isn't anything special but still quite a pleasant listen.
I'm not a huge isekai fan, but Bookworm is a really special case and I've highly enjoyed everything that has been animated of it so far. The third season's ED is very thematically appropriate, covering the entire history of information communications from the invention of paper to the digital age, and looks really good while doing it too, featuring a wide range of visual styles and emulating methods such as wood engraving and glass painting. Maaya Sakamoto's song is very nice and manages to live up to season 2's ED, which is no small feat.
Now that I think about it, DIY!! actually has a lot in common with Bookworm. They're both at their core shows about creating things, and creation is also the theme of the visuals of this ED. Although instead of humans creating books or treehouses, it's a cat and a dog creating a guitar while a deeply traumatized pig looks at them from the side. The song, sung by Serufu and Purin's VAs (even the credits call her Purin lol), is super sweet and hearing Purin's VA sing "tonari ni kimi ga iru" while the visuals show the two hand in hand looking over their hometown is just perfection. Your honor, they're in love.
Finally a Sayuri song that doesn't hurt my ears to listen to! Okay, that's maybe being a bit harsh on the mix of Erased's ED song, but I think that I have to be salty about the way Yuki Kajiura's composition was ruined there. Anyways, anyways! Back to anime lesbians! LycoReco's ED doesn't feature nearly as much contrasting between Chisato and Takina as the OP did, but it does have a bit of a fashion show of its own too. The lyrics are reflected surprisingly directly in the visuals, such as the whole early sequence of Takina reading manga, flowers showing up and then that space rocket thing... you can guess twice what the lyrics said at that point. (Worth noting that since the beginning of the ED was always played on top of the episode, the first 12 seconds of the non-credit version don't appear in the series itself.)
This ED consists of only a total of two shots that both use the same layout, but that doesn't make it any less visually interesting - in fact, being able to insert so much detailed, personal movement to each of the characters in those two shots is precisely what makes this ED so impressive. Like the OP, there's quite a few fun blink-and-you-miss-it moments here. The song is fantastic (I see "FantasticYouth" are living up to their name lol), managing to be simultaneously both soothing and uplifting. I'd almost say that it... makes me feel nostalgic for something I haven't experienced myself, if that makes sense. Kinda like a Makoto Shinkai movie.
SpyFam's most popular character by far is of course Anya, so it makes sense for the first ED to be largely focused on her. The visuals really nail the aesthetic of old spy films while also portraying Anya's loneliness and how it disappeared upon her being adopted by Loid. The lyrics expand on that theme even further, especially in the full version, and are definitely up there as my favourite anisong lyrics of the year.
Looking like a motion manga does not make the largely monochromatic ED of Akebi any worse - I'd even say that it makes it better! An honestly underrated part of the series in my opinion is how it portrays that wistful melancholy of the dying countryside and its old wooden schools, and this ED's artstyle fits that aesthetic perfectly. It's like a memory of a time gone by, full of life that no longer is there. But those lives did once burn bright, like azure flames much akin to the color of the sailor uniforms. ...Whoops, I got a bit poetic there. I do love this ED a lot though, and I've listened to the song many, many times during this year, especially before bed.
I've seen many people say that "Akuma no Ko" could've and maybe should've been the final ED of AoT, and while I remain hopeful for Linked Horizon returning one last time, I can definitely see where they're coming from. It feels like a bookend for the first ED of season 1, this time focusing on Eren instead of Mikasa. The artstyle feels like a balance between many different ones we've seen over the course of the series, and the song is a bittersweet ode to freedom that manages to stay true to AoT's complex moral worldview.
1. Bocchi the Rock! ED1-3 "Distortion!!", "Karakara" and "Nani ga Warui"
Yeah, I couldn't pick one. I admit it. When all of the runner-ups are this good, it just isn't possible to pick one that can reign over them. So why not multiple? All of the Bocchi EDs are really good on their own, but together they feel like a whole, and it just isn't possible to separate them. So I picked them all. That is not to say they're undeserving of the number one spot - heavens no! The simplified, chibi-like artstyle might fool you, but these EDs are full of personality, reflecting each of the Kessoku Band members and their struggles, joys, strengths and outlooks on life in the animations and song lyrics. The final episode of the series will come out a few hours after this blog post goes live, and I'm confident that with it, this anime will go down as one of the best of the year, if not all time.
How do you follow up a fantastic rap episode? With a fantastic rap ED, of course! Vercreek's stylish directional debut is a significant departure from Kaguya-sama's usual style, but that's exactly what makes it stand out so well. To put it simply: it goes hard. Both visually and musically. Even if you haven't watching a single second of the anime (you should, it's really good), I still highly recommend checking this ED out just as a cool piece of animation.
Aaand we're done here! You might've noticed the lack of chainsaws in the ED ranking, which is because I decided to give those their own ranking. And the final one isn't out yet, so I can't rank them at the moment. Do look out for the 28th tho ;)
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, pleasant holidays, whichever you celebrate! See you (hopefully) this time next week for the one and only... Ranking of Anime 2022.
Edit 2022-12-28: Chainsaw Man has now finished airing, and I've got my ranking of its EDs here. Please note that like with the top 10 EDs ranking above, I'm ranking these based purely on the TV size songs + animations. If I were to consider only the full size songs, it would look quite different.
12. ED3 "Hawatari 2-Oku Centi" by Maximum the Hormone
11. ED4 "Jouzai" by TOOBOE
10. ED7 "Chu, Tayousei." by ano
9. ED11 "Violence" by Ziyoou-vachi
8. ED6 "Dainou-teki na Rendezvous" by Kanaria
7. ED12 "Fight Song" by Eve
6. ED2 "Zanki" by Zutomayo
5. ED5 "In the Backroom" by Syudou
4. ED10 "DOGLAND" by PEOPLE 1
3. ED8 "first death" by TK from Ling tosite sigure
2. ED1 "Chainsaw Blood" by Vaundy
1. ED9 "Deep down" by Aimer
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