My Top 100 Popular Japanese Songs From the 2010s @TopShonenRanks

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] Throughout the past few years of being into J-Pop and anime songs, I’ve found myself looking at what’s popular in Japan on charts like Spotify and iTunes for recommendations, so my pallet of J-Pop/J-Rock is a bit rooted in the mainstream, but I got curious as to how much popular stuff I really like, so I made it a goal to go through different decades of J-Pop’s history by selecting the biggest hits of each year and ranking them, starting with the 2010s as it would get me started with pretty familiar ground. I tried to select at most less than 20 songs per year, but closer to 13-15 songs narrowed down by BillionHits/Billboard rankings, RIAJ status, YouTube views and Spotify streams.

So how was it? Well to be honest there was very few outright bad songs imo, but there was a good portion of songs I was pretty indifferent towards. That being said, very few of those made the top 100 and many of my favorite artists and bands also had songs within this decade, so that’s always fun to see. On top of that, there were some really nice surprises. I will always be more biased towards the 2016-2019 years cuz many of my favorites started to find their footing within these years, but 2012 was surprisingly stacked imo. As of writing the description for this video, I already have the 2000s list ready as well, so I just need to edit that and I’ll try to have it up soon. I will say though while editing this list, I realized there were a few songs that weren’t as big as I thought (Yoru no Odoriko, Zutto, For You, EXCITE, Hello world, Nemurihime, and Memeshikute) so I’ll try to make sure everything in the 2000s list is pretty big. Also I used the iTunes romanization for a lot of the songs so if any of the songs spellings seem weird, that’s why. I tend to use those in case someone finds a song they like and thus they can just type the exact title on Apple Music or Spotify and have it pop up.

People might also be wondering what BillionHits is: basically from the years past 2005, digital music started to become more mainstream in Japan of a way for people to listen to music, so Oricon physical CDs weren’t necessarily the best indicator of popularity like they used to be, so the BillionHits blog created a chart (combining RIAJ digital certifications and Oricon sales) to better depict the popularity of songs from 2006-2009. From 2010-2016 they do this, but only counting digital certifications because idol groups started to flood the market with multiple versions of CDs, so Oricon charts were practically useless. From 2017 onwards, Billboard Year End charts started to become a pretty good indicator of what people were listening to the most in those years. billion-hits.hatenablog.com

updated 2 years ago

My Top 100 Popular Japanese Songs From the 2010s

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-06-03 | Throughout the past few years of being into J-Pop and anime songs, I’ve found myself looking at what’s popular in Japan on charts like Spotify and iTunes for recommendations, so my pallet of J-Pop/J-Rock is a bit rooted in the mainstream, but I got curious as to how much popular stuff I really like, so I made it a goal to go through different decades of J-Pop’s history by selecting the biggest hits of each year and ranking them, starting with the 2010s as it would get me started with pretty familiar ground. I tried to select at most less than 20 songs per year, but closer to 13-15 songs narrowed down by BillionHits/Billboard rankings, RIAJ status, YouTube views and Spotify streams.

So how was it? Well to be honest there was very few outright bad songs imo, but there was a good portion of songs I was pretty indifferent towards. That being said, very few of those made the top 100 and many of my favorite artists and bands also had songs within this decade, so that’s always fun to see. On top of that, there were some really nice surprises. I will always be more biased towards the 2016-2019 years cuz many of my favorites started to find their footing within these years, but 2012 was surprisingly stacked imo. As of writing the description for this video, I already have the 2000s list ready as well, so I just need to edit that and I’ll try to have it up soon. I will say though while editing this list, I realized there were a few songs that weren’t as big as I thought (Yoru no Odoriko, Zutto, For You, EXCITE, Hello world, Nemurihime, and Memeshikute) so I’ll try to make sure everything in the 2000s list is pretty big. Also I used the iTunes romanization for a lot of the songs so if any of the songs spellings seem weird, that’s why. I tend to use those in case someone finds a song they like and thus they can just type the exact title on Apple Music or Spotify and have it pop up.

People might also be wondering what BillionHits is: basically from the years past 2005, digital music started to become more mainstream in Japan of a way for people to listen to music, so Oricon physical CDs weren’t necessarily the best indicator of popularity like they used to be, so the BillionHits blog created a chart (combining RIAJ digital certifications and Oricon sales) to better depict the popularity of songs from 2006-2009. From 2010-2016 they do this, but only counting digital certifications because idol groups started to flood the market with multiple versions of CDs, so Oricon charts were practically useless. From 2017 onwards, Billboard Year End charts started to become a pretty good indicator of what people were listening to the most in those years. billion-hits.hatenablog.com

My Top 60 FLOW Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2026-08-11 | (.5s for covers and alternate versions of songs on the ranking)

My Adobe Premiere subscription from my college may be expiring after I graduate so if this is the end, I wanted to cap things off with an artist ranking of the first Japanese band I ever became a fan of. There really isn’t another band as legendary as FLOW when it comes to their contributions to anime. I first heard them knowingly when getting hyped for Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods back in 2013 (13 years ago!!! I am old lmao) and hearing both their cover of CHA-LA HEAD CHA-LA and their original song HERO made me a fan of them and Japanese music as a whole, and I kept up with their releases ever since. Funnily enough I would then come to find out that wouldn’t have been the first time I heard FLOW. Even before that, there was the video of the eBay song by Awempty, in which DAYS plays in the bloopers section, so that’s something lmao. Obviously they are most known for their iconic songs in Naruto, but I honestly find their Eureka Seven and Code Geass songs to be even better (they did also make the iconic “JIBUN WO” line). And of course Kaze no Uta, Ai Ai Ai, and Steppin’ out are also some of the best anime songs ever in my opinion. While the style of hype anime rock isn’t exclusive to them, the combination of KOHSHI’s sharp vocals and KEIGO’s smoother vocals are just something that no other band can bring and makes them stand out so much.
Listening to their albums from start to finish was an interesting process for sure. From #0 to GAME you can hear their sound getting better and better each release, even if they’re unfortunately not there yet, and then Golden Coast and Ailu are some of their best works, especially Ailu. Aside from those early albums, their sound is honestly fairly consistent and there’s not THAT many songs that I outright hated, but definitely some that I liked more than others. Admittedly there weren’t a ton of huge surprises in terms of songs I never heard before, but Ailu was great and Won’t You Stay from FLOW THE MAX is so good. #5 feels similar to Ailu but not with the same highs, MICROCOSM I found kinda boring outside of the anime songs (which didn’t even fit the electronic vibe of the album imo), BLACK AND WHITE was a solid rock album, and everything from FLOW THE MAX to TRIBALYTHM was pretty damn good with only #10 being a little weaker. Unfortunately though with bands that have been around for this long, they get old and I do think in recent years they have been weaker. There’s still some promise in some of their new tracks like 5TELLA and White Moon, but they’re not giving us anything new and fresh and that’s ok. It is a shame though that Sony has boiled down an anime song legend like them to Isekai slop shows now. Obviously the type of music that’s popular for this generation isn’t exactly FLOW’s type of music, and the new shows will get the popping artists of this generation, but I do wish FLOW at least got treated with a bit more respect than they currently are. They still get tie ins related to Eureka Seven, Code Geass, and Boruto, but they usually are mobile game songs or pachinko and unfortunately nothing for anime series. Still though even if they’re not what they used to be, the impact they’ve left is enough for me, especially for 15 years (2005-2019) they were putting out some of their best work.

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Spring 2026

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2026-07-11 | An overall pretty consistent season. I wouldn’t say there was a lot of super standout tracks, but there was a lot on the same level of good. There’s quite a few banger tracks from anime I’m not watching this season (TBATE, Daemons, Liar Game, Needy Girl Overdose, Eren the Southpaw) but at least there was Akane Banashi as well which I was keeping up with and liked. We also got some curveballs with Utada on Chibi Maruko-chan, MISIA on Detective Conan, and (not an anime song but) a hard rock song from Omoinotake with the guitarist from HIGEDAN. Also 2 pretty good albums from Aooo and DISH// this season which is nice to see. Of course we’ve got more great stuff from the usual artists I expect to see (Yonezu, HIGEDAN, Ryokushaka, ZUTOMAYO, Yorushika, etc.) but two big surprises were KANA-BOON and THREEE collabing to create probably the best song either of them have done in the last few years imo as well as a new band Vivanz Eden. I got recommended this song after seeing an Instagram reel and it’s got some Fujii Kaze esque vibes, similarly to iri’s song this season too. Overall definitely some stuff worth coming back to, even if the ceiling of quality this season isn’t as high as other seasons.

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Winter 2026

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2026-03-27 | I swear these seasons of J-Pop lately have been alternating between underwhelming and way too much good stuff cuz wow is this quite the stacked season compared to fall 2025. Both Yorushika and Rokudenashi had some really good albums this season, and Yorushika especially has been impressing me since around late 2024 with Taiyo with the type of sounds I like to hear from them. On top of that of course you’ve got the heavy hitters from anime like King Gnu, Mrs. GREEN APPLE, HIGEDAN, THE ORAL CIGARETTES, SPYAIR, YOASOBI, even Chanmina making a song that actually grew on me. But along with those there have been a few pleasant surprises. One of the first groups of surprises was the sheer amount of songs that sound like they came from another era. Ken Yokoyama on Golden Kamuy channeling 2000s Naruto vibes, Takanori Nishikawa on Fire Force and FLOW on Gundam capturing the essence of what they were big for in their primes, SUPER BEAVER on Gintama feeling right at home alongside the other songs from that series, Masayuki Suzuki doing Suzuki things on Kaguya-sama as always, you could throw these in a 2000s ranking and I probably wouldn’t bat an eye. The other big surprises came from a J-Pop acts I haven’t been listening to deeply but came out with some bangers: Rikon Densetsu, jo0ji, and M!LK. Rikon Densetsu is becoming one of my favorite up and coming J-Pop acts with their suave style and Suteki is definitely my favorite song they’ve put out so far. Jo0ji did the ED for JJK season 3 as a song dedicated to Yuji and while the TV size version didn’t give me the biggest impression, the full version with the organ section and the final chorus really made it something special for me. And then M!LK… this one is kinda a guilty pleasure, but even though it sounds pretty Johnny’s and this group usually wouldn’t be my thing, something about the energy is just so good. I put them on my fall 2025 ranking as well but their song this season is even better imo.
As for spring 2026, I think it will be nowhere near as stacked as this season, but still interesting. I’m really looking forward to who will be doing the next One Piece OP.

My Top 40 Japanese Songs of Fall 2025

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2026-02-15 | Super late to this, but with work and how packed the current anime season is, I’ve had very little free time to edit videos lmao. This is a weird one though I gotta be honest. What would’ve been a relatively weak season was saved by the RADWIMPS tribute album with acts like MGA, Yorushika, ZUTOMAYO and iri delivering some of their best songs in a while imo alongside some more of their biggest J-Pop/J-Rock acts out there. It’s also a weird season in the sense that I have more chill songs near the top than hype ones as well as being more into EDs this season than OPs. We’ve also got MADKID, Ado, AKASAKI, Yoh Kamiyama and yama all putting out some of their best in a while, a real curveball with Yuki Chiba, and my favorite up and coming J-Pop act in RIKON (or Rikon Densetsu). And of course the masterpiece collaboration between Hikaru Utada and Kenshi Yonezu, two of the best and biggest J-Pop artists collaborating for CSM, one of the best and biggest anime. I actually like this more than IRIS OUT but both are great for their own reasons imo. Really looking forward to making the winter 2026 video cuz there’s a lot I didn’t expect to really mess with that I wanted to highlight.

