Animation

Drawn, and rarely still for two seasons running.

464 shows · 479 sequences

The ones that kept changing

All 13 in Animation · every genre →

Beast Wars: Transformers

1996–1999Syndication / YTVAnimation

Transformers rebuilt in computer graphics on a fraction of the budget, which is why everybody is an animal.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Robotech

1985SyndicationAnimation

Three unrelated Japanese series cut together into one American saga, and the opening is where the seam shows: the same theme and the same establishing pan every week, then a different logo card and a different war.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Family Guy

1999–FoxAnimation

A musical number performed by the family about how television used to have values — a sitcom opening from the 1970s, done straight and then undercut.

Season 1
Season 10

Futurama

1999–Fox / Comedy Central / HuluAnimation

Like The Simpsons, an opening built to differ every week — a new caption under the logo and a different scrap of old cartoon on the screen the ship flies past — wrapped around Christopher Tyng's theme and a crash into a billboard.

Seasons 1–4
Seasons 6–7

King of the Hill

1997–FoxAnimation

Four men drinking beer in an alley, and a guitar riff. Thirty-one seconds that tell you the show has no interest in going anywhere.

Season 1
Season 14

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2006–2009Tokyo MXAnimation

A schoolgirl who can rewrite reality and has not been told, in an adaptation that first broadcast its episodes deliberately out of order.

Season 1
Season 2

2020s

Invincible

2021–Prime VideoAnimation

A title card that gets progressively more blood-spattered as the season goes on — the show's escalation, tracked in one graphic.

Season 1

Smiling Friends

2020–Adult SwimAnimation

A tiny company whose job is making people happy, with a title card that is over almost before it starts.

Seasons 1–2

The Mighty Nein

2025Prime VideoAnimation

Critical Role's second campaign animated, three years after The Legend of Vox Machina did the first.

Season 1

The Legend of Vox Machina

2022–Prime VideoAnimation

The first Critical Role campaign animated as a series, with a proper broadcast title sequence to go with it.

Season 1

Arcane

2021–2024NetflixAnimation

Painterly animation of two sisters pulling apart, rendered in the same hand-worked style as the series — one of the few animated openings that is not a step down from the show it introduces.

Season 1

Jujutsu Kaisen

2020–MBS / TBSAnimation

Eve's 'Kaikai Kitan' over animation that keeps breaking its own frame — one of the sequences that made the studio's reputation.

Season 1

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

2022NetflixAnimation

Franz Ferdinand over Night City, cut by Studio Trigger at a speed that dares you to keep up.

Season 1

Lazarus

2025Adult SwimAnimation

Shinichirō Watanabe's series with action by Chad Stahelski, opened to Kamasi Washington.

Season 1

Blue Eye Samurai

2023–NetflixAnimation

Ink, forge-fire and steel — a blade being made, in the same brushwork the series uses for its violence.

Season 1

My Adventures with Superman

2023–Adult Swim / MaxAnimation

Clark, Lois and Jimmy in their twenties, animated in an anime register with an opening to match.

Season 1

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

2022–TV TokyoAnimation

The final arc animated a decade after the original series ended, with a new opening for each cour in the tradition the show established.

Season 1

Devil May Cry

2025NetflixAnimation

The Capcom games animated by the Castlevania team, with an opening cut to match.

Season 1

Eyes of Wakanda

2025Disney+Animation

Wakandan agents across four periods of history, opened by a hand-drawn sequence unlike anything else Marvel has put on television.

Season 1

Sakamoto Days

2025–TV Tokyo / NetflixAnimation

A retired hitman running a corner shop, and everyone from the old life who keeps turning up.

Season 1

Pantheon

2022–2023AMC+Animation

Uploaded human consciousnesses at war, animated and almost entirely overlooked.

Season 1

What If...?

2021–2024Disney+Animation

The Watcher narrating alternative versions of the films, with a sequence that assembles and dismantles itself every week.

Season 1

Long Story Short

2025NetflixAnimation

Raphael Bob-Waksberg's family comedy, which jumps decades between scenes and uses its titles to say so.

Season 1

Blue Lock

2022–TV AsahiAnimation

Football shot like a psychological thriller, with the players lit as though they are about to commit something.

Season 1

Batman: Caped Crusader

2024–Prime VideoAnimation

The Animated Series team returning to a 1940s Gotham, with titles that quote their own 1992 sequence without repeating it.

Season 1

Common Side Effects

2025Adult SwimAnimation

A mushroom that cures anything, and everyone who would rather it did not exist.

Season 1

The Owl House

2020–2023Disney ChannelAnimation

A human girl apprenticed to a witch on the Boiling Isles.

Season 1

Chainsaw Man

2022–TV TokyoAnimation

An opening built almost entirely out of film references — a different movie restaged in nearly every shot, at a speed that makes spotting them a second viewing's work.

Season 1

Star Wars: Visions

2021–Disney+Animation

Ten seconds and a card, deliberately — an anthology handing each episode to a different studio to open however it likes.

Season 1

Krapopolis

2023–FoxAnimation

Dan Harmon's mythological Greek city, run badly by a family of gods and monsters.

Season 1

Star Trek: Lower Decks

2020–2024Paramount+Animation

The joke is in the structure: it opens exactly like a heroic Trek title sequence, and then the ship spends the entire minute getting wrecked by everything it meets. The Cerritos never wins a single shot of its own opening.

Seasons 1–5

The Boys Presents: Diabolical

2022Prime VideoAnimation

Eight animated shorts in the same universe, each by a different studio, and eleven seconds to introduce all of them.

Season 1

Scavengers Reign

2023MaxAnimation

Alien biology drawn with botanical-illustration patience — organisms doing something to each other that the show will spend an episode explaining.

Season 1

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

2023NetflixAnimation

The O'Malley books animated by Science SARU, with an opening in the full Japanese OP tradition.

Season 1

Star Wars: The Bad Batch

2021–2024Disney+Animation

The Clone Wars continued with a squad of defective clones, and a title card that keeps the parent series' logo shape.

Season 1

Spy × Family

2022–TV TokyoAnimation

Sixties spy-film design applied to a fake family — the parents' cover story rendered as the title sequence they would want.

Season 1

Star Trek: Prodigy

2021–2024Nickelodeon / NetflixAnimation

Made for viewers who had never seen a Star Trek before, and it shows in the best way — the Protostar streaks through bright, candy-coloured space on a theme with more wonder in it than most of the grown-up entries.

Seasons 1–2

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder

2022–Disney+Animation

The revival, which rerecorded the 2001 theme with a new cast rather than writing a new one.

Season 1

Wind Breaker

2024–MBSAnimation

A delinquent school whose students defend the town rather than terrorise it.

Season 2

Inside Job

2021–2022NetflixAnimation

Conspiracy iconography assembled into a corporate onboarding video — every hidden-world cliché filed and badged.

Season 1

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

2020–2022NetflixAnimation

Six children on Isla Nublar during the events of the 2015 film, which nobody comes to collect.

Season 1

Monsters at Work

2021–2024Disney+Animation

Monsters, Inc. after the switch from screams to laughter, told from the maintenance floor.

Season 1

Kiff

2023–Disney ChannelAnimation

An optimistic squirrel and her deadpan bunny best friend in a town that indulges neither.

Season 1

Blood of Zeus

2020–NetflixAnimation

Greek vase painting animated into motion, with the title card restaged for each episode's myth.

Season 1

Ranking of Kings

2021–2022Fuji TVAnimation

A deaf prince who cannot lift a sword, in a picture-book style that hides how hard the series hits.

Season 2

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

2023Adult SwimAnimation

Genndy Tartakovsky's reincarnated heroes in an alternate nineteenth century, animated on a hand-painted look.

Season 1

Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures

2023–Disney+Animation

The franchise's first series for preschoolers, set in the High Republic.

Season 1

Hamster & Gretel

2022–2024Disney ChannelAnimation

A brother and sister given superpowers, except only the hamster got them.

Season 1

The Cuphead Show!

2022NetflixAnimation

The game's 1930s rubber-hose style animated properly, which is the whole point of it.

Season 1

Grimsburg

2024–FoxAnimation

Jon Hamm as a detective in a town where every case is someone he knows.

Season 2

The Apothecary Diaries

2023–Tokyo MXAnimation

A poison expert conscripted into the imperial rear palace, solving what everyone else is covering up.

Season 1

The Ghost and Molly McGee

2021–2023Disney ChannelAnimation

A relentlessly positive girl and the ghost whose curse bound him to her.

Season 1

Dandadan

2024–Tokyo MXAnimation

Aliens and ghosts arguing over the same two teenagers, opened by Creepy Nuts at a sprint.

Season 1

Hailey's On It!

2023–2024Disney ChannelAnimation

A girl with a list of every thing she is afraid of and a deadline to do all of them.

Season 1

The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse

2020–2023Disney+Animation

The Paul Rudish shorts continued, drawn in the 1930s line and paced like it.

Season 1

HouseBroken

2021–2023FoxAnimation

A group-therapy circle of neighbourhood pets, run by a poodle who is not qualified.

Season 1

Teenage Euthanasia

2021–2023Adult SwimAnimation

A Florida funeral home, and a mother resurrected by embalming fluid.

