Being aimed at a much older audience unlike Western Animation (with a few exceptions), these are bound to happen.
- Akiba Maid War has the manager of a maid café get gunned down within the first minute. The series doesn't get any lighter from there, with its plot revolving around a Mob War in which death can come for anyone, at any time.
- Tokyo getting destroyed nuclear-style in the opening shot, and then the dogs and the spy getting killed in AKIRA. The spy's death was especially bloody, just to drive home the point that, no, even though it's animated, this is not for kids.
- Angel Beats! opens with the main character stabbed right through the chest.
- The opening raid in the first CGI Appleseed film has shootouts with quite a bit of High-Pressure Blood, culminating in one robot crushing a soldier's head like a grape.
- All variants of the story of Berserk have done this, in varying ways:
- The manga begins with the protagonist, Guts, having sex with a woman who in the throes of passion transforms into a demon. As she gloats over what she sees as her latest kill, Guts jams his arm into her mouth and blows her head off with the cannon hidden inside. As he leaves her smoldering corpse behind, he shoots one last glare at the fiend, which has the effect of appearing as though he's looking at you instead, giving you one last warning that this story is not going to give you a pleasant ride.
- The three thugs getting killed by Guts in the bar scene from the anime Berserk (1997), including one getting slashed in half with his BFS.
- The opening scene of the movie Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I throws us headlong into the storming of a castle and ends with Guts killing the giant Bazuso in very bloody fashion.
- Berserk (2016)'s opening credits are basically a summing-up of the Golden Age Arc, including Griffith's torture, the horror of the Eclipse, Casca's rape at the hands of Femto, and Guts chiseling off his arm. The first episode proper begins with Farnese and company coming across the lake of blood and the partially-eaten remains of the Band of the Hawk.
- The first episode of Black Butler II (that is, the second season) introduces Alois Trancy naked and bruised, in bed next to a very naked old guy, creepily muttering the word "darkness" to himself over and over again. The entire episode counts as this, since it focuses on Alois being sadistic and crazy, basically telling the viewers that this season is much darker than the last one. Throughout the episode, Alois proceeds to: gouge out a maid's eye with his fingers, tell creepy personal stories about his prolonged abuse to strangers, make vaguely sexual comments to every male person he interacts with, beat that (now one-eyed) maid again, and then cry about not wanting to be alone.
- Black Lagoon shows off guns, Stripperific outfits, and swearing before you even get through the opening song.
- Blood+ begins with the most violent scene in the entire series. Even before the opening, you are treated to a scene from The Vietnam War. It quickly shifts to some flares, soldiers shooting monstrous creatures and Saya slaughtering everything in sight. You are most likely confused and horrified by now and to drive it even further, this is followed by a slow shot of a Vietnamese girl running away terrified only to be slashed in half by Saya. This is immediately followed by the first Title Sequence with its bouncy J-pop theme music, then a present day scene with an unaged, perfectly sane Saya as an Ordinary High-School Student.
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners begins with an incredibly gory sequence where a Cyberpsycho makes quick and messy work of NCPD forces attempting to take him down, just before MaxTac, the team that deals with cyberpsychos, shows up, disables his cyberware via netrunner hacks, and puts him down. The braindance of this sequence also shows up in Cyberpunk 2077, in a tribute to the anime.
- The opening theme for the Dance in the Vampire Bund anime... well it stops just short of female nudity, but given the apparent age of the female lead the Nipple and Dimed thing does not help much. The manga is a bit of an improvement, as it takes 2/3 of a chapter for a noblewoman to command her head guardsman's teenage son to strip her to her panties (yes, same female lead). Quickly moving on to examples of the blood and swearing (more of the latter than we see for quite a while afterwards). Once in book form we don't even wait for the start - the female lead's posing on the back cover in panties, gloves and a rose - which really should keep it from being bought by accident.
