Gun's & Roses

Gun's & Roses is the instrumental opening theme for the 2007 anime adaptation Baccano!, and the first track in the single of the same name by the all-female Japanese band Paradise Lunch. The single was released on August 22, 2007 in conjunction with the ending theme.

Two differently-lengthed television versions of the opening theme are used for the anime: The first version has a 1:30 runtime and is used for the first, second, seventh, and fourteenth episodes; the second, used for the other twelve episodes, has a 1:50 runtime.

The second version's extra twenty seconds of music make space for a recap section, where scenes and dialogue from previous episodes are seamlessly integrated into the opening.

Tracklist and Performers

 * Vocals: Natsuki Akiko
 * Trumpets: Anna Kagami; Hiroko Furuya
 * Alto Saxophone: Tomoko Yokoyama
 * Tenor Saxophone: Tomoko Mashio
 * Guitar: Chie Horiguchi
 * Bass: Arisa Sakakibara
 * Keyboard: Yuu Nagasawa
 * Drums: Makiko Kakoi
 * 1) Gun's & Roses (Instrumental; Opening)
 * 2) Never Mind (ft. vocals from Akiyo Hoshino)
 * 3) Promised Land (ft. vocals from Akiyo Hoshino)
 * 4) Gun's & Roses (Vocal Version)
 * 5) Gun's & Roses (Karaoke)
 * 6) Never Mind (Karaoke Version)
 * 7) Promised Land (Karaoke Version)

Opening Animation
In an urban alleyway, a man in a tuxedo tosses a Standing Liberty quarter into the air. He catches it on his hand, and waits for a woman to join him so they can check the results together. Her face brightens, his eyes widen, and the next cut finds the woman openly jubilant while the man, crestfallen, slumps next to a large white sack with red fabric and a broomstick sticking out of its opening.

A quick sequence of stills depicts the man and woman changing out of their 1930 formalwear into a Halloween costume and Santa Claus costume respectively, and the scene timeskips to the man entering a goods store. The camera zoom to the pumpkin atop his head reveals that he is smiling, and the frame freezes on his smile as the name ISAAC DIAN flashes on the screen. Isaac is followed inside by the woman, and the name MIRIA HARVENT briefly appears next to her bearded grin before she gestures for the off-screen shopkeeper to fill the now-empty sack up.

Putting his hands into the air, the shopkeeper surrenders and hoists a cardboard box full of chocolate bars up and over the counter. The camera zooms in on the chocolate bar in the middle, its label BACCANO! filling the screen as the Title Card.

Isaac's hand snatches up the BACCANO! chocolate bar and flings it behind him. The frame fades to black as it disappears out of sight and fades back into green, which is revealed to be the green fabric of a fedora blocking the camera as a baby-faced young man in a matching green suit retrieves the hat and dons it. An older mild-looking man in a brown suit watches on behind him, the hat-filled shelves lining the wall behind them both placing the location as a haberdashery.

As the youth admires himself in the camera-as-mirror, the camera zooms in on his face to introduce him as FIRO PROCHAINEZO. The mild-looking man in the brown suit who puts his hand on Firo's shoulder after the zoom-out is subsequently introduced as MAIZA AVARO, and he plucks a wad of ten-dollar bills from his wallet and holds them out to the off-screen store owner. One ten-dollar wad becomes two, both of which have just been tossed onto a poker table cluttered with cards and chips.

Context comes with the next shot, revealing three men sitting around the table in a haze of their own cigar and cigarette smoke. The bulky man in the foreground retracts his hand, marking him as the one who made the bet, but the cards visible in his hand are weak enough to suggest that he is bluffing. Across the table, the man whose pile of chips may as well be a mountain compared to the chips of the man between them reveals his hand: a high-ranking four-of-a-kind, with four Kings and one Ace. He sticks a cigar between his teeth just in time to be introduced as KEITH GANDOR, his severe expression unchanged despite the win.

The bulky man's hands fly to his head at the moment of realization, sending his cards fluttering, and the glimpses that the camera catches of them confirm that his hand was worthless. A freeze frame interrupts him mid-shout to identify him as BERGA GANDOR, and proceeds to let him continue to bellow off-screen. LUCK GANDOR reacts to his brother's eruption with little more than a resigned smile, and then reaches behind him to pour a glass of Coraggioso-branded distilled London dry gin (94.4% proof).

A camera spin transitions Luck pouring the gin into an old man in old-fashioned clothes emptying an unlabeled bottle of liquid (either a failed version of the Cure-All Elixir or a component of it) into or onto something out of frame. There is just enough room to introduce him as SZILARD QUATES before he reaches for a identical-looking bottle and repeats the process, but this time the image of a short-haired woman in a business suit is framed within the bottle's liquid contents. ENNIS is only on screen for as long as Szilard sees fit; he tilts the bottle at a steeper angle to increase the rate of flow, and her visage distorts in tandem with the swishing liquid. The bottle is not yet empty when he rightens it and drops it to the side–

–And a falling Briou Rosso champagne bottle is caught neatly in the white-gloved hand of the Young Conductor, who returns it to the ice bucket on Jon Panel's tray before heading down the Flying Pussyfoot's corridor. With the ice bucket and two champagne glasses safe, Jon balances his tray on one hand and knocks on a cabin door with the other; the door opens to reveal an elegant, reserved woman by the name of LUA KLEIN, and she takes the tray from him without further ado.