Season 1

It's Pony

2020–2022NickelodeonAnimation

A girl whose pony lives in the house and is not remotely house-trained in any sense.

Season 1

Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life

2021–2024Disney+Animation

The chipmunks in a city park, dialogue-free, animated in France.

Season 1

The Fungies!

2020–2021Cartoon Network / HBO MaxAnimation

A mushroom child scientist in a prehistoric fungal town.

Season 1

Bocchi the Rock!

2022Tokyo MXAnimation

A guitarist too anxious to speak to her own band, animated with more formal invention than almost anything else in its year.

Season 1

Masters of the Universe: Revelation

2021NetflixAnimation

Kevin Smith's continuation of the 1983 series, opened in the same fanfare it inherited.

Season 1

Solo Leveling

2024–Tokyo MXAnimation

Hiroyuki Sawano scoring a power fantasy at exactly the scale it wants to be taken at.

Season 1

Sonic Prime

2022–2024NetflixAnimation

A shattered multiverse of Sonics, opened in twelve seconds.

Season 1

X-Men '97

2024–Disney+Animation

The 1992 series' opening rebuilt shot for shot in modern animation — a revival that understood the titles were the thing people actually remembered.

Season 1

2010s

Rick and Morty

2013–Adult SwimAnimation

A montage of adventures that mostly never happened, re-cut every season out of clips from episodes that do not exist.

Season 1

Bluey

2018–ABC Kids / Disney+Animation

A blue heeler puppy and her family, animated in Brisbane, whose titles introduce the whole household in under half a minute.

Seasons 1–3

Primal

2019–2024Adult Swim / MaxAnimation

Twenty seconds of charcoal and blood, with no dialogue anywhere in it — which is also true of most of the series.

Season 1

Attack on Titan

2013–2023NHK General TV / MBSAnimation

A new opening for almost every cour, each one restating the series' situation as it currently stands — which over four seasons means the titles document a war changing sides.

Season 1

Bob's Burgers

2011–FoxAnimation

Three running gags in nineteen seconds — the burger of the day, the shop next door, and the pest-control van — all three rewritten for every single episode.

Season 1

Adventure Time

2010–2018Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Twenty-five seconds of a candy world that turns out to be a post-apocalyptic one, sung by a boy and a dog who have not noticed.

Season 1

Love, Death + Robots

2019–NetflixAnimation

Three icons — a heart, a skull, a robot — recombined every episode to declare which of the three that instalment is going to be. The shortest possible statement of an anthology's rules.

Season 1

BoJack Horseman

2014–2020NetflixAnimation

A man drifting through his own life on his back while Los Angeles slides past above him, ending in a pool. Six seasons of the same slow fall, with the crowd around him quietly changing.

Seasons 1–6

Gravity Falls

2012–2016Disney Channel / Disney XDAnimation

A cipher hidden in the last second of every opening, so the title sequence is itself a puzzle the audience was expected to solve across two seasons.

Season 1

The Legend of Korra

2012–2014NickelodeonAnimation

The Avatar sequel, which keeps the four-element structure of its predecessor's opening and moves it into an industrial age.

Season 1

Over the Garden Wall

2014Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Nineteenth-century American illustration and a wax-cylinder recording, for a miniseries that spends ten episodes pretending to be much older than it is.

Season 1

Regular Show

2010–2017Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A blue jay and a raccoon employed as groundskeepers, opened with a synth sting and almost no information.

Season 1

The Loud House

2016–NickelodeonAnimation

One boy, ten sisters, and a theme song that has to introduce all eleven of them.

Season 1

Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World

2016–TV TokyoAnimation

A boy who restarts from a save point every time he dies, and remembers all of it.

Season 1

Made in Abyss

2017–AT-XAnimation

A children's-book art style over a descent that gets progressively less survivable.

Season 1

Harley Quinn

2019–DC Universe / HBO MaxAnimation

The adult animated Harley, whose opening is short enough that the show keeps rewriting it episode to episode.

Season 1

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

2011Tokyo MXAnimation

A magical-girl opening played completely straight, which turns out to be the series' first and most effective lie about what it is.

Season 1

Steven Universe

2013–2019Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A theme sung by the characters about themselves, rewritten as the line-up of those characters changes — which for this show is the plot.

Season 5

Haikyu!!

2014–2020MBS / TBSAnimation

Volleyball animated with the weight of a fight scene, over a rock track that never lets the tempo drop.

Season 1

Big Mouth

2017–2025NetflixAnimation

Puberty rendered as a marching band of anxieties, with the hormone monsters given equal billing to the children.

Season 1

Mob Psycho 100

2016–2022Tokyo MXAnimation

Paint, distortion and animation techniques that change every few seconds — a title sequence used as a showcase for what the studio can do.

Season 1

Beastars

2019–2021Fuji TVAnimation

A boarding school of carnivores and herbivores, opened by a stop-motion sequence unlike the series it introduces.

Season 1

Vinland Saga

2019–NHK General TVAnimation

Norse violence scored with post-hardcore, and an opening that gets quieter as the series abandons the war it started with.

Season 1
Season 2

Young Justice

2010–2022Cartoon Network / HBO MaxAnimation

Twenty-two seconds and a card, from a superhero series that assumed its audience already knew everyone.

Season 1

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

2018–2020NetflixAnimation

The 1985 toy line rebuilt by Noelle Stevenson into something the original could not have carried.

Season 1

Big City Greens

2018–Disney ChannelAnimation

A country family relocated to the city, opened at the speed of a banjo run.

Season 1

Assassination Classroom

2015–2016Fuji TVAnimation

A class assigned to kill their own teacher, who is the best teacher any of them have had.

Season 2

We Bare Bears

2015–2019Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Three bears stacked in a trenchcoat trying to fit into the Bay Area.

Season 1

The Dragon Prince

2018–NetflixAnimation

Twenty-seven seconds of moving illustration, closer to a book being opened than a montage.

Season 1

Overlord

2015–AT-XAnimation

A player left inside a shut-down game as his own undead avatar, playing the villain straight.

Season 1

Disenchantment

2018–2023NetflixAnimation

A fantasy kingdom introduced with the same long pan Groening's other shows use, and the same willingness to hide jokes in the background.

Season 1

My Hero Academia

2016–MBS / TBSAnimation

Superhero iconography by way of shonen convention, with a new opening for each season announcing how much worse things have got.

Season 1

Akame ga Kill!

2014Tokyo MXAnimation

An assassin's guild against an empire, in a series that kills its cast far faster than the genre allows.

Season 1

Star vs. the Forces of Evil

2015–2019Disney XD / Disney ChannelAnimation

A magical princess sent to Earth for remedial schooling, with a wand she does not control.

Season 1

Kill la Kill

2013–2014MBSAnimation

Trigger's first series, cut at a speed that leaves the title cards behind.

Season 1

Tron: Uprising

2012–2013Disney XDAnimation

The Grid between the two films, animated with a design sense far beyond its slot.

Season 1

Ultimate Spider-Man

2012–2017Disney XDAnimation

Spider-Man trained by S.H.I.E.L.D., opened in eleven seconds flat.

Season 1

Amphibia

2019–2022Disney ChannelAnimation

A Californian teenager stranded in a world of frog people, with a banjo theme to match.

Season 1

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

2010–2012Disney XDAnimation

The most complete adaptation of the Avengers comics animation has managed, cancelled at two seasons.

Season 1

Avengers Assemble

2013–2019Disney XDAnimation

The film line-up animated weekly, with an opening as long as a station ident.

Season 1

Hilda

2018–2023NetflixAnimation

Luke Pearson's blue-haired girl and the Nordic folklore living beside her town.

Season 1

Infinity Train

2019–2021Cartoon Network / HBO MaxAnimation

A train of endless carriages, each its own world, with a nine-second open that refuses to explain any of it.

Season 1

Durarara!!

2010–2016Tokyo MXAnimation

Ikebukuro told through a dozen viewpoints that only connect in the last act.

Season 1

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

2015–2020Tokyo MXAnimation

Competitive cooking staged as combat, with the reaction shots doing most of the work.

Season 1

Elena of Avalor

2016–2020Disney ChannelAnimation

A crown princess ruling a Latin American-inspired kingdom before she is old enough to be queen.

Season 1

Kuroko's Basketball

2012–2015Mainichi BroadcastingAnimation

A basketball player whose entire skill is being unnoticeable.

Season 1

Milo Murphy's Law

2016–2019Disney XDAnimation

A boy for whom anything that can go wrong does, from the Phineas and Ferb creators.

Season 1

Carmen Sandiego

2019–2021NetflixAnimation

The game-show thief given an origin, animated in flat colour and a lot of red.

Season 1

Mr. Pickles

2013–2019Adult SwimAnimation

A family dog who is secretly satanic, opened in the visual language of a wholesome fifties cartoon.

Season 1

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

2018–Tokyo MXAnimation

A salaryman reincarnated as the weakest monster in the game, who builds a country anyway.

Season 1

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2018–2020NickelodeonAnimation

The turtles redrawn in a hand-animated style closer to a comic than the CG series before it.

