Anime of the Weird!

Sometimes the anime world gets a little weird. What we understand about reason, logic, and the laws of physics kind of get thrown out the window and we the viewers just have to accept that the anime we are watching is going to be a bit more “trippy” than the standard series. Sometimes pirates eat the wrong fruit and turn into rubber. Sometimes the most talented and powerful psychic is being trained by the most half baked con man. Sometimes kids can fall out of their own world and fall into the never ending worlds of a magical shopping arcade. And, sometimes the only way to save the world is by growing giant mushrooms. Yeah, things can get a little weird in anime. The famous artist Salvador Dali once said, “I don’t do drugs, I am drugs!” and some anime could say the same thing. So if you are addicted to some wild trips in anime, your going to love these series!

One Piece

For anyone that forgot, the anime One Piece is about the young self proclaimed pirate Luffy D Monkey. As a boy he ate the Gum Gum Devil Fruit, a magical fruit that gave him the super power to be very stretchy, but also took away his ability to swim. Though spending his life on the water seems a bit risky, with his rubbery special powers Luffy aims to gather the best pirate crew in the world and become the king of pirates! And together they will find the legendary treasure One Piece.

One Piece is an anime that is known and loved by many. It is known for it’s epic battle scenes, intricate character backgrounds, and amazing world building. Another little thing this anime series is known for is the very weird world that this series takes place in. It’s a world filled with hundreds of islands and each island is it’s own tiny ecosystem. There are islands with dinosaurs, frozen islands with were-reindeer, there are islands with mutant animals, or battling giants. And on nearly every island logic and the laws of physics seems to be turned on it’s head. On one island a ship wrecked pirate got stuck in a box and some how turned into a tree! Not to mention there isn’t a whole lot of anime that have mythical fruit that give people bizarre powers when they eat it.

Mob Psycho 100

Mob Psycho 100 is one of those odd anime that is both epic and almost slice of life. It’s silly and ironic. It’s super powered and yet relatable. Not surprisingly, it’s by the creator of One Punch Man. The anime is about Shigeo Kageyama aka Mob, who is an extremely powerful psychic. The thing is Mob doesn’t really think of his powers as all that special and this anime isn’t about him going on epic super powered adventures (though there are plenty in there) it’s more about Mob’s everyday middle schooler life. Him joining the muscle builders club so he can impress a girl, him trying to be a good big brother, him wanting to ditch his part-time job at a psychic agency because it’s boring.

And as a counter point for this everyday lifeness, there are Mob’s powers, and the bizarre life he lives with them. Mob has a mentor but it’s not a super psychic that’s training him, but rather a cheap con man. He has a frienemy ghost that follows him around as a green blob that sometimes helps Mob and sometimes tries to posses him. When Mob finally breaks loose with his powers, they can be pretty trippy! The animation quickly goes from blobby slice of life to scribbley toddler nightmare drawing. That kind of animation illustrates how bizarre Mob’s powers are more than words ever could. With the power of this completely normal, average, even kind of boring middle schooler’s mind, buildings get floated into pieces, people’s hair gets blown out, and ghosts are shredded to nothing.

Rust Eater Bisco

The anime Rust Eater Bisco is set in a post apocalyptic desert world where a toxic wind carries a disease called Rust, infecting people everywhere. The main characters are Milo, a city doctor that’s working to treat patients suffering from Rust disease including his sister, and Bisco a mushroom keeper. Mushrooms are alleged to have caused the Rust disease and mushroom keepers are seen as out laws and terrorists. In this world mushrooms aren’t little things that you slice up to put on your salad, they are huge building sized fungus that pop up in explosions!

To find the true cause of the Rust disease and a cure, the two main characters travel around on the back of a giant, high speed, jumping crab. As they travel through this bizarre world they find entire hills that come to life and can chase intruders, giant floating, man eating blow fish that migrate through the sky, and giant oil eating worms that live in train tunnels. For all the anime worlds out there, this might be one of the weirdest and most dangerous!

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi

The anime Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is definitely not your average magical series. It’s about two teen childhood friends (Arumi and Sasshi) who live near the Abenobashi shopping center in Osaka Japan. One day they get transported from their own shopping center to a parallel world’s version of the shopping center. As they try to find their way home, they travel from one world to the next. With each new world they travel to, things seemed to get weirder and weirder! The worlds vary from swords and magic to dating sims, and just about anything in between that could possibly pop into a certain otaku’s head.