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Summer 2025

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2025-09-21 | Now THIS is a great season. Everything in the top 50 I like to some extent and everything from White Moon onwards I really like. So many of my favorite artists putting out some of their best in a while and working on anime series that I’ve been really enjoying. Along with some pleasant surprises from some unexpected faces like Paledusk, Seasons for Change and a few others. Really good stuff this season. Short description this time because I’ve been very busy lately but there’s a lot I love this season. Also no JANE DOE because I’m counting that for fall. I’m sure it will be very high up though if not number 1

My Top 50 Japanese Songs from Spring 2025

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2025-06-21 | This season is a weird one. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad one cuz some artists have delivered their best song in the past few years: Omoinotake, back number, Aqua Timez, Yorushika, Suisei Hoshimachi, ZUTOMAYO, yama, BLUE ENCOUNT and RADWIMPS specifically (and UVERworld even though their song here isn’t super high on the ranking). That being said, I feel like the top 10 are the only really amazing songs, though I still go back to a lot of the stuff in the top 25. Regardless, there’s also been a lot of new faces here: BILLY BOO, Aooo, muque, yutori, UshioReira, shallm, RIKON, and others who I’ll be looking forward to seeing what else they release in the future. There’s a lot of unexpected things this season like Fujii Kaze now making a fully English album along with Mrs. GREEN APPLE appearing on Apothecary Diaries, and me actually liking a Hoshimachi Suisei song, but I think the thing that got me the most emotional is Omoinotake channeling their prime again with Apothecary Diaries S2 ED2. And it makes me even more emotional reading the lyrics and seeing how it’s really closely related to Maomao and a certain other character that’s been important this cour. I always love those anime songs where you can really tell they put a lot of effort to integrate their events of the show naturally into a song of theirs.

My Top 20 Bruno Mars Songs (April Fools Day Special)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2025-04-02 | Welp I know I said I wasn't gonna do an April Fool's Day video in my community post, but I managed to find the time to edit the ranking video, so here it is! This is the future of the channel! All Western music from here on out! Lmao jk. Seriously though, even though I mostly listen to Japanese music, there are a few western artists that I really mess with, Bruno Mars being one of them, albeit I got into his stuff a lot later than other people. Tbh I remember hearing songs like Grenade played at grocery stores and I thought they were generic and not my thing (come to find out where it would end up ranking here lmao), but after giving the Silk Sonic album a try, I immediately fell in love with his style and I started to see how some of the bands I listen to like HIGEDAN were influenced by his stuff. Especially with songs like Saigo no Koiwazurai being a Japanese version of Treasure and elements of Runaway Baby being in some of their other stuff. And after actually giving Grenade a full listen, it’s his best work imo. He's mostly been on a hot streak (with APT being a grower for me) until his recent feature which was awful lmao. Still though, I love a lot of his popular stuff and I think his Silk Sonic stuff is up my alley the most, like the whole album is really good.

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Winter 2025

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2025-03-19 | To be honest, this season was quite a ton better than I thought it would be, and there was enough songs that were good enough for a top 50 as opposed to a top 40. I definitely underestimated the growing power of some of the anisongs cuz I didn’t think I’d have sakanaction and ALI in my top 3 along with Plazma in my top 10. Also hadn’t heard much before from Dai Hirai so I’m glad the first anisong I heard from him was really good. Fujii Kaze delivering another great song along with Ado delivering 2 great singles to start the year off compared to last year, Ryokushaka and tuki having great albums, ONE OK ROCK finally delivering a song reminiscent of their prime and Vaundy’s banger Sakamoto Days OP! I wish I had a lot more to say about that one but I feel like the way the anime turned out made the hype of the song kinda wane for me unfortunately, like I was prepared to have it in my top 3, but still it’s pretty damn good.

Also I tried to include the English translations alongside the romaji for songs that are titled that way on iTunes (except Aimyon’s insert for Doraemon cuz the title was just too long to fit lmao)

More honorable mentions:

Coffee and Marshmallow/Ryokuoushoku Shakai
Looking for the Northern Lights/Ryokuoushoku Shakai

My Top 40 Japanese Songs of Fall 2024

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-12-28 | The fall 2024 season! Honestly, this was a really good season to end off the year, but weirdly enough I don’t have a top 50, but instead another top 40 like my spring 2024 video (which honestly wasn’t quite as good as this season). I still say this is a good season though because the peaks are so good. Not only some banger with Creepy Nuts, SIX LOUNGE, THE ORAL CIGARETTES, ZUTOMAYO, HIGEDAN and some big surprises with NOMELON NOLEMON and ZEROBASEONE, but also this guy AKASAKI comes out of nowhere dropping not only one of the biggest Japanese songs of the year but also one of my personal favorites. Da-iCE had a banger Oshi no Ko song as well and the addition of the “Lalalai”s (the performing arts company that Akane is a part of) as a catchy sound is such a nice bonus. YOASOBI also dropped another song that I liked which is always good because they can be a bit of a toss up to me. And then sumika drops a song reminiscent of their prime, and while I liked Unmei, I was a bit worried they were starting to fall off so I’m glad I was mistaken. I also included Ai to U by Mega Shinnosuke and a few AKASAKI songs as decimals because they came out this year but I only found out about them this season.

My Top 50 Popular Japanese Songs From 2020-2024

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-12-19 | The last addition to this series on my channel! I’ve ranked the most popular songs from as far back as 1980 to as current as this year! I was planning to reupload the 2010s video to keep it all nice and consistent on when it was uploaded on my channel, but it only had one mute so I didn’t think it was worth it. So this is it! The current era of J-Pop, and it’s so weird to think it’s already been over 5 years since I really got into the medium of Japanese music as I really got into it around 2018-2019. This era contains the stuff that I was actually in the community for to experience, and so a lot of my bread and butter was in this era, but also it most certainly isn’t a perfect era. I have my gripes with the direction Mrs. GREEN APPLE has been going in after their hiatus (albeit I’m glad to see how big they’ve become) and releases from groups like YOASOBI and Yorushika can range from me not feeling anything to me loving the hell out of them, and Ado’s releases can also be a toss up for me. That being said, some of my favs have also put out their best stuff in these 5 years and also the 2020s have been a major turning point for anime songs, as more popular artists than ever have been involved with anime songs and getting huge hits out of them. Pretty much every big artist besides back number and Fujii Kaze (one day hopefully lmao). And also thankfully Billboard Japan exists which makes it really easy to determine the popularity of certain tracks in their release years, unlike the 2000s and 2010s rankings where I had to use BillionHits to determine popularity. This ranking is a top 50 because it is a half decade, and there are also some songs that I feel like are big and would’ve ranked on here, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so given their place on Billboard Japan’s year end rankings:
Mou Sukoshi Dake/YOASOBI
Tabun/YOASOBI
Ano Yume wo Nazotte/YOASOBI
Fukakouryoku/Vaundy
Napori/Vaundy
Tokyo Flash/Vaundy
Hanauranai/Vaundy
Teenager Forever/King Gnu
Peter Pan/Yuuri
Saikou Toutatsuten/SEKAI NO OWARI
Shinunoga E-wa/Fujii Kaze (this is a gigantic song but mainly outside of Japan)
And I also think it’s too early to include Otonoke (Creepy Nuts) and Bunny Girl (AKASAKI) so those also aren’t here.

So that’s the end of this series! Maybe if I’m still doing rankings by 2030 I’ll post a ranking video of the entire 2020s but who knows what I’ll be doing 5 years from now. I do want to post a fall 2024 ranking video along with a video I’ll probably make like last year posting my top 100 most listened to songs of 2024, and I have a ranking I need to edit on “elitist J-Pop” but I’ll have to see when I get around to that.

My Top 100 Popular Japanese Songs From the 2000s (Reupload)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-12-16 | This is yet another reupload due to copyright blocks in Japan and mutes on the original upload.

Original description:
Throughout the past few years of being into J-Pop and anime songs, I’ve found myself looking at what’s popular in Japan on charts like Spotify and iTunes for recommendations, so my pallet of J-Pop/J-Rock is a bit rooted in the mainstream, but I got curious as to how much popular stuff I really like, so I made it a goal to go through different decades of J-Pop’s history by selecting the biggest hits of each year and ranking them, starting with the 2010s (last video) as it would get me started with pretty familiar ground. I tried to select at most less than 20 songs per year, but closer to 13-15 songs narrowed down by Oricon rankings, RIAJ status, YouTube views and Spotify streams.

So when it came to this year, I found there to be a lot of more boring songs. Barely anything outright bad, but definitely quite a few songs I felt pretty indifferent towards that it made ranking the bottom 10 or so pretty difficult because I wasn’t sure which songs I really liked more, but I think I got it to a point where I’m satisfied. I think a lot of the songs that ranked high were the songs I knew prior, but there were a few really big surprises for me. One being Love Forever (a collab between Miliyah Kato and Shota Shimizu) and the other being pretty much anything by Southern All Stars. I really didn’t think I’d have the taste of a boomer but I can see why they’re one of the most popular and legendary bands within J-Pop now. Even though their music is very old style (especially Sind Bad which wasn’t released in the 2000s but is on this video as it got popular in 2003), it was very refreshing to hear their stuff all throughout this binge of the 2000s decade. I did find out I wasn’t too much of an Ayumi Hamasaki fan. Dearest almost made it, but a few songs just barely edged it out. Kobukuro was also a bit of a let down since I love Summer rain, but Tsubomi is nice and Sakura is good. So I guess for my taste back then, I would’ve been a fan of a lot of the more anime bands (Ikimonogakari, ORANGE RANGE, Sukima Switch, Aqua Timez, UVERworld, FLOW, AKFG, Pornograffitti, etc.) as I still am now and also a big Utada fan and would’ve listened to some of the oldies from time to time.

People might also be wondering what BillionHits is: basically from the years past 2005, digital music started to become more mainstream in Japan of a way for people to listen to music, so Oricon physical CDs weren’t necessarily the best indicator of popularity like they used to be, so the BillionHits blog created a chart (combining RIAJ digital certifications and Oricon sales) to better depict the popularity of songs from 2006-2009. From 2010-2016 they do this, but only counting digital certifications because idol groups started to flood the market with multiple versions of CDs, so Oricon charts were practically useless. From 2017 onwards, Billboard Year End charts started to become a pretty good indicator of what people were listening to the most in those years.
billion-hits.hatenablog.com

My Top 100 Popular Japanese Songs From the 1990s (Reupload)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-12-15 | This is a reupload from a bit ago, as the original had to undergo a lot of mutes after uploading due to copyright blocks.

Throughout the past few years of being into J-Pop and anime songs, I’ve found myself looking at what’s popular in Japan on charts like Spotify and iTunes for recommendations, so my pallet of J-Pop/J-Rock is a bit rooted in the mainstream, but I got curious as to how much popular stuff I really like, so I made it a goal to go through different decades of J-Pop’s history by selecting the biggest hits of each year and ranking them, starting with the 2010s (a few videos ago) as it would get me started with pretty familiar ground. I tried to select at most less than 20 songs per year, but closer to 13-15 songs narrowed down by Oricon rankings, RIAJ status, YouTube views and Spotify streams.

