Thanks for the info. It’s interesting to know that the same music marketing strategy is used for other Japanese shows besides anime.

@ Kyoizumi

Yeah, Sailor Moon is a good example of an older series that’s done this.

@ Panther

Right, novelty always gets people’s interest, so making new OPs or EDs more frequently is one way to go. And yeah, the many different OPs and EDs can be used as bonus material/omake that fans can eat up.

Really, there was no OP in episode 12? I did watch the gg fansub and since ANN and MAL both had episode 12 listed with the “staple staple” opening, I had no reason to think otherwise. So thanks for pointing that out.

By the way Bakemonogatari episode 12 had no OP at all, gg fansubs added it in because they wanted to.

One interesting tale is that of Tomica Hero Rescue Force. Unlike one of your earlier posts that stated the songs for shows generally are chosen for those shows and made specially for that show, Rescue Force’s OP was adapted by changing one line from the original song that was released not as a single, but as part of camino’s next album. The newer version of that show Rescue Fire has the songs made for it like the others do, but I think that one was more interesting.

I think tokusatsu’s sales are getting stronger as there are more overseas fans purchasing the singles/albums. Each year for all the series I know of, they release collections of singles (and for Kamen Rider a box set including every song and BGM). The openings for the last four Kamen Rider shows have debuted in the top five for the week on the Oricon rankings, so they’re getting up there. The last show had GACKT to sing the OP and both movie songs, so they’re signing some big names too.

Once again, not really anime-related, but I thought since there some overlap (especially with the Pokemon/Pretty Cure audience) it may be nice to have some additional information.

Yeah, making fans listen to certain character songs that they would otherwise not listen to by making those songs the OP or ED is a good advertising strategy. And if the profit from the music sales is greater than the cost for extra animation and song production, it all works out fine.

@ Author

Naruto and Bleach seem to change OPs and EDs more than other long-running series, like One Piece and Pokemon. For these kinds of shows, I think it might be different because they have more episodes, thus they warrant more OPs and EDs because their plots are always changing. But yeah, they don’t need to change the OPs and/or EDs as often as they do its a good marketing strategy for the songs. They’ve used popular artists like FLOW and Uverworld more than once.

That reminds me, for the current Pokemon ending “Dotchi~Nyo,” four different versions of it will be included on an upcoming CD, with the only difference being the last line (saying a direction, either “up,” “down,” “left,” or “right”). Pokemon OPs and EDs are usually made specifically for the show and not for the artist’s single (hence all the Pokemon terminology in the songs) so I think that’s connected to the fact that Pokemon OPs and EDs change infrequently, sometimes using the same one for over 50 episodes with only slight changes, like adding new pokemon to the animation or making a remix of the song.

Didn’t know about Sekirei. Thanks for pointing it out.

There’s also a change like the one the original article mentioned (the insert of Azusa). Yet another style of it would be Sekirei ED which has a special place where a different character was inserted in each episode, rather lazily animated…

Wow, thanks so much for all the info! You certainly know a lot more about it than I do so I’m glad you took the time to explain it =)

I was sort of thinking it might be costly to make many different OPs and/or EDs, but then I had a second thought that it might actually be worth it because of all the music sales and not just because fans like it. Guess it’s the case that it’s more profitable to do so or they probably wouldn’t do it.