Season 1

Generator Rex

2010–2013Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A boy who can rebuild his own limbs into machines, in a world where nanites turned everything else monstrous.

Season 1

Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil

2010–2012Disney XDAnimation

A boy in a stunt suit treating an ordinary suburb as a series of ramps.

Season 1

Final Space

2018–2021TBS / Adult SwimAnimation

A prisoner adrift in space with an alien that everyone in the galaxy wants.

Season 1

Clarence

2014–2018Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A relentlessly cheerful boy and two friends, drawn in a loose line that never tidied itself up.

Season 1

Space Dandy

2014Tokyo MXAnimation

Shinichiro Watanabe again, and again the opening is a music cue with a visual identity of its own — surf rock, neon and a pompadour.

Season 1

DC Super Hero Girls

2019–2021Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The DC heroines at high school, from the Powerpuff Girls' creative lineage.

Season 1

Craig of the Creek

2018–Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A wooded creek run entirely by the children who play in it, mapped like a country.

Season 1

Aggretsuko

2018–2023NetflixAnimation

Sanrio character design and death metal, in an opening that switches between the two exactly as the protagonist does.

Season 5

Mike Tyson Mysteries

2014–2020Adult SwimAnimation

Scooby-Doo's structure with Mike Tyson, a ghost, a pigeon and an adopted daughter.

Season 1

Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

2017–2020Disney ChannelAnimation

The film continued in hand-drawn animation, which the feature never was.

Season 1

OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes

2017–2019Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A hero-supply plaza run as a beat-em-up, with the video game's grammar kept in the titles.

Season 1

Sym-Bionic Titan

2010–2011Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Genndy Tartakovsky's mecha series, cancelled after one season for having no toy line.

Season 1

Uncle Grandpa

2013–2017Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Everyone's uncle and everyone's grandpa, travelling in an RV that is also a tiger.

Season 1

Wander Over Yonder

2013–2016Disney Channel / Disney XDAnimation

Craig McCracken's relentlessly cheerful nomad and the villain he will not stop befriending.

Season 1

Hey Duggee

2014–CBeebiesAnimation

A dog running a scout group for small animals, structured around a badge per episode.

Season 1

Big Hero 6: The Series

2017–2021Disney XD / Disney ChannelAnimation

The film's team continued in 2D, in a San Fransokyo drawn rather than modelled.

Season 1

Fish Hooks

2010–2014Disney ChannelAnimation

A high school inside a pet-shop fish tank, animated over photographed backgrounds.

Season 1

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

2011Fuji TVAnimation

Childhood friends reassembled by the one of them who died, who only one of them can see.

Season 1

Brickleberry

2012–2015Comedy CentralAnimation

A national park staffed entirely by people who should not be near one, opened in ten seconds.

Season 1

Tuca & Bertie

2019–2022Netflix / Adult SwimAnimation

Buildings with faces and plants with opinions — a city drawn as though everything in it is slightly alive, which in this show it is.

Season 1

Black Dynamite

2012–2015Adult SwimAnimation

The blaxploitation pastiche film continued as a series, with the seventies title grammar intact.

Season 1

Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness

2011–2016NickelodeonAnimation

The DreamWorks films continued weekly, opened in ten seconds of brush-and-ink.

Season 1

Fruits Basket

2019–2021TV TokyoAnimation

The second adaptation, which ran the manga to its end rather than stopping partway.

Season 1

The Casagrandes

2019–2022NickelodeonAnimation

The Loud House spin-off, following the Mexican American family next door into the city.

Season 1

Sanjay and Craig

2013–2016NickelodeonAnimation

A boy and his talking snake, drawn in the loosest line Nickelodeon has ever put on air.

Season 1

Unikitty!

2017–2020Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The Lego Movie character given her own kingdom and a great deal more sugar.

Season 1

Guardians of the Galaxy

2015–2019Disney XDAnimation

The team animated after the first film, in the same eleven-second house style as the rest of the block.

Season 1

Summer Camp Island

2018–2021Cartoon Network / HBO MaxAnimation

A camp where the counsellors are witches and the moon is a person, drawn in chalk pastel.

Season 1

T.U.F.F. Puppy

2010–2015NickelodeonAnimation

A dog secret agent, from the creator of The Fairly OddParents.

Season 1

Trollhunters

2016–2018NetflixAnimation

Guillermo del Toro's trolls under a Californian town, opened in fifteen seconds.

Season 1

Green Lantern: The Animated Series

2011–2013Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The first fully CG DC series, cancelled after one season when its toy line failed.

Season 1

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja

2012–2015Disney XDAnimation

A ninth-grader handed an eight-hundred-year-old ninja suit and no instructions.

Season 1

Neo Yokio

2017–2018NetflixAnimation

Ezra Koenig's magistocrat comedy, animated in Japan and pitched somewhere nobody has located since.

Season 1

Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.

2013–2015Disney XDAnimation

The Hulks as a team, framed as a documentary crew filming themselves.

Season 1

The 7D

2014–2016Disney XDAnimation

The seven dwarfs before Snow White, animated in a rubber-hose style by Tom Ruegger's team.

Season 1

Black Clover

2017–2021TV TokyoAnimation

A boy born without magic in a world made of it, across thirteen different openings.

Season 4

Apple & Onion

2018–2021Cartoon NetworkAnimation

An apple and an onion sharing a flat in a city of anthropomorphic food.

Season 1

Bless the Harts

2019–2021FoxAnimation

A North Carolina family whose matriarch talks to a Jesus only she can see.

Season 1

Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart

2019–2020Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A cat sheriff who wants to be a legendary hero and is instead responsible for a valley of fruit people.

Season 1

Harvey Beaks

2015–2017NickelodeonAnimation

A well-behaved bird and the two feral children who are his best friends.

Season 1

Pickle and Peanut

2015–2018Disney XDAnimation

A pickle and a peanut, animated over photographed backgrounds and stock imagery.

Season 1

Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero

2015–2017Disney XDAnimation

A part-time hero zapped into a different world every episode, each drawn in its own style.

Season 1

Sarah & Duck

2013–2017CBeebiesAnimation

A girl, her duck, and a narrator who talks to both of them, in fifteen seconds of open.

Season 1

Motorcity

2012Disney XDAnimation

A hidden Detroit beneath a corporate city, from the Titmouse studio, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

Victor and Valentino

2019–2022Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Two half-brothers in a Mesoamerican village where the folklore is real and mostly annoyed with them.

Season 1

Bordertown

2016FoxAnimation

A Seth MacFarlane-produced border comedy, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

Welcome to the Wayne

2017–2019NickelodeonAnimation

An apartment building with a secret in every corridor, and children who map it.

Season 1

Moonbeam City

2015Comedy CentralAnimation

A Patrick Nagel pastiche in neon and chrome, which is the entire aesthetic argument of the series.

Season 1

Lazor Wulf

2019–2021Adult SwimAnimation

A wolf with a laser bolted to his back, in fourteen seconds of open.

Season 1

Chozen

2014FXAnimation

An animated rapper released from prison, from the Archer production team.

Season 1

Future-Worm!

2016–2018Disney XDAnimation

A time-travelling worm and the boy who built his flask, from Ryan Quincy.

Season 1

The Rising of the Shield Hero

2019–Tokyo MXAnimation

The isekai hero given the defensive weapon and none of the credit.

Season 1

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

2017–2023TV TokyoAnimation

The Naruto sequel, following the son of the boy the first series was about.

Season 1

The Amazing World of Gumball

2011–2019Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A cat, a goldfish with legs, and a suburb assembled by layering drawn animation, models and live-action photography in the same shot.

Season 1

Bing

2014–2019CBeebiesAnimation

A preschool rabbit and the small woollen carer who manages him, from Ted Dewan's books.

Season 1

Castlevania

2017–2021NetflixAnimation

Gothic architecture and stained glass rendered as a slow climb, refusing the game series' rock score for something closer to a requiem.

Seasons 1–4

DuckTales (2017)

2017–2021Disney XDAnimation

The reboot, which rerecorded the 1987 theme rather than replacing it — the rare remake that understood the song was the asset.

Season 1

Erased

2016Fuji TVAnimation

A man sent back to his own childhood to prevent a murder, opened with the cold blue of a Hokkaido winter.

Season 1

F Is for Family

2015–2021NetflixAnimation

A 1970s sitcom opening built out of wood panelling, cigarette smoke and a father arriving home — the era's own title design, with the warmth removed.

Season 1

Green Eggs and Ham

2019–2022NetflixAnimation

Fifty Seuss words expanded into two seasons, animated with more craft than the premise suggests.

Season 2

Hunter × Hunter

2011–2014Nippon TVAnimation

One opening held for most of a hundred and forty-eight episodes, which for a shonen series of that length is close to unheard of.

Season 1

KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!

2016–Tokyo MXAnimation

An isekai where the hero's party is uniformly useless and the show knows it.

Season 1

March Comes in Like a Lion

2016–2018NHKAnimation

A teenage professional shogi player and the depression the game is holding at bay.

Season 1

Miffy's Adventures Big and Small

2015–2019KRO-NCRV / Tiny PopAnimation

The same rabbit remade in computer animation a decade later, and given considerably more to do.