Now this one was really interesting. Unlike the 2010s and 2000s rankings, there are much fewer songs that I really have a prior attachment to from the 90s along with not being as familiar with the artists, so honestly I thought this was going to be the worst of the bunch. Come to find out that after just listening to songs from 1992-1999, there were so many pleasant surprises. I think I have more of an attachment to my favs from the 2010s and 2000s as the style of stuff put out in those decades is more my bread and butter, but the consistency of how much good stuff there is here is insane. 1991 and 1990 had some sleepers again but even those years had some unexpected bangers as well. I used to not really mess with B’z like that, and I still wouldn’t say they’re my favorite band or anything, but hearing their prime (along with a few songs in the 2000s list), I definitely see how many gravitated towards them at the time. Same thing for Every Little Thing, and this ranking continued from the 2000s ranking to solidify myself as a Southern All Stars fan lmao. Along with that, I was not expecting Love Story was Totsuzenni to be such a vibe (which I unfortunately had to cut short for copyright), Yumemiru Shoujo ja Irarenai was one of the most hype songs I’ve heard in a minute, Kuchibiru Kara Biyaku also was unexpectedly hype, Hitomi Sorasanaide was more prime DEEN vibes that I love, and Timing easily was the biggest grower for me on this list. Just so much great stuff. Tho I will say a lot of songs kinda feel like they’re going for that ZARD vibe (I get it from FIELD OF VIEW, DEEN, Every Little Thing, and a few others) and some artists execute it better than others (hence why some are higher than others) but I think it’s all the more reason why Hikaru Utada became such a big artist around the end of the decade. Her style in comparison to a lot of things on the list kinda reminds me of when Fujii Kaze came onto the scene in the past few years with HELP EVER HURT NEVER and showcased a style with western and Japanese elements that was pretty different from anything popular in J-Pop until that point.

I will say unfortunately copyright hit this ranking harder than both the 2010s and the 2000s videos so it took quite a few reuploads, but I was able to make it work with a lot of shortening. Another thing I found out is that (while I’m not a big channel or anything) apparently there’s a good chunk of viewers that are in Japan, and it’s unfortunate because the 2000s ranking has a lot of stuff that blocked that video specifically in Japan, but I tried with this ranking to make it available in Japan as well, and the 2010s ranking happened to not be blocked in Japan either. I may do a separate upload of the 2000s ranking for Japanese viewers as I think it could be a cool nostalgic thing for people to go back to generations of J-Pop that they may have grown up with.

My Top 100 Popular Japanese Songs From the 1980s

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-12-14 | Throughout the past few years of being into J-Pop and anime songs, l've found myself looking at what's popular in Japan on charts like Spotify and iTunes for recommendations, so my pallet of J-Pop/J-Rock is a bit rooted in the mainstream, but I got curious as to how much popular stuff I really like, so I made it a goal to go through different decades of J-Pop's history by selecting the biggest hits of each year and ranking them, starting with the 2010s (a few videos ago) as it would get me started with pretty familiar ground. I tried to select at most less than 20 songs per year, but closer to 13-15 songs narrowed down by Oricon rankings, RIAJ status, YouTube views and Spotify streams.

And this is it! The final video of this ranking series on my channel! (I am not doing 70s J-Pop lmao) This has been such an interesting journey and arguably there’s some songs that I missed but I’ve now listened to a good chunk of the most popular J-Pop songs since 1980. Now how was this decade? Honestly pretty solid. The 80s are definitely a decade that people hold to a high regard in terms of music but would I say the same for specifically Japanese music? This era is definitely quite a bit detached from my bread and butter but there still was a lot of great stuff and I’ve become quite fond of city pop. I listened to Anri’s album Timely for another ranking I have coming up and it has become one of my all time favorite albums. That being said anytime an enka song came up I couldn’t stand it tbh. There was one song actually that, while enka, was still relatively tame and fine but it didn’t make the list (I think it was a Takashi Hosokawa song from 1982), but the rest of the enka stuff really wasn’t for me. It’s interesting to see tho how many artists I used to see as boomer artists now have songs I regularly come back to, like Tatsuro Yamashita with RIDE ON TIME, TUBE with Season in the Sun, Akina Nakamori with Kiita Wing, THE ALFEE with Hoshizora no Distance, hell even Johnny’s groups had some bangers in the 80s. And aside from the enka stuff, most of the stuff I listened to sounded pretty fine and that made making this list a little difficult, but I’m glad I was able to make it work. The one thing I will say is that people talk about how much more soulful music was back in the 80s-90s and while there definitely are some banging soulful tracks like I CAN’T STOP THE LONELINESS and Kiita Wing, I feel like immersing yourself in everything that came out in the decade kinda takes away from that magic when there were similar sounding songs then just as there are now. Unrelated to the songs themselves, but I only used cover art for this ranking as opposed to the MVs because I think most of the songs don’t have regular MVs anyways. Looking at the covers tho, I feel like unfortunately a lot of them look very similar, just like a front profile shot of the singer. It was when I saw the cover for Shanels’ Runaway tho that I realized that unfortunately Masayuki Suzuki did blackface back in the 80s. Really sad to see tbh cuz his songs are pretty good imo, and I can separate the art from the artist, but it still sucks.

Along with this, I will also be reuploading all of my previous videos from this series as there have been a lot of mutes in the current uploads due to copyright, and I will also do a top 50 video for the half decade 2020-2024. I’m also going to soon have a doc that I put in the description with all of the songs I used for each year if anyone cares and also in case there’s any songs that people think I should’ve included that I didn’t

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Summer 2024

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-09-24 | After spring 2024, summer 2024 was actually a good season surprisingly. Usually spring and fall are the stacked ones but summer was pretty consistent that I was fine with a top 50 this time. It also definitely helps that my favorite artist (Kenshi Yonezu) and my favorite band (Official HIGE DANdism) both had an album this season and had some interesting surprises. On top of that I continue to be the biggest glazer from Ryokushaka with all their releases this season being in the top 30 lmao. Still didn’t like Nice Idea from last season so there’s that at least, but they’re just so good. Vaundy also finally appears on MHA for the movie and is the first artist to write and sing more than one song for the series (since he’s a huge fan of the series I’m sure it was awesome for him to get to work on it). And speaking of MHA, Yuuri was not a name I was expecting to see so that was a pleasant surprise along with ZARAME who I had never heard of before, but also did a solid ED. And I obviously gotta talk about the big banger that is DUNK by THE ORAL CIGARETTES and Masato from coldrain. I’m happy to see ORAL is doing rock bangers again since I don’t think the other stuff they were doing really suited them and this one was so good that I had to use it immediately for my Weilin Zhang sakuga MAD. Alongside those, YOASOBI continuing their banger of a year (UNDEAD doesn’t exist lmao) with one of their best songs in a while, Oshi no Ko getting Tatsuya Kitani and an ex-Johnny’s member for some reason while also putting out Kitani’s best anisong in a while, Aimyon also having an album which while not as strong as Yonezu and HIGEDAN still had some great tracks especially Zarame, and Natori and imase on a collab. There were also some artists I didn’t expect to put on this list being iri, Wednesday Campanella and SHOW-WA. The first two I was familiar with already and they just happened to make banger songs while the latter being an idol group based in the Showa era. I found this on one of the Billboard Japan weeks and usually I don’t like these idol groups that just show up pretty high for one week and leave the next. Their sound usually doesn’t appeal to me but hearing this one I thought “woah that’s something a little different! I actually kinda like this!”. And UNO by Yoh Kamiyama is probably the biggest grower of the season for me. At first it just sounds corny and a song that’s trying to become a hit but admittedly it grew on me after multiple listens lmao. Overall a good season for Japanese music.

I’m glad I was able to find time to put this video out, but I can’t deny, college has already been ramping up with work and it’s made it very difficult to put out videos consistently. Tbf this channel has never run on a schedule but it’s definitely gonna take longer for me to put out videos both on this channel and my sakuga MAD channel. There is a video I’ve been planning, which is an elitist J-Pop/J-Rock ranking based on critically acclaimed albums and I’m currently going through YMO, and I still need to get around to Boris, Lamp, Nujabes, Number Girl and maybe a few others, but I do hope I can get that out by the end of the year.

My Top 50 Kenshi Yonezu Songs (2024 Updated)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-08-20 | Kenshi Yonezu is without a doubt my favorite Japanese music artist. I think he is also the first artist I ever made a discography ranking on, and with his new album around the corner (that may have leaked lmao) I think it’s around the time that I should update the list as a few placements have changed, and on top of that, quite a few good new tracks have come out. Having another gigantic hit in Chainsaw Man’s OP is a huge feat, especially being an artist that seemingly peaked in popularity in 2019-2020. And he’s also had the opportunity of being able to work on a mainline Final Fantasy game and a Hayao Miyazaki/Ghibli movie. Genuinely he’s done few things many artists could do and really worked his way up from his vocaloid days to get this far. I still very much respect how he’s very hands on with his approach on pretty much everything as a songwriter, composing the music, writing the lyrics and singing all by himself and then also making his own album art. I think I geeked out about this in the description of my last video, but seriously how does he do it? And his songs are very distinct, like while he’s worked on all these different series, he’s done different things but musically hasn’t lost the aspects of his stuff that makes him unique. It’s an approach that can make fans of those series happy and also fans of his music happy even if they don’t like the series. And he now seems to sport a new look showing both of his eyes compared to before. I’m happy he’s continued to get a lot of recognition and I hope he does get one more big anime hit in the future, but I have no idea what it would be.

My Top 25 frederic Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-08-12 | Sorry for the long wait. I believe someone in one of my previous videos asked me to cover this band and honestly from the stuff I heard from them, I liked their stuff so I figured why not! (Though I’m not necessarily taking all requests but if the band you want happens to be one I’ve been wanting to dive deeper in, I may cover it at some point)
I’ve liked their stuff for years now, really starting to listen to them as a fan with their ANSWER EP and Saika, but for some reason I haven’t really felt a spark to make a video on them until recently with their single CYAN. It was pretty damn good and now felt like the time to do it. The single is still pretty recent as of writing this, but I still haven’t edited my 2000s popular J-Pop list, my spring 2024 J-Pop list or the sakuga MADs I was hoping to get out, so it may not be as recent of a single by the time this video comes out (Edit: it was indeed not as recent lmao). Overall I think frederic is pretty good!

They’re a rock band, but there’s a certain vibe to them that feels unique with the types of sounds they use lending to a more pop rock vibe. It feels very distinct to them since Hitorie did a similar thing with their anisong Kaze Hana and Daytona 520 basically said it was a frederic song lmao. Although when they’re not going for that vibe, I feel like their more rock stuff is reminiscent of UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (another band I made a video on before). I don’t think their discography is as strong as USG but there’s some pretty damn good stuff here. I thought I was going to enjoy their first album the most, but listening to all of the albums, I surprisingly preferred Frederhythm 2 and 3 more, with Frederhythm 3 being my favorite of the three. Now I was gonna make this a top 30, but the more I sat on editing this video, the more I thought the bottom 5 were pretty sleeper so I cut it to 25. I think that’s a big unfortunate thing about their discography in the sense that they have very little outright bad songs but a lot of songs that I just felt indifferent towards, along with some pretty similar songs. Like even though I have Saika and Taika pretty high, they aren’t just similar in name but they might as well be the same song lmaooo. I really like when they can get their energy on tho like pretty much anything I have in the top 5.

I gotta say for artist ranking videos, I’m not sure how often I’m gonna do them in the future because I’m back in college, but I said that last year and I still found the time to make them lmao. I actually do have one list that I need to edit, but I know it’s probably gonna get taken down and that is Tatsuro Yamashita. Idk if I should put his name in the title as a special font or something so YouTube won’t detect it but idk I wanna figure out some way to post it. I kinda wanna get around to Aimyon at some point as well since she has a new album coming soon, and sooner or later I might have to do a revamped Yonezu top 50 as well, especially since the album already leaked. Maybe one of these days I’ll also do an 80s popular J-Pop video and around the end of the year I want to do a top 50 mid decade list for the 2020s, so basically half of what I’ve been doing for all the other decades.

