Yoko Kanno and the music of Wolf's Rain

Every note of Wolf's Rain was composed and arranged by Yoko Kanno, and the production treated the score the way the show treats its journey: as a trip across a whole dying world. The vocal songs were recorded around the planet, in Japan, Poland, Brazil, the United States, and Italy, with singers including Maaya Sakamoto, Steve Conte, Joyce, Raj Ramayya, and Ilaria Graziano, so that the music itself would sound like it came from everywhere the wolves walk.

Victor Entertainment released the score in two albums: Original Soundtrack, Volume 1 on March 29, 2003, with twenty-one tracks, and Volume 2 on January 21, 2004, with twenty-three more, including the OVA music and the finale's closing song. Reviewers singled the score out from the start as the element that carries the series' sorrow, and the industry agreed: Kanno's work on Wolf's Rain was nominated for an Annie Award in 2006, for Music in an Animated Television Production.

Listen for how Kanno scores the wolves themselves. The pack gets motion music, guitars and rhythm, the road. Cheza gets voice and stillness. The world ending gets the orchestra. The score is the one member of the cast that is allowed to say what the ending means, and it says it in the final track title of the second album, a hidden piece called "To Paradise".