Well, it’s that time of year again – time for a Top 10 list! This is one that’s probably going to be deeply contentious: there are so many anime openings, and so many of them are really good that I think every anime fan has their own personal top list, with very little overlap between them. So if you disagree, go ahead and share your favorites in the comments, I’d love to hear them.
Because the field is so massive, I feel it’s important to set some ground rules. First, I’m only considering actual anime. I’ve reviewed a couple things on this blog that are tangentially related, but they are summarily ruled out here. Second, I’m only considering openings, not endings or music that’s kind of opening-adjacent but never really served as the show’s opening. Further, I’m not considering anything that I was able to determine used a preexisting song, rather than one specifically for the opening. And, in the case where a show has multiple openings worth talking about, it can still only get one entry on the list. I’ll talk about the openings together, but the slot belongs to the one best opening from the show.
Lastly, I’ve made the executive decision to judge intros for Action shows and intros for non-action shows differently, because those intros are trying to accomplish fundamentally different things. Some might use similar techniques, but at the end doing two top ten lists rather than one gets us twice the music to enjoy, so for something for the blog’s anniversary and not a serious business attempt at an all-time ranking, I think that’s alright. It is worth noting, though, that the non-action list was significantly less competitive, there being fewer shows outside the action bracket that really stood out. And, whether a show or an intro is “action” involves some judgment calls, including a few that could have gone either way and were thus mostly shoved towards the non-action side.
To determine my list, I considered both the music and the visuals. A good opening looks good or sounds good or is particularly fitting to the show. A great opening is all of those. I am not, however, considering the show itself’: a bad show can have a good opening, and a good show doesn’t make its opening any better. Overall shows that put a lot of effort into their opening are more likely to put more effort into the rest of the production as well, but there are exceptions both ways.
So, let’s lead off with the honorable (or dishonorable) mentions, things that were disqualified for one reason or another or that didn’t quite make the cut, but still deserved some sort of discussion
Magia (Madoka Magica) and Monochrome (Star Driver): In-episode music is a rough thing. Technically Magia was at least an ending theme as well, but its use in-episode was quite bold and triumphant. These are both amazing songs, but they don’t make the list.
Black★Rock Shooter and Duvet (Serial Experiments Lain): These were disqualified because the songs already existed, but otherwise, either one of them might have made it onto the list. Black★Rock Shooter is an unreasonably catchy song, and while the animation that went with it didn’t tell you much about the show, it did create a general mood. Duvet, though, did something really impressive: it managed to properly introduce Serial Experiments Lain. As of this writing, Lain is not a show I’ve discussed in full, but it is both an amazing show and one that would be extremely difficult to have a functional intro for. And, between the visuals and the strangely fitting song, Duvet manages with flying colors.
Time to Say Goodbye and When It Falls (RWBY): RWBY is not anime. It’s clearly anime inspired and tends to attract the same fans (if the presence of RWBY merch mixed in with anime merch at anime cons is anything to go by) and it’s something I feel should be discussed alongside anime… but it really doesn’t count in actuality. The inspiration does go all the way to the show’s openings, though, which are all very much like Anime openings… and good ones at that, with flashy and dynamic action along with some really great music (the soundtrack being, in general, one thing I can recommend about RWBY without reservation). Still, it doesn’t count for our purposes here, and would be up against extremely stiff competition even if it did.
ideal white (Unlimited Blade Works): While it didn’t ultimately make the list (Really, it’s not even the #11 slot), I feel like I have to thank “ideal white” in particular for being almost the platonic ideal of a modern action opening. Every beat, both visual and musical, is precisely on point with what you’d consider the ‘standard’ for the genre. Its slow moments are exactly as long as they need to be, its action bits hold exactly as long as they need to, its shots of character faces… well, you get the idea. In some ways, this opening feels like it was made by a computer, taking a bunch of examples of what was or would be considered a ‘good opening’, finding and then using the underlying formula to create the ultimate brain-hacking opening. It’s perfect in its execution, but also perfectly standard.
Non-action #10 – Bouken Desho Desho? (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)
Like many of the shows on this list, Haruhi was not one that was easy to introduce. On one side, it’s a fairly tame slice of life show, but in other ways it’s one of the most “out there” concepts you’re likely to see, what with espers, future people, and aliens in real life at the whim of an unknowing goddess. So, what does Bouken Desho Desho? manage to do? For one, it has a lot of bits that are kind of your typical bouncy slice of life show opening, including a lot of characterful focus on our leads Haruhi (proud and spunky), Kyon (perpetually frustrated and sour) and Asahina (the eternal comedy victim). It also has some good imagery for the strange and mystical side of things, painting a picture of a somewhat otherworldly slice-of-life adventure sort of affair… which is exactly what Haruhi is. The beat and sound are really catchy as well – perhaps not as much as Super Driver, the 2009 Haruhi season opening, but that one kind of took the adventurous tempo a little too far, especially given the arcs that it opened.
