Samurai Champloo
Nujabes and Shing02 over Edo-period swordplay — hip-hop and historical drama treated as obviously compatible, which nobody had assumed before.
Samurai Champloo opens with a main title sequence of 90 seconds.
At 90 seconds, it opens well above the 58-second median for animation sequences in this catalogue.
The opening titles
Season 1
90s'Battlecry', from Crunchyroll.
More animation opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
Avatar: 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