My Top 40 Japanese Songs of Spring 2024

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-06-23 | One of the lists of all time lmao. Nah but for real, this season was weird in retrospect. Even after ranking the songs this list just feels weird to me, even though I think the top 10 is great. Sayonara Mata Itsuka is a great song and one of Yonezu’s best imo since KICK BACK, but as a number 1 it just feels weird. Anyways, quite a few good anisongs this season, some even from artists that I wasn’t even that familiar with. And Kroi is back with another banger, and they had an album this season too which I haven’t gotten around to fully listening to, but I think I just really like their anisongs. Also Kitani giving some more songs similar to his DEMAGOG era is always something I’m happy to see. Kyanai also has been dropping a song every week which has been cool. And Ryokushaka doing an almost enka song and it’s fire? Truly one of the best newer Japanese bands out there imo. Mrs. GREEN APPLE also had quite a lot of stuff this season, but honestly I’ve been kinda mixed on the direction they’re going in. Putting aside the controversy with Columbus, I wanna say they’re turning into more of an idol band than a rock band with how they’re prettying up Ohmori nowadays, but Lilac still felt like that prime MGA style that I love.
So yeah this was a weird season, and it’s even more weird since spring and fall tend to be the more stacked seasons, but I guess we’ll see what happens in summer. I am kinda looking forward to it because both HIGEDAN and Yonezu are finally releasing their next albums so there’s gonna be quite a few new songs from them to look forward to. Other than that though, there’s some good stuff (Da-iCE on Fairy Tail, Ikimonogakari on a P.A. Works show, Kitani and a Johnny’s member on Oshi no Ko) but nothing crazy strong that’s sticking out to me but I hope to be proven wrong.

My Top 25 Omoinotake Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-05-04 | I uploaded this yesterday, but I felt it was a bit premature as the MHA ED hadn't officially released, but now that the full version is out, I can finalize my ranking.

So my next top video was going to be Kroi, but after listening to their stuff, I felt it was a little too early to make a list for them. At some point I feel like I will, but I’m holding off at the moment. However, Omoinotake just did the newest ED for MHA so I figured now was a perfect time make a video on their stuff. I’ve been listening to them for a bit now, basically since COVID, and I got introduced to them from theDX3’s viewer charts that they used to do from around 2020-2022 and that introduced me to a lot of their 2020 stuff. If you’ve seen any of the other ranking videos I’ve done, you’d know that I’m a sucker for upbeat pop rock bands like sumika, Ryokushaka, HIGEDAN, Mrs. GREEN APPLE and more and Omoinotake is definitely one of those as well. Although Omoinotake also has quite a few great chill songs which I think sets them apart. Lately they’ve finally seen a true breakthrough in Japan with their drama theme Ikuokukonen, so I’m curious if they can keep that ball rolling. I imagine Sony’s really trying to push them in the limelight though seeing that they also got a song for MHA. Overall pretty good new band with a lot of songs I’ve been listening to relatively consistently for years now. Only a top 25 though because I mainly wanted to highlight their stronger songs. They have very few songs that I’d say are straight up bad, but especially when it came to some of their really early indie stuff, a lot of it just didn’t leave that big of an impression on me, so I didn’t want to end up including any of those. As for the MHA ED, it’s pretty good. It just unfortunately doesn’t hit that prime Omoinotake sound the same way their drama theme does, but it’s definitely good in its own right.
As for my next video, I’m planning on starting a series where I rank Japan’s biggest hits by decade, starting with the 2010s and going backwards. I already have my list for the 2010s so I just need to edit that together and I can get this ball rolling. There’s a few other artist discography videos I want to get around to eventually and I want to make a spring video. It may be more like my last winter video going through both anime and non anime songs, so I might not do an anime seasonal video for spring, but I don’t want to put anime seasonal videos off the table entirely because sometimes there are particularly stacked seasons that I do want to cover.

My Top 50 Japanese Songs of Winter 2024

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-03-22 | Winter 2024 is finally over so here are my favorite songs from the season! I pretty much counted anything released from December 21st 2023 to March 19 2024 as part of the main list as those are the start and end dates of winter, but I say “pretty much” because some songs were released on the 20th of December and I figured that was basically winter by that point. Also have a few *s on the list, which is an idea I kinda stole from YonGin’s lists, but I’m not quite doing it the same way he did because there were songs that I only found out about during winter, even if they didn’t release during winter, so I counted those as asterisks. Either that or they were like SOULSOUP, Heroine and Sleep Walking Orchestra where they were released on the cusp of winter but just far away enough that they were part of fall.

So yeah this season was pretty dope. Idk if I’d say it was an insanely strong season or anything but some of the anisongs caught me by surprise and I didn’t expect that my favorite song from winter would be by a band I wasn’t all that familiar with. And by the looks of Kroi’s song on Sand Land, they’re already looking to be pretty high up on the spring list as well when I make it. I may make a video on them in the future. Kingdom getting one of its best OPs in a while as well and Ryokushaka with 3 songs in the top 10 is pretty crazy. They also released yet another song which unfortunately isn’t quite my cup of tea but aside from that, they’ve been on fire. And covering an Ikimonogakari song as well is just so dope cuz I kinda considered them this era’s Ikimonogakari and their styles mesh so well together. Also Omoinotake sounds like they’re back to their roots, and not gonna lie the popularity of this song may have affected how much more I started listening to it and how high it ranked on this list lmao. People also said it sounded pretty HIGEDAN and now I can’t unhear it. Yama is also pretty present throughout this list with some yama songs and some BIN songs, and tbh while the yama album was a little disappointing, I did end up enjoying the BIN album and Mood almost ended up making the list as well. Their output for the songs on the list were just so chill. Imase also delivering some bangers, UVER and SPYAIR delivering their signature anime sound, YU-KA with one of the most underrated OPs this season imo, and Creepy Nuts with the biggest surprise of an anime hit. Also in terms of the asterisks, TOMOO got under my radar for having two songs nominated as some of the best songs of 2023 on some Japanese TV show and they ended up being really good. Also Hajime no Ippo ED2 because I’m currently watching Ippo, but the biggest wtf is probably pretty fever. I was debating on doing a video on songs composed by Tomoya Tabuchi (UNISON SQUARE GARDEN) which I don’t think I’ll do, but this song was just too catchy for me not to include on any video lmao. It’s very much like their style on Mr. Andy Party Style and I love it. And lastly not to do with the asterisks but I’ve started to get into SUPER BEAVER. I’ll admit their album selling really damn well gave me a bit of a push to do so, and I won’t necessarily do a video but having binged a few of their various releases, I can see more of their appeal now.

My Top 30 Underrated/Under-Appreciated Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-02-19 | Had to shorten Never Lose and Doubt and Trust due to being blocked. Screw copyright

Really wanted to make a video highlighting some of my favorite OP songs that aren’t usually in the limelight, especially after realizing I like JUST ONE LIFE a lot more than other people do. I went with grouping songs as “underrated”/“under appreciated” by picking any OPs that had less than 4 million streams on Spotify that I like and I filtered out any songs like Bravelue that (even though I love) I thought were still considered a little popular. Unfortunately this meant I had to cut songs that I still think are relatively underappreciated like Kaze no Uta by FLOW, Equal by sumika, some USG OPs, and White Noise and FIRE GROUND by Official HIGE DANdism due to their stream count just being too high. Also I would usually just say “underrated” but I feel like a lot of these songs have fans that love these songs as much as I do, but a lot of people just aren’t aware of the songs themselves so I put under appreciated in the title as well. I wanted to do a video on top 30 underrated EDs as well but over 20 of the 30 EDs were already in my top 100 EDs video, so I didn’t think that would be worth it but if you’re interested in the other songs that would be in that video, they are:
1. Ahiru no Sora ED1
2. Dragon Quest Dai 2022 ED2
3. Dance Dance Danseur ED1
4. Ragna Crimson ED2
5. answer 2022/Takaya Kawasaki
6. Orient ED2 (this song is basically just a shonen version of Eureka by Sukima Switch lmao)
7. Uso/LACCO TOWER
8. Makemagic
9. OPM S2 ED
Most of the songs in this video are either from franchises not popular outside Japan (if anywhere) or they’re from Yugioh lmao. I guess the Yugioh fandom doesn’t overlap as much with people that listen to anime OPs as one would think or it could be because the dub uses completely localized OP songs. It’s a franchise that doesn’t always have the greatest OPs but sometimes they’re really cooking.
I want to at some point do a favorite OP visuals video and maybe and ED visual one as well. I already have a list for the OP one so I just need to edit that together. After that I’m definitely planning to do those top 100 J-Pop hits for different decades (1990s, 2000s, and 2010s are what I’m planning atm).

My Top 50 YOASOBI, ZUTOMAYO, and Yorushika Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-02-07 | Honorable Mentions:
1. Adventure (YOASOBI)
2. Yuusha (YOASOBI)
3. Deep Indigo (Yorushika)
4. Flower and Badger Game (Yorushika)
5. Thoughtcrime (Yorushika)
6. Haruhisagi (Yorushika)
7. Summer Slack (ZUTOMAYO)
8. Blush (ZUTOMAYO)
9. Stay Foolish (ZUTOMAYO)
10. Quilt (ZUTOMAYO)
11. Narenai Serve (ZUTOMAYO)

The 3 big units of this generation of J-Pop! I initially was planning a YOASOBI video around the time that Yuusha came out, but I found myself kinda mixed on making the video as even though I had a lot of good things to say about them, I also had a lot of bad things to say about them, so it felt weird for me to make a video solely dedicated to them. However, in making this video about the three units together, I felt like I could solely focus on their best songs, and I love all the songs in this list, so much so that I had to put some honorable mentions in the description.
I kinda just felt right for me to group these three units together for this video as they kinda blew up around the same time from 2019-2020. Although they do have their own vibes that make them stand out from each other: YOASOBI is definitely more pop focused, ZUTOMAYO is more pop-rock with an emphasis on bass at points, and Yorushika has a lot of acoustic rock and standard rock. My main issue is that in the case of YOASOBI and Yorushika, they do have a lot of same-y songs and it makes binging their songs a little boring after a while (especially with Yorushika). I think some people feel the same about ZUTOMAYO but even tho I do see the similarities in some of their songs now, I still feel like they have that energy that keeps me coming back for more. And even with YOASOBI, I think their releases this past year were a step up from say 2022. Stuff like HEART BEAT, Seventeen and Idol felt like they had enough energy in them that I felt was lacking in most of their 2022 output. Yorushika is the only one that I’m just a bit lukewarm on currently, but Haru (their Frieren OP) is not a bad song imo. It just still feels a far cry away from their Tada Kimi ni Hare days, and their decision to make their last full album “artbook only” was a questionable one to say the least. Regardless though, they still have some really good stuff in their prime and some occasionally great recent releases as well like Shayou and Miyakoochi imo. ZUTOMAYO is definitely my favorite of the bunch though. All three vocalists are pretty recognizable but ACAne’s vocals plus her bombastic compositions are just such an infectious combo that I always keep coming back for more. I feel like a lot of people are familiar with these units already but in case people want album recommendations: I’d recommend THE BOOK 1 for YOASOBI, Gusare for ZUTOMAYO and Makeinu ni Encore wa Iranai for Yorushika.

