Five Anime with Sweet Tunes

I thought rather than reviewing anything specific today, I'd just share some of my favourite music from anime I've seen.

1. Samurai Champloo

I've already talked about this one. It's pretty badass. The two songs I've got here are the opening theme and one of the closing tunes. They're both off  "Samurai Champloo Music Record: Departure". The record was produced by Nujabes and Fat Jon in 2004, with one track by MINMI.

Here's the first (which you've seen before): "Battlecry" by Nujabes.

And the second (which you haven't): "Shiki No Uta" by MINMI:

2. Deadman Wonderland

I haven't talked about this one yet, so I'll save any comments about the show itself for later. But the opening theme is pretty good.

The song's called "One Reason" and it's by a specifically put together group calling themselves the Deadman Wonder Band, though they're featuring Fade.

3. Ergo Proxy

Maybe it's because of when I was born, but my favourite music has always been alt-rock, so when I heard the opening theme to Ergo Proxy, a song called "Kiri" by Monoral, off their 2008 album Turbulence, I was pretty impressed.

4. Shakugan no Shana

SnS brings us to the world of Supercell, an 11-member Japanese supergroup that's about as hard to nail down as Jello, so I'll talk about individual members of the band as the folks making the music, but forgive me if I screw it up royally.

The opening theme to Shakugan no Shana is called "Light My Fire", and it's written by Ryo (the head of the band's revolving door of performers) and sung by Kotoko. It was released as a single by Kotoko in November 2011.

5. Guilty Crown

I'll get to all of these anime eventually, and I really enjoyed this one, but there are two more Supercell songs from this one to introduce, written by, well, Supercell in general I think, but I have no idea who within that, maybe the singers, maybe Ryo. First is "My Dearest", sung by Koeda. (To get an idea of how they got vocalists Koeda and Chelly, read this bit of the Supercell Wikipedia Page, it's a little nuts.)

The other one is sung by Chelly, performed under the name Egoist, after a band in the anime (which is a little meta, but still cool), and served as the second opening theme for the series. We'll end there, with "The Everlasting Guilty Crown".

I might do another of these posts eventually, when I've heard enough good stuff to put together a second collection. That's all for now.