Highlights
- Anime often misses the test audience phase, diving straight into weird and unique concepts that may surprise viewers.
- From shut-ins to underwater combat, anime like
Welcome to the N.H.K.
and
Keijo!!!!!!!
push boundaries and delight fans. - Shows like
Assassination Classroom
and
Neon Genesis Evangelion
take strange premises and elevate them to classic status in the anime world.
It’s often the case that shows and movies in the West will go through multiple test screenings, allowing a small number of people to experience a piece of media and give their honest feedback before it gets released to the public. That test audience might help the creators come to the conclusion that their work is a bit too off-kilter for a wide audience.
In the anime world, that step often seems to be replaced with the release of a manga to see if readers latch on despite a potentially weird concept. Sometimes, though, an anime is released with no preamble, with the creators hoping that it will click with fans despite its eccentricities. Below are the weirdest anime concepts to grace the silver screen, for better or worse.
8 Welcome To The N.H.K.
A Show Exploring The Drab Life Of A Complete Shut-In
Many people find great fun in researching conspiracies. However, Welcome To The N.H.K. is an anime exploring one that has some serious life-ruining potential, especially for main character Tatsuhiro Satou. See, the belief here is that the reason hikikomori (shut-ins) exist is to satiate some evil government plot.
Satou’s beliefs are, frankly, disturbing, and their depictions tend to get a bit silly, leaving the viewer to wonder if they are real, or just the machinations of a mentally ill young adult. What starts as an exploration of a lifestyle that should make for iffy television quickly turns into a sad and entertaining look into the lives of hikkikomori, one that’s more realistic than the rest of this list.
7 Keijo!!!!!!!!
Players Must Knock Eachother Into The Water With No Hands
In the sport of Keijo, girls must attempt to knock each other off of floating platforms using their rears and chests; a simple and effective ecchi premise for sure. That is, until the girls start busting out the special techniques.
One of the most well known is the “Hip of Babylon” (known in English as “Gate of Bootylon”). It allows Kazane Aoba to use the Keijo technique of any girl whose backside she’s touched, represented by a wall of glowing backsides. The show is full of stuff like this, easily making this a sports anime someone might want to watch alone.
6 Kakegurui
A High School That Revolves Around Gambling
At Hyakkou Private Academy, the belief is that to be good at gambling is to be fully prepared for the outside world. Some students who attend the school, though, just find fun in taking somebody for all they’re worth, seen in many of the players’ depraved expressions throughout their games.
Take main character, and certified hustler, Yumeko Jabami. On her first day at the Academy, she gets into a high stakes game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that ends in her proclaiming her infatuation with gambling just before crushing her opponent. After being told she’d have to wait a while for payment, she just leaves for the day, showing just how unhinged she can be, and setting up the wild tone of the rest of the show.
5 Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo
The Gang Must Stop The Hair Hunt
|
Release Date |
November 8, 2003 |
|
Genre |
Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi |
|
Seasons |
3 |
|
Studio |
Toei Animation |
|
Creator |
Toshio Sawai |
|
Streaming Services |
Crunchyroll, Netflix |
Like all parody anime, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is mostly in it for laughs, as the main character’s long and powerful nose hair proves. But its plot, involving a quest to put an end to the Maruhage (Chrome Dome Empire), is as real as it gets.
Main characters Bo-bobo and crew aim to stop the Maruhage at all costs, leading to some pretty funny plays on the battle anime formula.
For instance, one of Bo-bobo’s attack during a battle is to equip a bunch of monkeys with ringing phones on their head to annoy the enemy into submission, making for one of the weirdest resolutions to a fight ever seen.
4 Shimoneta: A Boring World Where The Concept Of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
A Dystopian World Where Perversion Is Outlawed
In most fiction of this show’s kind, it’s something like a virus or murderous robots that has brought the planet to its knees. In Shimoneta, it’s Japan’s criminalization of anything sexual that leads to this Orwellian nightmare of a future. For others, like student council president, Anna, it just leads to a lot of repression.
The SOX “terrorist” organization is having none of this. Whether they have to litter the streets with lewd fliers or leave boxes of adult toys lying around, one way or another, Japan will know what it’s like to be a little pervy once again.
3 Assassination Classroom
A Tentacle Monster Teaches Kids How To Be Assassins
Assassination Classroom asks the burning question: How does one become a good assassin? The answer is revealed rather practically, as the students learn by making attempts on their weird, yellow, octopus teacher’s life.
Of course, there are reasons why this creature is teaching kids how to help him meet his maker. They just fall by the wayside with how ridiculous and disarming he can be when teaching his students things like proper pool etiquette.
2 Fooly Cooly (FLCL)
Robots Come Out Of A Boy’s Head
There is no harder time in a young boy’s life than adolescence, when hormones are raging, and just about anything will set them off into a flurry of emotion. The last thing a kid would ask for in the midst of it all is an intergalactic alien to use their head as a portal for all sorts of robotic creatures.
That is exactly what happens in Fooly Cooly, though it’s all a result of an intergalactic alien trying to reunite with her one true love. It’s a tripped out premise, and its weirdness is compounded by the fact that the original run of the show is only 6 episodes long, meaning that each one is stuffed to the gills with ridiculous gags poking fun at the medium itself.
1 Neon Genesis Evangelion
Kids Pilot Mechs To Save The World
By the time the 90s came around, the influence of the Mecha genre, and Gundam in particular, had become fully apparent. Born out of this popularity would emerge Neon Genesis Evangelion, a show that takes some liberties with the typical action-formula, mixing in a hefty amount of existential dread for good measure.
Enter Shinji Ikari, a depressed elementary school kid who is trying to find his way in the world — a world that is rapidly approaching the apocalypse because of a secret organization. He’s recruited to pilot one of those aforementioned mechs. In fact, he’s one of the few who can because his mom’s…soul is housed inside one of them? There’s a lot going on here, clearly. This series is a classic for a reason, and while it definitely goes to some weird places, it brings it home in the end.
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