A Sub-Trope to Animesque. Almost every anime has a catchy opening. Anime openings are rife with their own tropes and cliches, making them distinct from Western cartoon openings. In the West, lyrical theme songs are more limited to kid shows and sitcoms. This has led to the question: what if their favorite media had an anime opening?
This is often used for comedy. There's humor to be found in creating a serious animesque opening for a comedic show and vice versa. It's also not limited to pieces of media, as there have been fan anime openings created for WWII
, Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, and the entirety of the Byzantine Empire. If the parody is from an official source, expect a Suspiciously Similar Song to be used to avoid getting into copyright trouble. The opening may include an Art Shift to an anime style.
More often than not, such parodies are a Homage or Affectionate Parody to the anime genre. After all, who doesn't love an epic opening?
Examples:
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Fanmade (sorted by source material)
Anime & Manga
- MytholoGeek made various anime opening parodies, but the most notable of them are the live-action versions of Rurouni Kenshin and Bleach which were made to see if they would resemble than their anime counterparts (Sobakasu and Asterisk, respectively.)
- The opening song "Cruel Angel's Thesis" from Neon Genesis Evangelion is a meme. Memes can range from edits to full-fledged animation depending on how much effort the creator is willing to put in.
- Parodies of Nichijou's first opening are common, such as this one with the characters replaced by those from Jojos Bizarre Adventure, this one which uses the Kaguya-sama: Love Is War cast, or this one, which uses the Toradora! characters. This version uses the Nichijou characters, but its costumes and settings are from Among Us.
Films — Animated
- This video shows what Disney's Alice in Wonderland might look like as an anime opening.
- Attack on Ogre is an anime opening of Shrek (crossed with Pokémon and Attack on Titan).
Films — Live-Action
- This video shows what Avengers: Infinity War might look like as an anime opening, using the song "Guren No Yumiya" from Attack on Titan.
Live-Action TV
- One fan video reworks the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening for Twin Peaks by replacing the animated clips and Ken Burns Effect stills from the original with images and clips from the live-action Twin Peaks, with Agent Cooper taking Shinji's place. This plays on similarities between the two works, with both being Mind Screwy cult favorite shows from the 90's with heavy amounts of esoteric symbolism, and also plays on the "Twin Peaks is an Anime" meme that became popular when Season 3 was released. Video here (contains major spoilers for Twin Peaks).
Video Games
- This video redoes the second opening theme and first closing theme sequences of Full Metal Alchemist 2003 as well as the third ending sequence of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo with the cast of Final Fantasy VI. In all three cases, most of the backgrounds and poses are taken from the original footage, with a few exceptions such as the characters being on the airship in place of Edward and Alphonse running.
Web Animation
- Star Wars: Galaxy of Adventures received various anime openings thanks to YouTube users like Bar Akuda and 6IXLXRD, who used the animated clips from the web series and converted them into anime openings based on trilogies or exclusive movies.
Web Original
- On YTMND, there's the site "Cosby Bebop", spoofing Cowboy Bebop with sound clips of Bill Cosby as parodied on Family Guy and The Simpsons.
Web Videos
- Some fans made an anime opening for El Bananero based on the one from Blend-S. The "opening" was so well received by El Bananero himself that he used it as the opening for the actual version of Radio Garka (his past podcast now revived as a live YouTube show due to the COVID-19 Pandemic) for the rest of 2020.
Western Animation
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Anime originally began as fully-animated anime opening parodies of popular Nickelodeon show SpongeBob SquarePants.
- "South Eater", a parody of the first Soul Eater opening rendered with South Park characters.
- This fan-made opening of Amphibia is accompanied by "No Pain, No Game", the first opening of Btooom!.
Real Life
- This video uses footage from various WWII films to create an anime opening for WWII.
- This video is a fully-animated parody of "Cruel Angel's Thesis" from Neon Genesis Evangelion centered around the Byzantine Empire.
