Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
It is often pointed out that animes' EDs seems like large tonal shift from the shows themselves, and when played directly after the OP the contrast can seem even comical. The OP is generally used to show off the anime's directly appealing side. Trying to give the feeling of the show as one would be immediately attracted to it. For an action show this means fast and cool song with fight-scene visuals. For moe it means a light-hearted piece with the characters making funny faces and dancing a lot. But the ED is used to show the underside of the story, considering the internal emotions of the characters or the implications of the story. It is like the liminal time just before you fall asleep, alone with your thoughts, when you can step outside the happenings of the day and view them from a different, less interested angle. The slow attitude of an ED pulls you out from the direct emotions of the minute-to-minute and forces you to take the whole story into perspective.
Let's take Lupin as an example, specifically part one but its true for all of what I've seen. The OP serves almost as an advert for the show [1]. Packing the emotive content of the plots and characters into a highlight reel of explosions, car chases and stylish contrast shots. Its how you would recommend Lupin to a friend (or advertise it to an audience). The lyrics are entirely devoid of deeper meaning, not to a fault, but as a perfect of example of the OP as a surface level reading of the story. A suave sounding man just repeats the name of the show and titular character a few dozen times before we get the awe-inspiring lyrics of "davadavadavadavadavadavadavada!" proceeding by a few more refrains of the name of the show, just in case you forgot.
The ED is a far more reflective affair [2]. The iconic visuals of the sun slowly setting and Fujiko speeds away on her motorbike and not technically stunning, and might at first seem at odds with the faster pace of the show. Although it is common for Lupin, as a common trope of Japanese storytelling in general, to spike an otherwise happy ending with a moment of romantic melancholy, which leads straight into a heartfelt lamentation sung by Lupin, attempting to pull the viewer out from the story and force them to recontextualise what they just saw. The lyrical composition of the ED is more complex than the OP (an impressive feat) and has Lupin mourn for the transience of life and of fortune:
この手の中に抱かれたものはすべて消えゆく 定めなのさ
Everything that I hold in this hand of mine shall disappear. It is an inevitability."
The song apparently refers to his pistol (his Walther P38) as the disappearing object, but the image of Fujiko driving away into the sunset alone makes the insinuation of loneliness clear. Despite how much fun Lupin and co have on their adventures, at the end of the day his way of life can never bring lasting happiness, and the only rule his life seems to follow is that all he has will someday disappear. A powerful sense of "mono no aware".
It is this kind of forced reflection that the ED seeks to achieve. To understand the deeper emotion of what you just saw and the intention underneath it. It's an appreciation of why the anime was so powerful to you, and can turn something surface level into something deeper. What would Konosuba be without its ED? But it is this often quite aggressive attempt to make you think that scares many people off. In a media binge culture people will consume media back-to-back without allowing an interval between that would let them soak it in and reflect on the story. In fact pleasure machines like Netflix actively discourage you to think too hard about the film/anime you just watched by immediately cutting off the credits and starting up something else. There is a fear on their half that if you were allowed to think too hard then you wouldn't want to keep on watching something on their system, and that fear is not false. If I finish a good film I usually would rather go out for a walk than start something else up to cover the emotions I felt.
People are naturally afraid to be alone, and rightfully so. True terror can only be felt by yourself, since all feelings are within your mind. But that makes it all the more important to do so, even if it is uncomfortable, since the truth without must be coupled with understanding within. Nobody was given life to be comfortable. To understand what makes something what it is, you must see what is behind it. And to appreciate the emotional depth of an anime, you have to sit through the ED.
"There are no beautiful surfaces without terrible depths." -Nietzsche
[1] - Lupin III OP1 (1971)
Video Link
[2] - Lupin III ED (1971)
Video Link