Action #10 – Anicca (Unbreakable Machine Doll)
Unbreakable Machine Doll itself was a moderately standard battle school harem affair, with its big claim to fame being a unique theme/setting with robot familiars in a Victorian world. The first couple seconds of Anicca alone do a lot to sell that with a distinctive metal intro and some intense mechanical visuals. From there, it maintains a good beat, and does an effective job first introducing the characters with good imagery, and then showing off some of the show’s style of action. The music and lyrics match up, and it ends with the same distinctive sound it started with alongside a hell of an iconic (if goofy) image. The lyrics add another layer, working as a song from the perspective of Yaya, our mechanical Yandere, and expressing a depth and honesty of feeling that you kind of wish she got out in the show itself.
Non-action #9 – Welcome to Chaos (Dorohedoro)
None of the other titles among this top list will be quite as fitting as “Welcome to Chaos”. It is, at the very least, an utterly unforgettable opening, what with its psychotic and psychedelic imagery serving as your way into the weird world of Dorohedoro. Honestly, it would have been significantly higher on the list if not for one little bother in terms of my rubrics for rating these things: it kind of seems like it belongs to a cooking anime, since the focus of the majority of the ‘action’ in the opening is on one of our main characters making Gyoza. In that it manages to slip a lot of references to things that go on in the show and hints of more, as well as the beautifully insane style of the whole thing… but it still doesn’t quite get across the bloody mystery that is Dorohedoro. All the same, though, I kind of have to ask what could. While Welcome to Chaos may not represent the show’s content, it does get across just the kind of trip you’ll be going on, allowing me to forgive it enough to make the list
Action #9 – Nageki no Hana (Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary)
Most of the entries on this list belong to good shows, but the OP for Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary is a big delta from that. Like most of these openings it has a distinctive sound that’s immediately evocative. Even without any visuals or understanding of the language you could listen to a few seconds of this song and say “Yeah, that goes to fantasy ancient China.”. The visuals do even better, opening with an Asian-style watercolor and going into scenes of its characters that are absolutely dripping with feelings. We see imagery that strongly implies madness, bloodshed, loss, and deep emotional strife that bring you to quickly understand who the leads are, or at least should be: the bold older sister with the magic sword, the younger sister with mechanical arms who threatens to lose herself to violence, the tortured young empress, and the brooding young man in her court. We see the construct army in its dark glory doing probably evil things, and the obvious hero standing against it even though other images tell us she’s got some sort of relation to the boy with the empress and thus that they must now be on opposite sides of a desperate struggle. Wasted characters like the ancient robot and the nobody rebels are barely in the opening, focusing it (as the show should have been focused) on the experience and turmoil of those four youngsters with their little knot of relationships stretched across revenge and war. In fact, I dare say that if you handed someone talented the opening alone, they could probably produce a better full story than Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary did.
Non-action #8 – Shadowgraph (Boogiepop and Others)
As of this writing, Boogiepop and Others is not a show I’ve talked about at length, so unlike most of these I can’t just link my review to tell you what kind of show this intro goes to. But, if you watch Shadowgraph, you’ll probably get that it’s dark, psychological, and sometimes twisted, blending fantastical elements and the distortions of the characters’ minds with a spooky urban environment. That’s about right, and it’s doing a lot of work to be as engaging as it is. You might, however, have a distorted sense of where the focus is. The intro is almost 100% dedicated to a particular girl who acts as the vessel for the titular Boogiepop, but she’s hardly in the show. However, Boogiepop (and, by extension, she) is the only really consistent element across all the arcs, which otherwise deal with different people in different supernatural troubles. So, as little Boogiepop as there sometimes is, it’s not exactly wrong to focus on her for the OP, and unlike Dorohedoro it’s not exactly giving any false impressions along with the correct ones.
Action #8 – Light My Fire (Shakugan no Shana Final)
A number of the shows featured on this list have multiple openings, and when they do it’s typical that they’re all good… there’s just one that stands out as the best of the lot. For Shakugan no Shana, featuring six openings across its three seasons, the competition is a little more clear-cut. The others are good, but Light My Fire really goes the extra mile to properly represent the show catapulting itself from an urban fantasy monster hunter affair where the supernatural is kept secret, to open warfare between factions devoted to various ancient gods with the fate of the world in the balance. For the song, all the ones on this list are good, but Light My Fire is certainly up there on its own rather than just with its intro. For the visuals… they’re a little more standard. There are a lot of shots of characters because there are loads and loads of characters to get through. Still, they manage to mix in some visual storytelling for important arcs (Shana reaching for transformed Yuji, Margery out of commission) as well as some badass action borrowing the beautiful battlefield that is the Palace of the Stars. Like most good openings it starts strong and ends strong with iconic shots and maintains through the center with a strong beat and effective visuals. It may be the most basic entry on this list, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be here.
