Animaniacs
1993–1998Fox KidsThe WBAnimation
A patter song with a different closing rhyme every week, sung by three cartoon characters at a tempo no live performer would attempt.
Animaniacs opens with a main title sequence of 69 seconds.
It arrived on Fox Kids in 1993, when Bobby's World, Eek! The Cat and Tiny Toon Adventures were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
69sThe broadcast opening, found on a later pass. The final line of the song still changes per episode, so this is one reading of it rather than the only one.
More animation opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequenceOne Piece
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
2 sequencesSouth Park
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
1 sequenceSpongeBob SquarePants
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
2 sequencesFamily Guy
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
2 sequencesKing of the Hill
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
1 sequenceNeon Genesis Evangelion
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