So what i want here are recomdations for anime that are weird af. What i would consider to be the ‘anime’ anime. Like this weird whatewer tf it actually is in thumbnail link ( my dear friend nokotan for those that dont want to clik on them ). Some other good example would be gintama.
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If you can get past the part where it is pure, unabashedly crass, Panty + Stocking & Garterbelt oozes style. Actually, it oozes multiple styles, as it’s more than willing to switch from a ‘chibi’ style, to an overly ‘high-res’ style, and even to real world paper mâché within a single episode. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and certainly “built different.”
It’s also getting a second season after a decade, so there’ll be more of it soon.
It sounds like when you say “weird” you mean absurdist, so I’ll not recommend things like “Ping Pong the Animation” even though it’s both excellent and weird.
With that said, the absurdist anime I’ve seen in roughly descending order of preference are:
- Dan Da Dan - Takes itself a little more seriously than the examples you gave, but things still get very wild.
- BOCCHI THE ROCK! - Nothing absurdist about the plot, but the animators get very creative.
- Nichijou - My Ordinary Life - Most people already know what this is, so I’ll just say that City from the same author will be releasing later this year. I haven’t read it, but odds are it’s great.
- Akiba Maid War - Maid-themed Yakuza drama.
- Space Dandy - Cowboy Bebop if all the main characters were incompetent
- Cromartie High School - High school for delinquents.
- Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead - Guy has an opportunity to finally leave his abusive company when zombies attack. He resolves to live each day as fully as possible and makes a list of things he wants to do before being turned into a zombie.
- Ghost Stores (the dub of course) - They realized this anime had no appeal as-is to a western audience so they made a batshit insane dub that only loosely follows the original story.
Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan, if you speak Japanese or can read subtitles fairly quickly.
One anime that really is built differently, in structure, art style and themes:
Tatami Galaxy
Every episode is the main character making a different choice to try and fulfill his dream. It’s like Groundhog Day, but where Mr Groundhog eventually manages a perfect day, Mr Tatami learns to accept the imperfection of life.
Not really anime (but imo the anime version is worse): The way of the househusband.
Basically a Yakuza retires as a househusband.Quite enjoyable
Some that haven’t been mentioned yet (I think):
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Kuuchuu Buranko: This one uses rotoscope animation. It’s a “trippy” anime that deals with various mental health problems (mostly OCD). I think this is one of those anime that almost nobody really knows about. It’s very obscure.
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Aku no Hana: This also uses rotoscope animation. I actually never watched the anime and only read the manga. It’s one of those psychological types but it’s well-grounded in reality. The animation itself is weird however. Probably because rotoscoping at this level is uncommon in anime.
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Monogatari Series: The notoriously “immoral” anime series (and one of my all-time favorites). Generally speaking, anything by SHAFT have really unique visual storytelling which includes Madoka Magica and Sangatsu no Lion.
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Excel Saga
Bobobo-bo bobo-bo
Azumanga Diaoh
Nichijou
Lucky Star
Haruhi (actually a serious romantic melodrama but with absurd things happening).
Zombie Land Saga
Kill la Kill (serious fight show but the absurdity levels are very high).
Dandadan (mesh of all genres: absurd comedy fight RomCom).
EDIT: Do you want “horror weird” ?? Because “horror weird” opens up Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, Elfen Lied, Paranoia Agent and Paprika.
So, OP wants weird anime. “Anime” anime.
- Odd Taxi
- Ping Pong Club
- Excel Saga
- FLCL
- Gantz
- Otaku No Video
- Way of the Househusband
- Golden Boy
- Colorful (of note, the English dub is heavily adapted to the point where it can’t really be considered accurate. But it is faithful. The format helps. This approach doesn’t often work, but it does here.)
- Cromartie High School
- Paranoia Agent
- Nerima Daikon Brothers
- Puni Puni Poemy
- Great Teacher Onizuka
- Gundam-San
- Oruchuban Ebichu
Depending on which flavor of weird one is going for, not all of these are going to scratch that itch.
Odd Taxi
I don’t consider this weird at all. The “weirdest” thing about this is just the artstyle. Otherwise its basically a Film Noir / Detective like story except the Taxi Driver is the detective-protagonist who saw the crime (and has a perfect memory of his customer’s faces). So as you go around the cast of characters and see where they want to go + their small talk with the Taxi Driver, you end up figuring out the mystery with the protagonist.
It does a very good job at making the city feel like a city, and making every taxi drive feel like its going somewhere. Obviously there’s red herrings to throw you off of the core mystery. But everything felt appropriate and actually relatively mundane.
Like seriously: the “weirdest” character is a rapping Yakuza / gangster who puts too much effort into making things rhyme. Nothing else about this show is “weird”. Its like, good (but dumb) cop, bad corrupt cop, unexpected Yakuza / gangsters, pop-idols, fanboys, dumbass (failing) Youtubers, Gachapon Whale, unpopular Radio comedian duo, dumbass friend who gets catfished and of course the titular character: the Taxi Driver.
If anything, I’m surprised at how incredibly mundane the whole situation is and yet how awesome the story was told. Its a murder mystery in a big city, but as it turns out this Taxi Driver is surprisingly at the center of it all as his list of customers happens to line up with the entire damn mystery.