Non-action #7 – Touch Off (The Promised Neverland)
Again, we have a song with a unique and distinctive sound. I’m not exactly a music person (my wheelhouse is more in prose fiction) but I might call it jazzy? Which is odd, because that’s not a sort of music I normally gravitate towards. That alone wouldn’t be enough to put it on the list. Again, a good song is a must but a great intro has good visuals and a good (or good enough) fit as well. And the visuals for Touch Off are genuinely great, with a solid theme and progression that tells you enough to get the theme and scope of the story without telling you too much about its twists or stakes. You see the children, including the numbers of the neck, the darkened halls of the house, and the run through the forest, creating a sense of motion and breaking through. At the same time, there are a couple of repeated images: a jigsaw puzzle motif for Norman’s mind games, a match or wick burning out that evokes the short time the kids have, and a fluttering moth in the same white that defines their garb, struck down in what’s clearly a menacing visual. Towards the end, the images get more defiant. The run is fun; the kids, instead of being contained by Krone or Isabella, are standing on their own in an upturned area; they break through the wall of puzzle pieces to a light beyond; and, finally, the moth flies free. You might not know why they’re escaping, but you know that there’s this dystopian repressive enemy and that the kids are doing their best to break their way out. That’s a lot to unpack from a minute and a half of music and visuals, and it manages to keep some of the other elements, like demons and the like, hidden to maintain the surprise and horror of the show itself.
Action #7 – FAITH (Rising of the Shield Hero)
The Rising of the Shield Hero has two openings, and which one was going to headline the slot was a very tight. OP 1, RISE, ultimately lost out because of the two it was much more standard. A lot like the show, RISE took all the general tropes of an action-Isekai opening and executed them at an extremely high level of skill. FAITH, the second OP, is a little different, and tries to focus more heavily on the elements of the show that are more pronounced. RISE has some dark moments, for instance, getting some hint that Rising of the Shield Hero might be a little grittier than standard. FAITH, on the other hand, goes fully for artistry, draining the color from the scene until it becomes straight out gray depression, with lots of dark and monstrous imagery including bars, chains, rain, tears, and drowning, only to explode into bright full color as Raphtalia embraces Naofumi. The material for the show being about suffering and recovery is in RISE, but it doesn’t come out quite as strong. There’s some good, fast action in RISE, but in FAITH there’s action that’s good, fast, and actually a little different with its saturation and some sprays of blood to remind you that this isn’t Konosuba you’re getting into. The music is more distinctive in FAITH as well – both intros include some rap elements, but RISE still has the general action-pop sound that something like ideal white does on the whole. FAITH bleeds more strongly into styles outside of that band, and benefits from it. If you like RISE better, that’s fine, but it might not have made the top 10. FAITH takes more risks and presents a more unique presence, and because it wins those gambles, it earns its spot.
Non-action #6 – world’s end, girl’s rondo (Selector)
Selector is another one where I really have to mention both openings. world’s end, girl’s rondo belongs to the second half, Selector Spread, while the OP of part 1, Selector Infected, was killy killy JOKER. Of the two, the imagery for killy killy JOKER was a hair better representative of Selector, while at least in my opinion the song itself is significantly better for world’s end, girl’s rondo, as well as said opening possibly having a wafer-thin advantage on just its overall art. They’re very close on both scores, though, and to an extent the differences between them in terms of the opening itself are representative of the differences between the seasons: killy killy JOKER focuses more on the ensemble, spending a good moment with each human character and showing us her LRIG as a reflection of the girl playing her, while world’s end, girl’s rondo, though still including all the assorted secondary characters, has more moments dedicated in particular to Tama, Iona, and Ruko and the black-and-white color scheme they share with Mayu. The interesting thing about both openings (particularly world’s end, girl’s rondo) is that they’re constructed more like action openings than anything else. I actually debated which list this opening (as well as one other that made it) would go on, and ultimately erred on the side of filing it by the nature of the show rather than the nature of the opening itself. Despite that, it’s not a bad fit. There’s enough card game battling in the show that getting you ready for it is good, and enough nightmare imagery or mysterious figures in world’s end, girl’s rondo to properly communicate that this is going to be more about Ru’s struggle than Tama sword fighting with people. I think, for each of the openings, the last image is a strong one: in killy killy JOKER, the last image is of Ru walking down the street. Tama runs towards her from behind, as though to excitedly embrace a friend, but when Ru turns to look there’s nothing there (until her flesh and blood friends step in from around the corner). In world’s end, girl’s rondo, we end with Mayu, looking at reflections in water cupped in her hands like she’s mystically scrying from her weird white room: Tama facing one way, Iona facing the other (as though they’re back to back opposed) and finally Ru facing forward, mediating between them. In both cases, there’s a strong bit of the season’s theme communicated: Selector Infected spends a lot of time being about friendships, while Selector Spread spends a lot of time being about balance and humanity. Both openings are amazing, but world’s end, girl’s rondo is just a little bit better, getting the headline position for the slot.
