The main reason I watch so much anime is that I love animation and its boundless potential
for storytelling, and for most of the medium’s history Japan has been the only country that's really interested
in exploring that. But in the last decade, with shows like Adventure Time and Avatar:
the Last Airbender, America has started to catch up in a big way.
That’s especially true in the realm of opening theme songs, where anime has reigned supreme
for years. Most american cartoons are still a little light on details, and most don’t
feature catchy pop numbers, but some are flat-out incredible, and out of those, for my money,
Gravity Falls reigns supreme. Hidden details tend to mean spoilers, by the way,
so consider yourselves warned. We open on time lapse shots of the town’s
outskirts, first the falls for which it was named, then a paul bunyon looking statue near
a gas station, and finally a water tower emblazoned with the town’s name.
These establishing shots are implied to be what the twins see as they enter town, but
they also bear striking resemblance to the gloriously mellow intro to Twin Peaks. Considering
how much Gravity Falls draws from David Lynch’s surreal opus, I think it’s safe to say that’s
an intentional allusion. The kids arrive on a Speedy Beaver bus – an
and immediately we can tell a lot about them
from their luggage and attire. Mable’s childish nature is clear as day,
with an adorable plushy poking out of a hastily-packed, sticker-adorned suitcase. Her bigger bag is
covered in purple polkadots, and her pink sun-visor is better suited for a day at the
golf course than a trek through the woods. By contrast, Dipper is clearly taking everything
a bit too seriously. His steamer suitcase looks like it belongs to a well-traveled old
man, and his plain duffelbag – decorated only with a label telling us they’re from
piedmont, California – looks practically military issue.
On top of that, his backpack looks ready for a camping trip, with a sleeping bag rolled
on top and who knows what kind of survival supplies stashed inside. It’s also worth
noting that he arrives wearing the plain brown hat that he loses in the first episode, a
solid nod to series continuity. From stan’s explosive entrance, we know
he’s a showman, and the shabby state of the shack – not to mention his
suit – tells us more or less immediately that he’s also a charlatan.
Inside the shack that’s confirmed, as we see a bunch of chintzy, obviously fake junk,
all of it with price tags and… that’s a severed human ear in a bottle.
There’s not much detail in the shot itself – just iconic pieces of supernatural chicanery
like the classic pie tin flying saucer and the ubiquitous stuffed jackalope – but hot
dang is this facial animation ever impressive. Especially the distortion of dipper’s face
through the poison bottle.
And again, Mable’s adorable smile here in contrast
with dipper’s more serious frown is very telling about the differences between the twins.
This shot of the pines family investigating a bigfoot footprint while unknowingly standing
within the steps of a giant is funny, but it’s also a clever metaphor for the structure
of the show. In each episode the twins solve a mystery and feel like they have a handle
on things, but they’re caught up in something much bigger then they can even perceive.
Another beautifully animated time-lapse shot follows, showing us the briefest glimpse of
Bigfoot in a single frame. The pose he takes is identical to the alleged bigfoot in the
famous Patterson Gimlin film. Even in the intro, viewers have to be eagle eyed to catch
everything. This brings us to the mystery shack weather vane, which poses a simple,
direct question to the audience. Dipper is shown investigating some sort of
cave with Norse runes carved into one of the walls. In a Rare Exception for this OP, The Runes don’t appear to have any
specific meaning in themselves.. He turns around to find himself staring
at the skeletal remains of some hideous monster, Later revealed to be eight ball, and promptly drops his candle in another spectacular
piece of character animation. And speaking of great animation, just look at how smooth
this shot of Mabel snuggling waddles is. Seriously, not only is this timed perfectly
with the music, it’s just fundamentally great animation, showcasing all 12 of the
principles outlined by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in The Illusion of Life. Intros
are usually the best-looking parts of shows, but they clearly went all-out for this one.
Not only is Mabel’s sweater here a serious funhazard, it also tells us quite
a bit about her personality. She turns like she’s standing on a stage, clearly hungry
for attention from the way her eyes dart around the room.
Cut to Grunkle Stan running with a stolen cash register and then lounging in his recliner
with his fake mister mystery eye patch. The constant across all these character shots
is that we see their best traits juxtaposed with their worst. Dipper’s curiosity leads
naturally into a moment of cowardice. Mabel shows off her warm heart and her huge ego.
Stan is a liar and thief, but he also has an abundance of confidence and roguish charisma.
We’re then treated to our first group shot of the main cast – Stan tells them a spooky
story, and right at the climax we see some sort of bat monster lurking in the shadows
behind them. There’s actually a TON of information about the characters’ relationships packed
in here, so let’s explore that a bit. The biggest thing we can pick up on here is
how all the characters relate to Stan, judging by how they react to his story. Stan himself
is clearly more than a little giddy at the prospect of scaring them, and presents his
story with pinache. Mabel is briefly shocked, but then reverts to her default mode of childlike
delight. Dipper clearly takes things a bit more seriously,
but not nearly as much as Soos, who’s hanging on his boss’s every word. And indeed, in
the show, Soos has a bit of a hero worship thing going on with Stan. On the other end
of the spectrum, Wendy is totally nonplussed, rolling her eyes before giving Stan a skeptical
side-eyed glance. Speaking of Wendy, for a few frames Dipper
nervously glances her way to see what her reaction is, while she doesn’t pay him much
attention at all. You’re immediately primed for dipper’s one-sided crush by this one
brief but efficient bit of animation. Interestingly, this next shot also shows Wendy
– in fact a lot of the cuts in this intro follow whatever has dipper’s attention.
