Recently, I was able to sit down with composer Yūki Hayashi and talk about his most famous work, the song “You Say Run” from My Hero Academia. We discussed not only the origins of the song and his favorite version of it, but also the meme surrounding it and why the song seems to go with everything.

To start with, I asked him if he was aware of the “You Say Run” Goes with Everything meme. “Oh yes, of course.” Hayashi replied, “It popped up when I was on YouTube. I watched it, wondering what it was, but they’re all really fun. And it’s really flattering, too. Watching them, I’m actually impressed by how well it fits.”

“In the series, it’s obviously used in scenes with Deku. But it’s also used with All Might and other heroes as well,” he continued. “Why the music fits across all of them is something I’ve wondered.”

To get to the bottom of this mystery, I proceeded to have him watch a few of the most popular “You Say Run” Goes with Everything videos on YouTube.

The first was the 1.4 million views of “You Say Run Goes with Everything – The Tigger Movie.”

“Wow. I’ve never seen this,” he laughed, “I didn’t think it’d work with Winnie the Pooh.”

Then, to show Hayashi that it worked equally well with live-action, I had him watch a bit of “‘You Say Run’ Goes With Everything – Speed Racer Final Race.”

“I didn’t know about this either! How interesting. I find it very fascinating,” he said in response to the video. “I like how people are playing around with it.”

With a few examples out of the way, it was time to answer the big question: Why does “You Say Run” go with everything?

“I’m not sure… but that piece doesn’t start intensely. It’s not like that,” Hayashi began. “It has a rather quiet intro, and then the drums suddenly kick in—into that riff. The quiet intro, the drums… then the drum part acts like flipping a switch, which leads to the memorable riff. Just having those three elements probably makes it easy to fit with any video.”

From there, Hayashi went into how he created the song. “I got the request from [Masafumi] Mima, the sound director, for some music that leads into an action scene. It was made as the main theme for battles. Mima wanted it to be something that starts with high fanfare and acts as battle music that leads to victory.”

“The reason I structured it as I did is because of the protagonist Deku,” Hayashi explained. “He doesn’t have a quirk. But he wants to help his friends and the people. He wants to be a Hero. So there’s conflict, and then he runs to the rescue. Like in episode 2, when Katsuki was being absorbed by a villain. The music plays when Deku goes to save him. That’s the sort of thing I was going for.”

“Will he be able to do it? He wants to be like All Might. He was told he could be a Hero. That wish to be a Hero is what makes him run forward. I wanted the music to encapsulate that. So it starts with the quiet intro… and then the drums have him running forward.” Hayashi continued, “I think that works in lots of different ‘You Say Run’ Goes with Everything videos. Like where they shift gears in that Speed Racer video. There are lots of scenes where they flip a switch. That can happen in action scenes, so if you use ‘You Say Run’ there, it seems to work naturally, from what I’ve observed.”

Of course, the memorable leitmotif of “You Say Run” doesn’t just show up in that song alone. It appears in several others across the seasons, like “GO Beyond!!”, “Next, it’s our turn!”, and “Jet Set Run.” However, none of these is Hayashi’s favorite.

“[For me it’s] the piece ‘Might+U’ from the second movie that was used during the climactic battle,” Hayashi told me. “For that scene, Mima sent the request. He was trying to figure out how to make the music and sound work out. Basically, he was stuck in the battle scene. It’s not so much that it’s a really long, intense battle scene. There’s an unbeatable enemy, so how do they fight it? Deku gives One For All to Katsuki, and they fight alongside each other.”

“In the TV series—I think it was season four—when they fight the villain, Chisaki, to rescue Eri […] there’s a vocal ballad that I made. Mima took that and applied it to the [climactic battle scene in the second movie], and it really worked. So I lengthened it for the movie and made a sort of deluxe remix version. When we applied it, it worked amazingly well.”

“So in the final climactic battle scene, there are no sound effects or voice lines. It’s just the music. It basically encompasses the entire scene. Back when we did the final dubbing, the grunts and voices were still in there. The director said, ‘Could you take all of those out?’ ‘I want it to just be the music.’” Hayashi chuckled, “Apologies to the voice acting cast. All their hard work and acting were removed. So the finale climax of the movie is just music. That was really memorable for me. It’s something that I’m really proud of in my work. So I think it’s that piece [that is my favorite].”

To finish off this section of the interview, we circled back to the question of why “You Say Run” has unquestionably become Hayashi’s most famous composition. “Well, I think it’s because My Hero Academia is loved by so many fans worldwide,” he explained. “The piece has pretty much become the series’ main theme song. So it’s only natural that people know about it. I think that’s how they all got to hear it. I think it’s really thanks to the series.”

To see this interview in full, check out the video below.