Gotta be honest, I’m definitely planning more artist ranking videos but I have no idea who I’m planning to prioritize next. I really want to do an updated Yonezu video but I think I should just wait till his next album before I do that. Also wanna wait for Vickeblanka’s next album to do a video on him since Daytona-520 and GYO just did their duo rank on his stuff. For a while I also wanted to do a “My Top Anime Songs By Big Japanese Artists” and I’m not sure if I’m just gonna scrap that or not, but I’ve been more interested in doing a “My Top Hit Songs in Japan” for every decade based on a playlist I put together with a lot of Oricon, RIAJ/BillionHits, and Billboard info (open.spotify.com/playlist/52mualnSG1VTYIyZWN1cZZ?si=hV5VAFrcTvOE2BAvhHXPfQ) and that has anisongs in it that would’ve been in that initial “Top Anime Songs By Big Japanese Artists” video. Also feel free to let me know if there’s any hit songs in Japan you feel should be in the playlist but aren’t. Also kinda wanted to make a “My Top Japanese Songs of January 2024” but it might be a little late for that, so I might just group a ton of songs from end of December-middle of March and say “My Top Japanese Songs of Winter 2024” or something

My Top 20 Winter 2024 Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-01-20 | At last another anime video!
Wow. I thought winter 2024 was gonna be horrible for OPs but boy was I mistaken. It’s kinda crazy seeing the list I had just based on what’s been leaked vs what we have now because it was two completely different lists lmao. Same number 1 but Mashle OP2 didn’t even make top 20 and One Piece was towards the bottom of the list. To have visuals this good that both songs actually grew on me is insane. Also somehow the Mashle OP is doing gangbusters on the charts right now like wow this could be the next Shinunoga E-wa in terms of global popularity. I guess Creepy Nuts + jersey club + a stylish visual with a dance is just an insane combination that worked to finally get Mashle a hit song (which at its state I thought would be impossible). There’s also a few more really big names here as well: BUMP is on Delicious in Dungeon delivering a kinda mystical tune (although with an unfortunately still visual), Uru is on Apothecary Diaries and while it doesn’t hit the same as Ryokushaka’s hype Hana ni Natte, it does its own thing and is still a pretty good song, Yorushika is on Frieren and it’s not one of their best necessarily but it’s still a fine song and fits the vibe, UVERworld is back on Blue Exorcist continuing their streak of bangers with that series, Kroi is a band that I’m just vibing with more and more as they release more anisongs, and YU-KA now has an anime OP with Metallic Rouge delivering one of her best songs. Also I had never heard of DeNeel before but that Kingdom OP is fire.

Also this is based on song only. If we’re talking visuals, One Piece is easily number 1 and Mashle is number 2. There’s a few other really noteworthy visuals as well like Dangers in my Heart and Frieren OP2 but One Piece and Mashle are just unmatched in this category imo

My Top 40+ Tatsuya Kitani, Keina Suda, Kiro Akiyama and Yoh Kamiyama Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-01-15 | I know I said I didn’t wanna do a video on Kiro Akiyama. However, Kitani has an album this season and both Suda and Kamiyama have anime songs this season, so I felt like now was a perfect time to make a video for them, and I felt I couldn’t just not include Akiyama with those three. Usually I like to make these videos about one artist, but given these artists all don’t have huge discographies, I figured it would be good to make a video purely about songs I love from these artists, rather than a top 25 of each artist with some duds towards the end. I initially wanted to make this a top 50 but a lot of songs kinda sounded the same and I didn’t want people to get annoyed by their sound as the video went on, so I kept it to only the songs that were my all time favorites from the artists. I may do this for YOASOBI, Yorushika and ZUTOMAYO (although maybe an actual top 50 for them) as well except if people aren’t a fan of this format. Also not as attached to Eve, Sou, mafumafu, and Amatsuki but if I were to make a video on those artists it would probably be like this as well

These artists all kinda have a similar vibe and on top of that, they have a similar hairstyle to Yonezu (well not Kitani anymore but still lmao). It’s kinda like a pop-rock-electro type beat with each artist having very distinct vocals. Kinda like yama, but I already made a video on them. They tend to work pretty well with anime and so it makes sense that three of these four artists are with Sony which gives out a lot of anime tie ups. Although the one out of the four that isn’t (Suda) happens to have the best anisongs of the bunch imo. Quality over quantity I guess. Kitani has also been making a huge name for himself as well in Japan and in the anime community, and on one hand, I’m glad because I’ve been wanting to see this dude get popular since listening to DEMAGOG, but on the other hand, Ao no Sumika is such a safe song imo so it would be sad if Kitani went towards that direction, but there were at least some bangers in his new album to show that may not be the case. As for Kamiyama, he unfortunately hasn’t been gaining a whole lot of traction, and not all of his singles are as gripping as they used to be imo, but on the bright side, he does have Koimeguri which I think is a banger and shows that he still has that dog in him to make songs like Gunjo and Kiito. Akiyama’s back to making songs, but his reputation seems like it’s been tarnished since his scandal unfortunately. Regardless, all of these guys have honestly made some of my favorite Japanese songs (the top 20 is immaculate) and I’m glad I could show that in the form of this video!

Also I only included songs that were featuring the artist vocally, so no composed songs. Just too much stuff to go through on Kitani’s end between sajou no hana’s discography and his other composed songs. Although I did include 99.9 because Kitani actually has a few small vocal lines in it. I do wish the season 3 OP was MOB CHOIR feat. Tatsuya Kitani so he could’ve had a more vocal role, but regardless I’m happy he was at least a small part of OP2 in my favorite anime.

My Top 100 Most Listened to Songs of 2023

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2024-01-01 | Happy New Year! Wanted to have this uploaded yesterday, but hey January 1st still seems like a fitting time to post this. Listened to a lot of songs this year (although apparently not as many as last year) and most of them are Japanese lmao. Though there were some that I was expecting to be on here that didn't show up, and others that I didn't think I listened to as much. I was 100% sure what my number 1 was though, as I listened to it pretty much all year round. These are some of the songs that I thought would've made the top 100, but didn't:
GOLD/PEOPLE 1 (Ranking of Kings Treasure Chest OP)
Goasette/DISH//
know me.../Kairi Yagi (Undead Unluck ED)
Snowreverse/UNISON SQUARE GARDEN
Zero no Mama de Iraretara/Official HIGE DANdism
Laila/Yuuri
Ureshikute/Ikimonogakari
Ibitsunakokoro/Keina Suda (both the solo version and the one with Muto)
Nostalgia/absolute area (I swear I listened to this a ton and last.fm just didn't get the data or something lmao)
Cranberry to Pancake/Kenshi Yonezu
Siren in the Spy/UNISON SQUARE GARDEN
NEO JAPAN/Vaundy
Lonely in Gorgeous/Tommy heavenly6
Tsuki to Chou/XIIX
Seventeen/YOASOBI
Turquoise/SEKAI NO OWARI
Daite Senorita/Tomohisa Yamashita
Seiza ni Naretara/Kessoku Band
RIDE ON TIME/Tatsuro Yamashita

15 no Yoru by Yuuri definitely would've made it as well but I've been listening to that on YouTube so last.fm didn't count that. I was gonna make a comment about every song on the list, as I have a bit of an attachment to all of them having listened to them a lot, but maybe I'll update the description later with that or something. For now, this caps off 2023 and I hope 2024 is filled with more bangers! Hopefully more discography videos in the future and seasonal anime OP/ED ones when there's a season I feel pretty strongly about

Jujutsu Kaisen Shibuya Arc Sakuga MAD Part 2 - Tokyo Midnight by MY FIRST STORY

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-12-28 | Since my previous Sakuga MAD only covered part of the Shibuya arc, I figured I’d make another one covering the rest. This one took a lot more time than the previous one, but that was because I was making it as the episodes were coming out. Funnily enough I think I’m more satisfied with my first one, which only took me a few hours lmao. Regardless though, as I said before, I’m honestly more of a CSM guy than JJK but I can’t deny that the animation has been insane this season. I wish the staff were able to get a good rest after this but both the CSM movie is in production and they just announced JJK S3… hope for the best for the staff once again. Also I undimmed a lot of the sequences that required it, so I think those turned out really good, but of course there was nothing I could do about the ghosting. Also sorry to the person who asked me to use Neon by ONE OK ROCK for this MAD. I had already been familiar with the song and yes it does have “Shibuya nights” a lot throughout the song, but it felt a little too Panic at the Disco feeling to work with JJK imo. Still a good song but yeah. Although funnily enough the vocalist of MY FIRST STORY is the brother of ONE OK ROCK’s vocalist so that’s pretty cool.

As for my upcoming ranking videos, I might make one on my top 50 most listened to songs of 2023, as that will cover a lot of the anime OPs I really liked this year, and I’m planning some more artist videos as always but I’m not sure who I’m planning on covering next. The winter season of anime OPs looks fine but tbh not a huge selection of wild picks or surprises at the moment so I don’t think I’ll be doing videos for that season but the Delicious in Dungeon, Apothecary Diaries, Frieren and Undead Unluck songs sound pretty nice

My Top 25 Who-ya Extended Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-12-02 | So I think I had Who-ya queued really low, but he has a new anisong out so I feel like it’s now a good time to rank his stuff. And I’ve been doing a lot of pop rock band rankings so this would be something a little different. Goated artist (or band?) and really underrated as well. I’m glad he at least got his time in the shine with Jujutsu Kaisen but it’s a little bit of a shame that it was with a more safe song of his as opposed to something like Wander Wraith. Though tbh a lot of the JJK OPs were pretty safe until King Gnu came with a much more experimental (and imo interesting) song. Anyways, Who-ya Extended has an interesting blend of rock and techno that complements his high vocals really well. It almost gives me a cyberpunk vibe which is why I’d almost just call it cyberpunk rock but regardless, it’s a style that works well with anime like Psycho Pass. I do think Sony did try to promote him well by not only giving him 2 notable anime (Psycho Pass and JJK) but also giving him OP slots on both series, but unfortunately the type of music he makes isn’t something that clicks with the mainstream, so it makes sense that when his OP on Night Head came out, his songs stopped doing as good. I’m guessing Night Head was kinda a test on how well Who-ya could do based on his namesake alone, and because it didn’t do well, he’s now only on EDs and pachinko games (that’s why Die for a life has a Kizumonogatari visual cuz it’s for the pachinko game). It’s just a shame cuz he still makes good stuff imo (albeit maybe a little less consistently), but it is what it is. I recommend checking out either of his albums but I think wyxt is a bit more on the experimental side, so while it does have some great stuff, I think WII is a better album to starting listening to his stuff.

My Top 50 UNISON SQUARE GARDEN Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-11-23 | Didn’t intend to get this out on Thanksgiving but hey, happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate it!

