Anime gives a song a story: why do overseas fans love Japanese anime songs? Starting with JoJo’s new opening theme

Key Points

• “SPIN,” written by the Japanese band Kroi as the opening theme of the Netflix anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, was released on September 24, 2026. In its first week it was streamed 3.23 million times outside Japan, reaching No. 1 on Billboard JAPAN’s chart of Japanese songs outside Japan. It also topped the Japan Songs charts in the US, the UK, France and Brazil, and became the band’s first entry on the US Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart (No. 44).
• Overseas fans tend to love Japanese anime songs because they fell for the anime first. Viewers see the opening every week, the melody gets tied to the images, the characters and the story, and the song becomes part of the work. People who love the show keep coming back to the song. Theme songs from anime and other works make up most of the Japanese music heard abroad.
• Japanese anime songs are usually written for a specific work. For a story set in an 1890 horse race across America, Kroi drew on the sound of Ennio Morricone, the master of Western film scores. YOASOBI’s “Idol” was based on a short story the original manga writer wrote especially for the song, and in 2023 it became the first Japanese song to top Billboard’s Global Excl. US chart.
• As anime songs grow more popular abroad, Japan’s music business has started to treat overseas audiences as a real market. In 2021 Sony bought the anime streaming platform Crunchyroll for more than US$1 billion, so one group can fund an anime, release its theme song and deliver both to viewers worldwide. Ado, who sang for a One Piece film, signed with a US label in late 2022, and in 2025 became the Japanese artist most streamed outside Japan on Spotify.

On October 8, 2026, Billboard JAPAN published a chart with a new No. 1.

The chart is called “Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan”: the Japanese songs people listen to most outside Japan. It counts streams and downloads in more than 200 countries and regions, leaving out only Japan itself. For the previous 13 weeks, the top spot had belonged to “TOKYO DRIFT” by TERIYAKI BOYZ, a song that has been popular abroad for twenty years thanks to the 2006 Hollywood film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. It was knocked off by “SPIN,” a new song by the five-piece band Kroi, which was streamed 3.23 million times abroad in one week, more than five times the previous week.

The same week, “SPIN” also took No. 1 on the Japan Songs charts in the US, the UK, France and Brazil. These national charts rank only Japanese songs, which is not the same as reaching the main US chart. But it did put Kroi on an official US Billboard chart for the first time: No. 44 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.

“SPIN” is the opening theme of the Netflix anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run. And it is not alone. Look at the Japanese songs most played abroad in recent years, and anime songs take up a large share. A 2024 music industry report from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says so in its opening pages: the Japanese music heard overseas is mainly theme songs from anime and other works.

That raises an interesting question. Japan has so many good songs. Why is it anime songs that overseas fans play again and again?

Ten years of Western songs in JoJo, and now a Japanese song goes abroad

To understand where “SPIN” fits, it helps to look at how the JoJo anime has used music in the past.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a long-running manga by Hirohiko Araki, serialized since 1987. Every so often it changes its hero, its era and its setting, and each section is called a “Part.” Araki is a well-known fan of Western music, and many of the story’s characters and special moves are named after Western bands and songs.

When the TV anime began in 2012, the production team made an unusual decision: the ending themes would be old Western songs. The first season used “Roundabout” by the British progressive rock band Yes, followed by songs such as “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the American band The Bangles and “I Want You” by the Australian duo Savage Garden. This is rare in Japanese anime, where theme songs are almost always newly written Japanese songs.

In other words, for ten years, from 2012 to 2022, the JoJo anime brought Western songs to Japanese viewers. This time its opening theme works the other way, bringing a Japanese song to the world.

The setting of Part 7, Steel Ball Run, suits this turn. The story takes place in America in 1890, where riders from around the world enter a horse race across the continent, about 6,400 kilometers from San Diego to New York, for a US$50 million prize. The anime is made by David Production, the studio behind the earlier JoJo series. Netflix released a 47-minute first episode worldwide on March 19, 2026, and from September 25 has added a new episode every Friday.

“SPIN” came out on September 24, the day before the new run began. Since then, every Friday, viewers around the world open Netflix and the first thing they see is the opening animation set to this song.

First you fall for the anime, then for the song

How do people start liking a song from another country? There is usually a trigger: hearing it in a film, a friend’s recommendation, or seeing it again and again in short videos. An anime opening puts these triggers together, and it happens on schedule every week.

The opening of a Japanese TV anime usually runs about a minute and a half; people in the industry often call it “89 seconds.” In that time it has to fit the catchiest part of the song, set to animation drawn especially for it: the hero’s entrance, the villain’s silhouette, glimpses of key scenes. Every drum hit and every key change is matched to movement on screen.

For overseas viewers, that minute and a half works like a condensed trailer. When they remember the melody, they also remember the hero bursting off the starting line on horseback, and the two heroes riding side by side as the chorus kicks in. The song is tied to characters and a story they love, so the melody carries real feeling. Over a season, the same song has played with the show a dozen times or so. By the time they search for it on Spotify, what they love is not just the song but the whole work.

This also explains why anime songs are growing so fast on streaming platforms. Spotify reported that global streams of anime music grew 395% between 2021 and 2024, and that users had made more than 6.7 million anime playlists. In 2025 it added that nearly 70% of anime music listeners worldwide are under 29. These young listeners watch anime on Netflix and on Crunchyroll, Sony’s streaming service for Japanese anime, which had 21 million paying subscribers by May 2026. The moment an anime goes online, its opening theme reaches all these countries too.

Why do Japanese songs need an anime to travel?

At this point some readers may ask: if the song is good, why not just put it on Spotify? Why does it need an anime?

