

Most of the animes I've seen repeat a limited set of soundtracks over and
over. It gets annoying after a while. With soundtracks I refer to the music
that is played in the anime, not the opening and ending theme. I think this is
a weak spot of animes. Here are some examples:

  * Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
  * Death Note
  * Dragon Ball Z

Why is this?


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anime-production
Why do animes always play a limited quantity of soundtracks through all the anime?


This is from my understanding with music for game development. However, most
are practically the same with anime as they are both mediums that use music to
help engage the audience.

Each track costs so much and the price varies due to the length of a track and
the number of revisions of that track. It would cost a while lot to create new
tracks every time

Like with video games, music can help identify situations. As such, if one
first sees some romantic scene where two characters go to kiss but don't, when
one hears that same score again when the two characters are just talking, one
can start to think "oh my god, they might confess to each other this time."
Likewise in a fight, some anime have different tracks for fighting music based
on how intense the battle will be so, when you start to hear that same music
you can expect how epic a battle might be (just like with boss music in video
games).

Music can set the mood to make you feel for the characters and what they are
feeling, e.g.

> in Fate Stay/Night anime when Rin, regardless on how much she got hurt,
> embraced Sakura and regretted how she wasn't much of a big sister by not
> doing anything to stop Sakura from being adopted out by the Matous (more of
> an impact for those who know what Sakura went though and that Rin was also
> blaming herself for Sakura's abuse)

By changing these more often you tend to lose the immersion and impact in some
key scenes.


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Different tracks evoke themes, you have a sad track, a we're in deep trouble
track, a "The Main character is starting to win track" it helps with emotional
engagement, and builds emotion.

Much in the same way that the Final Fantasy Fanfare at the end of a battle
evokes a sense of "HELL YEAH I WON" regardless of whether you beat a slime or
a Boss. And the distinctive boss music from a game evokes stress that might
not be there, it doesn't matter how hard the boss is, that music makes you
stressed. The same applies for anime.


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@Memor-X and @Omar Kooheji tell you why this exist.

This is my two cents:

Most of the time, this is intentional, and it is not exclusive of _Anime
series_.

This is know as **Leitmotif** or **musical motif** and it is a musical tool
used in audiovisual media mostly characterized by short/repetitive/catchies
melodies in certain situations in a media (which can be a movie, game or tv-
serie, etc.) with the solely propose of let audience recognize, familiarize
and empathize with an specific event.

There are tons of examples, like the [_Imperial
March_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8) which is easy related to
Darth Vader, or the [_Sound of The
Shire_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chLZQtCold8) to Frodo, Sam or the
Fellowship in general, or a [_battle in Dragon Ball
Z_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG8YdwCVZSc).

And even when is used the same theme, most of the time it'll have sublime
changes in order to fit the situation.

I can't think in a anime example, but [here, in the introduction
song](https://youtu.be/zAf-Kfq5UlA?t=1m7s) of the Disney's Movie _The
Hunchback of Notre Dame_ you can see how the theme for Quasimodo is being sung
by Frollo in the middle of another song pointing the future misfortune of the
baby and the omnipresence of Notre Dame. A moment after, you can see how [this
same melody/song](https://youtu.be/ZxFD7Tk8Kps?t=1m14s) is being sung again by
Quasimodo inside Notre Dame in full emotion; you can easily see how this both
situations share how `cruel life threat Quasi` or how `this church bind this
two characters` just by one simple melody.


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