Anime composer

An anime composer is a composer who mainly composes music for anime productions.

There have been many anime composers over the years, and while anime soundtracks are big business in Japan, there have been few notable, long-term composers of anime music before the 2000s.

Notable figures

One notable exception is Joe Hisaishi, best known for his collaboration with Hayao Miyazaki beginning in the mid-1980s. Since most of Hisaishi's anime music has been for Miyazaki, his influence has been somewhat muted compared to later composers.

Another early, notable anime composer was Shigeaki Saegusa, composer for Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam in 1985. He was a classical composer who produced a symphonic score for this series, and the series went on to be extremely popular (one of the foundation successes of the Gundam franchise). While Saegusa produced only a little more anime music, his Zeta Gundam soundtrack is still considered a classic among otaku. For many of them, Saegusa and Hisaishi were the first to inspire the idea that anime music could be of very high quality.

Meanwhile, Kenji Kawai was producing scores for series such as Blue Seed, Patlabor, and Ranma 1/2. While few of these scores were groundbreaking, they were almost all solid works of music. Kawai was arguably the first composer to produce a number of anime soundtracks and achieve at least a modicum of popularity within the otaku community while doing so.

During the 1990s, Yoko Kanno garnered some interest with her soundtracks for Escaflowne and Macross Plus, but it was her soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop in 1998 that made her extremely popular among anime fans.

Meanwhile, Taku Iwasaki (the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs, Witch Hunter Robin, Read or Die TV) and Yuki Kajiura (Noir, .hack//SIGN, Kara no Kyoukai) have both produced several well-respected soundtracks in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Another well-known composer, Toshio Masuda (composer), has composed music for anime such as UFO Baby (2000) and Naruto, both of which are popular shows.

Shinji Miyazaki is another popular composer mainly known writing and arranging music for the anime Pokemon.

The famous anime Fullmetal Alchemist had music written by the well-known composer Michiru Oshima while the equally famous second production known as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood had music written by the notable composer Akira Senju.

Even Shiro Sagisu likes to do his anime music, which has high-quality production and great sound.

Satoru Kosaki is another popular composer mainly known writing and arranging music for the anime Lucky Star & The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Goro Omi is another popular composer mainly known writing and arranging science-fiction anime, which is his specialty due to his dark electronic music. He is also best known for the background music in both the Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin and Tonde Buurin TV shows.

Motoyoshi Iwasaki's music style is also dark electronic music, although he is best known for his music from the Hamtaro TV show.

While he is mainly known for composing background music outside of anime, the music for the Blood+ TV show is composed by prolific non-anime composer Mark Mancina.

Kohei Tanaka, a prolific anime and video game composer, is famous for being the music composer for One Piece and 21-emon.

Takanori Arisawa, Udi Harpaz, & Amotz Plessner are other popular composers mainly known writing and arranging music for the anime Digimon.

Toshihiko Sahashi is another popular composer mainly known writing and arranging music for the anime Steel Angel Kurumi.

Kow Otani's Oriental Light and Magic anime music mainly comes from Deltora Quest.

While not a music composer, Rica Matsumoto is a widely-heard J-Pop singer and prolific seiyuu best known for doing the voice of Ash Ketchum from the anime Pokemon and Yami Bakura from the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV show.

Shunsuke Kikuchi is the music composer for Doraemon & Dragon Ball Z TV shows.

Shinkichi Mitsumune, because of his cinematic scoring and orchestration with big Hollywood sound, is the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV show's music composer.

Kan Sawada is another popular composer mainly known writing and arranging music for the anime Doraemon.