Anyone who has watched the Japanese anime series Naruto would know how awesome the soundtracks are. If you haven’t seen Naruto before and somehow managed to stumble onto this hub, I urge that you watch the first episode of part 1 in the original series. Give it a shot, you have nothing to lose. I got hooked onto it immediately after watching that first episode.

The reason behind doing this hub is really out of personal curiosity. I want to get an idea of people’s preferences for the various Naruto music, including from both the original and the Shippuden series. There’s definitely a heavy Japanese rock influence throughout most of the music.

Before I discuss further on the music of Naruto series, I want to point out that I realize the arrangement of the opening and ending theme songs for the English release don’t correspond exactly to the Japanese release. Plus, some of the Japanese music has been replaced by English alternatives instead.

For example, in the Japanese version, the first 25 episodes (part 1) has R*O*C*K (performed by Hound Dog) as the opening theme song followed by Far Away (also called Haruka Kanata performed by Asian Kung-Fu Generation) in the next 28 episodes (part 2). In the English release of the Naruto anime however, the opening theme for the initial 52 episodes (parts 1 and 2) is an English song called “Rise, Power!” which is performed by Jeremy Sweet and Ian Nickus. Part 3 of the English series saw Far Away being brought in as the opening theme.

In the case of the ending theme, the English version opted for a single English song throughout the entire first series. I’m going to focus on the Japanese version of the theme music.

Firstly with the original series, there were nine different opening themes across the 220 episodes. Each of the songs were performed by different artists except for GO!!! and Re:member which were both sung by FLOW.

I like pretty much all the music in Naruto, but I have to say one of my favorite opening theme songs would be Haruka Kanata. I guess I have some personal preference towards Japanese rock. For the curious, the band that performed this song, Asian Kung-Fu Generation (what a name!), consists of four members - Masafumi Gotō (lead vocal), Kensuke Kita (lead guitarist), Takahiro Yamada (bass player) and Kiyoshi Ijichi (drums). To give you an idea of how good they are, they won the award for “Best Anime Theme Song” at the American Anime Awards in 2007. If you wish to learn more about the band and their other music, there is an English fan website, http://www.akfgfan.com/

Another opening theme song that I thought was fairly good is GO!!! by Flow. Again similar to Asian Kung-Fu Generation, these guys are a rock band. It has five members consisting of Koshi (vocal), Keigo (vocal), Take (guitar), Got’s (bass) and Iwasaki (drums). They too have a fan website in English at http://www.motto-motto.net/flow/.

If you have seen a few episodes of Naruto, you’ll notice that battles between the ninjas form a significant component of the series. Even in the very first episode, you’re already treated to a fight scene and that is only a mere teaser to the several and more magnificent fights to come later in the series. A great battle sequence must of course be accompanied with the right music. I found that the three most talked about Naruto fight music are the following (all of which are in the first released original soundtrack composed by Toshio Masuda):

• Strong and Strike (Track number 18)
• Naruto Main Theme (Track number 21)
• The Raising Fighting Spirit (Track number 7)
  

The second series of Naruto (called Shippuden) is currently still going, and so far, there have been five different opening theme songs. They have gone for more of rap/pop flavor this time. One which comes to mind that I thought was pretty good is Hero’s Come Back!!! featured from the very first episode. This song was performed by a group called Nobodyknows+.

If you are interested in reading more detail about the opening and ending theme songs, such as the specific episodes in which each song is featured or the lyrics, then head over to http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Music.

For the hardcore fans who know how to play a musical instrument of some kind and want to learn to play the music from the series, there are Naruto sheet music that you can download from the Internet. The two most popular sites are:

• http://ichigos.com/sheets/n
• http://josh.agarrado.net/music/anime/index.php