I haven't delved too deep into the weirdness of anime, but probably the most confused I ever felt watching an anime was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I originally watched the series when I was in high school and couldn't really follow what was happening in the final couple episodes. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that there is probably some deeper meaning here that I am just too dumb to understand...
...and I still think that. I am sure if I really wanted to read explainer articles or watch more of the many Eva-adjacent things it would make more sense, but I am happy to just not fully understand it. I am content with appreciating it as an influential piece of art within the genre and move on.
It's not that deep. They got the rug pulled from under them when the studio slashed the budget. Instead of doing an ending they wanted, lots of action, with bad animation, they instead rebelled with a rewrite ending that used intentional vagueness and ambivalent philosophical storytelling that let them use their resources to focus on art design and keep the cool factor up. Tons of stills, but really pretty. That's why a lot of the last sequences are just artsy backgrounds with only voice overs, there are several seconds of just white paper, etc. This however proved widely popular and the writing was vague but interesting enough to fuel hundreds of hours of video analysis and thousands of words essays.
The other factor was the mythological treatment of biblical imagery, which was rather new and unique at the time.
Eva starts throwing out wild amounts of lore and background information out of nowhere and never really stops to explain any of it. I don't think most anyone fully grasped the show on their first watch through. In fact, iirc a lot of what was figured out was with the help of a Playstation game that came out that had large text entries of lore.
It could be thought of as deep. I remember it being meanigful to me. A visual representation of the ego dissipating and watching the main character with numerous neurosis honestly reflect on his life and character while communicating with his subconscious that's taken the form of the people in his life. Seemed like it was what the whole show was working towards.
Furi Kuri and Kuuchuu Buranko.
Furi Kuri is a favorite for some but a lot of the images didn't make a lot of sense to me. I like TheCynicClinic's video essay on the series though.
Kuuchuu Buranko is also really weird. The narrative is easier to follow but it uses a lot of weird animation techniques. You can probably describe it to be visually psychedelic. It introduced me to Denki Groove though.
Huh never heard of FLCL being called Furi Kuri.
Yeah I had to look it up and was like "oh yeah, FLCL". But I do remember it was pronounced that way in the anime.
It comes from the Japanese language ambiguity between r's and l's. The title is written out in katakana as フリクリ, typically converted to romaji as "fu ri ku ri". However, in spoken Japanese it would sound very much like Fooly Cooly because r's are pronounced very similarly to l's, this then becomes FLCL. If you look at the AniList page, all those versions are listed as synonym names.
Cat Soup, I didn't understand enough of what was going on there to even describe it.
Out of context mildly NSFW screengrab (it doesn't make any more sense even in-context)
This looks like a painting from a modern art museum.
Reincarnated as a vending machine was absurdly fun.
That series wildly exceeded my expectations. I am so glad to see it got a second season and I will be right there to see where it goes next.
Amazing title, this is going on a list asap. One of the few in this thread I haven't heard of which probably means it's really fucking weird! Thank you!
Serial Experiments Lain. Assuming I remember it correctly. Or understood to begin with. It’s been a while.
lol, I just found this post
Perfect blue seemed to be preoccupied with pants pissing
If anyone's curious what the one from OP's picture is it's called Angel's Egg. Seen it a few times now, very slow, dark and quiet. I love it.
I love it too. I don't understand the whole story but it's nice to just appreciate the animation.
I feel like I didn't understand almost any of it as a teenager, more as an adult, and then a LOT more when I watched it with someone who had familiarity with Christianity?? It has some weird religious mythos to it that I didn't know at all so that was really cool to have my eyes opened to that. But I think it's also pretty open ended so it can mean different things to people.
There is no egg. Pretty sure Studio Deen also has no idea what it's about either.
Though personally, just like the egg Princess Filianore held at the end of the world in the ringed city, it shows the power faith, even blind faith, holds over the world.
I guess probably Kaiba (and it's also one of my all-time favorites).
It's odd though, because the settings and art design and such are very, very weird, but the storylines themselves - both the individual episodes and overarching plot - are actually fairly straightforward. It deals with some fairly serious themes - love, loss, loyalty, hope, betrayal, redemption and so on - and it does it very well really. It just also does it in very weird settings with very weird characters.
For that matter, FLCL qualifies in the same way. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it right off - I guess I stopped noticing how weird it is somewhere along the way, because it's just... FLCL. It is what it is. But it is very weird. In the same way as Kaiba though, behind the very weird details is a fairly straightforward story. And in a way, it's even simpler - where Kaiba deals with some relatively broad and complex societal issues, FLCL really just deals with a boy coming to terms with growing up in a bleak nowhere town, and starting to sort out how to deal with the opposite sex.
And as long as I'm here, I want to mention Ergo Proxy, which is exactly the opposite type of weird. Aside from a highly stylized science fiction setting, it's really pretty straightforward from moment to moment. It's odd, but no more odd than should be expected from the setting. But all the while, behind the current things going on, there's this background story that's bizarre to the point of near-incomprehensibility.
Utena
Ooh interesting question and I'm sure I'll need some time to even remember some of them.
The ghibli movie with tanuki is what comes to mind. Japanese traditional lore consistent with transformations, tricking humans, and big and huge nuts - or sth. I don't quite remember it well.
Happy Sugar Life. The name did not resemble the anime at all.
Urusei Yatsura of course... Hen to hen o atsumete, motto hen ni shimashou!
Katte Ni Kaizou. These piss bottles...man.
How tf has nobody said Made in Abyss yet?
This shit has downright freaky abstractions who wanna use magic soul currency to trade you for body parts to get their desires satisfied!
