Five More Awesome Anime Openings

Yeah, this is totally against whatever schedule I wrote up, but I like anime openings, so there. These are five openings that I think are pretty dang good.

Baka To Test's First Opening

This opening has the same unfortunate side effect as Durarara's: it makes me want to dance. Granted, it's more like a dance of happiness and stupidity, but it's still a dance...

Ergo Proxy

After posting my five favorite anime openings, someone told me I needed to see Ergo Proxy. I made a mental note, since I had a lot to do. At Benedictine I was finally in the mood for something new, and one of my friends owned the dub, so I watched it. To make a long story short (too late!) I found the show to be pretty good, but the opening?

Bloody fantastic. So good that I downloaded the full version! Thanks for the recommend!

Angel Beats

Piano? Yes please. This song is beautiful, and I find myself whistling it all the time. It's also cool that the girl who's playing the piano's name means "to play a song". Nothing less than what I'd expect from something written by Jun Maeda.

Eden of the East (Broadcast)

Notice how I said broadcast version? Yeah, the DVDs have a different opening, due to copyright arguments with Oasis. And it's a damn shame, too, because this opening is amazing. It has a similar feeling to Ergo Proxy's, and that can only be a good thing.

AAAAAAAANDDD... SURPRISE!

The Second Deathnote Opening

Ok, so that totally wasn't what anyone would expect for me to put up as an "awesome opening", but hear me out. A large part what makes an opening good is the tone that it sets for the show. The opening is supposed to help set up the audience for the show. That's almost exclusively why Clannad: Afterstory's opening is my favorite: because it summarizes, informs, and sets you up for the show so well that when you watch the show you realize what the writers are trying to get at, based off the opening alone. Very few shows get openings at that level of quality, and I'd say that, in its own dark and twisted way, the second Deathnote opening does that very well. Is it a weird death-metal-ish song, that has almost no aesthetic appeal? Yup. Does it sound insane? Yup.

But consider this: the first Deathnote opening was about Light's dreams of being a god in a world that he had made, and the hope that he had. With the death of L Kira starts to genuinely lose his sanity. Do you need to know that in the anime? You almost don't, because this opening is so nutty and repulsive that people turn it off, because they don't want to see what Kira has turned into.

This is the true essence of Light Yagami, people, this is your supposed anti-hero. Take a good look, because it's not pretty.

Vice Verses Review

I love Switchfoot. From the time I heard them when I was 15 til now I have bought all their albums and listened to them attentively. Their lyrics have always been smart and well thought-out, from their clever "Chem 6A" (which is where my on-again off-again band, Project 6A, with CarpeGuittarem drew its name from) to their sad and lonely "The Blues", Switchfoot has been with me through many a time, developing with me. As time went on, however, I found myself not connecting as I once had with my favorite band. Jon was at a very different part of his life than I was, and while I enjoyed Hello Hurricane, the band's previous album, I felt a little isolated from it. The album lacked the intensity of the band's previous outings, and wound up sounding like U2 (which is a bit of a mortal sin in my book, considering how bland U2 usually is). So I was a bit afraid of this new album, hoping the energy would come back with this album.

I'm happy to say that it did, and then some. 

Now if any of my audience is looking for The Beautiful Letdown, I'll be happy to say this: that's never coming back. Beautiful Letdown, while a good album, doesn't have the bite of this album, and I can honestly say that it's better than Beautiful Letdown. The entire album feels like Dirty Second Hands on steroids which, if you don't know what that is, here's the song so you can get an idea!

The whole album has this feel of  looseness and rapidity, firing off songs at a breakneck pace. It's Switchfoot's most energetic album to date. And it works. Each song leads to the next smoothly, and manages to be unique without sacrificing the feel of the album. The sound in this album, while like Hello Hurricane and the previous albums, is something completely and totally its own, and further evolves the band in a positive and unique direction. 

Come to think of it, that's something that this band does really well with this album: it's a cohesive unit, with all its parts contributing to make something more. I can't imagine listening to just one of these songs without wanting to listen to at least half the album, delving into all the sounds that these guys put together. It's one of the few albums I've heard that's an actual album, as opposed to a collection of songs that just happen to be together on the same disc.

Ultimately, I have to say that Switchfoot's album is worth the listen. It's going to be different than what most people think of as "classic" Switchfoot, but let's get real: they left that four albums ago. 

And good riddance I say.

"Thrive"

Switchfoot has always had a special place in my heart, and each year they earn it again.

Forgot!

I had promised to put this up in my past Trolling of Evangelion post, and well... oops.

I personally think the video's pretty funny (and before I'm told that I'm really screwing a dead horse I would like to comment that a fan of Evangelion sent me the link and ASKED me to post this).