Best Opening Animation and Music: Kyousogiga
Runner-up: Flowers of Evil
Here was a category that had little consensus, understandable as everyone has different tastes in music and what constitutes the best opening. Because of the diversity of preferences, the winner is more a winner by default than a firm vote of confidence as more people placed the OP to Kyousogiga on their ranked lists than for any other show. Flowers of Evil was cited the next highest amount of times. Both openings, however, failed to get a single first place vote from any member of our panel. First place votes went to a variety of contenders: Gatchaman Crowds, Silver Spoon, The Eccentric Family, Oreshura, Attack on Titan OP1, and A Certain Scientific Railgun S OP1 each got first place votes from our staff.
Best Ending Animation and Music: Flowers of Evil
Runners-up: Samurai Flamenco, Miss Monochrome
There was greater agreement over which show had the best blend of visuals and music for its ending sequence. Again, there was a great array of contenders put forth, including top marks for the endings to Samurai Flamenco, Miss Monochrome, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Oreshura, and Little Busters Refrain ED 3. Despite its lack of visual flair compared to many other entries, the power of the creepy song combined with the dark atmosphere lead two of our staff to name it the best ending with two others ranking it highly on their lists. Samurai Flamenco and Miss Monochrome received nods on three lists, each also scoring a first place vote.
Best Music (Theme Song, Insert Song, or Background): Kill la Kill, Vividred Operation, Flowers of Evil
For the overall package, it’s hard to beat the work being done for Kill la Kill by Hiroyuki Sawano. As Kestrel Swift wrote about Sawano: “he definitely made his mark on 2013, melding insert songs and background music in Kill la Kill even more noticeably than ever before. Imaishi, Sawano’s fellow Hiroyuki who directs the series, always knows how to find the best composers to complement his style. Sawano has a solid stable of singers to use for his insert/BGM hybrid work, and one of them that he’s used very often is Mika Kobayashi, also included in a couple of notable Attack on Titan pieces. She’s easily the star of Kill la Kill’s soundtrack, with her unmistakable “Don’t lose your way!” as much a trademark of the series as Gurren Lagann’s “Fight the power!” and Panty and Stocking’s “Fly away now!” were for their shows.”
For an example of the background music salvaging an otherwise flawed show, Bryan Morton noted that “Vividred Operation had a wonderful line in transformation & battle music – crank it up, enjoy the adrenaline rush that the music helped give, and you almost forgot about all the deficiencies that the series had. Almost. There are little snippets of the show that I could still put on just to enjoy the music again (I’ve never noticed an OST album being released for the show, strangely). Far more memorable than the rest of the show, sadly.”
Oddly, Thomas Zoth chose to place Flowers of Evil’s “Hana ga Saita yo” in this category instead of in the Best ED. In his own words: “I chose to put this here rather than under the ED because the ED really had no visuals to speak of, which limits it creatively. A better place for it is here, because it takes its life in relation to the visuals of Flowers of Evil, particularly the classroom destruction scene. The song is creepy and somehow catchy, and has the exact same uncanny valley feeling as the rotoscoped visuals themselves.”
