Friday, April 07
When I first started watching anime as anime rather than as cartoons that just happened to come from Japan, one of the things I most looked forward to was the new releases from ADV every month. For a simple reason: The ADV tapes (and this was back in the middle ages, so all we had was tapes) had trailers on them.
Trailers that did not suck.
This was an art that had escaped most of the anime distributors of the time, though watching even a handful of ADV's trailers made the techniques involved obvious. All they did was take the opening theme (or in some cases, the closing theme if it was catchier or if there was no opening theme) and a selection of clips from the show. Even without a real-time NLE (which were in short supply in the 12th century) you could put something like that together in an hour or two. Add titles with your handy-dandy character generator (anyone remember the outrage when ADV changed their subtitle font?) and you're done. A 90 second promotional spot that your customers will actually want to watch made for practically nothing.
(The secret part that most of their competitors didn't get was what they didn't do. No voice-over. They let the anime speak for itself.)
Well, that's what I want to talk to you all about; endings.
I love the opening and closing sequences of anime shows because this is exactly what they are designed to do. They have to sell the show, and they have just 90 seconds to do it.
The job is very different to the opening credits of most western TV shows. Look at something like, say, Buffy or Stargate. Yes, you have theme music (or in the case of Buffy, a crappy pointless noisy riff), and you have some action shots, but the big point is to show and name the cast. Because... Well, I don't actually know exactly why. But that's what they do. With a live-action show, the cast is important; not many TV series can get away with replacing their stars (Dr Who being the notable exception).
Live action TV shows live or die to a large degree by their casts. The stories are secondary - which is why so much of what we get on our screens is crap.
Animation doesn't. I might be interested if a series has a character voiced by Megumi Hayashibara, still a favourite of mine, or if it has music composed by Yoko Kanno. A film from Hayao Miyazaki is a must see. But for the most part, the names of the seiyuu (voice actors), composers, directors, and writers don't register all that strongly. It's not about the stars.
Now, endings normally happen at the end.
It's about the story. Most anime is developed from existing manga*, comic books, and manga are usually the work of just one or two people. They're almost always black-and-white, so there's not even the need for the type of teams of artists that produce many Western comics. (Does Rumiko Takahashi have an inker and a letterer? I have no idea.)
And when a show is story-driven, what you have to do is tell the story. If you have 12 episodes worth of story, you can't run the series for seven years.** So next year, next season in fact, you have to come up with another story to tell.
And you have to persuade people to watch it.
And you have ninety seconds to do so.
You have ninety seconds to say, these are my characters. This is my artistic style, this is my animation, this is my music. This is my story. Please watch it so that the advertisers will keep funding me and I can afford something more than instant ramen now and then.
But as we all know, endings are just beginnings.
Given that requirement, it's not surprising that a lot of thought and effort goes into the opening and closing credits in anime. I have a couple of laser discs (uh, somewhere) of the credits for all the seasons of Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½. That such a thing could be produced and sold means that I'm not the only person to notice this.***
My friend (a 2nd generation Japanese) who has seen far more anime than all other people I know (and myself) combined, has come up with an heuristic for judging whether something is worth getting an actual viewing. There are far too many series around competing for attention, even more so for him since he can watch region 2 releases (no need for English). Time and resources are finite, so some sort of prioritization must be used. Basically it is this:It doesn't always work, of course. The opening theme to Aishiteruze Baby was some appallingly dreary Suzanne Vega-ish thing, but I liked the show a great deal. And they can be terribly misleading (Narutaru, I'm looking at you).Watch the opening and the closing.
- If both are good, then the series is, more likely than not, also good and worth watching.
- If one is good but the other so-so, then the final opinion could go either way. (Openings are worth more points.)
- If both are bad, don't watch.
But it works - for me - far more often than not.
And that's why I'm archiving them here. A reviewer can tell you that the animation is fluid (or stilted, as it may be); the music joyous or inspired or achingly beautiful or, well, none of the above. But in ninety seconds, you can determine that for yourself.
* Most anime series that aren't adaptations of manga are adaptations of computer games. But they almost invariably suck, so I'll ignore them.
** Ranma ½ notwithstanding.
*** And if you thought that the closing themes for Popotan or Happy Lesson were ear worms, just writing the name of Urusei Yatsura has got Lum no Love Song stuck in my head.
Hoshitachi ga kagayaku yofuke
Yumemiru no anata no subete.
Aishite mo anata wa shiramburi de.
Imagoro wa dare ka ni muchuu.
Oh yes, here, in case you were wondering.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:07 AM
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Hey! don't be hating on Nerf Herder.
You apparently liked the UY opening/closing animations more than I. Aside from "Rock the Planet", I don't think I've seen a UY op/ed that didn't make me want to put a fist through drywall. That horrible giggle from the first TV opening... shudder
Posted by: Mitch H. at Friday, April 07 2006 11:20 AM (iTVQj)
Actually, I can find out pretty quickly. Where's my iPod? Right. Now w-a-i-t for it to boot. Oookay, the giggle is a bit much, but it's over with soon enough.
