This Side of Japan's 50 Favorite Anison of 2024
Our favorite songs by voice actors and anime shows from TOGENASHI TOGEARI, TRUE, Akari Kito and many more
Hi! Welcome to a special feature of This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. We are currently prepping for our year-end coverage, but here’s a fun bonus while you wait. You can check out previous issues here.
Had “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” not been as massive as it had been this year, it's likely that I would not have published this list of my favorite anison. Maybe I was still in my honeymoon phase last year when it comes to releases from the scene by voice actors, franchise-specific units, and acts hit up for tie-ups, but I gathered less candidates for my shortlist than the previous list. Aside from personal tastes and enthusiasm, I found less breakthroughs and recognizable hits in the finalized list. To be fair, it's tough competing with a year that saw “IDOL,” Kessoku Band and “Chu, Tayousei” break into public consciousness. But even the buzzed-about titles in my end result still strikes as more niche considering the supposed broadened popularity of anime this decade.
That said, the dominance of Creepy Nuts in J-pop suggests the story about the year in music is not complete without talking about anime. As borderline exhausting as “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” has become now, its ubiquity is undoubtedly a big headline of 2024. Even if “BBBB” was more a TikTok hit than an anison one, eclipsing the popularity of its home show Mashle: Magic and Muscle, the duo still contributed to a hyped series few seasons later with Dandadan, whose song "Otonoke" and its success worked hand in hand with the show. With a good amount of music from anime taking up the conversation, I figured it might be worth it again to draft up a list in dedication to it.
My number-one pick is pretty niche as it is very meta: it's music by a fictional band from an anime about music, music-making, and the music industry. A perfect hook for a music fan like me who's only casually invested in anime. In fact, the fictional band came along first with a batch of songs long before their home show actually premiered, so the music actually was the primary hook. The chosen song really writes out the show's tones and themes, but it also reminds of how, more and more these days, the TV show seems less of the central work with music as its media offshoot; rather, it's one of the many satellite works branched out of a huge core franchise.
Here are my 50 favorite anison of 2024. What counts as “anison” can be a bit vague, but the rough guide I followed was considering if the song was 1) by a voice actor, either as themselves or a character of a respective show or 2) featured as the opening or ending credit roll. You can check this list as a playlist here.
TOGENASHI TOGEARI - “Wrong World”
Tomori Kusunoki - “MAYBLUES”
Kana Hanazawa - “Love Me”
Suisei Hoshimachi x Kaede Takagi (CV: Saori Hayami) - “Jubilee”
Amano Risa (CV: Maeda Kaori) & Tachibana Mikari (CV: Kito Akari) - “Watch Me”
Liyuu - “Soaring Heart”
KALEIDOSCORE - “Neutral”
Regal Lily - “Twinkling Ash”
Akari Kito - “Yume No Ito”
Maaya Sakamoto - “nina”
Giga & Teddyloid meets Rina Matsuda & Hikaru Morita (Sakurazaka46) - “Pikkaan!”
Divermy - “Dive Out”
Maaya Uchida - “CHAIN”
harmoe - “HyperLoveSong”
NACHERRY - “My dream girls”
Sora Amamiya - “Shoten”
ARCANA PROJECT - “Aire”
Sumire Uesaka - “Dear Panta Rhei”
Yui Ogura - “Hanauranaisuruno”
Aya Uchida - “with me”
Kitri - “Suisou No Buranko”
5yncri5e! - “Jellyfish”
TRUE - “ReCoda”
LiSA - “MAKE A MiRACLE”
Creepy Nuts - “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born”
DIALOGUE+ - “Utopia Gakugairon”
fhana - “Tenshitachi No Uta”
Ai Furihata - “Hohoeminoto”
ZUTOMAYO - “TAIDADA”
AIMI - “Meritocracy”
kana (CV: Aimi Tanaka) - “Just keep looking at me!”
Azusa Tadokoro - “Ivory”
Nonoka Obuchi - “Yume.jpeg”
Himika Akaneya - “Side U”
Rin Kusuru - “Whachane?”
Kohana Lam - “Koishiteru Jibunsura Aiserunda”
SSGIRLS - “Follow Your Arrow”
Ami Maeshima - “Determination”
Nako Misaki - “Chiisana Tsubomi”
Inori Minase - “Fragum”
Kessoku Band - “Doppelganger”
Momo Asakura - “LIBRA”
Shuka Saito - “Hanarenaide”
shallm - “Massakasa Magic!”
Konomi Suzuki - “Hakka”
SoundOrion - “Sunny Canvas”
ano ft. Lilas Ikuta - “Zezezezettai Seiiki”
Kaede Higuchi - “Kyunrious”
Asaka - “Wayawayawa!”
Noko Shikanoko (CV: Megumi Han), Torako Koshi (CV: Saki Fujita), Anko Koshi (CV: Rui Tanabe) & Meme Bashame (CV: Fuka Izumi) - “Shika Iro Days”
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