K at the Movies had a great idea – though one that probably cost them a lot of time and effort – to rank the worst anime openings of all time and to collaborate with a large number of bloggers.
The project completed I am now reflecting on the experience of being involved in such a large project.
Admittedly, I actually did keep an audio recording of my reactions while listening to and ranking the majority of the anime OP’s on the list and I intended to put together a podcast with some of the highlights. Turns out, listening to and discussing that many songs left me with a lot of audio and to be honest I haven’t had the time to go through it and put together something cohesive.
I’ll get there.
Anyway, if you didn’t get to see the finished project when it came out early in June you can check it out on K’s blog or on YouTube. I’ll try to embed here and we’ll see if it sticks. But seriously, go visit K’s blog as they put a lot into this project plus have links to all the ‘experts’ who contributed to the voting and ranking of these songs.
100 Worst Anime Openings Of All Time!
Anyway, even though we ended up with a list of the 100 worst anime openings, we actually listened to and ranked about 150 different openings. I ended up breaking the play list into batches because after about thirty openings they all kind of started blending and I found my attention wavering and giving lower scores more from fatigue than actually disliking the song.
While we were allowed to score things using part numbers (so 1.5) I stuck to whole numbers between 1 – 10 because otherwise it may have taken literally all year for me to have gone through this list and actually scored the openings.
Weirdly, I only gave 6 anime openings a score of 1 and looking back now I’m pretty sure all of them deserved it though if I had to personally choose the worst anime opening from the whole list I’d probably give it to Honey and Clover. I actually had to double check that I’d opened the right link because I just couldn’t believe that was the opening.
I was far more generous with scores of 2 with 20 anime openings earning this fairly low mark. Usually that meant I couldn’t stand it but I suspected that someone, somewhere might have appreciated something about the anime opening. For me, the squeakiness of the Squid Girl Opening had me wanting to exit out of that video fast and yet I was committed to listening to the whole song for each of these prior to giving them a ranking.
Unsurprisingly I ranked a lot of the anime openings on the nominated list at 3, 4 or 5 out of 10. It was after all a list of anime that people had suggested were the worst anime opening so it really isn’t surprising that the majority of my scores fell below the half-way mark. Though, that said, a lot of the songs were tolerable even if not actually enjoyable.
K actually calculated each panel members average score and mine came in at 4.3 with a whole pile of decimal places after it.
I did however give two anime openings on this list a perfect 10. They were both anime OP’s I’ve loved forever and I was kind of surprised to see them even nominated for a worst anime opening of all time list (though given some of the discussions that were had in the chat, clearly musical taste is highly subjective).
The first was Elfen Lied. I know it isn’t exactly a boppy dance number but it perfectly fits the anime and it stands out from the crowd. Besides I love creepy horror openings and endings and Elfen Lied kind of fits that group nicely.
The second was Wolf’s Rain which is an anime opening I’ve always loved. From the opening lyrics to the grey visuals and emotional tones, I think it is perfect and it really fits the anime.
That said, I won’t argue with people who don’t like these openings. I’m well aware my musical taste is a bit off to begin with and sometimes odd things catch my attention sometimes while other songs pass almost without notice.
Anyway, I want to thank K at the Movies for inviting me onto the project. I hadn’t done something like that before and I certainly didn’t realise how much of a time commitment it was going to be and I didn’t even have to find the songs or put the video together afterwards. But it was great chatting with the other panellists during the week we were listening as we all kind of scrambled to get finished.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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Karandi James