- This video is a fully-animated anime opening for the 2020 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, portraying him as a Cool Old Guy.
- Due to the rebellion state of the Chilean protests since 2019 (that would be more brutal if it wasn't for the COVID-19 Pandemic), various anime openings were dedicated to this massive event, mostly the openings based on Attack on Titan with many versions of "Guren No Yumiya" (OP 1) to other openings of the series like "Jiyuu no Tsubasa", "Shinzou wo Sasageyo" and "My War."
Non-fanmade
Anime & Manga
- Pop Team Epic: The anime does a bait and switch with this, starting off apparently like a magical girl/pop idol anime called "Hoshiiro Girldrop" complete with an anime opening. Just as its first title card is read out, Popuko appears and rips it apart, starting the real anime of the series.
- Hitoshi Ariga, the creator of the renowned manga Mega Man Megamix based on Mega Man (Classic) made his own animated opening based on the famous "Subarashiki Shin Sekai (Brave New World)" from Namco × Capcom, with Mega Man, Bass and the Robot Masters staring this animation against the Stardroids, which are the Big Bad Ensemble of the series, hyping fans for many years about a possible Animated Adaptation of his manga.
Live-Action TV
- The opening of the TV version of Train Man (2004) parodied the Daicon IV anime sequence, using the same music and key sequences but using Mina (a character from a Show Within a Show on Train Man) instead of the heroine and with flying trains instead of flying swords.
Video Games
- Project Wingman has an Easter Egg where if you play Mission 11 ("Cold War") on the highest difficulty, the game will display the game's title (in both English and Japanese) along with the "episode number" when the mission starts.
- Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is an American-produced homage to Humongous Mecha anime, complete with an original anime-style opening theme.
- Splatoon 2: The trailer for the 4.0 update is a pastiche of anime openings, from the J-rock-inspired track used to the shots of characters staring off into the distance before the action kicks in for the chorus to the fake "credits" in the Inkling language. The Stinger is even a fake "sponsored by" screen with in-game brands.
Web Animation
- ASDF Movie: 12 includes an anime opening. The segment has an Art Shift to a more Animesque style.
- Centricide 2, also known as Centwocide, a fan-made concurrent story to Jreg's Centricide, produced by Jreg 2 has an opening edited to mimic an anime opening.
- JaidenAnimations the Anime, as the name implies, is a faux anime opening created by and themed around story time animator JaidenAnimations, fitting her and the various people in her videos within the context of a Fighting Series. The video even uses an original J-rock-styled theme song created specifically for it.
Web Original
- Twitch streamer/gamer Max Gamble, AKA Aplatypuss, plays a parody of the Evangelion OP based around images and content from his streams and YouTube videos whenever he's raided by another Twitch streamer.
Web Video
- In Internet Historian (Incognito Mode) video "mythology.", the ad for NordVPN resembles an anime opening, complete with an original Word Salad Lyrics song.
- Cultaholic had the Big Dog Bebop, a series of openings for the channel's "WTF Moments" shows, which parodied anime openings, complete with "Blind Idiot" Translation subtitles, Japanese-spoken songs, and still images of the show's host Ross Tweedell, Roman Reigns, Rusev and Edge.
- Dzwiedz 24 has one for the Shadow Warrior 2 let's play, "Dźwiedziu's Bizarre Adventure" - complete with a Japanese theme song with lyrics displayed on the bottom of the screen and Japanese Credits Gag.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball parodies the Cowboy Bebop opening "Tank!" in the episode "The Spinoffs." The short surrounds the character Larry Needlemeyer and is titled "Barcode Cowboy."
- Regular Show parodies the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening "Cruel Angel's Thesis" in the episode "Brilliant Century Duck Crisis Special."
- The Rick and Morty episode "Rickamurai Jack" replaces the usual intro with an Animesque intro sequence (complete with Japanese vocals) for "Rick and Two Crows".
