Ask John: Why the Changing Opening & Ending Animation Clips?

Question:
I have noticed in some anime that there are more than one opening and closing piece of animation. When did this trend start and why do some anime have more than one piece of animation and opening and closing themes? I know Inu-Yash, Ceres and Angelic Layer have more than one piece of animation. Could you make a list of some anime that also have more than one piece of animation for the closing and opening themes please?

Answer:
There are actually several reasons why many TV anime series have multiple opening and ending animation sequences or theme songs. These changes can signify changes in the show itself, or can be introduced as a marketing tactic. It’s common for especially long TV series to get periodic new opening animation sequences because these changes bring in new viewers that are interested in the novelty of something new, and bring back previous viewers that may have lost interest in the show and stopped watching. 50, 100 or more episodes with the exact same opening animation and same theme music week after week, year after year, can get to be a bit tedious. Especially given the relatively short attention span of the average market for anime in Japan, shows need to do whatever they can to try to retain viewers over longer broadcast runs. Long series including Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku and the king of new openings and endings, Ranma, used multiple opening and endings to help maintain viewer interest.

But sometimes changes in opening animations can coincide with changes in the show. The second opening animation sequence for Rayearth signified the beginning of the second season and a dramatic change in story direction. Changes in the opening animations for Rurouni Kenshin and Dragonball Z also signified the beginning of the long “Kyoto arc” and the shift of central focus in later Dragonball Z from Son Goku to Son Gohan. The change in opening animation and especially the change from a happy J-pop theme song to a dramatic operatic opening theme in Violinist of Hameln preceded the deepening story, increased seriousness and darker tone of the second half of the series.

Opening and ending themes may often rotate in order to give exposure to more music and sell more CDs. Especially recently with popular J-pop performers including Move, Ayumi Hamasaki, Folder 5, Do As Infinity, Dream, V6 and Hitomi providing theme songs for anime TV series, more theme songs mean more CD singles and more sales for the record companies that foot the bill for the production of TV anime.

A list of which anime series have different opening and ending animation clips is virtually impossible to compile, partially due to the difficulty of determining exactly what constitutes “different.” While the shows I’ve mentioned above have employed immediately noticeable, entirely different animation clips or theme songs, there are a virtually uncounted number of shows that use subtly different opening or ending clips. Series including Brainpowerd and Fushigi Yuugi have run episode specific clips or previews during their ending credits. Gasaraki slightly modified its opening animation every 3 or so episodes. Series including Vandread Second Stage and Trigun included episode specific footage in each episode’s opening animation (although the American version of Trigun used the episode 1 opening animation for all 26 episodes). The opening animation of the VS Knight Ramune & 40 Fresh OAV series changed slightly as the character Lemon was not included in the otherwise unchanged opening animation until after he had been formally introduced in the show. And as has been noted on the AnimeNation Forum, Sazae-san has over 1500 episodes and every single one of them has a slightly different opening animation, as Sazae-san visits a different Japanese location in each week’s new opening sequence.