- Deadman Wonderland opens with the incredibly bloody mass murder of male protagonist Ganta's middle school class by an unknown figure in red. The manga on which it was based leads into this moment with Ganta playing with a girl as a child, making it even more jarring in that situation.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba examples:
- The first episode features most of Tanjiro's family being slaughtered by demons in graphic fashion, and his sister Nezuko being turned into a demon herself; establishing the danger faced right out of the gate.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train opens with a graveyard scene of the previous Demon Slayers, with the first act of the movie containing a group of assassins intending to kill the passengers by breaking their spirits (including those of the main characters). The English dub of the film is rated R for the violence and bloody images that ensue.
- Lucy's rampage through the lab in Elfen Lied definitely qualifies, with bonus points for taking off her straitjacket so she could be completely naked for her killing spree, except for the creepy helmet. Not to mention the nudity throughout the opening theme sequence in each episode.
- Shinji masturbating over Asuka's comatose body at the start of End of Evangelion. For bonus points, the Manga Entertainment dub has him saying that he is "so fucked up".
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) starts off by showing the transmutation that caused the loss of Edward's leg and Alphonse's body. With copious amounts of blood from Edward's stump.
- Both Ghost in the Shell and its film adaptation start with the Major assassinating a diplomat, with explosive rounds. The movie then follows this with a sequence of the Major's nude cyborg body being built.
- Highschool of the Dead opens with several students running and fighting their way through a crowd of zombies, with plenty of blood and gore resulting. Not surprising, given the subject matter. However, we're also treated to some gratuitous breast bouncing and panty shots from the female lead, and, in the English dub at least, a couple precision F strikes, making it abundantly clear within the first two minutes that this show is not appropriate for younger viewers.
- Higurashi: When They Cry starts with Keichi beating Rena and Mion into a pulp with a baseball bat. This is based on the opening of the original Visual Novel, where he gives a monologue with the sound of loud, sickening thwacks in the background before abruptly cutting to him getting ready for school. The opening credits also feature a nontrivial amount of blood, creepy music and visuals, and mild nudity.
- The opening of Karin has a large amount of nudity that has nothing to do with what actually happens in the anime.
- Ken Akamatsu is best known for his Unwanted Harem comedy work Love Hina, and Negima! Magister Negi Magi, while undergoing a Genre Shift, is still chock full of similar material and takes a while to get to the more action-y bits. In his newest work, UQ Holder!, he apparently decided to make it clear from the get-go that this isn't more of the same: the first chapter includes almost none of his signature Fanservice, instead showing the protagonist getting an arm hacked off and another character being hacked into pieces in a bloody fashion (she gets better).
- Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine uses an opening narration describing a love/lust of theft. The animation is of a naked woman in suggestive and non-suggestive poses. Lots of nipples, although genitalia is covered. The episodes themselves usually have less nudity, but deals with the older Seinen demographic, rather than the more general Shōnen demographic.
- The first scene of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is focused on Setsuna's Dark and Troubled Past, showing the future protagonist running through a ruined city filled with bodies, trying in vain to fight a squadron of mobile suits. 0 Gundam does not show its face until the very end of the scene, right before it cuts into the opening.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny starts with Shinn Asuka's family being accidentally gunned down by two mechas as the kid stares in horror at the corpses.
- Monster Musume's opening scene of its first episode features the protagonist accidentally causing Miia to orgasm by pulling on her tail, which is immediately followed by an OP with a decent amount of risque fanservice, and another scene where Miia shows off her breasts.
- Used a couple of times in the One Piece movies:
- The Movie opens with the aftermath of El Drago killing an entire pirate crew and a terrified Tobio watching him pick Woonan's treasure map from one pirate's dead hands. For extra nightmare fuel, El Drago's laughter is backlit by a lightning strike, which leaves his face visible for only a second. Cut to the upbeat adventure theme of 'We Are!'. This is by far the most intense the movie gets; There are no on-screen deaths, El Drago is largely Played for Laughs and the rest of the movie takes place during the day with appropriately bright colors.
