It’s time for the seasonal OP/ED roundup! I want to hear about your favorite OPs and EDs for the season (alternatively, your least favorites!). If you are looking for a collection of them all for this season, you can find almost all of them at the link below:
Just a note that you can absolutely use this thread like you would any other general discussion thread. So, feel free to post questions/comments/recommendations like any other week.
As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).
Last week in older anime:
First up was Bloody Escape: Jigoku no Tousou Geki, a movie sequel to Estab Life: Great Escape that I didn’t even know existed until I happened on it while getting the link for Estab Life for last week’s post. It was… okay. It’s almost entirely separate from Estab Life, though it’s the same setting and Equa and the crew show up a couple of times. It’s a decent action movie with no particular flaws but no particular merits either.
Then, for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to rewatch Puni Puni Poemii, which is one of the strangest things out there.
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It’s two episodes, and a sort of spin-off from Excel Saga, and like it, it’s crammed full of meta humor, pop culture references, over-the-top satire and incomprehensible nonsense. I suspect that the initial inspiration was Shinichi Watanabe’s appreciation for the seiyuu Kobayashi Yumiko, because one of the things that stands out most about it is the extraordinary job she did. It’s as if it was written as a showcase for her talent, because Poemii talks a mile a minute virtually nonstop through both episodes. Beyond that though, it’s just very, very strange and silly.
Then I wanted something a bit more serious (granted that virtually everything in existence is more serious), and after some wandering ended up at Sukitte Ii na yo aka Say “I Love You”, which is a shoujo “hot guy and awkward girl” romance that started out okay and went rapidly downhill until it became insultingly awful.
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First off, it has a very specific and irritating flaw that I’ve seen a few times with anime and manga (most recently and frustratingly with Hope You’re Happy Lemon). It goes to great effort to lay out this awful trauma the MC went through in the past and the profound impact it’s had on her ever since, then when the current story starts, the trauma is basically entirely forgotten. There’s no resolution, no lasting effects, no struggle to overcome it - just “poof” and it vanishes. She’s still awkward and unsure around people, but it’s just generic “socially awkward character” stuff - the specific and detailed and supposedly crippling trauma basically never made it out of the first episode. The only time it’s even really noted is when she learns that her boyfriend’s imouto has been betrayed by her supposed friends, and she has a brief flashback to her own experience, but then that’s just context for her to tell the imouto that she used to believe that nobody can be trusted and friends will always betray you, but she doesn’t any more. That’s it? Years of living entirely subject to that trauma and then it’s just “I used to think this, but I don’t any more?”
The most brazen example - there’s a scene late in the series in which she and the hot boyfriend are going on an overnight trip on their own. They’re literally at the train station, and she’s dressed up and looking radiant, and he gets a call from someone telling him that her love rival is having some sort of emotional crisis and he actually abandons her and rushes off to rescue the rival. And then it’s not even mentioned again! We’re expected to believe not only that this girl who only recently had an all-consuming traumatic association with being betrayed was not only perfectly fine with her boyfriend blatantly betraying her by abandoning her at the train station to go rescue her rival, but that it’s such an insignificant event that it’s not even worth mentioning again? What the hell?
In the beginning, he claims that she interests him because she has such a strong sense of herself. By the end, she’s constantly insecure and clingy and desperate for the few scraps of his attention he happens to toss in her direction - ironically enough, just about exactly the sort of pathetically needy empty shell that the hottest guy in class manipulates girls into becoming when he’s cast as a villain instead of a supposed hero. And she’s betrayed at virtually every turn - by the hot boyfriend, by the rival, even by the hot boyfriend’s imouto - and she just lets it slide, as if she has no other option - as if she didn’t just spend years specifically subject to the lasting trauma from being betrayed.
When it wasn’t disappointing, it was revolting.
Then, desperately in need of a palette cleanser with good characters, I rewatched what there is so far of Journal with Witch. It’s something I likely would’ve done anyway - I generally, when I’m as impressed by an anime as I am by this one, need to rewatch it to essentially check and make sure that my reaction is valid - that I didn’t just get swept up and see it for something it actually wasn’t.
And I’m pleased to say that it’s every bit as good as I thought it was.
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Seriously, if it keeps up this level of quality, this is going to be one of the all-time greats. It’s incredibly well-written, but that’s not even close to all - everything about it is top-quality. The OP and the ED are both terrific (and I didn’t put together the first time through that the OP is the same song that Asa is singing in the kitchen in the first scene), as is the incidental music throughout. The characters are great, and not just Asa and Makio - the few we’ve met so far have all been impressive (Daigo especially). The art is great too - I especially love the recurring sort of surreal bits of symbolism, like the desert and the exotic marketplace with familiar people speaking a language she can’t understand. (The scene where Asa is staring at the blank page in her journal and the lines slowly morph into waves of sand in her desert was particularly brilliant). It’s just one of those incredibly rare anime with seemingly no faults.
