10.
Millionaire Detective – Balance: Unlimited
Number 10 slot is always tough because I feel like there are a 10 I could have easily slotted in as being near equal to this. As much as I like the more traditionally heroic theme of the old Adventures of Dai cartoon, the new theme gets me pumped for fantasy action and adventure. Talentless Nana basically show quick shots from each beat of the story but without context so there are no actual spoilers until after the fact. Appare-Ranman was a really strong contender, as the song stuck with me for a while. And the latest Golden Kamuy intro looks real slick (both it and the ED almost made those respective lists for me). But I went with Millionaire detective, beating a lot of these series by a hair. The song feels like a dance beat with an underscore of hip hop and the imagery is a mix of pulp detective series, James Bond and braggadocio rap videos oozing with financial excess. We have our lead smoking a big cigar like the greatest asshole in the world. It’s a mix of cool and, on the title character’s end, crass that mirrors his abilities to fight crime with his excess. Millionaire Detective was a fun mid-tier show with some genuine surprises and this is a great way to open up each episode.
9.
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle
Another one that got by on the slimmest of margins as there were a lot of good traditional pop intros this season I liked. This one mostly got by with two specific elements of visual flair I loved: the very start where the castle begins to fold and we see its in a pop up book and the moments after the title reveal where we do some transitioning though the lead character's head (literally) with a short visual journey that looks fierce. Even in comedy shows, I feel like we have fewer series where the characters sing the intro and this one has the title character, a kidnapped princess who is actually a royal terror in the vein of “The Ransom of Red Chief” and here we see her lamenting her fate but with hints that the monsters she lives with have it far worse thanks to her even before we get going. Then we see her, as usual, unhappy with her sleeping arrangements and causing havoc around the castle for her goal. The show isn’t always laugh out loud funny (EDIT: I wrote this before the last episode, which very much WAS. Man, that was a good one.) but it is always enjoyable and I like the character dynamics between the lead character and her “captors” and this pop musical number style intro reflects that.
8.
Jujutsu Kaisen
Jujutsu Kaisen is a show I’m losing a bit of faith in. Its not bad but while it is very slick looking, I’m becoming a little less interested in the mythology and I feel like we haven’t been able to dig into the main character for a while in a way I’m interested it. Nonetheless, the intro has some very gorgeous animation. I like that it is bookended by the lead character falling asleep on a flooded train (whether this is a metaphor or a thing that will literally happen remains to be scene). This doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of shonen action openings. There’s some cool looking fights where the character use their powers. We see characters on their own doing their thing then preparing for battle. Images of villains and significant events. The duality as this is another main character with a darker, more powerful force hidden inside of him. It just does everything very well with pretty animation, good transition and a strong energy-packed pop song.
7.
Gal & Dino
Meanwhile, Gal & Dino is one I fell out of love with relatively quick. Not that I hate it but I just feel while I liked the very chill, sweet pace of the first few episodes, I felt I didn’t have the desire to stick with it and I really don’t care for the back half of the episodes with live action that seems to depend on my knowledge of the Japanese celebrities who are cameo-ing that mean nothing to me. But I do like the relationship between the two title characters: a sweet, stylish Gal and a slow-witted by kind dinosaur. And I like this intro, very poppy and mixing the aesthetics of Sanrio-style mascot characters and gal culture. Particularly, I love Dino traversing the screen is a series of still images based on chocolates, clothing, jewelry and other trendsetting stuff aimed at girls in their late teens/early twenties. It’s a really eye-popping opening and as much as I like something that tells a mini-story or does something to reflect the deeper aspects of the show, there’s something to be said about an intro that just grabs your eyes’ attention.
6.
The Gymnastics Samurai
The Gymnastics Samurai (I’m not sure why Funimation doesn’t just call it Taiso Samurai. It says it in Romanji in the intro) is a fun show set in 2002-2003 for reasons I’m not certain but it makes sense to go with a song from a band that hit big around then, Orange Range. And did they pick a good one: Shanghai Honey is hip and bouncy and I am immediately into it. It’s a new performance of the song apparently (or maybe a new mix) and fits perfectly for this musical video style introduction to our fun cast of characters. It centers around three major characters, including the title character but the show is closer to an ensemble that is gravitating around the lead but has lives outside of him. Still, they are in solidarity with him so it makes sense they are all working together in this fun, music video style intro, including one of Jotaro’s main rivals. Mostly, its just that it’s a visual delight and the song is incredibly catchy.
5.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War
I’m going to confess this one disappointed me a bit on first watch but it grew on me pretty quick. I was super enamored of the first opening with its song and visual and while “Daddy! Daddy! Do!” slaps just as much as “Love Dramatic” (Masayuki Suzuki is such a great choice compared to a more conventional/timely pop singer), I wasn’t as into it visually on first watch. I did like the most of it tells a little episode in and of itself but for some reason the strength of it took a while to take traction in my mind, mostly because I think I expected more obvious visual beats to the music beats (you have heavily punctuated “1-2-3” you expect similar visual punctuation) and while they are there, I guess there weren’t in the way I wanted. But they are there and they are great and I love that while the first intro shows the war metaphor under the surface, here we simply are obvious metaphor free (save for the very start) and it’s the two kids preparing for a war and we watch it play out minus the usual inner monologue. At this point, we know the characters so well, we understand the beat of this story without them: one has a romantic plan, Chiyuki and fate kind of ruin it, something more sweeter and genuinely romantic happens based on spontaneity and the character’s good points, they get under each other’s skin but don’t realize it. Its sweet and funny and I love these characters and want the two knuckleheads to finally work things out.