This would be a pretty standard shot of a bored teenage part-timer, with the hazy focus
emphasizing her own lack of attention, but the jar of eyeballs in the foreground gives
it a certain creepy edge, which is only enhanced as they swivel to face us. This could possibly
be hinting that Bill Cipher is watching. Eyes also feature prominently on the page
of the journal that dipper is reading
There are a lot of weird symbols on
this page that could be some kind of code, but if they are, so far nobody has cracked it.
Gravity goes haywire as the twins sit reading
in their room, making everything float up toward the ceiling – this show sure does
like magic eight balls, by the way. It takes dipper a few seconds to notice what’s going
on, while mabel doesn’t even look up from her book.
as it turns out
this is a direct reference to the effects of Stan’s portal in the pivotal episode
“not what he seems.” The last shot of the intro is a pile of polaroid
photos showing various things from the show mixed in with more iconic supernatural hoaxes,
such as a Fiji Mermade and the weekly world news Bat Boy, along with more jackalopes and
flying saucers. Also shown in the photos are the summerween
trickster, Blendin Blandin, Gideom Gleeful, a pterodactyl, and a gnome which apparently
bit the photo right after it printed. After "not what he seems" the Pterodactyl is replaced with stanford holding the journal.
At the top of the screen, behind the jackalopes,
we can see a partial caricature of series creator Alex Hirsch with his trademark scraggly
goatee. This is followed by a group photo of the mystery
shack crew, and then a stylized title card designed to look like a gravity falls post card. In
the top right corner is a Billy Meier UFO, and in the left is an old postage stamp with
the faded number “618” overtop of it. This number, used frequently in the show,
is a reference to June 18th, the birthday of Alex Hirsch and his own twin sister Ariel.
As we pan out from the card a mysterious whisper is mixed in with the music. When played backwards,
it reveals the method for decoding the cryptogram that shows up at the ending credits of the episode
In the first episode, the whisper says “three letters back,” but in episode 7 it’s changed
to “switch a with z,” and at episode 14 it changes again to “26 letters.”
Throughout season two it says “Key Vigenere,” referencing the vigenere cypher which requires
a keyword from the episode to decrypt. This only changes for “Not what he seems” and
“A tale of two stans,” where instead it says, appropriately “not what he seems”
Lastly for a single frame we’re shown a page of the journal filled with information.
The page is covered in mathematical codes and alchemical symbols – including a cypher
that translates to “STAN IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS” – but the centerpiece is a code
wheel surrounding series villain Bill Cipher. The image implies that the elements in the
code wheel can be used to either empower or contain Bill. But what do they represent?
THAT is a hotly contested subject. A lot of the images are pretty obvious, especially
since the big reveal in Not What He Seems, but two are pretty nebulous.
The Pine Tree and Shooting Star are taken straight from dipper and mabel’s clothing,
and this… claw… thing is taken from Stan’s hat. The stitched heart and question mark
come from Robbie and Soos’s shirts, respectively, while the hand and pentagram come from the
journals and Gideon’s tent of telepathy. For a while people thought that the glasses
might also represent stan, but we now know they’re from his twin brother Stanford.
This leaves only the bag of ice and llama unaccounted for.
Some people think that the llama also represents mabel –which would be weird since no other
character shows up twice on the wheel. Others have argued that it must be pacifica, since
the Llama is facing opposite to mabel’s sweater, and the two characters mirror each
other in a lot of ways. This was lent a lot of credence in Northwest
Mansion Mystery, where it was shown that the Northwests have a painting of llamas hidden
in a backroom. With two episodes left to go, I feel like that’s a safe assumption.
The Ice, then, is the only mystery remaining. Most fans think it represents Wendy, since
many of her appearances involve ice and cold things, but that’s hardly definitive. Another
contingent holds that it must be Blendin Blandin, since Dipper first met him while looking for
ice, but that’s not really any better. Whether it makes more sense as Wendy or Blendin
depends on the meaning of the wheel itself. If all these people are needed to seal Bill
back away, it could be either one, since both have played a prominent role in weirdmageddon
so far. If the wheel shows people responsible for
unleashing Bill, on the other hand, then Blendin is more directly at fault than anyone else,
and a very likely candidate. Either way, I’m willing to bet that all of these characters
will play a prominent role in the series’ finale.
Speaking of that finale, I cannot wait to see what it has in store for us. When this
last Hiatus finally ends, I’m gonna do something a little special and review it, as well as
give my take on the Weirdmageddon variant opening. If you wanna catch that when it happens,
be sure to subscribe. And since you guys seem to like crazy conspiracies,
you might enjoy watching me and a bunch of my friends plow through the entire Metal Gear
Solid franchise from today until Friday the 18th at metalgearmarathon.com. All proceeds
go to Child’s Play, so please come out, support a good cause, and have a good time
doing it. If you enjoy this kind of intro analysis
there’s plenty of great anime breakdowns on my channel. Next episode we’ll be returning
to our regular anime programming with the second season of Spice and Wolf.
I also do game reviews, by the way, and next week I’ll be covering another supernatural
mystery set in Oregon with my review of Life is Strange, so keep an eye out for that.
As always, this is Geoff Thew, professional shitbag, signing out from my mother’s basement.