Action #6 – Cruel Angel’s Thesis (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Do I even need to talk about this one? Well, for the purposes of making this list, yes I do. Cruel Angel’s Thesis is over a quarter of a century old, and it still holds up extremely well against an art form that hasn’t been without evolution. In fact, I dare say that it shows its age less than the show itself, which also holds up extremely well all things considered. The music is iconic, it goes with just about everything and has probably been heard by swathes of people who are more or less unaware of Evangelion, and certainly by those who haven’t watched it. The imagery is similarly enduring and fit, including suggestions of Kabbalistic mysticism for the angels, psycho-sexual elements, and quick cuts that imply as much horror as action when it comes to the mechas. If it has one weakness after all these years, it’s that it doesn’t quite pull together as well as some other intros. The images match the show, but while the motion of the images goes perfectly to the music, the tones don’t exactly agree. Ominous title aside, most of the lyrics and tune are brighter and more triumphant (or at least more hopeful) than the images you’re being shown or will be shown for the next half hour. That, and as much as it’s a landmark, it does sort of do what everyone and their brother would go on to do. The imitations don’t lessen the original in an objective sense and this isn’t like ideal white, it does still have its own character… but it does make it harder to say that said original really stands out. Above most of the fools who tried to take it on by copying exactly what it did? Probably. Apart form the pack of all other anime openings? Not so much. Before you give me too much flak, remember: this is still the #6 slot, shared though it is, out of probably hundreds of openings I’ve seen – I’m not trashing a masterful opening for a masterful show, I just feel that I need to justify how others could leap above it. And, typically, that was by doing something unique and different as well as extremely effective.
Non-action #5 – Hacking to the Gate (Steins;Gate)
Show me that we’re doing a time travel show, really make me feel it, except we’re not visiting the past or the future so you can’t lean on any of that. This, presumably, was the challenge issued to create the opening to Steins;Gate, and Hacking to the Gate passed with flying colors. The music has an electronic quality to it, and the esoteric lyrics evoke many of the principles addressed by really considering time travel as a science fiction concept rather than an occult one: infinite and finite, fixed and variable, observation and choice. And the visuals are above and beyond, incorporating mathematical and engineering elements, echoes and reflections, and images associated with time travel concepts such as branching lines and butterflies, all in a static-gray existence that seems at once real, unreal, and undeniably technical. Between all the aspects of the opening, virtually every keynote for Steins;Gate is expressed, be it science fiction, drama, or even romance, and it’s all done in a complete package that’s compelling and memorable as its own thing.
Action #5 – Again (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)
Again is an opening that tells a story. The lyrics are, essentially, the experience of existing as one of the brothers Elric (though certain phrases also apply to other characters, typically Hohenheim when he’s on screen). The music is catchy – it’s got a fairly familiar pop sort of sound to it, but it’s good. And then there are the visuals. When it comes to what’s been shown on screen, Again has a very solid core with grace notes that push it up and over. It knows when and how to slow down and when and how to pick up, showing us action sequence elements that are better than what some shows provide. In a sense, Again does kind of share its formula with ideal white, but the difference here is that while ideal white is precision-machined, Again is willing and able to be artful. It’s not just an action opening following a pattern, it belongs entirely to Fullmetal Alchemist and evokes it completely. Which, I suppose, brings me to another opening that’s not on this list, Melissa. The first opening for the original Fullmetal Alchemist, Melissa is often well-remembered. Its visuals are similarly stellar… but despite the music and animation both being top notch, the song is, when you get down to it, kind of a generic love song when romance is not really a big theme in FMA, where as Again is all about loss, regret, and moving forward – critical themes to the franchise. Also, the sources I’ve checked don’t agree whether or not Melissa was actually written for FMA or whether it was a Porno Graffitti single first. Even if it wasn’t disqualified for that, though, the lyrics would probably have cost it a spot on this extremely competitive list.
Non-action #4 – CHOIR JAIL (Dusk Maiden of Amnesia)
Dusk Maiden was the first show I reviewed at A+ on this blog, and it probably remains my most controversial A+ choice, or at least the one with the largest gap between my rating and the general aggregate consensus. I stand by it, though, in large part because of how artfully the show manages being many things at once. That’s an element that puts a great burden on the opening: It’s a tragic romance, it’s a creepy ghost story, and it’s a fun school show without any sharp lines between those elements, and CHOIR JAIL perfectly evokes that. All the hard work and top artistry that Bouken Desho Desho? had to do in order to walk the tightrope of introducing Haruhi without overdoing or underdoing either side of the show, CHOIR JAIL had to do under even worse conditions, and it did them in a package that was far more beautiful and cohesive than an entry that was already, itself, worthy of the Top 10 list for non-action openings. It’s a love song, in a sense, but its also full of pain and desperation, and the sound has a kind of discordant nature to it that evokes the eerie ghost story. That’s supported by multiple shots of dark spaces or, especially, areas drenched in the reds and golds of twilight, giving them something of an otherworldly look. Yet, all the same, it carries through into ‘meeting’ our characters and seeing them in scenarios that speak to the school comedy side. Even when it does, though it doesn’t break out of the style that it set for itself, melding the disparate elements together under the banner of the ghostly love story the way the show itself does.
