Gargoyles
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.
Gargoyles opens with a main title sequence of 64 seconds.
The opening titles
Season 1
64sThe title sequence, with Goliath's narration.
More animation opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequence
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The longest-running opening rotation in television — more than twenty distinct sequences over a quarter of a century, each announcing a new arc.
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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.
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SpongeBob 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.
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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.
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2 sequences
King 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
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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