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.
Codename: Kids Next Door opens with a main title sequence of 30 seconds.
At 30 seconds, it opens well under the 58-second median for animation sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Cartoon Network in 2002, when Samurai Jack, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Totally Spies! were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
30sThe theme.
More animation opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequenceAvatar: The Last Airbender
Four elements demonstrated in turn by four benders, then a narrated history — a world explained completely in about a minute, every week.
- Season 1
1 sequencePhineas and Ferb
A theme that lists everything the characters intend to build over the summer, at a tempo that leaves no room to breathe.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAmerican Dad!
A CIA agent singing about his morning routine, in a sequence that varies its final line to suit the episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Boondocks
Aaron McGruder's strip animated in an anime register, opened by Asheru's theme over ink-wash stills.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNaruto Shippuden
Twenty distinct openings across a decade, changed roughly every cour — one of the largest rotations of title sequences any series has produced.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBleach
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