OK, three, two, one…
Welcome one and all to the end of days, sponsored by the hot new global bestseller The Novel Coronavirus and cancellations of entertaining and essential programming worldwide. The name of the game is MARCH MADNESS, but with a twist: rather than a tournament of the most titanic teams in college basketball, our brackets seek to answer this question: What is the best cartoon theme song? We, the editors of The Dot and Line, will be your hosts today—manically, madly, musically mouthing off about our favorite toony tunes and offering you, sweet socially isolated reader, a chance to do the same. So! With only a little further ado!
…let’s jam.
Rules of the Tournament
Every good contest has a good set of guidelines. Here are ours, for the record and posterity. We’re sure you’ll agree that they’re very good.
- We shall have one bracket featuring Western (mostly, but not entirely, American) animated television shows and one bracket with anime.
- Themes selected for the anime cup shall be in Japanese, provided the English version not be deemed objectively better according to our own utterly arbitrary system of guidelines.
- Themes shall not be recycled from prior IPs (adios, Timon and Pumba the animated series) except when they are deemed worthy according to our own utterly arbitrary system of guidelines.
- Opening credits and whatever brilliance or nonsense they may contain shall not have any bearing over the outcome of this contest, as it judges music and music only.
- Seeding for all tournament entrants shall be chosen at random in lieu of attempting to somehow rank these songs, even by our own utterly arbitrary system of guidelines, because dear god, really, are you trying to kill us? Do you know how long this took as is?
- Should any creators and/or fans of the tournament contestants and honorable mentions have some problem with any of the above, their complaints shall be weighed against the Charlie Kelly Defense, and no other explanation shall be given.
For those of you unaware of the Charlie Kelly Defense, let us present it to you herewith:
Thank you. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let us present…
The Brackets
Exciting, yes? Please feel free to download/print these brackets here and fill them out for yourselves. Should you tweet at us with an image of your completed bracket, we will retweet it, perhaps even with comments from one of our very own editor-judges, especially if it is either very good or very bad, which will be determined according to our own utterly arbitrary system of guidelines. Please do this. We are all locked inside and going slowly mad. You are too. You have the time. Blow off some steam. DO IT.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The staff of The Dot and Line officially presents its victors in the inaugural and ultimate March’s Merrie Melodies Musical Madness tournament.
March’s Merrie Melodies Musical Madness
Editors’ Picks
Elly’s champs are… Sailor Moon and Arthur
These are two shows that literally got me through childhood and the theme songs are proof to me that music, even seemingly “silly” theme songs from children’s TV shows, can be all about healing and joy and give us hope. I can’t think of two songs we need in this world more right now than ones that spread the idea that having fun isn’t hard if you have a library card (or books on your shelves!) and the notion of “fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight!” Right now what we need in the world is books, fighting evil, and love. That’s all, folks.
Eric’s champs are… Cowboy Bebop and Arthur
It can’t really be overstated how important a message it is for children that “Every day when you’re walking down the street / Everybody that you meet / Has an original point of view.” That optimism is what propelled Arthur‘s “Believe in Yourself” to the top of my American cartoon brackets, the same way the horns in Cowboy Bebop‘s “Tank!” propelled that song to victory in the anime matchups. Special shout-out for posterity to Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory‘s theme song “The Winner” for its soaring English chorus “I got a burnin’ heart” and heroically hooky horns. I wish it could have won it all, just as I wish the same for Pinky and the Brain‘s theme, but Neon Genesis Evangelion and Animaniacs are both iconically memorable for good reason, and they more than earned their spots as runners-up.
John’s champs are… Neon Genesis Evangelion and DuckTales
What makes a great cartoon theme song? Until the championship round of each of these brackets, I actively worked not to think too hard about it. Whatever melody and, if appropriate, lyrics most filled my heart with feelings and/or my feet with the desire to dance in each round was enough to declare a victor. I found the right brackets to be more competitive (or, at least, difficult to decide) in both cups, frankly—it broke my heart to see the Samurai Champloo and Tiny Toon Adventures themes, for instance fizzle out so soon—which made it somewhat surprising to me that the left bracket’s champion took both cups for me.
Nevertheless, here we are. In the last round, I came to decide that for me, the ability to sing along to a theme gave it an intrinsic advantage against an instrumental when the chips came down, despite my deep love of jazz and all things with a horn and string section. So DuckTales beating Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies and thus giving the House of Mouse one in the W column against Warner Bros. was somewhat inevitable: not only is it a banger, but I can sing “wooo-oooo!” while it bangs. I feel mostly fine about this, as I know in my bones that when it comes to Donald vs. Daffy, that the latter duck is the better duck. (Unrelatedly, lemme shout-out to the Hey Arnold! theme, which absolutely whips.) The anime decision, however, broke me. As a whole, Cowboy Bebop has the best anime opening sequence of all time. I love it with my whole self. It is perfect. But in the end, when I needed a theme to sing along to, it didn’t quite, uh, bop enough. (Kill me before the plague does, please.) In a true upset—as in, like, I’m upset—Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” one-ups “Tank!” and Yoko Kanno for the win. I’m gonna carry that weight.
Marley’s champs are… Attack on Titan and Teen Titans
It’s a total titan takedown, folks! For anime, it came down to the classic city pop bop from Yu Yu Hakusho vs. a theme song for the end of the world, and the killer guitar riffs, thrilling brass, and all-too-relevant lyrics of Linked Horizon’s “Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen” gave Attack on Titan the win in my book. Puffy AmiYumi’s Teen Titans theme puts a more upbeat J-rock spin on uncertain times, clarifying that when there’s trouble we do, in fact, know who to call (Teen Titans!) It’s also basically impossible not to sing along to, a quality that helped it nudge out Gravity Falls for the big win.
Sammy’s champs are… Pokémon and BoJack Horseman
Sure, it’s slightly nonsensical from a lyrical perspective, but it’s undeniable: The Pokémon theme song slaps. It excites! It motivates! And IT SLAPS. Plus—for weary, burned out, geeky millennials like the Dot and Line crew—the Pokémon theme song is a wormhole to a simpler time, when life’s biggest problem was little asshole kid on the playground who wouldn’t trade back your Charizard card. All of this and more is why Pokémon gets the crown from me. As for BoJack Horseman, how can you go wrong with a soulful sax on top of a funky, trippy beat that makes you want to dance and cry into an entire family-sized frozen pizza at the same time?
Miscellany and Memorabilia
For those of you who are as off your gourd as we are, we’ve included a list of all our contenders and honorable mentions for each cup, listed alphabetically and with links to the song on YouTube, below. We’ve also included an extremely patchwork, cover-heavy, mostly half-assed playlist for the Anime Cup, because why not?
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.