Season 1

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir

2015–TF1Animation

Two Parisian teenagers who transform into superheroes and spend six seasons not working out who the other one is.

Season 5
Season 6

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

2010–2019The Hub / Discovery FamilyAnimation

A toy line handed to an animator who took it entirely seriously, and an audience nobody had forecast.

Season 1

Octonauts

2010–CBeebiesAnimation

A crew of animals working out of an underwater base, each episode built around a real marine species.

Season 1

One Punch Man

2015–TV TokyoAnimation

A screaming rock track and animation of enormous ambition, for a hero who wins every fight in one hit and is bored by it.

Season 1

Ping Pong the Animation

2014Fuji TVAnimation

Masaaki Yuasa drawing table tennis in a line nobody else would have approved.

Season 1

PJ Masks

2015–2024Disney JuniorAnimation

Three children who become animal-themed heroes at night, from the French picture books.

Season 1

Star Wars Rebels

2014–2018Disney XDAnimation

Kevin Kiner rewriting John Williams for a series about the Rebellion before it was one.

Season 1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

2012–2017NickelodeonAnimation

The CG revival, which kept the 1987 theme's shape and rebuilt everything around it.

Season 1

2000s

Avatar: The Last Airbender

2005–2008NickelodeonAnimation

Four elements demonstrated in turn by four benders, then a narrated history — a world explained completely in about a minute, every week.

Season 1

Phineas and Ferb

2007–2015Disney ChannelAnimation

A theme that lists everything the characters intend to build over the summer, at a tempo that leaves no room to breathe.

Season 1

American Dad!

2005–Fox / TBSAnimation

A CIA agent singing about his morning routine, in a sequence that varies its final line to suit the episode.

Season 1

The Boondocks

2005–2014Adult SwimAnimation

Aaron McGruder's strip animated in an anime register, opened by Asheru's theme over ink-wash stills.

Season 1

Naruto Shippuden

2007–2017TV TokyoAnimation

Twenty distinct openings across a decade, changed roughly every cour — one of the largest rotations of title sequences any series has produced.

Season 1

Bleach

2004–TV TokyoAnimation

Fifteen different openings across its original run, each one a complete restyling — a long-running series that treated its titles as a rotating commission rather than a fixed asset.

Season 1

Archer

2009–2023FXAnimation

Sixties spy-thriller title design executed straight — silhouettes, gun barrels and a brass sting, with the joke being that the show underneath refuses to match it.

Season 1

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

2008–2020Cartoon Network / Disney+Animation

A newsreel rather than a title sequence — a narrator reporting the state of the war, rewritten every episode, preceded by a different aphorism each week.

Season 1

Teen Titans

2003–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A J-pop theme by Puffy AmiYumi, recorded in both Japanese and English and alternated between episodes.

Season 1

Code Geass

2006–2008MBS / TBSAnimation

Mecha and monarchy over a rock track, with the aristocratic cast posed like a fashion shoot.

Season 1

The Fairly OddParents

2001–2017NickelodeonAnimation

A theme that runs through the entire premise as a checklist, revised several times across sixteen years.

Season 1

Robot Chicken

2005–Adult SwimAnimation

A chicken reanimated with machinery and forced to watch television, which is the show's premise and its title sequence at once.

Season 1

Naruto

2002–2007TV TokyoAnimation

Nine openings across five years, each announcing a new arc — and the first is the one an entire generation can still hum.

Season 1

Gurren Lagann

2007TV TokyoAnimation

A mecha series whose opening escalates as fast as the show does, and which by the end is operating at a scale the first episode could not have suggested.

Season 1

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

2000–2015Adult SwimAnimation

A rap theme introducing three fast-food items who do not solve crimes, performed with the conviction of a show that does.

Season 1

Samurai Jack

2001–2017Cartoon Network / Adult SwimAnimation

A villain narrating his own defeat of the hero, over graphic-design animation that owes more to UPA than to Saturday morning.

Season 1

Kim Possible

2002–2007Disney ChannelAnimation

'Call Me, Beep Me' over split-screen spy graphics — a theme so tied to the show that Disney rerecorded it for the live-action film and was widely told not to.

Season 1

The Venture Bros.

2003–2018Adult SwimAnimation

Jonny Quest's adventure-cartoon grammar played straight and then left to rot for fifteen years.

Season 1

Samurai Champloo

2004–2005Fuji TVAnimation

Nujabes and Shing02 over Edo-period swordplay — hip-hop and historical drama treated as obviously compatible, which nobody had assumed before.

Season 1

Codename: Kids Next Door

2002–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A spy-thriller opening for five children fighting adults, played with the seriousness of a much larger programme.

Season 1

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

2001–2007Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Two children who win the Grim Reaper in a limbo contest and keep him as a friend.

Season 1

The Batman

2004–2008Kids' WBAnimation

The series that had to follow Batman: The Animated Series and chose to look nothing like it.

Season 1

Moral Orel

2005–2008Adult SwimAnimation

Stop-motion in the Davey and Goliath idiom, which by its third season had stopped being a parody at all.

Season 1

Justice League

2001–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation

An orchestral fanfare and seven heroes introduced in sequence, from the same production team as Batman: The Animated Series and with the same refusal to condescend.

Season 1

The Cleveland Show

2009–2013FoxAnimation

The Family Guy spin-off, moving Cleveland Brown to Virginia and giving him a theme song about it.

Season 1

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

2004–2009Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A boarding house for imaginary friends whose children have outgrown them.

Season 1

Ouran High School Host Club

2006Nippon TVAnimation

A scholarship student mistaken for a boy and conscripted into the school's host club.

Season 1

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

2002–2005AnimaxAnimation

Yoko Kanno again, this time with Origa singing in Russian over cybernetic bodies being assembled — a sequence that treats the human form as hardware.

Season 2

Clone High

2002–2023MTV / MaxAnimation

A theme that introduces the entire premise as a shouted list of historical figures, which remains the fastest exposition in animation.

Season 1

Invader Zim

2001–2006NickelodeonAnimation

Gothic-industrial design on a children's network, with a theme that sounds like it was made under duress.

Season 1

Total Drama Island

2007–2008TeletoonAnimation

Survivor animated for children, with confessional booths and eliminations played entirely straight.

Season 1

Danny Phantom

2004–2007NickelodeonAnimation

A narrated origin sung over the transformation, in the tradition the network had been running since Doug.

Season 1

Ben 10

2005–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A theme that lists the premise as a countdown, over a boy who becomes ten different aliens.

Seasons 1–2

Cyberchase

2002–PBSAnimation

Three children pulled into a network to stop a villain with mathematics, which is the plot and the curriculum at once.

Season 1

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

2008–2011Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Batman team-ups in the Silver Age idiom, opened with a straight-faced superhero fanfare.

Season 1

Jackie Chan Adventures

2000–2005Kids' WBAnimation

Jackie Chan as an archaeologist hunting talismans, with the real Chan answering fan questions at the end of each episode.

Season 1

Dora the Explorer

2000–2019NickelodeonAnimation

A bilingual preschool series built on asking the audience questions and leaving room for the answer.

Season 1

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

2000–2004TV TokyoAnimation

A card game staged as a series of duels to the death, with an opening rebuilt several times inside its first season.

Season 1

Drawn Together

2004–2007Comedy CentralAnimation

A reality-house parody whose cast are each drawn in a different studio's style.

Seasons 1–2

The Proud Family

2001–2005Disney ChannelAnimation

Penny Proud and her family, opened by a theme Solange recorded with Destiny's Child.

Season 1

Metalocalypse

2006–2013Adult SwimAnimation

A death-metal theme written and performed by the show's creator, for a cartoon about a band whose concerts have a body count.

Season 1

The Spectacular Spider-Man

2008–2009The CW / Disney XDAnimation

Web-line geometry and a surf-rock horn chart, widely held to be the best Spider-Man adaptation in any medium.

Season 1

My Life as a Teenage Robot

2003–2009NickelodeonAnimation

A teenage combat robot who would rather be at school, drawn in hard mid-century angles.

Season 1

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius

2002–2006NickelodeonAnimation

One of the first fully CG series made for American television week to week.

Season 1

Static Shock

2000–2004The WBAnimation

A hip-hop theme over a Black teenage superhero in Dakota — from the same DC animation house as Batman and Superman, and tonally nothing like either.

Season 1

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

2008–2012Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A boy raised by a whale, in a sea-shanty register that got steadily more unsettling.

Season 1

Chowder

2007–2010Cartoon NetworkAnimation

An apprentice cook in Marzipan City, animated over patterned backgrounds that never stop moving.

Season 1

Toradora!

2008–2009TV TokyoAnimation

Two students agreeing to help each other with the wrong crushes, which goes exactly as expected.

Season 1

American Dragon: Jake Long

2005–2007Disney ChannelAnimation

A New York teenager who is also the American Dragon, and the only one.

Season 1

Xiaolin Showdown

2003–2006Kids' WBAnimation

Four apprentice monks collecting artefacts, in a series that borrows its fight grammar from wuxia rather than from superheroes.

Season 1

Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi

2004–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The Japanese pop duo animated as cartoon versions of themselves, with a theme they recorded.

