Video: Every Anime Opening Ever Made

[elfs]

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

Comments

[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. ^_^