ハッピー☆マテリアル リターン

Posted On September 19, 2008

For some reason, a lot of current OVAs don’t have good openings. All attention is put on making the show proper, so openings just tend to be an afterthought. What you usually see is just reused footage from the show matched to a song, or sometimes there simply won’t be an opening animation at all. There are rare cases where this doesn’t happen, but in my experience such things are few and far between. Negima Ala Alba’s opening animation is much like a Polish movie poster— it takes one random aspect of the show– the number 31– and just runs with it. Shaft is known for making amazing somethings out of nothing, and this opening does just that.

Like I said, it simply takes the numbers up through 31, sticks them in little circles, and has spectacularly sexy English credits bounce them around. It’s a 2D designer’s wet dream. Each and every cut of this is just so professionally composed– not mention well-timed with the hot opening theme– that I find myself watching this opening over and over… yet there’s only one real frame of character art across the whole thing!

Good on you, Shaft.