Action #4 – Kuusou Mesorogiwi (Mirai Nikki)
Usually, if something is too pretentious, it doesn’t really work for me. Kuusou Mesorogiwi gets away with it in large part because it’s as artful as it is pretentious. The obsessively white, black, and red palette and threatening imagery often melting into blood looks good here, and it does rather fit with the fact that the show itself is drenched in dark, bloody excess. The song itself works as Yuno’s theme and remains amazingly memorable. In a sense, I feel that the magic of this one is that it goes all the way with what it’s doing in “crosses the line twice” style. It is absolutely a pretentious and insane opening, but because it doesn’t take half measures in that, it ends up winning out for style and beauty. At the very least, it’s not every other opening. And then there is (as is often in the case in these openings) a very pointed last image, showing a sequence where Yuno savagely fights and kills her… self. Not in terms of suicide, mind, there are two of her to struggle. You might (as I initially did) think this an unsubtle metaphor for the character’s self-destructive tendencies and how her madness leads her towards ruin. And it might be that too, but both the show and the opening are a little too out there for such a straightforward metaphor to be all there is.
Non-action #3 – Sugar Sweet Nightmare (Bakemonogatari)
So, Bakemonogatari is (like Boogiepop) is not a show I’ve had the opportunity to talk about just yet. It’s a fascinating piece, and the openings are, weirdly, kind of worth discussion on their own. For a show that’s basically one cour there are a whopping five (or six, depending on how you count) openings, one for each arc of the show, and they’re all pretty different from one another. The first opening, staple stable, is bizarre enough for the show but weirdly calming, and in my opinion is probably the second best, focusing on the experience of the arc’s leading lady. The second, Kaerimichi, looks and sounds like it belongs to a childish slice of life comedy or maybe even a magical girl show, which is probably fit since the girl of the arc (mercifully not that way) is an overly-energetic elementary schooler. OP 3, ambivalent world, has a sort of sport/romance thing going and overall looks a lot more standard than the show itself. Again, it hooks in perfectly with the arc heroine… but less so the show as a whole. Ren’ai Circulation, the fourth opening, seems like it belongs to a maybe slightly junior slice of life romance – what the arc’s girl might wish the show was, but not what it actually is at all like. And then we come to the final OP, Sugar Sweet Nightmare. I said there were five or six because there are actually two versions of Sugar Sweet Nightmare (that are meaningfully different, not just off by a little credits text like the two ‘versions’ of staple stable): One is done almost entirely in live action with cosplay, while the other fully animates the lead character, Hanekawa, and some scenes while placing said animated figures on real backgrounds, mostly black-and-white (or mostly black-and-white washed) photographs of scenery. The latter is the version I’m really wanting to talk about. It shares its style to an extent with staple stable, though the latter uses less dedicated animation… and while that’s not strictly what the show looks like, it does represent the imagery within Bakemonogatari better than the other three openings. What Sugar Sweet Nightmare does and staple stable doesn’t, though, is properly communicate the tone. Sugar Sweet Nightmare is dark, tortured, and at times a little esoteric in its imagery. The song is heartfelt, fully expressing unrequited love and the pain it causes (a huge theme in the arc), and the imagery… this one is very much not for kids. It’s shadowy, twisted, and bleeds from suggestive through sexual all the way to, frankly, kind of graphic. It’s not really explicit (though there is nudity) but it certainly gets the point across of something more than the pretty words and pretty feelings expressed by Ren’ai Circulation. And while made for and dedicated to the Tsubasa Cat arc, I think it’s overall a good expression of Bakemonogatari, a show that’s weird and unflinching in the face of the dark and uncomfortable sides of humanity and the Other alike. … and damn, the song is amazing on this one.
