Super Mario World
The last of the Mario cartoons, made for one autumn after the game of the same name.
Super Mario World opens with a main title sequence of 44 seconds.
At 44 seconds, it opens well under the 58-second median for animation sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1991, when Another World, Columbo and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
44sThe cast assembled, Yoshi included, off tape.
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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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
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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.
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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