Anime to watch when you’re sick!

November is here. The weather has turned much more harsh and cold. The trees are growing barren and the flowers have long since withered. The sun doesn’t rise until long after you’ve dragged yourself out of bed and it huddles under the horizon long before you get home from school or work. All these charming traits mean one thing, it’s Cold and Flu Season.

That less than joyful time of year when you head becomes stuffy, your nose runs like a leaky faucet, and your sore throat makes you sound like a chain smoker for a week. And everyone has to ask you how you managed to catch a cold while wearing a mask, carrying travel sized hand sanitizer in both pockets, and constantly washing your hands like a person with OCD that forgot their meds. And how do we celebrate this sneazy of all seasons? By taking a sick day or two, slurping up as much hot chicken noodle soup and mint tea as your stomach will hold, and curling up on the couch with your furry friend and some good anime.

The only question is, which series to watch that isn’t going to be too taxing on your poor snot soaked brain, is going to be long enough that you can watch all day and all night when your sore throat and cough is keeping you up, but episodic enough that when you randomly fall asleep, you can just pick up the series on whatever episode happens to be currently playing.

Case Closed/Detective Conan

The anime Detective Conan is about a high school boy (Shinichi Kudo) that is a brilliant detective and also the son of a world renowned mystery writer. He’s so famous for cracking cases and finding murderers that he’s been featured in newspaper articles and been on national TV several times. Needless to say, Shinichi has developed a bit of an ego, much to the annoyance of his long time friend and secret crush (Ran Mori).

During one of his cases, two men in trench coats that are part of a mysterious criminal organization inject him with poison, but instead of killing the teen, the chemical shrinks him, making Shinichi look like a child! After his sudden transformation, he retreats to his neighbor and friend’s house, the crackpot old inventor (Dr. Agasa). The doctor has helped Shinichi on cases before and is pretty good at being open minded. So when Shinichi shows up on his doorstep in the form of a child, Agasa just kind of accepts it and gets to work on trying to help the teenager. They quickly realize that Shinichi needs to hide his identity and that fact that he was still alive or the criminal organization might come back and finish the job. Days pass and they still can’t find an antidote for the strange poison.

The doctor breaks the bad news that Shinichi might have to spend a while as a child until Agasa can make a scientific breakthrough, and the teen will need to start thinking about how he’s going to live his life in his current state. And that’s when Ran shows up at the doctor’s house looking for her arrogant friend. Being a high school boy, Shinichi panics. He definitely doesn’t want his crush to see him like this and he doesn’t want Ran getting involved in anything as dangerous as the crime organization. Hoping to disguise himself he puts on an old pair of the doctor’s glasses, and getting inspiration from the authors names on the spines of books near by, Shinichi introduces himself as Conan Edogawa (a distant relative of Dr. Agasa). Whether it was to find a reasonable place for someone that looked like a child, or the old doctor was just messing with his arrogant neighbor, Agasa suggests that Ran take the young Conan home with her. The doctor explains that Conan’s parents are out of the country and the doctor didn’t have enough time to watch him.

Ran agrees and Shinichi/Conan is now in a tight spot. He has to keep up the act around his crush and also deal with her father. If Shinichi Kudo is a brilliant detective, Kogoro Mori (Ran’s father) is on the opposite end of the scale. A drunkard, short tempered, heavy smoking, and completely inept at solving crimes, Mori sees Shinichi as competition and a rival in the detective business. Shinichi sees Mori as a bad joke.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for the young detective Conan to find a use for the old befuddled detective, and a way to get back into solving crimes. This is a great anime to watch while your sick because it’s very episodic, so even if you can’t think well enough to remember what happened the last episode, that’s fine each episode is a different mystery, and the series has hundreds of episodes so you can watch it all you want and you’re not going to run out of more episodes.