I like watching anime that’s build different:
Sonny Boy - Execution: S tier Weirdness: S tier
Kyousougiga - Execution: S tier Weirdness: S tier
Id: Invaded - Execution: A tier Weirdness: B tier
Flip Flappers - Execution: A tier Weirdness: B tier
Junk Head - Execution: A tier Weirdness: SS tier
Olympia Kyklos - Execution: C tier Weirdness: A tier
Train to the End of the World - Execution: B tier Weirdness: A tier
Your list sounds like you’d like “Undead Unluck”, a buddy cop comedy of two superpowered characters: an unkillable Super-zombie with the unluckiest character (who spreads her unluck to everyone close to her).
“Undead” is trying to finally find a way to die. And hanging around “Unluck” is finally managing to deal damage to him.
“Unluck” is just trying to find friends and live, despite her superpower. All of her previous friends have died due to her Unluck.
Undead is so unbelievably “undead” he can fly using the power of regeneration. He cuts off his legs and shoots his blood out to hover. Undead pressurizes his fingers so that they shoot out like bullets (and regenerate). He cuts off his arms and sharpens his bones to use as melee weapons. Etc. etc. etc.
There’s also “Humanity Has Declined”, which I’d say is maybe C tier execution but S-tier weirdness.
Humanity Has Declined is the origin of “suicide bread”, which makes even less sense in context.
Dorohedoro is fantastically weird but solid world building and funny as fuck too.
Sokushi Cheat…, aka My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered… sounds like a lousy isekai, but was surprisingly meta and funny.
Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction was really hard to watch, but it’s really good. It’s difficult to explain the appeal.
Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku/Where Does the Doomsday Train Go? - Also a little difficult to watch, but really fun world building.
Elusive Samurai/Nige Jouzu No Wakagimi - A fun show that has style and is focused on meta instead of developing characters.
Samurai Flamenco - Both a tribute and parody of tokusatsu shows, that is entertainingly weird.
Hands Off Eizouken!/Eizouken Ni Wa Te Wo Dasu na - A beautiful tribute to the spirit of animators, but meta and funny at the same time. Better than this season’s Zenshuu.
Shuumatsu Train isn’t difficult to watch! It is the most classic of classic plots: a band of heroes sets off to save their village and faces all kinds of trials along the way, making them stronger as individuals and as a group, before defeating the Great Evil and saving the princess. It also has trains.
Hands Off Eizouken! Is my favorite anime of all time but not that weird compared to others.
Yeah, Eizouken’s one of my faves too.
I was specifically thinking of the parts where the girls “go into” their drawings to develop their ideas, as being different from your standard manga/anime narrative story.
IIRC, the town that they live in is strange too…
Akiba Maid War had me laughing and saying “what the fucking is going on?” out loud a lot.
Maid war is underrated. Its basically a gangster comedy anime pretending to be about maids.
I see things like Nichijou, Lucky Star, Azumanga, etc. Those are all favorites of mine but I don’t think they are very weird. I would recommend Poputepipikku, Sakigake! Cromartie Koukou and most of all Pani Poni Dash! Maybe Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Depends on how weird you want your weird shit to be.
but I don’t think they are very weird.
Excuse me? I’mma suplex you like this deer because of that statement.
EDIT: Actually, the many “ouchie” jokes from Nichijou are likely better at describing my confusion at your statement!!
asobi asobase is, imo, one of the funniest weird anime ever made
aho girl (be forewarned the anime ends on the creepiest fucking part of the manga)
azumanga daioh (be forewarned there is anime bullshit here as well, different time)
hinamatsuri (definitely well worth it to read the manga, which is one of the funniest I’ve ever read. It’s so good. The anime is great but it only got 1 cour which is an abridged version of the first 9 volumes. There’s 10 more and the story just keeps getting better), I felt like it was a bit of a spiritual successor to ranma which is also a good suggestion
Imo nichijou isn’t very good, though the animation is excellent. City was a much better manga and I’m excited to watch the anime for that. People love it though so it’s worth checking out
I genuinely enjoyed nokotan but the above picks all destroy it imo
Nichijou has a pretty safe spot in my top 10. It very much depends what your sense of humour is like.
I’m not saying it’s bad, clearly many many people like it. It’s exactly what you say. For some people it clicks and for them it seems to be a borderline masterpiece, but for me I was just bored
I get it because there’s so many people right now that endlessly shit on nokotan, and when asobi asobase aired there was a similar contingency of people who loudly moaned about how stupid it was and how stupid people were for liking it and I just thought those people were dumb. I still think those people are dumb because I can understand why someone would like nichijou, I just didn’t
Absolutely, differing tastes exist. Just wanted to share an alternative perspective for anyone wondering whether nichijou is worth a try :)
Not sure on the exact flavor of “weird af” that Nokotan or Gintama get into since I haven’t seen them, but here’s some of the weirder shows I’ve watched:
- Nichijou
- Azumanga Daioh
- Penguindrum
- Utena
- FLCL
- Space Dandy
Thinking along a different style of weirdness, there’s also shows like Serial Experiments Lain – but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for.
Seconding Penguindrum as “built different”. It’s a classic imo, but it isn’t discussed enough, probably because everyone (like me) is convinced it isn’t a real anime but a fever dream they had after watching too much anime.
be forewarned that if you watch lain (made in 1998) you’ll be like “how the fuck did they know this would happen”
- Flip Flappers
- Panty and Stocking
- Arakawa under the bridge
- Akiba’s Trip
- Seitokai Yakuindomo
- shimoneta
- Bakuon!!
- Ben-to!