Season 1

As Told by Ginger

2000–2006NickelodeonAnimation

Middle school treated as continuing drama rather than a gag engine, which was unusual for the slot.

Season 1

Camp Lazlo

2005–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A Brazilian spider monkey at a scout camp run by a humourless beetle.

Season 1

6teen

2004–2010TeletoonAnimation

Six sixteen-year-olds working in the same shopping centre, from the Total Drama creators.

Season 1

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

2000–2007Adult SwimAnimation

Birdman as a lawyer representing Hanna-Barbera characters, opened in the register of a network legal drama.

Season 1

Back at the Barnyard

2007–2011NickelodeonAnimation

Farm animals who behave like people the moment the farmer leaves.

Season 1

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera

2007–2008NickelodeonAnimation

A boy from a family of both superheroes and supervillains, who has not chosen yet.

Season 1

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

2004–2008TV TokyoAnimation

The Duel Monsters sequel, moved to a boarding school for duellists.

Season 1

The Emperor's New School

2006–2008Disney ChannelAnimation

The Emperor's New Groove continued as a school comedy, with the film's narrator still interrupting.

Season 1

Sealab 2021

2000–2005Adult SwimAnimation

A 1972 Hanna-Barbera series redubbed into something else entirely, keeping the original's animation and none of its intentions.

Season 1

Squidbillies

2005–2021Adult SwimAnimation

Appalachian squids, with a theme song rerecorded by a different artist almost every season — one of the longest-running rotating title sequences on American television.

Season 1

Between the Lions

2000–2010PBSAnimation

A family of lions running a library, in a reading programme built by the people who made Sesame Street.

Season 1

Fanboy & Chum Chum

2009–2014NickelodeonAnimation

Two boys in superhero costumes they never take off, in one of Nickelodeon's first CG series.

Season 1

Ozzy & Drix

2002–2004Kids' WBAnimation

The film Osmosis Jones continued as a series, with a white blood cell and a cold pill policing a teenager's body.

Season 1

Megas XLR

2004–2005Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A New Jersey mechanic who finds a giant robot in a scrapyard and bolts a car to its head.

Season 1

Superjail!

2007–2014Adult SwimAnimation

A prison inside a volcano inside another volcano, animated with more detail per frame than the slot required.

Season 1

ChalkZone

2002–2008NickelodeonAnimation

A world made of everything ever erased from a blackboard.

Season 1

The Zeta Project

2001–2002Kids' WBAnimation

A Batman Beyond spin-off about an assassin robot that refuses to kill and runs from the agency that built it.

Season 1

Yin Yang Yo!

2006–2009Disney XD / Toon DisneyAnimation

Twin rabbits studying woo-foo under a panda, in a series that never once slowed down.

Season 1

The Mighty B!

2008–2011NickelodeonAnimation

Amy Poehler's Honeybee scout collecting every badge in existence.

Season 1

Charlie and Lola

2005–2008CBeebiesAnimation

Lauren Child's collage illustration animated as collage, with children rather than actors doing the voices.

Season 1

Class of 3000

2006–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

André 3000's series about an Atlanta music class, with a theme he wrote and performed himself.

Season 1

Time Squad

2001–2003Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Time police correcting history, which keeps going wrong in ways they caused.

Season 1

Brandy & Mr. Whiskers

2004–2006Disney ChannelAnimation

A pampered dog and a manic rabbit stranded together in the Amazon.

Season 1

The Replacements

2006–2009Disney ChannelAnimation

Two orphans with a phone number that replaces any adult in their lives.

Season 1

The Buzz on Maggie

2005–2006Disney ChannelAnimation

A teenage fly in a rubbish dump, which the series treats as an ordinary suburb.

Season 1

Tom Goes to the Mayor

2004–2006Adult SwimAnimation

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's first series, animated from photographs of the cast with almost no motion.

Season 1

The Brak Show

2000–2003Adult SwimAnimation

The Space Ghost villain relocated to a 1950s sitcom family, with the sitcom open played completely straight.

Season 1

Gintama

2006–2021TV TokyoAnimation

Samurai comedy in an alien-occupied Edo, and one of the longest lists of distinct opening sequences in television.

Season 1

Krypto the Superdog

2005–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Superman's dog on Earth without him, living with a boy in suburban Metropolis.

Season 1

12 oz. Mouse

2005–2020Adult SwimAnimation

Drawn deliberately badly in flat colour, and the show that pushed hardest at what the block would broadcast.

Season 1

The Life & Times of Tim

2008–2012HBOAnimation

A man in New York whose every conversation makes his situation worse, drawn as simply as possible.

Season 1

Dennis the Menace and Gnasher

2009–2013CBBCAnimation

The Beano strip animated for CBBC, with the comic's line kept largely intact.

Season 1

The Backyardigans

2004–2013Nick Jr.Animation

Five animals whose garden becomes a different world every episode, with a full musical score in a different genre each time.

Season 1

Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom

2009–2013Channel 5 / Nick Jr.Animation

Elves and fairies from the people who made Peppa Pig, drawn in the same flat two dimensions.

Season 1

Clannad

2007–2009TBSAnimation

A Kyoto Animation adaptation that spends a full season setting up what the second season does to you.

Season 1

Dinosaur Train

2009–PBS KidsAnimation

A Tyrannosaurus raised by Pteranodons, riding a train between geological periods.

Season 1

Doraemon (2005)

2005–TV AsahiAnimation

The robot cat from the twenty-second century, remade in 2005 with an entirely new voice cast after twenty-six years of the old one.

Season 1

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

2009–2010MBS / TBSAnimation

Alchemical circles and transmutation, animated at a scale the first adaptation could not afford.

Season 1

Hajime no Ippo

2000–2014Nippon TVAnimation

A bullied shopkeeper's son taken into a boxing gym, and one of the few sports series that gets the training right.

Season 1

Handy Manny

2006–2011Playhouse DisneyAnimation

A bilingual repairman whose tools talk, and the programme that taught a generation of American children their first Spanish.

Season 1

Happy Tree Friends

2000–Mondo MediaAnimation

Woodland animals drawn in the shape of greetings cards and then killed in every episode, made for the web years before television wanted it.

Season 1

Johnny Test

2005–2014Kids' WB / Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A boy who lets his scientist sisters test inventions on him in exchange for whatever he wants that week.

Season 1

Maggie and the Ferocious Beast

2000–2002TeletoonAnimation

A girl, a spotted beast and a pig live on Nowhere Land, where nothing much goes wrong.

Season 1

Max & Ruby

2002–2020Nick Jr. / Treehouse TVAnimation

A rabbit of three and his sister of seven, in a world where no adult ever appears on screen.

Season 1

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2006–2009Tokyo MXAnimation

A schoolgirl who can rewrite reality and has not been told, in an adaptation that first broadcast its episodes deliberately out of order.

Season 1
Season 2

Miffy and Friends

2003–2005KRO / CITVAnimation

Dick Bruna's rabbit animated in stop motion, keeping the flat colours and the two-dot face intact.

Season 1

Monster

2004–2005Nippon TVAnimation

Restrained to the point of austerity — portraits, European streets and a single held tone, for a series about a doctor who saved the wrong life.

Season 1

Mr. Bean: The Animated Series

2002–2019ITVAnimation

The character animated, which suits him — he barely spoke in live action either.

Season 1

The Mr. Men Show

2008–2009Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Roger Hargreaves' shapes rebuilt as a sketch show, forty years after the books.

Season 2

Oswald

2001–2003NickelodeonAnimation

A blue octopus and his dachshund in a town drawn without a straight line in it.

Season 1

Peppa Pig

2004–Channel 5Animation

A preschool series drawn in flat two dimensions and sold to a hundred and eighty countries, which is more than almost anything else British television has made.

Season 1

Pocoyo

2005–2010La 2 / CITVAnimation

A Spanish preschool series played out on plain white, with no scenery at all to compete with the four-year-old and the narrator who argues with him.

Season 1

Popee the Performer

2000–2001Kids StationAnimation

A circus in the desert, animated in early CGI and far more violent than its length suggests.

Season 1

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series

2003MTV / YTVAnimation

MTV's computer-animated Spider-Man, set between the first two films and cancelled after thirteen episodes.

Season 1

Super Why!

2007–2016PBS KidsAnimation

Four children who solve their problems by climbing into storybooks and changing the spelling.

Season 1

Tokyo Mew Mew

2002TV TokyoAnimation

Five girls infused with the DNA of endangered animals, in the magical girl series that made cat ears a convention.

Season 1

Totally Spies!

2001–2014TF1 / Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Three Beverly Hills schoolgirls working for a spy agency, made in France and drawn in a style borrowed from anime.

Season 7

1990s

One Piece

1999–Fuji TVAnimation

The longest-running opening rotation in television — more than twenty distinct sequences over a quarter of a century, each announcing a new arc.

Season 1

South Park

1997–Comedy CentralAnimation

A banjo, a cut-paper Colorado town and four boys at a bus stop — re-recorded and re-animated repeatedly across nearly thirty years while staying recognisably the same twenty-nine seconds.

Season 1
Season 15

SpongeBob SquarePants

1999–NickelodeonAnimation

A sea shanty led by a painted pirate head, in call and response with children — one of the most universally known pieces of television music written this century.