Next up was one I just happened on relatively recently - Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara aka Irodoku - The World in Colors. It was almost great.
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Technically, it was at least sufficient and often quite good, but the writing and the pacing just weren’t quite what they should’ve and could’ve been. It was sort of odd, because it kept feeling like it was just about to be phenomenal, but then it just wouldn’t quite make it. It’s deeply allegorical, with lots of symbolism, but it’s too rushed in too many places. It needed to take a bit more time and provide fuller context so that the symbolism would land effectively. And a lot of the situations came off feeling contrived, again because it was too rushed. Rather than slowly building a situation so that it made sense in-universe, it would just sort of plunk the characters down in whatever situation was necessary to tell the next bit of the story and sort of handwave the context. It was still good and I liked it all in all - all of the technical aspects of it were at least acceptable and often quite good, and the characters were well-developed and interesting - but it was sort of frustrating and disappointing, because I could feel how much better it could’ve been with a bit more attention and a bit more breathing room.
Then I finished off the week with Munou na Nana aka Talentless Nana, which was also almost great.
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It’s a sort of hackneyed ‘kids with superpowers’ scenario, but played in an unexpected and intriguing way. It had a few distractingly obvious flaws though. First, the smart guy who’s closing in on the solution to the mystery was handwaved into still not quite getting it by correctly analyzing things right up to a point, then obviously in order to maintain the mystery longer, he’d spontaneously decide that maybe he was just kidding himself, or that it couldn’t possibly be what it so obviously was, or whatever served to make him just drop it entirely. And second, Nana, who’s supposedly an even more brilliant strategist and analyst, couldn’t manage to work out the basic truth about her own situation, in spite of the fact that it was plainly obvious pretty much from the first episode, and in spite of the fact that her continued failure to figure it out led to extremely significant consequences. And that was a constant through most of the series - she was too smart to have allowed herself to get in that situation in the first place and he was too smart to have not figured out what was going on, but the series required the situation to continue, so it did anyway, unsatisfyingly. And like Irodoku, it was still okay, but it just could’ve been so much better.
quoting from original comment; Journal With Witch minor spoiler
the OP is the same song that Asa is singing in the kitchen in the first scene
Good catch! I completely missed this detail!
Current season notes and impressions:
MF Ghost - the finish order wasn’t quite what I expected - I thought Kanata would end in third with Sawatari in second - but it still broadly played out the way I expected. And we’re apparently heading into a filler episode, though the idea of a filler episode in a series that takes so excruciatingly long to tell its story in the first place is sort of odd.
You and I Are Polar Opposites - still very good because it’s closely following the manga, which was very good. We got to meet Taira and Azuma, who are going to be central to the rest of the series, and briefly got to see Nishi, though didn’t actually meet her (she was the other library assistant, with the books on conversation). She’s easily my favorite character in the series, and she’ll probably be yours too, whoever you are.
Scum of the Brave - this has been a pleasant surprise. I watched the first episode on a whim and liked it, and still like it now that we’re up to the third. It’s an interesting and sort of goofy setting and looks to be heading into an interesting and sort of goofy story, but mostly it’s just that the characters are appealing and have good chemistry.
Trigun Stargaze - the fight scene was spectacular. It did a thing that anime only sometimes does to me - it made me appreciate the cinematography. Anime technically has a “camera” - a viewpoint from which the action is shown. Even the most graphically impressive anime generally tend to not do much with that though - they just stick with a simple, practical viewpoint, only switching as necessary to follow the action. That fight scene though really made use of film-style cinematography - pans and zooms and pivots and so on - and it was very impressive.
Ikoku Nikki - still amazing. I was especially impressed by Makio’s ruminations on loneliness. Like her, I’m so introverted that I don’t really know what loneliness even feels like, but I only very rarely even mention that to people, because it’s too hard to explain. That was the first time that I saw someone else who feels the same way, and who put it into words. And I love that she not only sympathized with Asa in spite of not really understanding, but that Asa recognized that that was what she was doing. Broadly, the two of them have a lot of things to work through - both internally and between them - but they’re both fundamentally honest, so if they don’t give up, they’ll succeed. And it’s great watching it happen.
