Why It Rocks
Here are my Top 5 Reasons to Love Tank! These are my personal opinions. The song itself and the opening sequence is referred to interchangably here or together as one.
5. It is a stylistically unique opening.
I love many anime openings. But you can only watch so many before some of them start looking similar. Catchy jpop tune or intense ballad, with scenes of the gorgeous characters looking happy/angsty/fierce etc combined with a few symbolic images. Cowboy Bebop's Tank! tries to be different. It's uses the cast and ships to make the music come alive, instead of the other way around.
4. It features a variety of instruments.
Saxophones, trumpets, trombones, double bass, bongo drums and more! The song is done with the Big Band type of musical ensemble, meaning there are at least a dozen to two dozen musicians jamming and synthesizing their varied sounds. Given the popularity of this series, I'd like to think that Tank! brought more fans to jazz music and called to attention instruments that many people had not appreciated before.
3. The beat & animation are perfectly choreographed.
Right from the beginning, with the bright, quick flashes of gritty text styles in sync with bursts of music... to the milky bass accompanying Spike's smooth lighting... and cutting to Spike running just as the barrage of trumpets interrupt the lounge beat. Note how the three guns fire with the blasts of sounds. The music and animation are syncronized in perfect harmony right down to the end, where the profiles of the cast turn to silhouettes as the sax ends on its dramatic high note.
2. It's extremely difficult to play.
When you're listening to Tank!, you're listening to highly-skilled musical artists. It's fast, hard, powerful, exhausting, and utterly fun. The saxophone solo is insane. When reading comments on videos of The Seatbelts' performances, you're likely to see comments from music affectionados marveling at its difficult, like "That sax player is a friggin genius!" and so on.
1. It will never be dated.
Have you watched an op and immediately recognized it as 70s or 80s style animation? Tank! doesn't giveaway tell-tale signs of its age. Even the character designs look timeless when they're transformed into dynamic silhouettes and Warhol-like pop art prints. When people look back at this opening, they don't see it as 90s style, it's just Cowboy Bebop style. Tank!'s style is something that can be carried on far into the future, which I hope does.