Season 1

Family Guy

1999–FoxAnimation

A musical number performed by the family about how television used to have values — a sitcom opening from the 1970s, done straight and then undercut.

Season 1
Season 10

King of the Hill

1997–FoxAnimation

Four men drinking beer in an alley, and a guitar riff. Thirty-one seconds that tell you the show has no interest in going anywhere.

Season 1
Season 14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

1995–1996TV TokyoAnimation

Ninety seconds cut faster than the eye resolves, with whole frames of text and diagram flashed for one frame each. Yoko Takahashi's theme is bright, major-key J-pop laid over imagery that is doing nothing of the kind, and the mismatch is the point rather than an accident.

Season 1

Futurama

1999–Fox / Comedy Central / HuluAnimation

Like The Simpsons, an opening built to differ every week — a new caption under the logo and a different scrap of old cartoon on the screen the ship flies past — wrapped around Christopher Tyng's theme and a crash into a billboard.

Seasons 1–4
Seasons 6–7

Pokémon

1997–TV TokyoAnimation

The longest-running video-game adaptation on television, and a theme song that outlasted every cast change.

Season 1
Season 5

Beavis and Butt-Head

1993–MTVAnimation

Two teenagers on a sofa, and a guitar riff played about as well as they would play it.

Season 1

Batman: The Animated Series

1992–1995Fox KidsAnimation

No dialogue, no narration, and the character's name never appears — a full orchestral score over a robbery, a rooftop and a silhouette, and the audience is trusted to work it out.

Season 1

Arthur

1996–2022PBSAnimation

An aardvark in the third grade, in the longest-running animated children's series in American television.

Season 1

The Ren & Stimpy Show

1991–1996NickelodeonAnimation

Rubber-limbed animation and a jaunty theme, both of which are considerably more unhinged than a children's network should have permitted.

Season 1

Ed, Edd n Eddy

1999–2009Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Wobbling outlines and a scat vocal, drawn deliberately so that every line shakes — the last major American cartoon animated entirely by hand on paper.

Season 1

X-Men: The Animated Series

1992–1997Fox KidsAnimation

A guitar riff, a name card per character, and nothing else — the most efficient superhero roll-call ever animated, and the reason the 2024 revival copied it exactly.

Season 1

Courage the Cowardly Dog

1999–2002Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Twenty-nine seconds establishing a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere and a dog who is right to be frightened.

Season 1

Dexter's Laboratory

1996–2003Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Thirty seconds of a boy genius and the sister who ruins everything, in the flat graphic style that defined a decade of the network.

Season 1

Batman Beyond

1999–2001The WBAnimation

The same animation house forty years on, trading the orchestral score for industrial percussion and a Gotham that has kept getting worse.

Season 1

VeggieTales

1993–2015SyndicationAnimation

Bible stories told by vegetables, made on desktop computers in Chicago before any studio would have paid for it.

Season 1

Blue's Clues

1996–2006NickelodeonAnimation

A host talking directly to camera and waiting for an answer, which changed how American preschool television was made.

Season 1

Daria

1997–2002MTVAnimation

The cast doing ordinary things badly while the lead refuses to participate, over Splendora's 'You're Standing on My Neck'.

Season 1

Spider-Man: The Animated Series

1994–1998Fox KidsAnimation

The Fox Kids Marvel block's other pillar, alongside X-Men, with a guitar theme that does the same job.

Season 1

The Wild Thornberrys

1998–2004NickelodeonAnimation

A wildlife-documentary family whose daughter can talk to the animals they are filming.

Season 1

Hey Arnold!

1996–2004NickelodeonAnimation

A jazz theme over a city block, for a children's cartoon that treated urban childhood with unusual seriousness.

Season 1

Cardcaptor Sakura

1998–2000NHKAnimation

CLAMP's magical girl, with a new costume every episode and three separate openings across the run.

Season 3

Æon Flux

1991–1995MTVAnimation

Peter Chung's assassin, drawn in a style nothing else on television had, and killed off at the end of most early episodes.

Season 1

Berserk

1997–1998Nippon TVAnimation

'Tell Me Why' — an English-language pop song with almost no relationship to the series it introduces, which has become part of the show's reputation.

Season 1

The Maxx

1995MTVAnimation

Sam Kieth's comic animated almost panel for panel, about a homeless man who is a superhero in another world.

Season 1

Pinky and the Brain

1995–1998The WBAnimation

A theme that explains the premise as a call and response, ending on the same question every week and never answering it.

Season 1

Recess

1997–2001ABCAnimation

A brass march over a school playground treated as a sovereign state, which is exactly how the series plays it.

Season 1

Rocko's Modern Life

1993–1996NickelodeonAnimation

An Australian wallaby in O-Town, written for children with as much as possible smuggled past them.

Season 1

Johnny Bravo

1997–2004Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A pompadour, a bass riff and a character who has never once been correct about anything.

Season 1

Gargoyles

1994–1997DisneyAnimation

A thousand years of stone, narrated with the gravity of a Shakespearean prologue — which given how much of the cast came from Star Trek, it very nearly is.

Season 1

Sailor Moon

1992–1997TV AsahiAnimation

The series that built the magical-girl template, opened by "Moonlight Densetsu" across five separate runs.

Season 4

Doug

1991–1999Nickelodeon / ABCAnimation

A mouth-percussion theme over a boy walking to school — an opening performed almost entirely with a human voice.

Season 1

Great Teacher Onizuka

1999–2000Fuji TVAnimation

A former biker gang leader who becomes a teacher for the wrong reasons and stays for the right ones.

Season 1

Digimon Adventure

1999–2000Fuji TVAnimation

Seven children pulled into a digital world, opened by "Butter-Fly" — a song that has outlived every reboot.

Season 1

Slam Dunk

1993–1996TV AsahiAnimation

A delinquent who joins the basketball team to impress a girl and stays for the game.

Season 1

Superman: The Animated Series

1996–2000The WBAnimation

The companion to Batman: The Animated Series, and the same trick — a full orchestral score over a sequence that names nothing.

Season 1

Home Movies

1999–2004UPN / Adult SwimAnimation

Nineteen seconds, squiggle-drawn, from the series that established the improvised-dialogue style its creator would later bring to Bob's Burgers.

Season 1

Tiny Toon Adventures

1990–1995Syndication / Fox KidsAnimation

A patter song naming the entire cast, which the series' successor Animaniacs would take further still.

Season 1

Rocket Power

1999–2004NickelodeonAnimation

Four children in a California beach town who do every extreme sport in sequence.

Season 1

Rugrats

1991–2004NickelodeonAnimation

Mark Mothersbaugh scoring a baby's-eye view of a living room — the theme is closer to a Devo B-side than to children's television.

Season 1

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

1994–1997NickelodeonAnimation

Monsters at school under a city dump, learning to frighten people as a trade.

Season 1

CatDog

1998–2005NickelodeonAnimation

A cat and a dog sharing one body, and a theme song that spends its whole length asking how.

Season 1

Cowboy Bebop

1998–1999TV Tokyo / WOWOWAnimation

A jazz record given ninety seconds of animation. Silhouettes and hard-edged colour panels cut on the beat of a big band, borrowing the grammar of 1960s film titles so completely that the show it opens looks like a rediscovery rather than a debut.

Season 1

The Powerpuff Girls

1998–2005Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Narrated origin, sugar, spice and everything nice — a premise delivered in one sentence over sixties-modern graphic design.

Season 1

Freakazoid!

1995–1997The WBAnimation

A superhero theme performed at a volume and speed that make the joke before the show has started.

Season 1

Todd McFarlane's Spawn

1997–1999HBOAnimation

The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.

Season 1
Season 2

The Angry Beavers

1997–2001NickelodeonAnimation

Two beaver brothers who have left home and are managing it badly.

Season 1

Animaniacs

1993–1998Fox Kids / The WBAnimation

A patter song with a different closing rhyme every week, sung by three cartoon characters at a tempo no live performer would attempt.

Season 1

The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest

1996–1999Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The 1964 Hanna-Barbera series rebuilt for the nineties, with early CG sequences inside it.

Season 1

Celebrity Deathmatch

1998–2007MTVAnimation

Claymation celebrities fighting to the death in a wrestling ring, with commentary played completely straight.

Season 1

I Am Weasel

1997–2000Cartoon NetworkAnimation

The Cow and Chicken spin-off, with a theme that is mostly the title said repeatedly.

Season 1

Bobby's World

1990–1998Fox KidsAnimation

Howie Mandel's stand-up child character animated, with Mandel voicing both the boy and his father.

Season 1

The PJs

1999–2001Fox / The WBAnimation

Eddie Murphy's stop-motion housing-project comedy, animated in foam rather than drawn.

Seasons 1–2

KaBlam!

1996–2000NickelodeonAnimation

An animated anthology framed as a comic book being read, with the hosts drawn on the page.

Season 1

Yu Yu Hakusho

1992–1995Fuji TVAnimation

A delinquent who dies saving a child and is given a job in the afterlife rather than a rest.

Season 1

Spider-Man

1994–1998Fox KidsAnimation

The nineties adaptation, with a guitar theme that a generation can still produce on request.