And an especially intriguing detail in this episode - there was one of those flashbacks of Asa’s mom looking stern and disappointed and saying demeaning things, but it wasn’t Makio who saw it, but Asa. That’s probably progress - until now, Asa’s only flashbacks to her mom showed her as a cartoonish “mom” caricature - this was the first time that she saw her in the same sort of detail as Makio does, and it was telling that she saw her just about identically, though apparently without the same emotional investment. Yet.
I only rarely even note OPs or EDs. I always watch them the first time through, and for a lot of series, that means the first two episodes, since they often don’t formalize them until the second episode. But from there on out, more often than not, they just become a minute and a half that I skip.
So the first measure for me is if it’s something that I actually keep watching all the way through. And this season, the only things that I habitually watch are both the OP and ED for Ikoku Nikki (the OP in particular is beautiful), the OP and ED for You and I Are Polar Opposites (honestly more for the graphics than the songs) and, for what it’s worth, the OP and ED of Yuusha no Kuzu (the OP is pretty decent musically - reminiscent of Mr. Bungle - but mostly it’s just that they fit the series especially well).
It’s likely noteworthy that I’m not watching Frieren or Oshi no Ko at all - I’m going to binge them later instead. I did watch the OPs and EDs just for the sake of this thread, but without the context of the shows themselves, I feel like I can’t really judge them. The rest - there’s some other good stuff out there, but nothing so impressive that I don’t generally skip it.
You and I are Polar Opposites opening is my favourite of this season. Amazing different visuals usage and animation done by the same person who also did How To Become Ordinary opening. The music is catchy and fits the happy high school setting.
I didn’t quite like Frieren ending at first as it was too much jarring for me. But after reading it is all hand-drawn on paper with color pencils, can’t help appreciate the effort put in. As previous season, Milet vocal really fits the tone of Frieren ending.
OPs
Fate/strange Fake OP: “PROVANT” by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:Jean-Ken Johnny & TAKUMA - looks and sounds vibrant, grand, and fitting to the series. I need more Jean-Ken Johnny in my anime themes.
You and I Are Polar Opposites OP: “Megane wo Hazushite” by noa - a wonderful mix of different visual techniques. Looking forward to see what magic Kyouhei Ishiguro creates next.
Tamon’s B-Side OP: “Sweet Magic” by F/ACE - the song is as cringe as most idol songs are, ngl, but it’s still fun and goes well with the visuals. I like how Utage wakes up at the end and thanks her God for sending her a sweet, sweet, sweet dream or something.
Medalist S2 OP: “Cold Night” by HANA - it has an upbeat, feel-good vibe about it. The dance routine is my favourite part.
Oshi No Ko S3 OP2: “Test Me” by CHANMINA - didn’t expect to ever like an Oshi no Ko theme, but here I am. It’s perfectly sensual and ominous. I haven’t read the source material, but it gives me “Hyakka Ryouran”'s levels of foreshadowing.
Frieren S2 OP: “lulu.” by Mrs. GREEN APPLE - I like the song more than “Yuusha” or “Haru”, but I prefer Haru’s crispier feel. New OP’s filter is bothering me, I’m not particularly fond of this hazy look.
In the Clear Moonlit Dusk OP: “Uruwashi” by UNISON SQUARE GARDEN - it’s not fancy, but both the song and the colour palette make it work.
EDs
Frieren S2 ED: “The Story of Us” by milet - it’s not “Anytime Anywhere”, but still a good song to accompany those majestic pencil drawings.
Trigun Stargaze ED: “Stardust” by FOMARE - baby, the stars shine bright. It’s beautiful. I like it a lot.
Shiboyugi ED: “Inori” by Chiai Fujikawa - I am not watching the show, but this ED is hauntingly beautiful. It’s gorgeous. Immaculate vibes.
I didn’t care for the theme overall but I liked the song: “Make Me Wonder” by Official HIGE DANdism from Darwin Jihen OP and “Yoake no Uta” by jo0ji from JJK The Culling Game ED.
I want to hear about your favorite OPs and EDs for the season (alternatively, your least favorites!)
OPs
Best opening has to Oshi no Ko’s TEST ME (by CHANMINA) hands down. There’s just no contest this season.
It is kinda edgy and reminds me of Mephisto. Its visuals are incredible too.
EDs
I’m somewhat cheating here (since it was actually released last year, but it is the second ending song of the anime and the second half of the anime is airing this season) but my favourite ED is Gnosia’s Floor Killer (by Umeda Cypher). I enjoy how it sounds.
post questions/comments/recommendations like any other week.