Fantastic band that (in my opinion) has only gotten better with age. I don’t think most of their compositions anything that’s gonna change the game, but they’re executed really well with lots of power when needed. Definitely a band fitting for anime and as such, it makes sense that most of their tie ups have been anime ones. While they may not be the biggest Japanese band, they’re a notable name no doubt and have a really dedicated fanbase in Japan, to the point where their physical CDs still perform relatively well in a time where CDs have been selling less and less and rock bands especially haven’t been selling too hot. They even got their first number 1 album on Oricon this year, but this doesn’t mean they’re at their peak popularity, moreso it was likely a lowkey release week. Like sumika, there’s also not a ton of outright bad songs meaning that I was once again able to make a top 50 consisted completely of songs I like from them but I do think they have more songs that are weak than sumika. Overall though, they may be a bit of a safe band, but their vibe is something I’m always down for and I wouldn’t say every song is necessarily the same either (although there’s definitely some common motifs and themes that you notice when binging all of their stuff). And I do think it’s interesting when they do kinda experiment in stuff like Phantom Joke with multiple key changes throughout, but a lot of their newer songs are pretty clean cut (but not in a bad way necessarily).
Overall I don’t think you can go wrong with recommending USG to a rock fan, and if you want a good album from them, CIDER ROAD is pretty consistent (albeit the birthday song is a little weird lmao) along with Patrick Vegee. In regards to members’ contributions in other projects, I included XIIX’s songs as decimal points, but I chose to not include all of Tomoya Tabuchi’s compositions for other artists because even though stuff like Argonavis’ Hoshi ga Hajimaru sound very USG, I think this video would be three times as long with all of his contributions to LiSA’s discography lmao.
As for upcoming videos, I have a Who-ya Extended video coming up and then hopefully my top 50 OPs of the year as well but just because college work has ramped up to 11, I don’t want to promise that. After that I still want to rank all the artists I have in my queue eventually (ZUTOMAYO, Tatsuro Yamashita, Vickeblanka, FLOW, Aimyon, MY FIRST STORY, Keina Suda, maybe ONE OK ROCK and UVERworld as well) but I don’t have a concrete plan on when I’ll get those videos out. Also King Gnu is copyright blocked for the time being because of their upcoming album but I’m sure it will be back soon after their album drops

My Top 30 Vaundy Songs (Updated)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-11-15 | Just in time for his new album! I’ll be honest I completely forgot until today that his album was this week but thankfully I was able to put this together really quickly compared to other ranking videos. So since my last video what’s changed? Well in the span of a little over a year, Vaundy has dropped 21 songs on his own, composed for quite a few big names in the industry, appeared on Japan’s biggest music show NHK Kohaku bringing his stable hit “Kaiju no Hanauta” to new heights and finally has dropped a second album! This dude is killing it at the moment (although unfortunately he’s not at Kohaku this year :( ) and although in terms of this album, I wasn’t huge on every track on disk 1, there still was a lot to like from him this past year that wasn’t on my previous video, so I figured an update was right to do for his second album. Also wanted to include both Vaundy’s version and Ado’s version of Gyakkou because they’re both great but I do love Ado’s version a smidge more. Also just realized I forgot to include his unreleased song Iseijin, which would make this list, right above Tokimeki. I promise I’ll try to do USG and Who-ya Extended’s rankings soon as well lmao

Jujutsu Kaisen Shibuya Arc Sakuga MAD Part 1 - Doron by King Gnu

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-11-10 | I know I should definitely have waited for the arc to be over, but after that recent episode, I just said screw it I'm too hyped not to do this now lmao. This isn't something I typically do, but I love me some sakuga and I wanted to try this sort of a thing out with my favorite King Gnu song. I'm not even the biggest fan of JJK, I like it but if we're comparing new gen Shonen, I'm more of a Chainsaw Man guy, but I can't deny that the adaptation of JJK season 2 has been super stellar and this last episode made me want to make this MAD. There’s a lot of scenes that I wanted to include but Doron is just a three minute song so I had to cut some stuff based on what I thought worked best with the song. Hoping the best for the staff even though I know the production schedule has been at an all time low.
Still working on the UNISON SQUARE GARDEN ranking but I'll try to have that out soon, and I have a ranking for Who-ya Extended coming up as well as hopefully my 2023 OP ranking as well

My Top 50 Ryokuoushoku Shakai Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-10-22 | The new generation’s Ikimonogakari, and just like them, they’re a great band. And even though they’re a bit of a new band to the scene, they have enough bangers that I thought a top 50 was necessary for them. Similarly to sumika, they definitely excel in bringing uplifting piano rock tracks (albeit with a different flare) and Haruko Nagaya’s emotional vocals complement that so well. She’s probably my favorite female vocalist within the new generation of J-Pop, or at the very least up there with ACAne (ZUTOMAYO), Aimyon, Ikuta Lilas (YOASOBI), and eill. Between making lists for SEKAI NO OWARI, HIGEDAN, sumika Mrs. GREEN APPLE and now Ryokushaka (and USG coming soon too) I think I’m just a sucker for upbeat pop rock bands lmao. Their top 20 is insanely goated imo and they’ve been able to deliver amazing songs on both anime series and dramas. Speaking of which, they just released their new song which is the OP for The Apothecary Diaries, and I’m really happy not only because it’s a banger, but because as soon as the anime was announced, I thought this would be something that they’d fit like a charm. The series also has a good size fanbase in Japan so I hope the song does notably. Also, weirdly enough a good portion of my top tracks are the ones composed by Shingo Anami, but that’s not to discredit Nagaya as a composer though, as she also did my number 3, 6.5, 7, 9, 10 and 13, which are all fantastic. And speaking of the composers, I included all of the work they’ve been involved with in terms of other artists as well, since it still feels very Ryokushaka even when they’re involved with other artists (side note: New Normal was not used in MHA but it sounds so MHA that I couldn’t resist using an MHA visual for it lmao. I was also tempted to put Bleach visuals for merry-go-round, Spy x Family visuals for Korekara no Koto, and Urusei Yatsura visuals for Michi wo Yuke, but I don’t like to add unrelated visuals too often). One last note, some of their B-Sides are really strong, like some of the album only tracks for their self titled album and SINGALONG are a little sleeper, but somehow their coupling tracks for their singles blow those out of the water in a lot of cases. In terms of albums though, I’d definitely recommend pink blue and Actor. I highly recommend them as a great upbeat band to listen to around a sunny day in spring or summer, but even in the winter, tracks like White Rabbit and Don! are such a vibe imo.

My Top 25 Fujii Kaze Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-10-13 | One of the biggest newcomers in J-Pop! Also almost a worldwide phenomenon with Shinunoga E-wa being such a big hit on TikTok. Probably the least "anime" sounding artist I've ever done, but to be honest, I'm kinda surprised Spy x Family didn't get him. His chill style and breathy vocals feel like something that could’ve lived up to Gen Hoshino’s Kigeki. Regardless, Kaze is super consistent in terms of the quality of his tracks, so his style may not be for everyone (especially if you're looking for rock songs like the artists/bands I've made rankings for before, though SAYONARA Baby is rock) but if you vibe with it, you'll probably like most of his stuff. He has this interesting blend of Japanese and western influences that makes his style really stick out within J-Pop artists and HEHN was such a pleasant surprise that it was in my top 3 albums of 2020. I will say though with LASA, I find a lot of the songs to have some kinda voice filter on Kaze that makes his stuff feel even more poppy and HEHN barely has that at all and over half of the top 10 are HEHN songs. I think that's more Yaffle's doing (his producer for a lot of his songs) but either way LASA is still great imo. I originally wanted to put out this video alongside the release of Workin' Hard, but I'm glad I waited because Hana (his new drama theme) just came out and it's such a banger! I hope he continues to perform well on the charts and just deliver bangers. I don't know if he'll ever channel that HEHN energy again, but still the stuff he puts out now is great too.

Now that this video is out, I already have a Ryokushaka list ready, but I'm waiting till Hana ni Natte is out before I post it and I'm also in the process of making a UNISON SQUARE GARDEN list as well, so look forward to those. After those, I'm waiting for Vaundy's next album to come out before I make an updated video on him as well

My Top 25 yama Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-10-03 | Amazing artist. One of my favorite artists within the up and coming J-Pop scene. I would also say they are my favorite female artist within the new J-Pop scene, but they technically haven’t revealed their gender, so I don’t wanna assume anything. Also only a top 25 (technically 30 with BIN) because they’re a relatively new artist compared to others I’ve made a video on. Yama has a lot of composers that they work with, like Nakimushi, ACIDMAN’s composer, and Kujira/WhaleDontSleep, so each song definitely has its own vibe, but at the same time, they all feel very yama. Their vocals are compared to Aimer’s quite a bit, but I think that there’s some unique qualities to yama’s voice that might even rank them above Aimer for me (while Aimer is still very good). I think it’s also pretty cool that they’re thriving a lot from the anime tie ups they’re on. There’s some bands/artists like Novelbright, Macaroni Empitsu and Tani Yuuki that kinda feel like notable names of the new generation of J-Pop but when they’re on an anime, there’s quite a dip how their songs perform, but with yama, it’s almost the opposite. As for BIN, they’re yama’s band under Pony Canyon and I think there’s something different about their work that separates them from yama’s work that I can’t put my finger on, but it’s still yama singing and since I had quite a fun time listening to the COLONY album, I felt it would be right to include BIN too. Definitely recommend the album “the meaning of life” but honestly both albums that have been released so far have some pretty great stuff. Also probably the most random top 3 in the history of making these videos lmao. I heard the chorus of numbers 3 and 2 and thought they were sleeper af until I heard the whole thing and number 1 just grew on me more and more each listen. 9s start at 16
I was hoping to put this video out before I went back to college, but school work kinda swamped my free time. Also want to get my top 25 Fujii Kaze video out soon but we’ll see. After that, it’ll probably be a bit before I put out another one of these cuz of school work, but I do hope to get a few more of these out

Video queue (rough order on what I’m prioritizing)

1. Fujii Kaze
2. Ryokuoushoku Shakai
3. Vaundy (updated, I haven’t felt the need to do a whole updated video of any artist so far but he’s released a lot of singles since that video, so I think it’s necessary)
4. ZUTOMAYO
5. Tatsuro Yamashita
6. Vickeblanka
7. FLOW
8. Aimyon
9. MY FIRST STORY
10. UNISON SQUARE GARDEN
11. Keina Suda
12. Who-ya Extended

My Top 25 King Gnu Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-08-26 | Very strong band. Relatively new band as well so no top 50 on this one but they’re paving the way of the new J-Rock scene along with Official HIGE DANdism and Mrs. GREEN APPLE and I love to see it. Tsuneta’s expressive and thick vocals contrasted with Iguchi’s sorrowful falsetto voice coupled with Tsuneta’s very well produced compositions and Seki’s and Arai’s unique drums and bass and this is what you get. Also one of the few bands where I think their most popular song (in this case Hakujitsu) is one of their best. Although I guess that’s not too uncommon considering my rankings of RPG for SNO, Kyouran Hey Kids for ORAL and Wataridori for Alexandros lmao. Now I put a lot of .5s in here because these were songs either composed by Tsuneta and/or songs with Tsuneta or Iguchi as vocal roles. I could’ve made it a top 50 by including all of Millennium parade and Srv.Vinci in here but with these artist discography rankings, I like to limit it to the songs I like, and I’m not too big on a lot of Millennium parade’s stuff, so I kept it to 25. Also a relatively quick and easy video to put together as I’ve already heard a lot of King Gnu’s discography before wanting to make it, aside from needing to listen to Tokyo Rendez-Vous again, so that’s why I was able to put it out so soon after the [Alexandros] video. Anyways, these guys have been making hit after hit and are now on the new Jujutsu Kaisen OP, SPECIALZ, for the highly anticipated Shibuya arc. And in general they’ve worked on quite a few anime and dramas, with their biggest hit Hakujitsu being a drama theme. I’m interested to see how big SPECIALZ can be though. I know a lot of people either love it or think it’s the absolute worst OP in the franchise but based on my ranking, I’m sure you know which camp I’m in lmao (also I put it on the ranking cuz the full leak is out. Had it just been the PV, I would’ve just waited till next week or not put it at all, hence why the Mystery to Iunakare movie theme isn’t here). I almost want to put these guys over Alexandros in my top 5 because I think Alexandros has more bad songs (if we’re not counting Millennium parade and Srv.Vinci as King Gnu) but at the same time, I think Alexandros’ highs are higher than King Gnu so I think I have to put them right under them at 6th place but still, absolutely fantastic band. The CEREMONY album is what made me really fall in love with them and has a lot of hits from them. It’s weird to say this as the album is only 3 years old, but I have a lot of nostalgia for it, as it was one of my first Japanese albums and one I own on CD, so I’d recommend giving that album a shot to see what they can do.

