elfs | Video: Every Anime Opening Ever Made

KickInTheHead mashed up the video for over 90 anime opening sequences, showing how the same motifs occur again and again:

Current Mood: amused

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From:

http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/

Oh. Oh Wow.

I had to stop 1/4 of the way in because it was all blurring together.

I'm sure some of these motifs cross over into trope, or even cliche, because they're put in every opening for exactly the same reason: "Well, everyone else is doing it, so we have to do it to."

But I'm also fairly certain that some not-so-small percent of these motifs show up in the openings, well, reflexively. The creative teams put them in without even knowing that they're using a motif. And that's because those particular motifs are really cultural memes.

Consider one of the European cultural memes: Holst's "The Planets," first movement, "Mars, the Bringer of War." It (or something sounding like it) shows up, in part or in whole, anywhere and anytime there's a big-a$$ battle coming up. And why wouldn't it? Holst wrote, "The Planets," smack in the middle of World War I, the bloodiest war any European had ever seen. With the "Mars" movement, he captured all of that, direct from our collective Id. Sure, someone from south Asia or from China would probably get that this particular piece of music is about war, or a battle. Ask a European to describe what it evokes, and I betcha you'd get a richer description.

So, I think it would be interesting to know what the various motifs in anime opening credits means to a Japanese person. What does each one evoke for them?

From:

nbarnes.livejournal.com

It helps that John Williams proceeded to, uh, borrow from Holst for Star Wars' Imperial March. Between the two, we in the West pretty much have a hard wired idea of what the ominous sound of impending war and death is.

From:

http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/

Yep!

Here's another interesting phenomenon. Certain pieces of music capture something … primal, at least culturally. Same for certain stories, too. Other pieces of music, however, acquire a meaning that they never had originally. "Carmina Burana," for example, is mainly a bunch of 13th-century love and drinking songs. However, its opening and closing movement, basically a lament /tirade against the goddess of Fortune, has been turned into a musical cliche. It's used for a wide range of things, pretty much anything that falls under the heading, "dark and dramatic." It's been used in so many soundtracks and incidental music that you'll find dozens of claims for it being, "first used here."

And that kinda gets back to my original point, tying in with your observation,

nbarnes. "O Fortuna," has been slathered all over the place, overused in so many contexts that it doesn't really reflect any of them. Moreover, any copy, borrowing, or variant of "O Fortuna" sounds just like that: a copy of the original. But most people don't notice the difference.
In contrast, Holst's, "Mars, the Bringer of War," is just too context-specific. To reuse it in another context, a composer has to modify it heavily, as in your example of the "Imperial March." Very few people would notice the connection between the two. I can't envision any sort of tweak of "Mars" sounding like anything other than a bad copy of Holst.

There are musical and visual motifs that precisely and succinctly capture a mood+idea+concept better than any verbal description could. Used out of context, they make you go, "Heh!?!?" Variations and copies just look or sound off; they've lost that connection with that concept. But play/display the original, and everyone (culturally-connect to the motif) will instantly think, "Yes. That." and know exactly what you mean. ^_^