Roll Over and Die
I gave up on Roll Over and Die. It’s not too bad, but it’s just not good enough. Somehow, the dialogue and whatnots don’t seem to flow smoothly. Maybe its direction is no good? I’d rather just read the source material or its manga adaptation. My understanding is that the story is still ongoing and won’t be ending anytime soon though, so it would be a while before I pick it back up.
You and I Are Polar Opposites
The anime that replaced the freed-up time is You and I Are Polar Opposites. Its synopsis made it sound like a typical romcom which is why I have been brushing it off, but the numerous praises it has been receiving and its high rating on AniList made it hard to ignore. So I gave it a chance.
For the first half of the first episode, I was convinced this anime is going to turn out like most other romcoms and was ready to drop it once the episode ends. But there was a development - one that’s not done frequent enough in romcoms IMO - in that episode and that was enough to get me hooked.
Beyond that, I like the characters. I also like how the anime build-up the characters and their personalities by showing us their thoughts.
It has been surprising enjoyable. I would be following it as it airs now, so hopefully it would continue to deliver.
Cosmic Princess Kaguya
One last update: I completed Cosmic Princess Kaguya. It is very well-produced, with high quality animation and art. Its story feels lackluster by comparison though.
mild meta spoiler for Cosmic Princess Kaguya
I am glad that there is at least a twist. However it’s a predictable one.
IMO the plot would have been better if there was some kind of conspiracy instead of the time-travel shenanigans.
I mentioned in another comment in this thread that I have Megane wo Hazushite from Seihantai na Kimi to Boku as my favorite this season, but I want to say that TEST ME is a very close second.
Also wanted to comment once again that Mephisto is so. fucking. good.
Mephisto is so. fucking. good
It’s been a while since I have learnt about Power Law in Network Science, but was recently reminded about its prevalence thanks to Veritasium.
When I examined my music library, I noticed the number of times the songs were played follow Power Law too. Standing at the very top is Mephisto with more than 1057 plays, dwarfing Avid (86) and Monster / Kaibutsu (Beastars) in second and third places with around 617 and 580 plays respectively.
All this to say that: yes, 100% agree; Mephisto is just that great.
I am going to add my usual disclaimer that I tend to judge an OP/ED much more on the song than the visuals. I have called out below where that is different. I have divided this into shows I am watching vs. not, as well as some fun superlatives.
Shows I am watching
- Oshi no Ko OP - TEST ME by CHANMINA - This OP is scary good. I am especially impressed with the visuals of both this OP as well as the special OP from the first episode. Just remarkably good foreshadowing and symbolism as well as some great songs.
- Frieren OP - lulu by Mrs. GREEN APPLE - Really great OP that fits the show so well.
- 'Tis Time for “Torture” Princess OP - Sunday Morning by ILLIT - This OP might be prettier, but I don’t think it is as good as the first season OP (which I still regularly listen to), but I still really like this OP and it instantly got stuck in my head.
- Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers OP - YOAKE by blank paper - This premiere really impressed me, but I haven’t really been able to keep up with it since. In any case, big fan of this OP.
Shows I am not watching
- Fate/strange Fake OP - PROVANT by Jean-Ken Johnny, SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] & TAKUMA - I don’t know a damn thing about Fate, but I liked this OP a lot
- Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord OP - Okirakuzation by Rei Nakashima - This one had a bit of a tongue-twister feel to it that I enjoyed. It reminded me a bit of the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.
- The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife OP - Ding-dong by Mao Abe - This was such a cozy OP. This show looks like it is cute as a button.
Superlatives
- Rage Against the Rage! - honoring those that excel in the art of the scream
- Roll Over and Die OP - Liberator by PassCode - There was stiff competition in this category, but I felt this one really set itself apart.
- Be True to Yourself! - honoring those that know what they are and never change
- MF Ghost OP - TIMELESS POWER by MOTSU and Yuu Serizawa - You want more Eurobeat? Well, here is more Eurobeat.
- Running Horse Award - honoring those that make use of a zoetrope (sorry, this doesn’t have to do with Uma Musume)
- Polar Opposites OP - Megane wo Hazushite by Noa - This OP opens with a zoetrope, but makes use of lots of visual tricks both digital and analog in a neat visual display and a mix of the old and new.
Be True to Yourself! - honoring those that know what they are and never change
MF Ghost OP - TIMELESS POWER by MOTSU and Yuu Serizawa - You want more Eurobeat? Well, here is more Eurobeat.
Exactly.
And damned if it doesn’t work.
The first time I heard it, I cynically thought, “Oh gee - Eurobeat with alternating rap and clean vocals - sure didn’t see that coming.”
Even as I felt this weird compulsion to grab a gear shift and stomp on an accelerator.
I added quite a few to my favorites list this season.