Season 1

Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

1994–1999Fox KidsAnimation

The geography game animated, with Rita Moreno as the thief and a jazz score to chase her with.

Season 1

Mighty Max

1993–1994SyndicationAnimation

A toy line turned into a series with Tim Curry and Richard Moll in it, and a body count.

Season 1

Life with Louie

1995–1998Fox KidsAnimation

Louie Anderson's Wisconsin childhood animated, with his own father as the character the show turns on.

Season 1

Eek! The Cat

1992–1997Fox KidsAnimation

A purple cat whose motto is that it never hurts to help, in a series built entirely on disproving it.

Season 1

Histeria!

1998–2000Kids' WBAnimation

History taught as an Animaniacs-style variety show, made to satisfy an educational broadcasting requirement.

Season 1

The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries

1995–2000Kids' WBAnimation

The chase reframed as a detective series, with Granny solving cases and the cat still not catching the bird.

Season 1

Bob the Builder

1999–2011BBC OneAnimation

Stop-motion construction with a call and response the programme never varies, and a number one Christmas single.

Season 1

Road Rovers

1996–1997Kids' WBAnimation

Domestic dogs from six countries turned into a superhero team by a scientist who does not explain much.

Season 1

The Critic

1994–1995ABC / FoxAnimation

Al Jean and Mike Reiss's film critic, made between their Simpsons runs and cancelled by two networks.

Season 1

Trigun

1998TV TokyoAnimation

A desert western scored like a spy thriller, with a gunman who refuses to kill anyone.

Season 1

Cow and Chicken

1997–1999Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A cow and a chicken with human parents whose faces are never shown above the waist.

Season 1

Angela Anaconda

1999–2001TeletoonAnimation

Photographs of real faces cut out and animated over drawn backgrounds, which is as unsettling as it sounds.

Season 1

The Animals of Farthing Wood

1993–1995BBC OneAnimation

Animals leaving a destroyed wood for a nature reserve, and a children's series that killed off its cast as it went.

Season 1

Beast Wars: Transformers

1996–1999Syndication / YTVAnimation

Transformers rebuilt in computer graphics on a fraction of the budget, which is why everybody is an animal.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

The Busy World of Richard Scarry

1994–1996ShowtimeAnimation

Busytown animated faithfully enough that the books' cutaway drawings survive intact.

Season 1

Caillou

1997–2011Teletoon / PBSAnimation

A four-year-old with no hair and very little patience, adapted from Quebec picture books.

Season 1

Detention

1999–2000Kids' WBAnimation

Nine children in permanent after-school detention, animated in a flat 1950s style that nothing else on the block used.

Season 1

Dragon Tales

1999–2005PBS Kids / CBCAnimation

Two children who reach a dragon world by reciting a rhyme over a scale they find in a toy box.

Season 1

Earthworm Jim

1995–1996The WBAnimation

The game adapted with its own voice cast and most of its absurdity intact.

Season 1

Jay Jay the Jet Plane

1998–2005PBS KidsAnimation

Talking aeroplanes at a small airfield, made first on video and later for television.

Season 1

Kevin Spencer

1999–2005The Comedy NetworkAnimation

A Canadian animated series about a chain-smoking sociopath and his parents, drawn as crudely as it is written.

Season 4

Kipper

1997–2000ITVAnimation

Mick Inkpen's dog animated at the pace of the picture books, which is to say slowly and on purpose.

Season 1

Little Bear

1995–2001CBC / Nick Jr.Animation

Maurice Sendak's drawings animated in no hurry whatever, and about the quietest programme Nick Jr. ever ran.

Season 1

Madeline

1993–2007The Family ChannelAnimation

Bemelmans' twelve little girls in two straight lines, animated in the style of the books.

Season 1

The Magic School Bus

1994–1997PBSAnimation

A science teacher who shrinks her class and drives them through the lesson, with Lily Tomlin at the wheel.

Season 1

Mummies Alive!

1997SyndicationAnimation

Four Egyptian mummies revived in San Francisco to guard the reincarnation of a pharaoh's son.

Season 1

Nanalan'

1998–2004CBCAnimation

A puppet toddler spends the day at her grandmother's, filmed at grass height.

Season 1

Oggy and the Cockroaches

1998–France 3Animation

A French cartoon with almost no dialogue in it, which is the reason it sold to nearly every country there is.

Season 1
Season 6

ReBoot

1994–2001YTVAnimation

The first television series animated entirely by computer, and set inside one.

Season 1

Redwall

1999–2002TeletoonAnimation

Brian Jacques' abbey mice animated in Canada, with the villains drawn considerably better than the heroes.

Season 1

Rolie Polie Olie

1998–2004CBC / Playhouse DisneyAnimation

A world of robots built entirely out of spheres and cylinders, computer-animated in Toronto.

Season 1

Samurai Pizza Cats

1990–1991TV TokyoAnimation

Kyatto Ninden Teyandee rewritten wholesale in English by writers working without translated scripts.

Season 1

Skysurfer Strike Force

1995–1996SyndicationAnimation

Five pilots on energy surfboards, from the syndication block that ran opposite the Saban shows.

Season 1

Super Mario World

1991NBCAnimation

The last of the Mario cartoons, made for one autumn after the game of the same name.

Season 1

Theodore Tugboat

1993–2001CBCAnimation

Model tugboats in Halifax harbour, narrated for years by Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas.

Season 1

The Vision of Escaflowne

1996TV TokyoAnimation

A schoolgirl pulled into a war between a hidden planet and an empire, scored throughout for full orchestra.

Season 1

1980s

The Simpsons

1989–FoxAnimation

The only main title in television built to be different every week: the chalkboard, the saxophone solo and the couch gag all change, so the sequence is a format rather than a film.

Seasons 1–20
Season 21

Pingu

1986–2006SF DRSAnimation

A Swiss claymation penguin speaking an invented language, so it needed no dubbing to sell anywhere.

Season 1

DuckTales

1987–1990SyndicationAnimation

One of the most durable theme songs ever written for television, over a minute of ducks solving problems with money.

Season 1

Postman Pat

1981–2017BBC OneAnimation

A rural postman and his black and white cat, stop-motion, with a theme everyone in Britain can finish.

Season 1

Inspector Gadget

1983–1986SyndicationAnimation

A Peter Sellers impression with helicopter arms, and a theme that is In the Hall of the Mountain King with the serial numbers filed off.

Season 1

Fireman Sam

1987–BBC OneAnimation

A Welsh fire station in stop-motion, made in Welsh first and dubbed into English second.

Season 1

The Real Ghostbusters

1986–1991ABCAnimation

The film continued as a cartoon, keeping the theme and adding Real to the title because another studio already had the name.

Season 1

Dungeons & Dragons

1983–1985CBSAnimation

Six children pulled off a fairground ride into the game, with the ride itself doing the work of the title sequence.

Season 1

ThunderCats

1985–1989SyndicationAnimation

A sword extending, a cat's eye opening, and a shout — eighties syndication at its most confident.

Season 1

Danger Mouse

1981–1992ITV (Cosgrove Hall)Animation

A one-eyed secret-agent mouse under a Mayfair pillar box, and the most exported British cartoon of its decade.

Season 1

Muppet Babies

1984–1991CBSAnimation

The Muppets as toddlers in a nursery, spun out of a dream sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Season 1

My Little Pony 'n Friends

1986–1987SyndicationAnimation

The Hasbro line's first series, thirty years before the franchise found an audience it had not been aimed at.

Season 1

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

1985–1986SyndicationAnimation

A toy line turned into a war cartoon where nobody is ever hit, and a theme that spells the acronym out.

Season 1

Thundarr the Barbarian

1980–1982ABCAnimation

A post-apocalyptic Earth designed by Jack Kirby, with a narrated prologue doing all the world-building in twenty seconds.

Season 1

Count Duckula

1988–1993ITV (Cosgrove Hall)Animation

The Danger Mouse villain spun off into his own castle, a vegetarian vampire duck.

Season 1

Beetlejuice

1989–1991ABC / Fox KidsAnimation

The Burton film animated with Danny Elfman's theme intact, and Lydia and the ghost as friends rather than adversaries.

Season 1

SilverHawks

1986SyndicationAnimation

ThunderCats moved into space by the same studio, with the same narrator shouting the same way.

Season 1

Robotech

1985SyndicationAnimation

Three unrelated Japanese series cut together into one American saga, and the opening is where the seam shows: the same theme and the same establishing pan every week, then a different logo card and a different war.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

BraveStarr

1987–1988SyndicationAnimation

Filmation's science-fiction western, and the last series the studio finished before it closed.

Season 1

The Trap Door

1984–1986ITVAnimation

Plasticine creatures in a castle basement, with a theme built from a voice going "don't you open that trap door".

Season 1

SuperTed

1983–1986S4C / BBCAnimation

A discarded teddy bear given powers by a spotty alien, made in Wales and sold to Disney.

Season 1

Rainbow Brite

1984–1986SyndicationAnimation

A Hallmark character licensed into a cartoon, in the era when the toy came first and the series followed.

