Top 10 Worst Anime Intros

Top 10 Worst Anime Intros

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There are anime intros so good you watch them every time for every episode, aaaand then there’s these. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we are counting down our picks for the Top 10 Worst Anime Intros. For this list we are counting down opening themes for anime that are annoying to listen to, painful to the ear-balls or just straight up bad. Whether its terrible song, a good song that doesn’t match the series in question or pointless non-sensical visuals, these entries are just impossible to enjoy.

Kicking off our list is a song that in no way gets us geared up for giant fighting robots. Most mecha anime start with some sort of heart pounding or at least fast paced song to get you ready for the action, but this “Wings of Words” is the complete opposite. It’s too calm and the vocals sound like they’re having a hard time hitting higher notes. This would have been much more well suits as an outro theme, but either way, the visuals in no way compliment the song’s tone.

It’s not uncommon in anime for the main character to sing their own theme song. Hisako Kanemoto, who plays the titular Squid Girl, is joined by the band Ultra-Prism, to give us this overly cutesy song introducing us to the series. Despite what you may think of the show, this song isn’t one of its highlights. A rather short intro that feels like it goes on forever, the creators even felt the need to throw in a barrage of disconnected clichés towards the end for absolutely no reason.

Yep, we’re already on our second irritatingly cutesy song. Now just because something is cute doesn’t mean it's bad, but the voices shouldn’t be loud and annoying, which is the case for this opening. Being the spin-off of the popular “Lucky Star” you would think that the song would try and capture the magic of the original series, and to be fair the electronic beat is pretty catchy, but of course the vocals that sound like whiny children is what pushes us away.

It’s always frustrating when a great series has a lack-luster opening, and the intro for Tokyo Ghoul’s 2nd series, Root-A is a perfect example. Talk about lazy, not only does the song itself feel like the vocalist is out of sync with the instrumentals and is just kind of… there. The visuals are also so bare-bones it feels like this intro was made on a tight budget. It’s hard to imagine how something could be so oppressively surreal and pretentiously symbolic while still being so simple and uninteresting. It’s a metamorphosis and your sad, we get it!

The first couple seconds of this song starts off promising enough, giving us a supernatural tone to this anime, but about half way through we completely lose interest as the pace just falls apart. It starts to feel really out of tune as the vocals struggle to either stretch out or cram lyrics in to match the melody. Like our last entry, the visuals are pretty lazy, especially as we transition from one image to the next. “Shigofumi: Letters from the Departed” may not be one of the more well known series on this list, and with a theme song like this, it’s not hard to see why some people were turned away from this otherwise engaging series.

#5: “Black and White” by Erin Bowman and Joe Phillips “Pokemon: Black and White” (2010-11)

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With each new Pokemon generation comes its own series. While none of the other theme songs can compare to the original, “Black and White” for “Pokemon Black and White” makes it feel as if they aren’t even trying anymore. Is that CGI, really? And you thought the intro for “Pokemon Diamond and Pearl” was bad. As with nearly every Pokemon song, it talks about empowerment and journeying to the unknown, only this time the song isn’t really motivating us for any kind of adventure. It is however, mercifully short.

You would think a show that has such an interesting take on vampires would have a much more original opening. Alas not, this intro is as by-the-book cookie-cutter as it gets. While the song itself is a decent J-Pop number by Nana Mizuki, we really get no sense of what to expect from the series. A barrage of characters via quick cuts, fan service, cake, cream, maybe some innuendo? What the hell is going on? The Rosario + Vampire is so much better than this.

Naruto is one of those series that has been around so long, it has some really great openings, like Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s “Haruka Kanata”. Fast, fun, well paced and action packed, this one a song that gets you ready for a shonen series. Can we just listen to this one some more please? “Sadness into Kindness” on the other hand, can’t decide if it wasn’t to be fun and adventurous or slow and sombre, ending up a really incongruous mix of the two. This was really not a great way to welcome fans back to the series.

4Kids is remembered, often not very fondly for not so much as localizing anime, but westernizing them. One of their biggest crimes was this cring-worthy opening for their version of “One Piece”. Starting off with a narraited explanation of the shows plot, every single time, we are also forced to hear a lackluster rap give biographies of all the major characters. Rather than play a song that gets the audience pumped for the series, the opening is hijacked by plot exposition disguised as what corporate suits think the kids are into these days. Before we plug our ears, so we don’t have to listen to our top pick, here are a few dishonorable mentions. “Tell Me Why” by PENPALS “Berserk” (1997) "Kitei no Tsurugi” by Ali Project “Linebarrels of Iron” (2008-09)

Ok who honestly thought that polka and anime cuteness would be a good combination? While the series is about Ninjas and Assassins attending high school and is admittedly for a younger audience, there is just no excise for this awfulness. There’s too much noise, little of which can actually be called a song, the visuals do absolutely nothing to redeem the intro what so ever. At least the song title is accurate, please kill us before we have to listen to more of this. Since there are plenty of good and bad anime theme songs out there, chances are we missed something you would love to tear into. Let us know in the comments and for more gratifying top 10s published everyday, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.