Action #3 – Wagamama de Gomakasanaide (Revisions)
Like Nageki no Hana, this one belongs to a show that, if we’re being charitable, was deeply flawed. If we’re being less charitable, the show was bad… but that didn’t stop the opening from being amazing. So, what makes Wagamama de Gomakasanaide special? For one, The Oral Cigarettes (the band responsible for the opening. Between them and Porno Graffitti, I think someone in Japan heard of the Sex Pistols and decided that was how all bands were supposed to be named) gave it 100%. Anime openings seem to be split between ones done by professional bands and ones that are sung by one or more of the voice actors for the show. Either can work and both are represented on the list, but when a respectable band gives something their all, you kind of expect the payoff of good music. Second, the imagery. This one wasn’t content to just show us clips from the show or maybe some cooler than average original animation of the characters and action, they went the extra mile to show us things that would create a decently unique visual experience as well. I especially appreciate how time and layering is used to create a sense of distortion through this, which is fitting for a show about a city getting time-kidnapped into the Bad Future. Third and finally is how insanely perfectly this opening fits the show that Revisions aspired to be. Every emotion that Revisions attempted to express for its characters and nearly every arc is in there, even if as a flash. It expresses how Daisuke was set apart from the beginning and the way that his behavior in the future sets him apart from or at odds with his friends, turning into determination to reach out and do something. It expresses Milo’s apartness, both the degree to which she’s something other than the kids (despite relating more to them as a peer) and the degree to which she’s adrift. The cuts to the other kids also give us their resting characters, and the way they’re strung together tells us something about how those tempers run and what the flow of the show is supposed to be. Even the active villains (the OP changes slightly as they get axed), through visual means, manage to communicate what they’re about, what their themes are, and what sorts of feelings they’re supposed to evoke, which is really impressive to do in only a couple of seconds. I said when talking about Nageki no Hana that if you handed the opening to a talented creator and told them to produce the story that went with it, you’d get something better than Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary. In that case, it might not look a whole lot like the finished show. If you tried to do the same thing with Wagamama de Gomakasanaide, I think the clever creator would basically end up with Revisions, fully extrapolated from the minute and a half of the opening since it gets so much of the plot and character across. It could probably be better than the show we got that was ruined by Daisuke being so infuriating for so long, but it would be fundamentally the same, at least until the twists of the final sequence. Frankly, that might be the only OP I can really say this about: it communicates almost the whole of the show.
Non-action #2 – daze (Mekakucity Actors)
In a sense, it’s not surprising that this one is up here. After all, the Kagerou Project started out telling its stories with nothing but a song and a PV to go with that song, so making an anime opening should, in some senses, be old hat to the franchise. Oddly, there are two versions of the intro you’re likely to find online: a low-detail one with lots of stark white and few backgrounds, as well as less detailed animation overall, and a more polished version that at least in every version of the show I’ve dredged up is the real OP. So, if you see a version of daze and think it’s a bit sparse, that might be because it is. In any case, what does this one do that makes it worth the next-to-top slot? Well, a little like Wagamama de Gomakasanaide, it manages to encapsulate quite a lot of material in a little time. The imagery broadly introduces the characters of the Mekakushi-dan (and the supporting cast), and does so in such a way that their struggles and situations come across. Shintaro, miserable to be outside, Ene skulking through the background on monitors and electronics meaning mischief (one of the elements that’s missing from the stripped down version), the messy triangle of Konoha, Hibiya, and Hiyori. We have hits of Momo’s fame and foolishness, the lived-in warmth of being part of the Mekakushi-dan, and hints of professor Tateyama’s sinister secret. Marry’s isolation is expressed, and the importance of knowledge passing through the many hands it does. We see how Seto reaches her, what Kido and Kano are like in temperament. We see Takane making her “Headphone Actor” run and an electric bolt representing her transformation, Konoha facing Haruka, and the bold presence of Ayano in the haze, followed by Shintaro’s strength and determination as derived from her. We see Azami, vanishing into the haze, so when we finally meet her in the show we’ll have been primed for it. Even the Snake of Clearing Eyes, a villain who you can say, in the context of the anime alone, kind of comes out of nowhere is properly represented, a dark presence that appears on scene and shatters it (twice!), making you recognize his threat even if you don’t quite comprehend it. It doesn’t fully encapsulate the show (even the show itself struggles to do that) but it does go above and beyond to introduce it. And, I’ve said this about other shows, particularly in the non-action band, but I’ll say it again here because it’s true again: this was not an easy one to introduce. Hell, I’d struggle to give you the elevator pitch for Mekakucity Actors in prose! If it weren’t right in the creative wheelhouse of KagePro, doing the interpretive dance version, an anime intro, would be asking for trouble: easy to fail but immensely rewarding if done well. And, of course, it was done beyond well.