Season 1

The Littles

1983–1985ABCAnimation

Six-inch people with tails living inside the walls, from the John Peterson books.

Season 1

The Care Bears Family

1986–1988ABCAnimation

The greetings-card bears given a series, with a stare that resolves every plot.

Season 1

Willo the Wisp

1981BBC OneAnimation

Kenneth Williams voicing every character, in five-minute films made to fill the gap before the news.

Season 1

Bananaman

1983–1986BBC OneAnimation

The Beano strip animated with the Goodies doing the voices, and a narrator who explains the transformation every week.

Season 1

Button Moon

1980–1988ITVAnimation

Puppets made of kitchen utensils flying to a moon made of a button, with a theme sung by Peter Davison's wife and later covered by him.

Season 1

Pigeon Street

1981BBC OneAnimation

A street of neighbours introduced one at a time, including a long-distance lorry driver called Long Distance Clara.

Season 1

Anpanman

1988–NTVAnimation

A superhero whose head is made of bread and who tears pieces off it to feed the hungry, running now for more than a thousand episodes.

Season 1

Babar

1989–1991HBOAnimation

De Brunhof's elephant king animated in Canada, and told mostly in flashback to his own children.

Season 1

Beast King GoLion

1981–1982TV TokyoAnimation

Five lions that combine into one robot, later recut in America as Voltron.

Season 1

Dragon Ball

1986–1989Fuji TVAnimation

Toriyama's Journey to the West, from before the series turned into the one everyone remembers.

Season 1

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

1983–1985SyndicationAnimation

A man holding a sword above his head announcing that he has the power, at a volume that defined an entire decade of toy advertising.

Season 1

Jem and the Holograms

1985–1988SyndicationAnimation

A record executive with a holographic alter ego, and a series that stopped for a music video every episode.

Season 1

The New Adventures of He-Man

1989–1990SyndicationAnimation

He-Man moved off Eternia into space, with a redesigned cast and almost none of the original's iconography.

Season 1

Star Wars: Droids

1985–1986ABCAnimation

The two droids between the trilogies, in the first Star Wars television made for children.

Season 1

Superbook

1981–1983CBNAnimation

A Japanese-animated series in which a book sends two children into Bible stories, made for an American religious broadcaster.

Season 1

Thomas & Friends

1984–2021ITVAnimation

Model locomotives shot a frame at a time on a table in Britain, narrated for the first two series by Ringo Starr.

Season 1

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends

1984–2021ITVAnimation

Model railway engines shot at eye level and narrated by Ringo Starr, from the Awdry books.

Season 1

TUGS

1989ITVAnimation

Model tugboats in a 1920s harbour, made by the Thomas the Tank Engine team and considerably darker.

Season 1

Voltron: Defender of the Universe

1984–1985SyndicationAnimation

Five lions forming a robot, explained by narration because the animation alone could not carry it — and the sequence is better for the commitment.

Season 1

1970s

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

1972–1985CBSAnimation

A North Philadelphia junkyard, with a moral at the end and a live-action introduction at the start.

Season 1

Star Trek: The Animated Series

1973–1974NBCAnimation

Filmation's Saturday-morning continuation, with most of the original cast back on microphone duty. The theme is Courage's melody rescored for a cartoon orchestra, brighter and quicker than the live-action original.

Seasons 1–2

Schoolhouse Rock!

1973–2009ABCAnimation

Three-minute songs about grammar and arithmetic dropped between Saturday morning cartoons, and remembered longer than the cartoons.

Season 1

Hong Kong Phooey

1974ABCAnimation

A janitor dog who is a secret kung fu detective, with Scatman Crothers singing his own theme.

Season 1

Battle of the Planets

1978–1980SyndicationAnimation

Gatchaman recut for America with a robot added to explain away the footage that was cut.

Season 1

Josie and the Pussycats

1970–1971CBSAnimation

An Archie Comics spin-off built around a band, with records released under the characters' names.

Season 1

Mr Benn

1971–1972BBC OneAnimation

A man in a bowler hat, a costume shop and a changing room door, thirteen times.

Season 1

Bagpuss

1974BBC OneAnimation

Thirteen episodes, and a sepia photograph opening that colours in when the cat wakes up — Smallfilms doing the whole premise in the titles.

Season 1

Jabberjaw

1976–1978ABCAnimation

A drumming shark in an underwater band, which is Scooby-Doo restaged in 2076 with Curly Howard's voice.

Season 1

Roobarb

1974BBC OneAnimation

Felt-tip animation that boils and shimmers because it was drawn one frame at a time and never traced twice.

Season 1

The Wombles

1973–1975BBC OneAnimation

Litter-collecting creatures under Wimbledon Common, whose fictional band had six top-twenty singles in one year.

Season 1

Chorlton and the Wheelies

1976–1979ITVAnimation

A happiness dragon in Wheelie World, from the studio that went on to make Danger Mouse.

Season 1

Jamie and the Magic Torch

1976–1979ITVAnimation

A torch that opens a hole in the bedroom floor down a helter-skelter into Cuckoo Land.

Season 1

1960s

The Flintstones

1960–1966ABCAnimation

The first animated series in American primetime, and the source of a theme that did not arrive until the third season — the first two opened on something else entirely.

Season 1

The Jetsons

1962–1963ABCAnimation

The same studio's future to answer its own past, with a theme that names the whole family in about fifteen seconds.

Season 1

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

1969–1970CBSAnimation

A theme that asks the title as a question, over a van and five characters who have been drawn the same way for fifty-five years.

Season 1

Speed Racer

1967–1968SyndicationAnimation

Mach GoGoGo dubbed into English at speed, and the anime that got there before anyone called it that.

Season 1

Wacky Races

1968–1969CBSAnimation

Eleven cars introduced one at a time by a narrator, which is a title sequence that is also the entire premise.

Season 1

Top Cat

1961–1962ABCAnimation

Hanna-Barbera doing Sgt. Bilko with alley cats, in the primetime slot the studio kept trying to hold.

Season 1

The Magic Roundabout

1965–1977BBC OneAnimation

A French stop-motion series that Eric Thompson re-narrated in English without translating the scripts, inventing different characters over the same pictures.

Season 1

Underdog

1964–1967NBC / CBSAnimation

A superhero who rhymes, and one of the last title sequences built around its sponsor's product.

Season 1

The Clangers

1969–1974BBC OneAnimation

Knitted creatures on a small planet who speak in swanee whistles, narrated as though it were a nature programme.

Season 1

Astro Boy

1963–1966Fuji TVAnimation

Tezuka's Mighty Atom, the first Japanese television animation series, and the start of the whole industry.

Season 1

The Yogi Bear Show

1961–1962SyndicationAnimation

The supporting character given his own half hour, and a pic-a-nic basket that outlasted the studio.

Season 1

The Herculoids

1967–1969CBSAnimation

Alex Toth designs on an alien planet, in the run of Hanna-Barbera action shows that got them banned from Saturday mornings for violence.

Season 1

Davey and Goliath

1960–1975SyndicationAnimation

A boy and his talking dog, stop-motion, funded by the Lutheran church and animated by the Gumby studio.

Season 1

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000ABC / CBSAnimation

The prime-time repackaging of the Warner shorts, with an original curtain-raiser animated for television.

Season 1

Trumpton

1967BBC OneAnimation

The Camberwick Green sequel, opening on a town clock and a fire brigade roll-call people still recite.

Season 1

The Archie Show

1968–1969CBSAnimation

The cartoon whose fictional band had a real number one single, which is a thing that has happened once.

Season 1

Camberwick Green

1966BBC OneAnimation

A musical box that opens to reveal whichever character the episode is about — a title sequence that is also the casting.

Season 1

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales

1963–1966CBSAnimation

A zoo penguin with a walrus and a professor who explains how things work, which made it educational enough to keep.

Season 1

George of the Jungle

1967ABCAnimation

Jay Ward's Tarzan parody, and a theme that warns you about the tree before he hits it.

Season 1

Roger Ramjet

1965–1969SyndicationAnimation

A five-minute cartoon about a pilot who takes a pill for twenty seconds of super strength, drawn as cheaply as that sounds.

Season 1

Kimba the White Lion

1965–1967Fuji TVAnimation

Tezuka's Jungle Emperor, the first colour Japanese animated series, and a question Disney has been asked about ever since.

Season 1

1950s

The Bullwinkle Show

1959–1964ABC / NBCAnimation

Jay Ward's squirrel and moose, which began as Rocky and His Friends and was renamed for the character who talked more.

Season 1

The Huckleberry Hound Show

1958–1961SyndicationAnimation

The first animated series to win an Emmy, and the show Yogi Bear was a supporting segment in.

Season 1

The Quick Draw McGraw Show

1959–1962SyndicationAnimation

A horse sheriff who cannot shoot, with Snooper and Blabber and Augie Doggie filling out the half hour.

Season 1

Ivor the Engine

1959–1977ITV / BBC OneAnimation

A Welsh locomotive who wants to sing in the choir, drawn in pencil and cut out by hand.

Season 1

Noggin the Nog

1959–1965BBC OneAnimation

Norse sagas drawn from the Lewis chessmen, narrated in the register of a bedtime story about a war.

Season 1