Words about Openings: Blue Water

There's the temptation with this series concept to just endlessly talk about the super visually interesting creative opening sequences. Rest assured, I will get to them, but that's hardly a balanced view of what most anime opening sequences are like. So to give some perspective, let's look at the opening for Gainax's classic TV series Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.

Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad opening sequence or anything, but... well, let's go through it shall we.

First shot: a bird up in the sky. It's always birds.

Then we move into nice little bits introducing all the characters with some nice shots of each of them. This is followed by a group shot, where they're running. Running from right to left. For some reason it always seems to be right to left.

We then move into some nice shots of the show's main mechanical ship thingy. Then this is followed by some mystical hinting with regards to the magic macguffin and the female lead looking mysterious and shirtless. Then clouds again.

Not saying this is bad, in fact it's a great way to open the show and the song is upbeat and catchy. It's just... well it kinda follows a formula, and a lot of the imagery is pretty cliché. And like, if going forward I talk about like the GTO opening or Cowboy Bebop or whatever, stuff that deviates from the formula, I feel I need to explain what the formula is first.

The show itself is pretty great too... Hideaki Anno's first TV series (before Evangelion).

Discussion point if you've seen the show: Grandis, Sanson, and Hanson are basically Jessie, James, and Meowth of Team Rocket, right?