I always watch the credits. They set the scene. They prime you for what’s to come. Sometimes they tell the story before you know it, letting you recognize piece by piece what you should have known before. When they close an episode, they can offer bitter irony, desperate need, or taper off an intensity of feeling as if you’re being weaned back into the real world. They can give you permission to lose yourself, or to cry, to close the world out and open yourself up, or to silently scream at heartbreak. I always watch the credits because they’re part of the story.
Some stick in my mind and some don’t need to. Each does something different. In 2023, here’s how:
The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House
(Netflix) The Japanese series tells the story of best friends Kiyo and Sumire, who train to become present-day geisha performers. Sumire is a natural, but Kiyo flunks out. Rather than going home, she takes over as her house’s new chef, or makanai. She finds deep satisfaction in this, and the opening credits serve to clarify that Kiyo didn’t fail as an artist, but simply found a different form of art. She finds value and joy in practicing that art, and those around her appreciate it not as an expectation or chore, but as a daily gift she gives them.
“The Makanai” has very little conflict, and what conflict there is tends to be solved with a minimum of drama or be forgotten in realistic ways as time passes. Yet it is one of the most compelling and captivating series this year, finding a measure of calm I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed in a show before. That starts with the credits, which present what its characters do in artistic, caring detail.
Map Break!
Why are there so few English-language entries here? There’s a trend in U.S. and U.K. series to completely do away with opening credits. Just slap the title up in all-caps, drop a loud note over it, and call it a day. Edgy.
You know what we do love, though? Maps. Oh my god, give us a map and we can spend all day with it. It might be tempting to blame “Game of Thrones”, but I think our dysfunction goes back further than that. Psychiatrists shouldn’t ask us how we feel about our parents; they should ask us what’s our deal with J.R.R. Tolkien? If you approach me at the bar, don’t buy me a drink or compliment my eyes. Show me a map you drew with mountain ranges at absurd right angles to each other.
(Netflix) The live-action “One Piece” adaptation delivers on the map front like you wouldn’t believe. The endearingly cheesy pirate adventure features close-ups of maps, panning shots over islands we’ve visited, clues to episodes we haven’t seen yet, and realizations of how episodes we have seen link together geographically. Makes you want to settle your tab and pop a ride-share back to Oda Eiichiro’s place.
Every end credits sequence gets a different song, which isn’t that rare, but many are variations which capture the theme of that particular episode or center on specific characters. What’s more is that the maps themselves and their creation eventually play a major component in the season’s most emotional plot reveal.
(Disney+) The other quality credits map we’ve got this year belongs to “Ahsoka”. It’s a little harder to keep track of since it’s two-dimensional layers in a three-dimensional space, but it communicates the notion of traveling across the galaxy and – as the villains attempt – traveling to another galaxy altogether. Its markings of creatures and threats also help return that original trilogy feeling of the unknown and uncharted to Star Wars, an element where “Ahsoka” excels.
Kevin Kiner’s yearning but lurking score is exceptional. Between “Ahsoka” and “Andor”, we finally have new musical identities in Star Wars rather than folks just trying to emulate John Williams over and over again. It’s a big galaxy; it should cover just as much music.
Hell’s Paradise
(Crunchyroll) “Hell’s Paradise” is full of mood, tragedy, and mindfucks. So are the opening credits. The story follows criminals who are condemned to death but are given an opportunity for a pardon…if they can retrieve an elixir of immortality from a mysterious island. Everyone who’s gone there has died, or returned as their body transforms into flowers.
The animation is often astounding, and the storytelling is well-delivered. A good chunk of the first season is getting to know most of the ensemble right before they die. It’s not an upper, but it is thrilling. It gives into a few shonen cliches, including one I hate, but it is the best action-oriented anime of the year.
The credit sequence immediately gets your adrenaline pumping, and the scenes tell stories we immediately want to know more about.
Skip and Loafer
(Crunchyroll) For the complete flipside, we’ve got “Skip and Loafer”, which is the credit sequence that best sticks in my mind this year. You may wonder for the first half why. Song’s good, the visuals are pleasant enough, but nothing’s really popping. Then they get to the dance. It perfectly captures the nature of our two leads and their relationship – the driven, ambitious, yet anxious Mitsumi and the popular but egoless, and endlessly supportive Sosuke.
“Skip and Loafer” is so, so kind and real. Mitsumi isn’t as gorgeous or stylish as her classmates, but she’s substantive and honest. Sosuke harbors regrets and a quiet depression, but his own ambitions lie in bolstering and supporting the people around him. Mitsumi is someone with whom he can realize that ambition, someone he can steady and support. She knows what she wants out of life, but is shaky without kindness and acceptance. His dream is to give that kindness and acceptance, and have it be accepted in turn.
This approach ripples throughout the entire story of “Skip and Loafer”. Mitsumi’s Aunt Nao is cool, protective, caring, and wise. As a trans woman, she sometimes needs kindness and acceptance in the face of social judgment. Mitsumi is there to love, accept, and reassure her. In turn, Nao offers that kindness and acceptance when one of Mitsumi’s friends is having difficulty in their friend group.
The series is filled with beautiful moments: a trip home, a familiar family snack, a moment on a train where one person supports another, a casual comment that turns someone’s embarrassing classroom moment into one that people admire. There’s endless kindness in “Skip and Loafer”. It is a constant painting of loving support, and that dance in the intro encapsulates that permission to be imperfect in front of one another with unconditional acceptance.
See You in My 19th Life
(Netflix) K-Dramas tend toward iconography that’s key to the plot, which means their credit sequences open up the more of the show we see. As we learn to recognize the motifs that keep returning, we can plug their meaning into the opening and understand more and more what it’s telling us.
The opening credits for “See You in My 19th Life” may be briefer than other sequences, but they pack a lot in. They initially speak to protagonist Ji Eum’s ability to remember her past lives, and her goal of reconnecting with a love interest in a former life that was cut tragically short.
I love the retro imagery in this, and the light, hopeful touch of the theme, but every piece of iconography in that credit sequence takes on a meaning by the end of the show. Some take on two or three meanings in a series where that layering across lives constantly offers new ways of understanding both people and plot.
The Last of Us
(Max/HBO Max) “The Last of Us” is a journey through a post-apocalypse where fungus has destroyed society. As it evolves to endure higher temperatures, the same fungus that can control ants and spiders begins to survive in mammals. One girl is found to be immune, and she sets off with an ill-equipped guardian to find a surviving science base that might be able to develop a vaccine.
The series is both dire and beautiful, and constantly finds in its cinematic post-apocalypse ways to reflect our slow-motion one. It is haunting, and its opening credits always set this tone.
So much is hidden in the artistically spreading fungus: sky scrapers, a map of the U.S., a screaming human face. At one point, a baby is seen in razor wire – imagery that should’ve stayed in fiction, but we discovered this year is a reality for the way our National Guard treats refugee and immigrant children. Who needs fungus to steal our humanity when we can do it ourselves?
Just as the series does, the credits comment not just on a U.S. in this recent alternate history, but a U.S. at a juncture in the current history of our own real world. It is horrific and something we all understand, that we can all recognize the spread of, yet that we simultaneously can become lulled and hypnotized by. Sometimes credits help transport us to another world. Sometimes they clarify that the horror we see on-screen is best recognized from right where we’re sitting.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 