"It's Sometimes Better Than The Show!"

As anyone who has known me for any length of time would know, I still have a deep love for the cartoons I watched when I was younger, now 'rose tinted glasses' aside, I will admit that most of these shows have not aged well.

I recently watched the first 6 or so episodes of 'Around The World With Willy Fog', one cartoon which I remember fairly well, it really hasn't held up over the years, the poor 'dubbing' of the voices (the show is originally Spanish so it got dubbed into English), the poor quality of the animation, repeated frames, low frame rate, it's still perfectly watchable if you can accept that it really hasn't aged quite as well as other things have.

But yet what do I remember the most?, the theme song, it's so unerringly catchy it's almost impossible to not sing along, especially if you remember it from years gone by.

This intro clip is taken from a DVD release, so it's possibly the best quality you're going to get!.

Yeah, it's cheesy but I still kinda like it, it's a fairly big influence in some ways, also note how all the good guys are felines and all the bad guys are canines, didn't notice that until I watched it again.

A trick of the cartoon industry back then and in some ways still exists today is that they'll have exceptionally good and catchy intros, usually utilizing the best animation they could whilst the rest of the series may not be as polished or decent looking, it's to lure you in to keep watching, it could be said that 'It's Sometimes Better Than The Show'.

So onto today's video cavalcade of intros from Anime series.

Yes I've gone from a western show to Japanese Anime, now I've talked at length at times about my childhood cartoons, there is a lot of intros which I know and love, so does everyone else, but Anime is different to me as it's something I got into much later and they really put a lot of effort into their intros, usually using a hit song or popular artist of the time in the opening or ending theme, it makes for a really refreshing change to what we're normally used to over here, I'm going to show a couple of my personal fave intros/outros from Anime here, now I will admit, some of these I actually have not seen the series for but I've seen the intro and like the intro for various reasons.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Opening 'Inner Universe'

Animated entirely in CGI (the series is traditionally animated), this intro sets the scene for the series based on 'Ghost In The Shell', a haunting song over images of the city, robots and our protagonist, I've not seen the series but I've been told it's exceptional and I should catch it sometime, if the intro is anything to go by, I should.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Opening #4 'Period'

Not going to lie, 'FMA Brotherhood' is my favorite anime, I love the story and characters and I really recommend it to anyone, this intro is the fourth from the series and it's my fave, the music and animation are superb, setting the tone for the series at that period in the story, the animation quality also extends into the series itself and it's of a really high standard, the music combines the slightly more somber moments with high paced action and very much worth a look.

D.Grey-Man - Opening #3 'Doubt & Trust'

Another anime which I've not watched but I really like this opening, the visuals and music match to give a real 'epic' feel to this darkly gothic series, what's going on? I don't know! but I like what I see.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood  - Ending #2 'Let It Out'

No, I'm not cheating putting FMA again on the list but this ending theme is just too good to not mention, it's a wonderful song put over more wonderful animation from the series, sometimes within the series the ending theme started playing before the credits rolled striking a emotional chord to some of the scenes within, it's a great song from a great series.

So there is a couple of faves from me, is there more out there, more than likely, to finish on another piece of classic nostalgia, here's a full episode of Trap Door which has the full version of the theme song within, curious to note is that due to the short length of the episode (average episode length including intro etc is 5 minutes!) it means you hear the song THREE times, the intro, the outro and the full song itself!

It's worthwhile to note that it was released as a single back in the day, it's exceptionally rare to find.

Enjoy!