(The second anime I watched was Dominion: Tank Police, which was also great. The first one was a forgotten bit of fluff called Ultimate Teacher. This was pre-web, so I have an excuse.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 07 2006 11:37 AM (zZVLb)
I have a difference of opinion with Steven about the OP and ED of Banner of the Stars. I thought that the ED was great (as a music at least), and I have it on my iPod by J.Greely's method. But the funny thing is... it took me a few months to figure it out. It starts a little weak, so I always skipped it until some chance intervened. So, for me Banner is actually a matching hit for the heuristic.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, April 07 2006 02:36 PM (9imyF)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, April 07 2006 03:10 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, April 07 2006 03:12 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, April 07 2006 03:27 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, April 07 2006 05:08 PM (+rSRq)
Let's see if I've fixed it...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 07 2006 07:16 PM (zZVLb)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 07 2006 07:16 PM (zZVLb)
Also, a lot of viewers nowadays like to hear a bit of the dub, though I don't much go for it myself. (Whaddaya want? I was/am a subtitler, I don't watch dubs for a living! ;p)
The real reason why the OP and ED garner a lot of attention on the Japanese production side is simple - it's work that only has to be done ONCE. Yes, yes, good opening and ending and it enhances the show and helps sell it and yadda yadda, but fundamentally, it's 3 minutes of animation that you don't have to do over again every friggin' week. Essentially, because it's going to be run 13 or 26 or god-knows-how-many times, it's very efficient to pour extra work into that bit of animation.
Heck, some recent shows (Chrono Crusade springs to mind) have gone to air the first few episodes before the "real" opening was animated - they ran on air with a montage of shots from the show, then went to DVD with the "real" opening. Heh, Japanese animation production is very much a just-in-time industry, and it occasionally gets them in trouble...
Posted by: Avatar at Friday, April 07 2006 07:30 PM (mELpt)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, April 07 2006 08:21 PM (7+BNY)
Posted by: Shamus at Friday, April 07 2006 10:00 PM (GDT1x)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, April 08 2006 12:29 AM (+rSRq)
Anyway, while I intuitively agree with Heuristic 2 (H.1 := "Size") and Heuristic 1 (H.1 := "compute_suck(OP+ED)"), they seem weak even in conjunction when examined closer. The data which I have is quite inconclusive.
I pulled 3 boxes full of DVDs from the closet and compiled the list of Like factor (corresponds to Rewatchability), H.1 factor, H.2 in eposode units. The table has movies (from same boxes) and non-DVD thrown in too (for illustrative purposes), sorted by R.
S R H.1 H.2
Azumanga 5 3.5 26
Sp.Away 5 - M
Haibane 4.5 4 13
[Windy T.] 4.5 5 13
Kamichu 4.5 4 16
-- Naruto 3.7 5 180
Banner 3.3 3.5 13
Porco 3 - M
Dai-Guard 3 4.5 26
Stellvia 3 5 26
Chobits 3 3 26
Tenchi OVA 2.5 3.5 13
Furuba 2.5 3.3 26
Stratos 4 2 4 13
Excel Saga 1 3 26
Jubei-chan 1 3 13
Ga.Angel 1 3 Many
Drag.Half 1 3 2
ROD 1 4 3
[FLCL] 1 3 6
I was unable to calculate sensible corelation values, because of normalization difficulties. In case of H.1, there's a lot of randomness and self-selection, because my shelf has better shows than store shelf. See, no ones or twoes. Basically I never saw a complete stinker of an opener. For H.2, the trouble is in the scale. I mean, I do not even have CCS (70) or Maison Ikokku (96). But Naruto pushes 180! The other trouble for H.2 is how a bunch of stinkers has very small number of episodes.
But even so, it's obvious that H.2 is weak, in the sense that it gives good guidance for 13 and 26 group, but not for any oddballs. The way to apply it is to tabulate: 13 is factor 4.5, 26 is 0.5, everything else is 2.5.
H.1 is weak because truly horribly OPs/EDs are rare, so it fluctuates wildly and thus throws many exceptions.
It was a good fun to think about it, but I'm afraid we may be better without either H.1 or H.2.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sunday, April 09 2006 05:31 AM (9imyF)
I don't consider quality/likeability to be the same as rewatchability.
I think Cowboy Bebop is a brilliant show - and I have no intention of rewatching it.
(I think Connie Willis's Doomsday Book is brilliant, and I have no intention of ever rereading that either.)
I do think we need a bigger sample set, though. I just unpacked one, but I don't know when I'll get to analyse it...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 09 2006 05:52 AM (lLRbG)
Also, H.2 gives a good guidance indeed, I was mistaken calling it "weak". I got carried away with calculations which were futile. But if we simply split the table in three between Porco Rosso and Dai-Guard, and between Jubei-Chan and Galaxy Angel, the upper half is almost all 13s, middle part is almost all 26. Spooky, huh. Should've applied common sense earlier.
A bigger data set would be nice, but I'm lazy.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sunday, April 09 2006 03:46 PM (9imyF)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 09 2006 10:13 PM (oyvZL)
Posted by: Caty Tota at Saturday, July 08 2006 03:05 PM (EfiW2)
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