Action #2 – Kiss of Death (Darling in the Franxx)
And here’s the part where the torches and pitchforks folks have been getting ready since Cruel Angel’s Thesis was slotted in at #6 get used, but I’m sticking to it. This is also the mirror entry to Selector, in that it’s on the action list as the OP to an action show, but the OP itself… kind of isn’t structured like an action OP. Now, again, there are two versions of this one, using the same song, slightly remixed, with different visuals. In this case, I’m largely going to talk about the first OP, but I think it’s both interesting and justified to bring up the second version as well. A big part of that is that the second version skews harder on what the first was already doing: acting more as the intro for a romance that happens to have giant robots rather than as the intro for mecha action. When you get down to it, even though the action in Darling in the Franxx is mostly far on the good end, the romance is what drives the story and interest, and the show is right to focus on that element. That said, the first version is probably the stronger stand-alone intro because it does have more of the action intro parts in order to better represent that, focus where you may, the show has both lines going for it. There’s also a nice hint of threat to the first intro as well, perhaps due to its use of color. Both intros have very limited palettes, but the first version is mostly black and white (skewing to dark grays) on deep blood red – the same sort of color scheme that Mirai Nikki used so effectively in the #4 slot, yet here somehow still less pretentious, if only by a hair. As there, it communicates danger very effectively, which is something important when the fact that the romance aspect so on display is dangerous is a big theme. Zero Two is supposed to be attractive, but she’s also supposed to be scary, even predatory. The lyrics indicate that Kiss of Death is from her perspective, and implore the object of the song to not be afraid… but at the same time it is called Kiss of Death. The second OP’s bold colors, to an extent invert OP 1. Instead of dark grays on red, it’s mostly brighter whites on blue. There’s more full color as well: OP 1 Kiss of Death put a lot of figures in true grayscale, here they’re colored but lit in such a way as to be intentionally washed out. OP 1 did have some blues as accent elements, but it was very constrained – the gold of the honey, used for threat, was bolder and more notable. In OP 2 the accent color isn’t largely OP 1’s red, it’s pink. Combined with a lot of watery imagery, the entire impression is a lot softer, and even though the giant robots and even a villain appear it’s more strongly “this belongs to a romance” in how it moves and what it chooses to linger on. And, as I’ve said with a lot of choices that the intros on this list make that can be odd, it makes sense: by the time the second intro kicks in, Zero Two isn’t really a threat any more, at least not in the way she was back at the start of the show. Which, to an extent, makes me a little sad that OP 2 still goes ahead and uses Kiss of Death. It’s a great song, really one that you could just listen to on its own, but it went with the themes and emotions of the first intro, the moth-to-the-flame experience that fully blends the alluring and the dangerous. In the second intro, we’re seeing much more of Zero Two as a tortured soul – it starts with her sinking to the depths, followed by her, cupped in giant stone hands, looking over an empty sea with a single phantasmal wing (a metaphor that, while not exactly subtle, the show has already primed viewers for), emphasizing her separation and torment. It ends with her and Hiro trying to embrace and passing through each other like ghosts, leaving Hiro standing looking out over a darker, redder sea as scattered phantom sakura petals form the brief impression of a single wing, the opposite of the one Zero Two had. This is dynamite imagery for the latter arcs of Darling in the Franxx, as are many of the images in the middle. They might even be better and more powerful images than the ones in OP 1 Kiss of Death… but while their motion is set to the music, their feelings don’t match the song quite as well. The sense is there, torment and loneliness, but without the fear it doesn’t resonate quite as strong. Still, OP 1 Kiss of Death, on its own, is a masterful intro, telling you what you need to know about the show – its themes, its characters, its tone, its style and aspirations – and doing it in a package that shows great unique artistry. I know a lot of people really came to dislike this show, for any of a number of reasons, some of which even I have to sustain, but in my opinion Kiss of Death stands on its own as a terrifyingly strong piece.
Non-action #1 – DADDY! DADDY! DO! (Kaguya-sama: Love is War)
This is the intro for the second season of Kaguya-sama, but I don’t have to really cover any material beyond my original review to explain it. So, let’s get the basics out of the way: It looks good, it sounds good, the musical style is a little different, all that good stuff that needed to be got out of the way for any sort of consideration. What makes DADDY! DADDY! DO! The #1 slot? After the title card flashes at the 20-second mark in this intro, it is basically a bonus sketch for the show. The intro has everything you’d expect out of a funny Kaguya-sama sketch, but timed and paced to the music rather than the normal melodrama. There’s the scheme, the careful and probably too-clever-for-its-own-good setup, there’s the moment where sticking to the plan becomes hard, the moment where something goes hilariously/horribly awry, Fujiwara ruining the scenario to the shock of the rest of the cast, and a sweet-but-not-too-sweet finish. The way most of the scenes are animated, you can tell that this was being thought out. When Kaguya is preparing her bento, Hayasaka is helping her, because of course Kaguya wouldn’t manage to cook for herself. As Shirogane and Kaguya head to school they pass each other, but its only a glimpse (one of those longing glimpses) because she gets driven there while he rides his bike. Fujuwara is in her investigator mode, no doubt causing trouble to start. Kaguya’s approach goes through all her typical hesitation and double-thinking, and you can tell just from her expressions, and when a solution that would naturally leave her flustered comes up, she does her calming ritual that sends a shiver down Shirogane’s spine. It’s all there. If you don’t know what you’re getting into with Love is War (and you’re in the second season, so that would be a little odd) then it’s effectively a perfect introduction: showing you the 1:10 version of one of the show’s vignettes with some extra cool music. If you do know Love is War already, you can recognize all the little touches and grace notes that push it to the next level while still appreciating the basic fact that… yup, that’s what the show is like. I’ve discussed here intros that act as perfect summaries of their show’s critical themes or even hooks for better stories than the show itself, but no other intro I’ve seen legitimately works as a micro-episode all on its own. There’s even a degree to which you could say this unique and laudable quality was a major impetus for splitting the list: either every action show more or less does it (by showing a fighting moment) or none of them can (because they belong to a genre that needs time and effort) so it somehow wouldn’t be fair to either to judge something like Kiss of Death against DADDY! DADDY! DO!. It’s not the only reason, but it is there, and it earns DADDY! DADDY! DO! the #1 entry on the non-action side.
