TLDR: Anime openings are powerhouses in creative storytelling!
Interesting characters, unique ideas, and sometimes huge robots – what’s not to love? The anime industry has been wildly successful for some time now, and with its popularity only increasing in the 21st century, it’s worth looking into why: especially in terms of the forever hype-building anime opening.
Changing the Game
If there’s one thing anime openings are not, it’s boring. With such interesting premises, the prime time to show them at their best is at the very start of the show, and so creators are careful to show just what makes their anime unique as soon as possible.
This is, of course, a pretty good idea in general terms of creative storytelling. Making sure to highlight the unique and special aspects of whatever you are working on is a surefire way to make sure that others also immediately understand why it’s so rad. More importantly, it means you get to talk about the coolest part of your project – which is a win/win, really.
Establishing a Tone with Creative Storytelling
Tone is unmistakably one of the more important parts of anime openings. As the first thing the audience see, it sets up their expectations for the entire experience, and clues them into whether this is something they’ll want to continue watching.
That said, sometimes playing with a sense of tone can also be effective. Establish a warm, safe environment, and then tear it from the viewer? Make them think the worst and then show everything is okay? As with much of storytelling, tone is useful to use with and against audience expectations – so long as it is pulled off well.
Creating an Enjoyable Experience
Reducing anime down to its absolute skeleton, there’s one sole reason it’s maintained popularity – because people enjoy it.
As much as creative storytelling can be complicated to understand on some levels, mercifully this most important one is not. While there are of course other important factors to consider dependant on how you utilise creative storytelling, it all comes down to one simple thing: whether you’ve created an enjoyable enough experience that it will be memorable.
This is something that anime openings know and use well. They don’t have to be absolutely off the wall scenes – even if the series contains them – but rather something that is equal parts interesting, and enjoyable.
The entire make it pop team are huge anime fans, with decades of ‘research’ we have concluded that not only are anime openings totally awesome, they hype up the audience and tease an epic story.
