Every great TV show deserves a great intro, and in the anime world the task of creating a fitting opening is often taken quite seriously. But not all openings are created equal. In the worst cases, it's the part you skip as quickly as you possibly can. In the best cases you just keep watching them over and over, enjoying the perfectly-matched music and noticing something new to love every time.

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Then there are the super-popular long-running shows that have so many openings it's hard to keep track. Those have their charm, for sure, but for the most part they follow similar tropes and formulas and just end up re-mixing old ideas. We've all seen the “standard” anime opening scenes: Have your characters run for no reason, pan left as sunbeams shine behind a character, throw in a flock of birds somewhere, etc. After a while it all gets kind of old. But there are a few anime intros that break free and stand out.We've decided to take on the difficult task of ranking our favorite opening sequences from anime. What we're going for here are the truly creative and innovative intros that broke free of the usual — openings that strove to be something special, and succeeded. Considering the vast number of openings out there, we're sure we might have missed a couple, so read on and see if your favorite made the list.

10 Ergo Proxy

This was one hell of a mind-bending psychological series, and its intro really set the tone right off the bat. It's a dystopian tale with all sorts of social commentary and a grim look at the future, so it should be no surprise that the opening is full of gritty, grungy imagery. But all that gloom and doom is juxtaposed with a sad but hopeful theme song. “Kiri” by MONORAL is a melancholy English language song that's reminiscent of something Lifehouse might have put out, but the intro's visuals are more like Nine Inch Nails fare. The dark, ominous graphics are fitting for this bleak future world with skies shrouded by global ecological disaster, but there are times when it looks like the animators might have gotten a little heavy-handed with the grunge brushes in Photoshop. But, despite a few flaws, it's still a good intro that does a lot of things well, and if it had been live action instead of animation, the opening would have felt right at home in a cable TV drama.

9 Death Note (Opening 2)

This series had the difficult task of living up to the legend of the wildly popular manga, and it did not disappoint. But TV is a medium that provides a lot more options. The intro is a hectic assault of imagery backed by a driving death metal tune that slaps you in the face and demands your attention.Most of the openings in this list could be called beautiful, or catchy, or poignant. This one is none of those things. It's just raw emotion, portrayed in audio-visual fury. It's the perfect tool for conveying the wrath of Light Yagami and the darkness of his soul.

8 Great Teacher Onizuka (Opening 1)

GTO, as it is often affectionately called, has an opening that features the lead/title character being a crude miscreant in various imaginative ways, all drawn in a black and white style with a bit of fish-eye lens effect added every now and then for additional flair. His irreverent attitude draws you in, and it's clear this dude just doesn't give a damn as he lives his life 100% YOLO style.The intro starts with our lead character flushing a toilet and sauntering out of his bathroom buck naked. Then it just gets wilder from there. Onizuka spray paints a wonderfully suggestive picture of a girl on the side of a building, and at one point he grabs a brush, paints a bullseye on his belly, grabs a pistol, and shoots a mirror image of himself right in the gut. It's all creatively dysfunctional, and made even more interesting when you learn the guy is an ex-gang member turned school teacher. Throughout the first few episodes, the intro is a recurring reminder of Onizuka's ruffian past, which comes in handy when his life as a teacher ends up being just as wild and dangerous as his life on the streets.

7 Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

There have been many anime about bands, but none of them ever had an opening that captured the essence of what it's really like to be young, rebellious, and making music with your buddies. But then there was the Beck anime, and we had a great example of a successful manga-turned-anime making the most of the audio-visual capabilities a TV show provides.The core of the Beck intro is the catchy pop-rock song "Hit in the USA" that provides the audio foundation for what really feels like a music video for a new teen band...which is exactly what it should be. Beck tells the story of Koyuki, a 14-year-old boy who gets involved in a rock band called BECK. His life changes dramatically as the band forms and makes its way towards American rock stardom. It's simply a great, dramatic, funny story of teenage life told with a backdrop of surprisingly good rock music.The intro sets the tone for the series. It's full of classic Las Vegas style signs and billboards, t-shirts with rebellious phrases, band mates fighting, and scenes of the band rocking out and enjoying life on the road, touring the varied American landscape from desolate desert roads to the bright lights of Times Square.

6 Samurai Champloo

This is the story of three unique characters in feudal Japan... with a modern hip hop soundtrack and urban vibe that creates something unique in all of anime. The intro is a perfect blend of new and old themes, and it sets the tone for the series many consider to be one of Shinichiro Watanabe's greatest works.The animation in the intro is quite well done, and it showcases fine Edo style artwork in the backdrops as our three heroes are featured in the foreground displaying their signature personalities and styles. But the animation by itself honestly wouldn't warrant inclusion in this list. Take this same intro and pair it with a song that matched the time period or culture (maybe with some shamisen or taiko drums or something) and it just wouldn't be that great.But much of the craft of creating a great anime opening is about song selection, and the greatness in this intro is all about the anachronistic inclusion of a hip hop song playing over all this imagery of Japan's distant past. "Battlecry," performed by Nujabes and Shing02, is the samurai-inspired rap/hip hop track with the fat beats and smooth verses that give this intro its punch. One of Watanabe's notable skills is the way he blends genres and cultures to make seemingly disparate elements work harmoniously in a creation with universal appeal.Read on for page two of our favorite anime openings!