Action #1 – BRYNHILDR IN THE DARKNESS -Ver. EJECTED- (Brynhildr in the Darkness)
For the sake of my sanity, I’ll just be calling this (the first OP for Brynhildr in the Darkness) “Ejected” in the course of commenting on it. To an extent, this is ‘the big one’ – the Action list was a stiffer competition and Ejected is what fought its way to the top. Why? Well, to an extent, it does this all with one hand tied behind its back – Ejected has no lyrics, just the music and visuals. This is not, I want to stress, the sole reason why it’s here. If it wasn’t otherwise excellent, it wouldn’t be on this list, wouldn’t be high on the list if it was, and certainly wouldn’t be on the #1 slot above entries like Kiss of Death or Wagamama de Gomakasanaide. But, when it’s fiercely competitive with those other top entries, stunting like that does make it a hair more impressive. First and briefly, the music is unreasonably catchy. It’s got a sort of wailing techno tune to it and a steady rhythm that gets in your head really easily and doesn’t sound much like anything else despite being recognizable as good music. This sound does help evoke the show, a story about “witches” produced through mad science, a story that blends the technical and the mystical the same way the music track blends its sound. So, how about those visuals. One thing you may notice is that while it is an action intro to an action show, Ejected takes it fairly slow and steady. In a sense, it’s sort of the opposite of something like Cruel Angel’s Thesis that, at times, flashes images too fast to ‘read’ (or literally read in the case of heavy text) but not too fast to make an emotional impression as part of the whole experience. Here, instead, it lets you really soak in each image. Either strategy can work, but by picking one and owning it, Ejected makes its job somewhat easier. Now, on to the images themselves. We start with the witches (and their boy) waking up to a new dawn, with a cut to a sunflower emerging from ‘sleep’ as well. The slow focus here starts off a strong subtheme of creating a sense of time, in a show where everyone and everything is on a timer. We then get a series of sequences where one of the witches, in black and white and red, is standing in a colorful, normal background, the girl looking bloody, broken, and possibly even dead or dying. Then, a dark wind blows across the scene, and the witch girl is in full color, looking fine… but the background has turned to black and white and the scenery shifted from normal to ruined, run-down, or even apocalyptic depending on how you look at it, firmly setting our lead characters apart from society, not letting both be ‘alive’ in the same scene. We move on to an x-ray style image showing off the Harnest, the implant on a witch’s neck that is both, in a sense, the source of their powers and a great weakness. As we watch, what will come to be known as the worst happens, as the Harnest ‘ejects’ and the figure melts away – here, transitional, not spoiling what will always be a gruesome moment in the show. Along the side, we see hints of some of the Witch powers, in a way that reinforces the ‘technical’. Finally, we get into the action: alien eyes, running from explosions, and all our witches doing their awesome things. We’re treated to hints of further characters, enigmatic figures and villains, the male mc crying, and then a showdown between our leading lady and a villainous witch, Valkyria, that looks like the start of a better battle than the one we actually got. Finally, the last images are similar to the last images (and I mean the very last) of Kuusou Mesorogiwi, where the male lead reaches out a hand and grasps on to the hand of the falling female lead – but where in Kuuso Mesorogiwi that was an unexpected hand for broken-and-crazy Yuno, here we focus on the male lead reaching out, and even past the bounds of the frame, making the catch off screen where it’s believable it might have been missed, creating a very different emotional experience that fits with a different show. And, you might be saying, any show could have done any of these. Brynhildr in the Darkness (and Ejected as its opening), however, do all of them, and compose them into a whole package that, as good as the parts are, is a greater sum. And that, I think, is the real power here: how all the pieces go together. The music is awesome, but Wagamama de Gomakasanaide is probably a better song. The imagery is powerful, but it can be a little janky while the imagery in Kiss of Death is more consistently beautiful and well-animated. It fits and evokes the show very well, but Again probably did more for FMA than Ejected did for Brynhildr. No one element of this opening is the individual best, but they all work together and support each other to make, in my opinion, the best action intro I’ve seen.
So, that was my Top 10 (or, I guess, Top 20) Anime intros. I said at the start, and I’ll say again – I suspect only a couple of them would have much overlap with the lists of other people… and I’m curious to see what other folks would rate as their top openings, and why – so if you’re here, go ahead and leave a comment with, if not a whole list, at least a favorite or two to cheer for! There are no wrong answers (except maybe Ex-Arm) so go ahead and share it with the class!