My Top 50 [Alexandros] Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-08-24 | The final band of my top 5! [Alexandros] has a ton of bangers as well as a vocalist who can pronounce English lyrics pretty well. They excel in hype and uplifting rock tunes, but they manage to do a good job with chill and sad tracks without being too sleeper (nowadays at least). They recently started getting anime songs as well with Senkou being a hit on Gundam in 2021. Unfortunately, while I find that their highs are crazy good with their singles, a lot of their album tracks (at least the ones that weren’t on their compilation album) are honestly pretty inconsistent (more leaning towards not being good) aside from Me No Do Karate. Also Dog 3 felt like something I could imagine in Chainsaw Man so that raised it a few ranks. They’re also definitely a little memey at times but I don’t have a lot of those songs too high or on this list. Still though you can’t go wrong with their singles, so I’d recommend giving their compilation album “Where’s my history?” a shot. The first disk of that album (and Run Away and Starrrrrrr) are what really brought them up to my top 5 Japanese bands of all time. I’d also recommend their anisongs and their album “Me No Do Karate” if you liked what you heard from the compilation album.

HMs
Follow Me
El Camino
Can’t Explain
Aoyama
One Tempo Okureta Monster Ain’t Dead
city
Your Song
Thunder
Spy
You’re So Sweet and I Love You
Dear Enemies
I want u to love me
Ho!
Waterdrop

As for everything else, nothing has changed too much since my video for THE ORAL CIGARETTES. King Gnu might be a bit higher on the priority list after Alexandros cuz of their new Jujutsu Kaisen OP, but they don’t have 50 songs, so it’s either gonna be just the full discography of King Gnu or I can throw in the songs where Daiki Tsuneta and Satoru Iguchi have vocal roles. Though the Tatsuro Yamashita video I was planning might take longer than I thought, as it turns out a lot of the newer remasters and OPUS aren’t very good quality, so I bought a lot of the older printings of the CDs to get the best quality I can for the video. I don’t expect that to come out till maybe the end of the year though.

My Top 50 THE ORAL CIGARETTES Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-07-28 | At one point my favorite band of all time. I say at one point because unfortunately, their latest stuff hasn’t been that great. Regardless though, when it comes to hype rock tunes, there’s no better band than THE ORAL CIGARETTES imo. TAKUYA has such a unique voice and the whole band never fails in the emotion department. They have some banger anisongs as well, with Kyouran Hey Kids being their biggest hit, and I wish they were on more stuff (perhaps Dandadan?). Though they tend to make a lot of songs that sound similar to BLACK MEMORY, but since it’s one of my favorites, it’s not a huge deal to me. I’m just a bit worried about their direction going forward as a band given their new stuff. I feel like both them and UVERworld are going in a more autotuned and sometimes rap direction and I don’t feel like it suits them imo. That’s why I picked now to make the video, but I hope I’m wrong. Regardless, I continue to blast these guys at the gym and I think even if you just listen to anime songs, you’ll probably vibe with these guys. For an album, FIXION is definitely a great one, not just because it has their big hit Kyouran Hey Kids, but it’s probably their most consistent album in my opinion

As for upcoming videos, I’m not really planning to do a summer video because there’s only a few songs I really like from this season with the top OP spot either being taken by Mushoku Tensei S2, Mix S2, or Link Click S2 if we’re counting Chinese anime, and the main ED I’ve been listening to is the new Ghibli song by Kenshi Yonezu. I’m honestly curious as to how the fall season is gonna turn out with Official HIGE DANdism being on hiatus so they’re probably unable to return for Tokyo Revengers (or SxF) and Kenshi Yonezu having just done Ghibli probably makes him unlikely for JJK, but I’m looking forward to SEKAI NO OWARI finally getting another anisong and a shonen one at that.

While not anime related, I do have some more artist videos I want to do: [Alexandros] of course to cap off my top my top 5 rock bands, King Gnu, Ryokuoushoku Shakai, ZUTOMAYO, yama, and Fujii Kaze, with the latter two probably being easier videos to make since I’ve already listened to all of their stuff. There’s one more artist that I didn’t mention though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets taken down, but I wanna check him out: Tatsuro Yamashita. I recently able to import all of his albums to my Spotify via certain means (lmao please Yamashita rethink your views on streaming services) and listening to some of his tracks, I mess with the vibe a lot. It’s something different than I’m used to, but in a good way, and a lot of people have respect for his works despite them being only legally attainable by CD and a few releases on iTunes.

There’s one other ranking that I’ve been working on, but I’m still trying to figure out the right way to approach it: a ranking of anime songs by big artists in Japan. The way I was initially going to do this was to include songs from artists during their prime popularity, so aside from B’z most artists won’t have all their anisongs on the list. But then I started thinking if I should limit it to songs that have been certified Platinum or higher cuz a lot of big artists have anisongs just as B-Side tracks and some of those are certainly better than others. Idk what I’ll end up going with but it’s gonna be a while before that video comes out just because it’s been a doozy, but I’m looking forward to uploading it when it’s ready because it’s made me learn a lot about who was big in the previous generations of J-Pop/J-Rock.

My Top 50 Mrs. GREEN APPLE Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-07-02 | For the most part, great band. They’re currently one of the thriving bands in the J-Pop/J-Rock scene and with their album coming soon, I figured now was the time to make a ranking for them. I found this band out from Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V’s ending song Speaking, and at the time, it definitely stuck out to me, but I didn’t expect them to get this huge. Now they’ve done a few more anisongs (all of which being some of my favorites) and have made a name for themselves through their refreshing pop-rock sound and powerful vocals. You can separate the band’s discography into 2 categories (before the 2020 hiatus and after and I guess also a third being Motoki Ohmori’s solo stuff during the hiatus under his own name and Siip) as the members changed, but Motoki Ohmori continues to go strong with happy hype rock tunes like Watashi wa Saikyou and Enen, dramatic ones like Soranji, and hits like Dance Hall and Que Sera Sera. With all this said though, I don’t think they’re the most consistent band I’ve ranked. I can’t deny they’ve got some stinkers (especially with autotune like wtf is WHOO WHOO WHOO lmao) and some sleepers, but their top 20 is just so strong that I think they were deserving of a video and the top 50 is solid. For those reasons though I can’t put them in my top 5 bands but they’re in my top 10 for sure. I think they definitely deserve to be as big as they are and I hope they continue to deliver some bangers. It was fun to look back at all of their stuff, especially because while editing, I forgot about the In The Morning and Dokokade Hi Wa Noboru coupling tracks (they weren’t on Spotify) and stumbled on a pleasant surprise with Tsukimashitewa which made top 25

Also weird question for anyone reading this but am I the only one who feels like the tracks on the Unity album are mixed weird? It’s something I felt especially with New My Normal and I felt like that would be much higher on the list had it not been for that. Let me know if it’s just a me thing or if you feel the same. I’d recommend their new album ANTENNA (despite releasing the video too early to have any of the new songs) as it’s pretty consistent, as well as their compilation album 5 for a lot of their hits

Honorable mentions:

PRESENT (English Ver.) (I think if the Japanese version came out first, I probably would’ve preferred it, but I got too used to the English version that the Japanese one sounds less natural to me lmao)
Que Sera Sera
Watashi
JOURNEY
Just a Friend
Folktale

Now in terms of ranking videos I want to do, I still have the last band of my top 5, [Alexandros] (and depending on when this video goes up I still might be working on THE ORAL CIGARETTES), that I need to cover, so they’ll probably be next. After them, I kinda want to cover King Gnu and Ryokuoushoku Shakai as they’re not only thriving bands at the moment, but they deliver bangers as well. I don’t know how much attention videos for w.o.d., SIX LOUNGE, DURDN, and PEOPLE 1 would do but I would be down to do those as well. In terms of artists, I also want to cover yama, Fujii Kaze, ZUTOMAYO, and maybe Aimyon, Tatsuya Kitani, Keina Suda and YOASOBI as well. Kiro Akiyama and Yoh Kamiyama would be part of that list too but 1. Kiro Akiyama got caught committing a crime and 2. Yoh Kamiyama’s album sadly didn’t hook me as much as I wanted it to. He’s got some bangers like Kamen, Kiito, Gunjo, YELLOW, and Irokousui but the rest of his stuff doesn’t hit the same for me

My Top 100 Anime Endings of All Time

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-05-07 | Sheesh copyright is a PAIN. I thought TV Tokyo would go crazy but instead Avex blocking Brand New Story? Also should’ve expected Uchiage Hanabi and Aimyon to be issues but it is what it is
Gotta be honest, I haven’t heard every anime ED known to man lmao. What I will say though is that every song on this list, even those towards the bottom, are songs I love and can always come back to. There was even a few that I wanted to put on the list but just didn’t make the cut sadly (also forgot Oddloop by Frederic was a Yamada-kun OVA ED so that would make the list too, I just forgot about it being an anisong). Anyways this is probably going to seem like the most random assortment of EDs to some people but thinking of the EDs that really left an impression on me, whether upon first listen or one that grew on me overtime, this is a good portion of them. Though depending on my mood, my rankings might fluctuate a bit just because they’re all 9s-10s in my opinion. It’s just weird though cuz with a lot of these songs, I didn’t just have some a-ha moment thinking “I’m listening to one of the greatest anime EDs ever made right now” but moreso I just found myself coming back to these songs and before I know it, they become one of my favorite EDs.
Now I wanted to do a top 100 OP list but after trying to organize it, it just felt even more random and all over the place so maybe instead of a top 100 OPs I might do a huge video of my top 5 of every season in the 2000s or something. Hopefully look forward to that at some point but my next planned video is a top 50 of THE ORAL CIGARETTES (only leaving [Alexandros] left for making a ranking of all my top 5 bands)

(Also yeah the thumbnail is kinda clickbait lmao. Chainsaw Man is in the ranking though to be fair but not that specific ED. I just thought it was a cool shot)

(Also yeah the video sources for 93, 74, 68, 59, 53, 45, 38, 35, 31, and 2 are pretty scuffed. I ended up just going with YouTube because I couldn’t find these in the spreadsheet)

My Top 20 Spring 2023 Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-04-15 | A few days later than I wanted to be with this, but I had finals I had to focus on. Anyways now THIS is a real season for 2023. Not to say that there weren’t good songs in winter (White Noise is one of my favorite HIGEDAN songs, the MHA pair was pretty great too, and asmi cooked once again with MAISONdes for Urusei Yatsura) but it definitely felt lacking especially after the stacked fall season. This season though, while it doesn’t necessarily reach fall 2022 highs, there is a lot of good stuff here and the top 5 is immaculate. Quite a few artists we don’t get too often on anisongs as well, like Keina Suda, Ringo Sheena and Yorushika. And big artists too like YOASOBI, millennium parade, milet, sumika and (once again) Ringo Sheena and Yorushika.