The answer lies in the unusual structure of Japan’s music business. Japan has long been the large music market most dependent on physical CDs. In 2022, digital made up only 37% of Japan’s recorded music revenue, while most of the other top ten markets were above half. Record labels earn mainly from CD sales and concerts at home, and spending money to promote a Japanese artist overseas, to Western listeners who have never heard of them, is expensive and the return is uncertain.

Anime offers a ready-made route. When an anime launches abroad, the streaming platform’s recommendations, subtitles and dubs in many languages, and fan discussion on social media are all already in motion. A song that rides along reaches viewers in dozens of countries in the week the show airs, without its own overseas radio push or ad budget. On the chart of Japanese songs outside Japan mentioned at the start, the top spots are almost all anime songs: in the week “SPIN” reached No. 1, the top ten also included Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” and “KICK BACK” and Creepy Nuts’ “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born,” all anime theme songs.

Writing for one work: how Kroi put the Wild West into “SPIN”

Riding with an anime only solves the problem of being heard. To make people listen again and again, a song also has to feel like the work. Japanese anime songs are mostly written for a specific show, rather than licensed from songs that already exist.

Kroi is a five-piece band that mixes funk, soul and hip-hop, and the timing of this job was almost uncanny. Singer Leo Uchida had been obsessed with deserts for several years. Stuck writing about city life, he watched the film Dune, built a desert in his head and began writing one song after another set there; bandmate Daiki Chiba says he kept muttering “desert, desert” while writing. Guitarist Yuki Hasebe had long been a reader of Steel Ball Run and expected to simply watch the anime as a fan. Instead he ended up writing its opening theme.

A singer who wanted to write about deserts met a manga about a horse race across the American wilderness, and “SPIN” became a Western riding on a funk groove. The band deliberately added guitar sounds that recall a showdown in the wilderness, with the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who scored many classic Westerns, as a reference. Overseas viewers may not know the background, but one listen tells them: this is the sound of this anime.

YOASOBI’s “Idol” took “feeling like the work” even further. For this opening theme of the anime Oshi no Ko, the original writer Aka Akasaka first wrote a short story, “45510,” and YOASOBI wrote the song based on it, so the lyrics are essentially the character’s own voice. In June 2023, “Idol” became the first Japanese song to top Billboard’s Global Excl. US chart.

As overseas listeners grow, how is Japan’s music business changing?

As anime songs are played more and more abroad, Japan’s music companies have begun to treat overseas listeners as a real market, not a side benefit.

Sony has moved the most. The Sony group owns Japanese record labels as well as Aniplex, which invests in anime production. In 2021 Sony paid more than US$1 billion to buy Crunchyroll, a streaming platform devoted to Japanese anime, from the US telecom company AT&T. In 2023 Sony’s Japanese record company agreed to license its music to Crunchyroll for use overseas. From funding an anime and releasing its theme song to delivering both to viewers worldwide, one group can now do it all.

Other companies followed. In 2024 Spotify and Crunchyroll teamed up to open an anime hub on Spotify, with playlists curated with Crunchyroll’s help. The same year, Universal Music’s Virgin Music Group partnered with the Tokyo anime music company Frontier Works to develop anime music.

Artists themselves have started to go abroad too. Ado, who sang the theme songs for One Piece Film: Red, signed with the US label Geffen Records in late 2022. In 2025, when Spotify announced the Japanese artists most streamed outside Japan, Ado was No. 1, ending YOASOBI’s four-year run at the top since 2021.

In the past, an anime song was written for Japanese viewers, and success abroad was a happy accident. Now more and more anime songs are released on the assumption that the whole world will hear them.

Anime gives a song a story

Back to the original question: why do overseas fans love Japanese anime songs?

In my view, most of them fall for the anime first and the song second. The opening animation gives the song images and a story: which part is the resolve to set out, which part is the rival’s threat, which high note is the moment the hero grits his teeth and holds on. Hearing the song brings back the show, and wanting to go back to the show means playing the song again.

For Japan’s music industry, this is a very practical route. Instead of spending heavily on promotion country by country, write the song into a work the whole world is watching. That is how Kroi’s “SPIN” went abroad: a five-piece band wrote a song for a story set in the American wilderness of 1890, drew on an Italian composer’s Western scores, and took No. 1 on the Japan Songs charts in the US, the UK, France and Brazil. The song’s CD came out at the end of October, with a bonus video of the band playing it live at RAK Studios in London.

For ten years, the JoJo anime introduced old Western songs to Japanese viewers. This time it is a Japanese song’s turn, riding the same work’s horse west.

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Notes

• The “chart of Japanese songs outside Japan” is Billboard JAPAN’s Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan, calculated from the same streaming and download data as the Billboard Global 200, with Japan excluded. Each country’s Japan Songs chart is a national chart within the same system that ranks only Japanese songs. “SPIN” topped the chart published on October 8, 2026, covering September 25 to October 1.
• No. 44 on the US Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart is for the chart dated October 10, 2026.
• The race distance of about 6,400 km is a conversion of the original story’s “about 4,000 miles.”
• “89 seconds” is a common length for the openings and endings of Japanese TV anime, not a fixed rule.
• Spotify’s 395% growth covers 2021 to its announcement in August 2024; “nearly 70% under 29” is Spotify’s figure from July 2025.

Sources

1. アニメ！アニメ！｜アニメ「ジョジョ」新作OP「SPIN」が世界のJ-POPチャートを席巻！Kroiが米・英・仏・ブラジルで1位に｜2026-10-09 (chart position, stream counts, release date, broadcast schedule, the band on its Western references)
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