Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and conductor born in Paris in 1835 and died in Algiers in 1921. While he is a historical figure from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his musical compositions have been extensively featured in modern Japanese anime as sourced classical pieces, creating a significant secondary connection between his work and anime culture.

The most prominent example of Saint-Saëns' music in anime is his Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, a virtuosic piece for violin and orchestra composed in 1863 and dedicated to the celebrated violinist Pablo Sarasate. This piece plays a central role in the series Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, known in English as Your Lie in April. In episode four, the main characters Kaori Miyazono and Kousei Arima perform this piece together at a violin competition. The anime uses the work to highlight Kaori's passionate and unrestrained playing style, contrasting with the more rigid approach of other competitors. The piece is reprised in episode twenty-one, where Kaori plays it on the hospital rooftop, using it to communicate her feelings to Kousei. Saint-Saëns composed this work as a showpiece designed to display a soloist's technical brilliance, a quality that directly informs its narrative function in the series. The piece also appears briefly in the first episode of Nodame Cantabile, another anime centered on classical musicians.

Beyond Your Lie in April, Saint-Saëns' music appears in other notable anime series. The composer's famous zoological fantasy, The Carnival of the Animals, and particularly the cello solo The Swan from that suite, has been identified as being used in the ballet-themed anime Princess Tutu. Similarly, his tone poem Danse Macabre, which depicts skeletons dancing at midnight, has also been noted as a musical selection within Princess Tutu, chosen to match the series' dark fairy-tale atmosphere.

The musical identity of Saint-Saëns is that of a neoclassical traditionalist who excelled in crafting polished, technically demanding music. His extensive oeuvre includes symphonies, concertos, tone poems, and chamber music. He was a prodigious talent who became a national icon of French music, known for his intellectual rigor and wit. In the context of anime, his work functions as sourced classical music, carefully selected by directors and music supervisors to enhance dramatic scenes, define character traits, and evoke specific emotional responses. His Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso has become particularly significant, closely associated with the character of Kaori Miyazono and a key musical moment in one of the most influential anime series about classical music of the 2010s.