The camera switches to the perspective of another occupant in the cabin as Lua moves away, a dart soaring mere inches past her arm to bury itself in the dartboard hanging on the just-closed door. A quick switch to the dartboard's perspective reveals the the cabin's pleasant furnishings and the perpetrator: a grinning young man whose formal white attire complements the woman's own, but whose posture by comparison is altogether casual. Already holding another dart, LADD RUSSO takes a few more seconds to consider his aim before letting loose; the camera is forced to duck out of the way, and turns just in time to see that the dart's tip is wickedly sharp before it turns into an equally sharp hunting knife in mid-flight.

The knife buries itself into a paneled wall, and is retrieved by its owner: a black-haired, blad-clad woman named CHANE LAFORET occupying a train cabin with furnishings far richer than the one prior. Her face is impassive and her demeanor unruffled, despite the exertion, and she slashes her knife across the screen and leaves black color in its wake.

[RECAP SCENES]

An explosion from the left side of the frame sends rubble, two types of smoke, and heat blasting across the screen. As the smoke clears, two young men and one woman are seen fleeing from the heart of it: the first man is a giant, who swiftly disappears beyond the right frame to safety; and the second youth sheds nonstop tears as he tugs at the hand of the woman behind him. She is the only one to look back at the explosion, and her carefree laughter stands in stark contrast to her companion.

As the camera zooms in, the burn scars on the woman's arms and face and the eyepatch covering her right eye become impossible to miss. The frame freezes as she raises something in her hand, and she is introduced as NICE HOLYSTONE right before she hurls multiple tiny bombs into the smoke while weaing an expression of utter joy.

The camera switches its attention to the young man, his large facial sword tattoo visible for the first time. He flinches as the bombs ignite, reaching out in front of him as Nice reaches out to the explosion, and the frame freezes on his frantic, tear-filled expression to introduce him as JACUZZI SPLOT. Nice catches up to him, and their clasped hands fill the frame seconds before being enveloped by the light of the final explosion–

–Which becomes the flash from a camera shutter, held aloft by a cameraman hidden under a cloth hood. His subjects are a girl and boy in expensive-looking clothes; the girl clutches the boy's right hand between her own, and both of them are smiling. The color shot fades into the black-and-white photograph itself, which the camera zooms out of as a teenaged girl closes the book in which the photograph is being kept. She bears a strong resemblance to the girl in the photo, while the fancy house behind her resembles the photo's backdrop, and the camera zooms in on her morose expression to introduce her as EVE GENOARD.

Eve's nameplate wipes directly to another nameplate, which introduces a man with a vaguely smug, defiant expression as DALLAS GENOARD. Dallas' bravado vanishes as he finds himself surrounded by water, playing cards floating nearby, and his breath escapes him in a rush. The King of Diamonds drifting by is repurposed as part of a seven-card hand for a card game, only for an unseen player's hand to reach out and claim it for himself.

The camera switches to the unseen player's perspective, briefly showing his opponent – a young girl – and the girl's mother in the dining car of the Flying Pussyfoot before switching to the girl's perspective. The unseen player is revealed to be a young boy in a casual business suit, and he adds the card to his hand with closed eyes and a gracious smile. When the camera zooms in on his face to introduce him as CZESLAW MEYER, however, he has opened his right eye to peek – and his expression is oddly mature.

Czes' expression resettles into unassuming graciousness as the girl chooses a card from his hand. She shows it to the camera, revealing Isaac and Miria linked arm-and-arm in jester costumes as befitting the Joker card. They wink at the camera, and the screen cuts to black.

Foreshadowing

 * Hidden Nameplate: To preserve one of the anime's main plot twists, Claire Stanfield appears in the opening only as the Young Conductor and is not given an official nameplate. Rachel, who serves as a red herring for Claire, is missing from the opening entirely. However, the champagne bottle can be taken as an unofficial nameplate for Vino, Claire's name as an assassin.
 * Ennis' Nature: By framing Ennis both in the palm of Szilard's hand and the elixir inside a bottle (i.e. a 'flask'), the opening alludes to her true origins as a homunculus.
 * Dallas' Fate (1): Although Dallas' whereabouts is one of the main mysteries of the anime, his fate is 'spoiled' in the opening itself: Dallas is shown drowning in water, which is precisely what the Gandor Family condemn him to do for eternity in November 1930.
 * His Fate (2): A much more subtle hint at Dallas' fate can be found in Eve's book. A closer look at the page she is reading reveals that it is this page from the Edgar Allan Poe short story A Descent Into The Maelstrom. The scene follows a man and his elder brother as a storm catches them at sea - with lines like, "For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt," and, "It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard," it is an unmistakable reference to what eventually becomes of Dallas.

Recap Sequences
Gun's & Roses is used as the opening for all sixteen episodes of Baccano!, and features recap sequences three-fourths of the time. Each recap sequence is tailored specifically to the episode the opening is preceding, presenting scenes and dialogue from previous episodes that directly relate to the contents of the current episode.

The numerical sequences in the list below signal which episodes each recap scene came from per opening variant. For the specific scenes used in an episode's recap sequence, consult the 'recap section' on the episode's page.

Lyrics (Vocal Version)
To be found.

Trivia

 * The opening visuals are strongly reminiscent of the opening to Snatch, a 2000 British crime comedy film.