Just some quick note: I had to cut Pokémon, Dr. Stone and Mix short because of copyright. Their full versions aren’t out yet so Sony likes to block stuff like that worldwide for the time being :( ). Also this list is purely on song, which is why the Magical Destroyers OP is not on here. If it was purely on visuals that would be number 1, but the song is just not it imo.
Also after this video, I’ve got a few things planned, but I’m honestly not sure when they’ll be up. I’m planning a top 100 EDs of all time video, a top 50 ranking for THE ORAL CIGARETTES, a top 5 OPs of every season from the 2000s up until now, and maybe a spring 2023 ED video as well, so if any of those interest you, look forward to those!

My Top 50 sumika Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-03-02 | I love these guys!! It’s heartbreaking to hear about the passing of their guitarist just recently, and because of that, I went back to all of their previous stuff that I hadn’t heard before. Sumika is a piano rock band with the perfect jams for a clear sunny day, and some real heart-wrenchers as well. There’s one main issue with them though imo and that’s that a lot of their songs have similar sounds and vibes that when you’re binging all of their stuff (like I did) it can get a bit tiring, so I would definitely recommend listening to them in moderation if that makes sense lmao. With such a consistent output though, all the songs on this list are 8+ for me, which I think is a first for any of my ranking videos and why (despite their same-y output at times) they are in my top 5 favorite J-Rock bands. So with that being the case, just because your favorite might not have made the list doesn’t mean I don’t like it and even though some of the popular favorites might not be as high as some people might think they should be, these are all songs I like listening to, especially 18 and above as that’s mostly 9s and above. Rest in peace Junnosuke Kuroda and I wish the best for the rest of the band

Rest of the list for anyone curious:
51. Sara - 8
52. Regret - 8
53. Arles - 8
54. Honne - 8
55. Refrain - 8
56. “Dengonuta” - 8
57. Inazuma - 8
58. Koko Kara ????? - 8
59. Flower - 8
60. FUN - 8
61. Lamp - 8
62. Himitsu - 8
63. Gegen no Tsuki - 8
64. Ghost Writer - 8
65. Innocence - 8
66. No.5 - 8
67. Chocolate - 7.5
68. Jamaica Dynamite - 7.5
69. Soda - 7.5
70. Simple - 7.5
71. Marry Dance - 7.5
72. My Rich Summer Blues - 7.5
73. Culture Shocker - 7.5
74. Night Walker - 7.5
75. Toumei - 7.5
76. Lost Found. - 7.5
77. 4th track on Dress Farm 2020 - 7.5
78. 2nd track on Dress Farm 2020 - 7.5
79. The Flag Song - 7.5
80. New World - 7.5
81. Summer Vacation - 7.5
82. Strawberry Fields - 7.5
83. Maitta - 7.5
84. Twilight - 7.5
85. Iinoni - 7
86. enn - 7
87. 123456 - 7
88. Endroll - 7
89. Hokori - 7
90. Someday - 7
91. Monday - 7
92. Wasuremono - 7
93. KOKYU - 7
94. Happy Birthday - 6.5
95. Akane Iro No Gunjo - 6.5
96. Ashita Harerusa - 6
97. Hakuchuumu - 5.5
98. Hummingbird’s Port - 4
99. Picasso Kara no ??? - 3

Also the Sakamichi clip is from Whisper of the Heart because the song was made with that movie in mind as well as feeling like an anime OP. The clips I used came from this video youtu.be/2IznG18xw0E

My Top 50 Official HIGE DANdism Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2023-01-06 | Another one of my top 3 bands! With them announced to return for Tokyo Revengers season 2, I figured now was a pretty good time to make this video. So much great stuff from them, but I will say 42 and below is kinda sleeper. I did listen to all of their discography to make this video and their earlier stuff is not as consistently good as their current stuff, but there are some bangers especially on MAN IN THE MIRROR (even though you can definitely hear their inspirations of back number and Mr. Children within it). Everything Escaparade onwards though is pretty great for the most part with just a few exceptions. I love how well this band meshes with anime, as they seem to always try new things, depending on the series, while also not compromising how good their songs are usually. They usually stick to an easy to listen to pop sound, but they can go hard on stuff like FIRE GROUND and Cry Baby when they want to.

My Top 40+ Bocchi the Rock Songs in the Manga

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-12-01 | Man J-Rock is great and the amount of references to it in this manga is insane, so I figured I'd do a ranking on it since Bocchi the Rock seems to be getting some popularity from the anime adaptation. This was honestly really fun because there were so many bands I never even gave a shot until now, and while there were definitely ones that I don't think I'll be coming back to, I was pleasantly surprised with a lot of others, whether it be the song choice or the band themselves. I never really wanted to check out CreepHyp because of the vocalist's voice, but in Ito, it works surprisingly well and is a banger. I would say Ziyoou-vachi onwards is the stuff I like and Cody Lee onwards is the stuff I love. Funnily enough I still haven’t read/watched Bocchi the Rock yet but I’m gonna try to give the anime a shot soon.

NOTE: not every title page in Bocchi the Rock is a music reference, so those aren’t included. Also the audio isn’t the best quality for some songs because these were just ripped from the MV uploads on YouTube

Thanks to komaidonomusic for all of the comparison shot on his (or her) blog post! Their link is here and in the comments! http://komaidonomusic.seesaa.net/article/479679839.html?amp=1

My Top 50 Fukase/SEKAI NO OWARI Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-10-27 | These guys might slowly become my favorite band, but at the moment they're definitely in my top 3 with only Official HIGE DANdism and THE ORAL CIGARETTES above them (Maybe lists on them in the future). It's so dope to hear all the different types of music they've put out over the many years they've been in the J-Pop scene. They have songs with a cheery vibe, songs with a mystical vibe, songs with a circus vibe (in a good way), songs with a darker tone, and they've been doing even more different stuff with their English project, End of the World. And even though they're not at their peak popularity anymore, they still continue to put out chart topping hits, like Habit for the xxxHOLiC movie and their 2020 Christmas drama theme, silent. I think they have a few samey sounding songs when you go through their entire discography (especially in the Tree era) and I think their strongest stuff is from 29 onwards, but they've still shown a lot of promise throughout each of their albums and are definitely a band I'd recommend checking out.

Honorable mentions:
Fantasy
Bad Day
Ginga Gai no Akumu
Like a scent
Lost
My Sleeping Beauty

Also Kagerou Fukase version and Dropout would’ve made it on the list but I wanted to keep it to one version of each song

My Top 20 Fall 2022 Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-10-15 | As I said in my v0, this season is great, and since then it got even better. The triumphant return of the biggest artist in Japan (currently) and alongside him 12 other notable artists/bands for the endings on Chainsaw Man. Definitely something I don't think anyone saw coming and I'm so happy they did it this way. Even aside from this though, there's so much to love here that I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of my favorite OPs this year come from this season alone. I feel like since 2019, a lot of seasons haven't quite hit the same aside from maybe winter 2021, and that was because a lot of stuff got pushed to then due to COVID, but fall 2022 is definitely hitting those highs once again

My Top 15 Fall 2022 Anime Openings (v0)

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-09-17 | Now THIS is a good season! I like all of the songs in this list to at least some extent and Chainsaw Man hasn't even been revealed yet. And honestly with YOASOBI, I thought they were starting to fall off after Mister and Sukida (they weren’t bad per-say but they didn’t hit the same for me) but this new OP from them really hits those same highs they were hitting before for me. Just a stacked lineup overall and I'm curious to who they're gonna go with for Chainsaw Man. I don't know if I'll do summer 2022 stuff or spring 2022 stuff since it's kinda late but I will still try for a top 2022 OPs video as well as a top 2022 EDs one

My Top 20 Spring 2022 Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-04-10 | This season is really interesting. Official HIGE DANdism, UNISON SQUARE GARDEN and Masayuki Suzuki are back in anime, Alexandros gets their first TV anime tie up, and PelleK is on an official anime opening? Not just that but 2 popular shows this season didn’t even make my top 20 (Shikimori and Komi Season 2). They weren’t bad but as I listened to all of the OPs, they kept getting lower and lower on the list and eventually leaving the top 20 (Also a shame that they gave the OP to a Columbia artist this time rather than a Universal one). The top 15 is especially strong this time around compared to winter which had some high highs, but only the top 5 or so really stood out to me. Also some series don’t have OP animations yet but their songs are out in full, including Spy x Family, Ao Ashi, Yugioh and Kunoichi. And it wouldn’t be a TSR list if there weren’t songs being judged based on previews lmao (those being Summer Time Rendering and Bubble). Unless the verses for Bubble suck balls and/or the Hoshi ga Oyogu verses are absolute ear candy, I don’t think I’ll be changing their placements. Also the Mixed Nuts rank is based on listening to the full radio rip as well, not just the PV snippet

Also quick end note: some of Sony's anime songs are not released yet (Dance Dance Danseur, Gundam IBO, A Couple of Cuckoos and Kaguya-sama), meaning I had to shorten them to avoid getting the video world blocked.

My Top 20+ Vaundy Songs

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-03-28 | Vaundy: an up and coming J-Pop artist with an arsenal.

This guy has been a monster on streaming platforms right from the get go, and (imo) deservingly so. Distinct vocals that feel perfect for the generation and fit so many genres like a charm, whether it be pop, rock, jazz, R&B, etc. You go from stuff like Odoriko to something like Hadaka no Yusha to something like Tokyo Flash to something like napori and they all have completely different vibes to them, yet they all have a certain feel you get from only a Vaundy song. There’s a lot of similarities in each song but he masks them really well by trying different styles while also constantly dropping bangers (Something that I see other artists failing to do, like YOASOBI, who I also really like, but I feel like as of lately they’re just putting out so many songs while using a lot of similar elements from previous songs that it doesn’t create that atmosphere of “this is something brand new and original”). The top 10 is absolutely fantastic for such a new artist and I like everything within the top 20. Overall, great artist so far, and if he can continue this for the coming years, I can see him being one of my favorites and also someone who has made their mark in this age of J-Pop.

(Also if you want to see another Vaundy list, GYO also just made one here: youtu.be/dQjzw9Tpk6o)

(Also yeah the thumbnail is kinda clickbaity lmao. He isn’t confirmed for the Kaiju No.8 anime but there is a MAD for Kaiju no Hanauta with Kaiju No.8 visuals, so I figured I’d put it in the thumbnail since he hasn’t worked on any other anime.)

My Top 20 Winter 2022 Anime Endings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-01-21 | Good season for EDs. Even though the movies are the main highlight for me, there's some nice stuff here imo. Some songs are cut super short due to copyright and Mafumafu and SHE'S are using previews.

My Top 20 Winter 2022 Anime Openings

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2022-01-09 | Not a bad season. After the top 10 it's not too great but the top 5 is really dang good. Also Novelbright, Nagi Yanagi, Makoto Furukawa and Little Glee Monster are based on previews. Reuploaded just to fix some quality issues (as I say that I notice now that Papersky has a space in the wrong area lmao). Also some songs are cut in pieces due to copyright

My Top 50 Anime Endings of 2021

Harry [Top Shonen Ranks] 2021-11-01 | Happy Halloween! This was quite the year for EDs. Not hitting as high of the highs in 2021 OPs but very strong all around. Lots of surprises all around (and then UVER and FLOW kinda underperforming in terms of how good their EDs were but hey, they were still good). Lots of songs that grew on me overtime as well like Tokyo Wonder and Uso ja Nai. Also I included movie songs here, and with that I included Universe even though the Doraemon movie hasn't released yet since it was used in one episode of the TV anime. I also included U from Belle but I put it as a .5, since its a movie theme but it ended up being an OP and I didn't include it in the OPs list