The List
5 Anime That Made Us Go WTF!?
by Stephanie Donaldson & Jacki Jing,
Anime series can stir incredible emotional responses. In one episode, you can go from laughing to crying to being so frustrated you're not even sure you want to watch the next episode. And then there's those anime moments that completely shock you. The crazy plot twists, surprise endings or really strange gags. This week we're counting down the anime that made us go WTF, so let's see what series had us shook!
While School Days has truly gone down in anime history as one of the most shocking endings, we had our jaws dropped right from the beginning. The 2007 series is based on a visual novel of the same name and on the surface looks pretty harmless. A typical high school romance, with some miscommunications and selfish immaturity. But oh boy, were we wrong. At the core of this series is a mind boggling love triangle spurred on by perhaps one of the most unlikeable anime protagonists ever. Each episode we were shaking our heads at what an absolute twat he was. The rest of the cast don't get let off easy either, we can't think of a more irredeemable set of characters. But it's in episode twelve, the series' frustrating plot takes a dark turn and culminates in a truly WTF ending. We're not gonna spoil anything but just keep in mind that old saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.
Many anime shorts struggle to make an impression on audiences. It's hard to create a world and meaningful characters in only five to fifteen minutes. But Cromartie High School somehow not only managed to do that, but also squeezed in as much insanity as possible in twelve minute long episodes. Based on a manga of the same name, the show follows Takashima Kamiyama as he begins his school life at the infamous Cromartie High. Well, school certainly won't be boring with his pencil eating classmates, a robot and Freddie Mercury (we're not kidding). Looking at just aesthetics, the series may look a bit stale to some but the dated art and lack of animation seems to only add to the series' charm.Cromartie is absurdist humor at its finest, you honestly never know what is going to happen next. You're guaranteed to be laughing your butt off and thinking what just happened!?
It seems each year there's a new dark magical girl anime for viewers to agonise over, but it was Magical Girl Raising Project that shocked us most. After becoming a magical girl, Koyuki Himekawa's dream of crime fighting while looking hella cute has come true. But unfortunately, the city she lives in has too many magical girls, and they're pitted against each other in a gruesome death match. Now the show has its issues with...kinda everything - plot, art, characters. But the series' brutal deaths had us gobsmacked. Going into this, we weren't naive to the genre of death game anime, we definitely knew what we were signing up for. But this series had a way of building the sweetest characters, characters you could imagine being friends with in real life. And then cutting them down in front of our eyes in the most brutal ways imaginable. So many scenes had us staring at our screens in complete horror.
SHIMONETA: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
If you thought Psycho-Pass's Sibyl system was intense, welcome to the world of SHIMONETA. In a dystopian Japan, the government forces citizens to wear ‘peace-makers’, which monitor people's behaviour day and night, preventing them from even making a dirty joke. Fighting against this regime is the panty-wearing group SOX who spread lewd materials across the city. Now with a premise like that you can bet the show pulls out all the stops to make each of its twelve episodes as absurd as possible. We can't really say everything that goes on because, well YouTube guidelines, but trust us boundaries isn't even a concept with this show. Add to this perhaps one of the most bizarre cast of characters that we've ever seen - we didn't even make it through the first ten minutes before going WTF!?
After being killed during a robbery gone wrong, high schooler Kazuhito Harumi is reincarnated as a dog. He's adopted by the beautiful Kirihime Natsuno, but his new life is anything from sweet and heartwarming. One moment Natsuno is terrorizing her new puppy with scissors and the next declaring her true, romantic love for the dog, the show is a rollercoaster of eyebrow raising moments. As there's no real overarching plot, the show has a rotation of new genres and mini stories. One episode the duo are chasing a mass murderer and the next they're focused on saving a bookshop about to close down. Let's not even start to get into the cast of equally odd characters...or the outfits, or even the ropes. The show is a true bundle of quirkiness.
Just as anime can stir a multitude of emotions, the phrase WTF can mean so many different things. You can cry it when a series takes a turn for the worse and once sweet characters become nightmarish villains or when you're laughing at how insane a gag has gone. It's these WTF moments that make a series truly memorable. Seriously, some of these we won't be forgetting any time soon, no matter how much we want to.
So with that lingering thought, let's check out the results for last week's poll. We asked you what your favourite opening songs of Summer 2020 are, here's what you had to say!
This week, tell us what anime made you go WTF! Vote by clicking the link here!
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