4.
Great Pretender
If you have a caper show, you NEED a stylish opening. Though Great Pretender often slows things down in favour of deepening character relations to heighten the emotional stakes of each caper, it is a show that wants to emulate the fun caper, con man and heist movies of film’s like Ocean’s Eleven and The Sting. And to that end, it is clearly inspired by the opening to Catch Me If You Can (which in turn was inspired by the great graphic design of Saul Bass), a movie about a con man that also has fun with the cons but also has a very sad human element to it. With a pop art style, it begins taking us through the first arc of the series with quick shots of the stories to follow. We see our hero tries to keep cool like everyone else but really he’s being dragged into the crazy ride that is this series. I also feel, aside from Catch Me If You Can and Saul Bass, it also reflects general 20th century pop art, including an auction that calls to mind Piet Mondrian. The jazzy music also calls to mind caper movies and I feel like we are also intended to be put in mind of more stylish anime (that also used jazz) such as Lupin the Third and Cowboy Bebop. So, yeah, the show accomplished its style cred with this one.
3.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
No surprised that a Masaaki Yuasa show is getting on this list. We were very lucky to get two very good ones this year. And seeing as he makes very gorgeous looking shows, its no surprise he has incredible looking intros. This one is deceptive in that for a show about animation there are a lot of images that only move a little or not at all. But this is a show about both the joy of animation and the acknowledgement that it takes a lot of time to do very little. Here, we have repeated shots of the lead characters voguing. Over and over. Faster and faster. This is the work of animation and animation editing, having to do the same things over and over and faster and faster. We see the leads dancing in silhouette. Animators need to get the specifics of movement right. The intro is very well edited but it is also ABOUT editing, which is the heart of all moving visual mediums. The intro ends its incredibly frantic poppy funtime song with a swirl of repeated images. Each only has two frames of animation but even in that there’s a big scope of what needs to be done even for that simple imagery. And its done as a dizzying swirl. And then it is done again. Because for the world of animation and film in general, when it comes to making it, things need to be done again and again. In the words of Devo “We Must Repeat.”
2.
Dorohedoro
Dorohedoro is definitely an atypical manga so it needed an atypical, off-center intro to go along with it. And boy does it. Starting with psychedelic colors and vaguely world music-esque warbling, we are tossed into a truly foreign world of wizards and murder. And our lead doesn’t appear in a glorious moment but as a parade of soldiers falling to their doom. This isn’t going to be a basic “heroes beat villains” story. But rather than keeping going with conventionally trippy imagery, we cut to Nikaido in her dingy restaurant turning fresh ingredients into yummy gyoza as En’s cat chases that one cockroach. The latter element reflects the wizards tormenting the lower realm and using it as essentially their magic experiment toilet. But when Nikaido gets to the meat… OH SHIT. They film her chopping the meat into mince first with a somewhat happy expression and then with a positively manic one (and it is filmed as such, with bleeding extra colors). Clearly, even without showing us the violence, this is a series of extreme, wild violence. As Nikaido happily and gentle makes her gyoza, a parade of Caimans wonders past the background, still on their single minded and suicidal mission… but if symbolism is to be believed, he can’t be entirely singleminded. Because he carries a piece of her with him. As… some gyoza head guy. I love this intro and the intense, yet somehow fun music by K(no)w Name completes the package.
1.
Japan Sinks 2020
My #1 favourite is tonally the most different than any of the others, I’d say. I do tend to get drawn to the more dynamic opens and sometimes yawn past the quieter ones (I pretty much turn to my phone any time the DS9 theme starts). But like the show, Japan Sinks is something special. The show can get dark and even extremely violent in parts, but like Masaaki Yuasa’s work in general, there’s empathy, humanity and a sense that there is real goodness and hope to be found in young people. The show is about a disaster but it is also about a family and their enduring love for each other, the kind of thing that makes a country beyond a literal place. The intro is “A Life”, sung by Taeko Onuki with a composition and piano work by film legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also did the series soundtrack). It’s a song about remembering someone who is gone now. Its in heavy, almost heavenly whites. We are given images of the lead characters in safer times. I guess its definitely happier times but this isn’t about scenes of joy, but scenes of comfort and love. All the conveniences are there. This isn’t treated as ironic complacency, its just a safe world. There are chores to be done, not the annoying kind but the ones you might take small pleasures in. A place almost like a dream that is gone forever in the physical but lives forever in the mind. Japan Sinks’ intro works because not of extremely clever foreshadowing, though there are subtle elements, but rather a gentle moment in time reminding us what is valuable as our heroes fight to survive in an increasingly unsafe and disappearing world.