- The Cursed Holy Sword: Oh boy. Saga and Maya are attacked by a group of pirates, who surround them and mortally wound Saga. Saga is seen losing a huge pool of blood, which is absorbed by the Seven-Star Sword. Now cursed, Saga uses the sword to slice the pirates in half (albeit in silhouette) as Maya screams out in horror. Once again, nothing else in the movie is anywhere near as disturbing. As this was the only One Piece movie to receive a 15 in Britain (for strong violence), this may well be a literal R-rated opening.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt starts off with Garterbelt forcing Panty and Stocking downstairs with Panty still sleeping with a lot of men. In addition, a lot of swear words are stated as Garterbelt gets annoyed at Panty and Stocking ignoring his exposition.
- The anime adaptation of Parasyte took a scene from the middle of the first chapter and showed it as the very opening of the first episode. In this scene, a man who has been taken over by the titular creature opens his face five ways and reveals a gaping, black hole full of teeth and five eyes and then bites his wife's head off, with lots of blood and gore. Not nice.
- The opening for Pokémon: The First Movie sets things up as being Darker and Edgier than the normal animé by having Mewtwo destroy the laboratory in which he was created minutes after he wakes up, killing every last scientist inside as they try to run away screaming. Then after meeting with Giovanni and being used as his tool, he blows up Team Rocket's base and swears to purge the world of non-clone life.
- The opening of Princess Mononoke has an ominous bit of background text superimposed on a dark screen, but for good measure the first scene contains a highly disturbing demonic form assaulting a village, almost eating a child, and eventually getting shot by an arrow in the eye, before melting away into a gigantic skeleton. Needless to say, anyone who brought their young daughter to see the cute anime princess should leave at this point. It's also noteworthy in this case that people often ignored the PG-13 rating; as the film came out in theaters in the middle of the Pokémon craze, and by extension, the family-friendly Pokémon: The First Movie. People who were expecting a wholesome family adventure were promptly stricken with cries of What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?.
- The Rurouni Kenshin prequel OVA Tsuiokuhen/Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal starts with a gore-drenched sword massacre.
- Serial Experiments Lain shows off its dark nature by having a middle schooler jump off a roof at the start.
- Skeleton Knight in Another World opens with a graphic Attempted Rape in the first few seconds.
- The first three episodes of Soul Eater (which introduce the main characters) contain quite a bit more nudity and fanservice than the rest of the series. Not quite R-rated, but still jarring enough to notice.
- Space Runaway Ideon The opening to ''Be Invoked'' has main character Cosmo Yuki witness how one of his two love interests, Kitty, is horribly killed by a Buff Clan attack. The movie even shows the poor girl's severed head in the reflection of Cosmo's helmet! It gets worse from there.
- Sword of the Stranger opens with a hail of arrows ambush by bandits. This succeeds in killing approximately one person and some pack animals, and maybe winging one or two others. And then the Unstoppable Blood Knight Badass of the Badass Crew that comprises the villains of the movie scales a cliff and slaughters 15-20 bandits, throwing their bodies down as he goes. The bandit leader gets taken down by a blade toss. Lastly, he finishes off one unarmed (and missing one arm) bandit who is writhing in pain on the ground as if he were stepping on a bug.
- The anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul has a Cold Open depicting a woman messily consuming a pile of human corpses and, in the English dub, orgasmically shouting "More! More!" as she does it. Though the lighting conceals anything too graphic it's obvious she's not wearing a stitch. She's then attacked by a masked man wielding bloodstained pliers. While the series is by no means intended for children, it's not usually quite that lurid (preferring psychological horror) and the scene isn't present in the manga.
- Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song: The anime is all about preventing a Bad Future in which intelligent robots have Turned Against Their Masters, to the point of killing every single human they run into. The first scene shows the above happening, including several bloody on-screen killings.
- The very first event in Wolfsmund is a man being executed via decapitation. The violence only gets worse from there.
- X/1999: The Movie starts with Kamui having a vision of his mother, with full frontal nudity, pulling the BFS out of her stomach in graphic detail. As you can imagine, there's lots of blood.