Flint the Time Detective

Flint the Time Detective definitely has some serious nostalgia quality. This anime has everything you want from your Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Cheerful characters, going on fun adventures with their friends. Even the bad guys aren’t that bad and usually get defeated by their own stupidity rather than the main characters ruthlessness. Every episode seems to end with something exploding and the bad guys being blasted over the horizon only to come back the next episode perfectly fine.

This series has wonderfully silly stories and unbelievable plots, with cute little monsters that have superpowers which can either help people throughout history or ruin history. It’s the Time Detectives job to make sure it ends up positively. Flint is actually a caveman (boy) that accidentally gets brought to the future where the Time Detectives work.

Though Flint is hardly the most intelligent person around; his pure heart, determination to help the little time monsters, and his ability to make friends with the monsters makes him the perfect Time Detective.

So Flint and his new friends from the future (who are Time Detective Cadets) travel throughout time trying to save the original time line, historical figures, and the time monsters from the Evil Petra and her henchmen. Petra is a hilariously evil character, who tries to manipulate historical figures so she can be a queen and fabulously rich where ever and when ever she happens to be.

She also likes lying to, tricking, or hypnotizing the time monsters into doing her bidding. And why does she do all this crazy evil stuff? So she can show off to her crush with the hopes that he will notice her more . . . Yeah. Though I am usually very strict that as close to the original Japanese version is always the best, in this one case when watching during illness, dubbed is the way to go. So, by “Flint the Time Detective” I specifically mean the American, English dubbed version not the Japanese “Jiku Tantei Genshi-kun” version. This anime is great to watch while you’re sick because it very episodic, it has a lot of that nostalgia feels, and it’s good silliness that you don’t need to think too hard on.

Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan

Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan is a bit different from the first two recommendations. Though this is definitely a comedy (because isn’t laughter the best medicine?) this anime is a more grown-up comedy about how hilarious life can be when everything has already gone all wrong and how someone can not deal with it well. The series is about Uramichi Omota, in his college years he was a gymnastic star. His skills were amazing. Everyone looked up to him. Uramichi had spent his whole life training, and working toward becoming a professional gymnast. And then he hurt his back and his life’s work came crashing down.

The story focuses on Uramichi after he has landed in a job as a cast member on a pre-school children’s educational TV show. Think like, Blues Clues. He’s supposed to do little skits about how it’s fun to stay healthy and do exercises. Unfortunately, Uramichi isn’t dealing with his new life well, so he’s amazingly depressed and gloomy. Uramichi’s flip flop between the intensely happy, energetic persona he’s supposed to play for the TV show and his natural gloomy state is hilarious.

And of course his gloom sometimes leaks through around the kids in the most laugh worthy ways. My favorite was in one of the earlier episodes when Uramichi Oniisan (as he’s known on the show) was having a hard time singing and he mutters under his breath that it must be because of all the hard drinking. A few scenes later he starts coughing, and one of the kids on the show asks if he’s okay and if its because of “Hard Drinking”?

So, for anyone who has worked with small children and been forced to act very happy even though you feel awful, it’s an extra dose of humor. This is a great anime to watch while yours sick because there’s a lot of slap stick humor that you don’t have to think too hard to enjoy, and it reminds you that it’s okay to not feel energetic, and not deal with things well.

Do you have any favorite anime that you like watching when your feeling sick? Leave a comment below!

The anime exclamation of the week is: Oniisan! meaning Big Brother!

I’m currently watching:

• Zombie Loan
• Over Lord
• Case Closed
• Super Lovers
• Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
• Visual Prison
• Fena: Pirate Princess
• Backflip
• Mars Red
• Takt Op. Destiny
• The Great Jahy will Not Be Defeated!
• Sakugan
• Yashahime: Princess half-demon
• Hells
• Cardfight Vanguard Overdress
• Drug Store in Another World
• Bungo Stray Dogs
• Tokyo Revengers
• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
• Inari Kon Kon
• Mieruko-chan
• Click Link
• Banished from the Hero’s Party
• Toilet Bound Hanako-kun
• Obey Me!
• Taisho Otome Fairy Tale