Obsucure anime/manga you enjoy? - After watching some classics like æon flux and The Big O, I figured I should try to see what you guys like.

[LOLurtranz]

I typically find anime/manga extremely gay but every once in a while I find something so fucked up I have to read it. I'm not sure how obscure it is but I've read a lot of Blood on the tracks too and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I really like to consume psychologically disturbing material for some reason and sadly sometimes manga is the best means of doing that. If any of you have any suggestions I'm open to them.

 

[buckshot.]

Blood: the Last Vampire is really good. I love the spin off Blood+.


I recently watched Mononoke and the movie, it was really good. I always wanted to watch it because the style is so unique, but I finally did. The movie was a trip.

I watched Dororo just last week, which is a remake of the 1969 anime from Osamu Tezuka based on his manga. The character design was updated, but the animation was good and just something about Tezuka's stuff that's great. It takes place right before the Waring States Era and is about a lord who sacrifices parts of his son to demon gods right as he's born for the prosperity of his lands and it's about the son getting his body parts back accompanied by an orphan named Dororo (yes Dororo is a kid, but I didn't find him annoying).

Im waiting for the next Mononoke movie to release internationally, the whole franchise thing was a gigantic role in my life, even if it’s just a small fandom. I don’t know, that shit was just comforting to me as a otakucel of the sorts. And I have watched dororo, absolute peak anime, and the 1969 anime was brought up to me by my dad surprisingly. Didn’t know he was that much of a nerd as me.

 

[We Are The Witches]

I finally met someone who’s watched it, nice to meet you
I should take a look at ichi the killer, sounds interesting even by the name itself.

Hey, nice to meet you.

For Ichi The Killer, there is an OVA (anime of 1 episode or so I think) and a movie (with real actors), neither are interesting enough as the manga (or even accurate, forget about the movie), the manga it's where it's at.

Now, it is for mature audiences (of different nature), so a bunch of the panels do have gore, or mild sexual stuff. After all, the world of the Yakuza and assassinations is what we're working with here, so just to give you a hint towards what's this about.

 

[ThatBloodyTower]

M.A.R is Prototype, kingdom Hearts without the extremely convoluted plot and the fantasy and fairy tale elements aren’t just one and done but actually integrated to the plot. The guy who did art for the arms went on to do a lot of the heartless designs for Kingdom hearts. I know it’s typical shonen and has a tournament arc that’s kept straight all the way to the end (more it’s the bulk of the story) but I thought it was pretty neat.

And technically I only read the manga and haven’t yet watched the anime adaptation. Sorry if my choice doesn’t help.

 

[buckshot.]

I typically find anime/manga extremely gay but every once in a while I find something so fucked up I have to read it. I'm not sure how obscure it is but I've read a lot of Blood on the tracks too and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I really like to consume psychologically disturbing material for some reason and sadly sometimes manga is the best means of doing that. If any of you have any suggestions I'm open to them.

I reccomend any works by suehiro maruo. I don’t really read much from him, since his works are actually grotesque as fuck. He’s also made a film adaptation of shōjo tsubaki, which is by far the worst thing I’ve read. Absolute horror. I do consider it as a form of psychological horror when it comes to the whole discography of his works, but the creativity in it was just horrifyingly impressive. Recommend reading some of his works if you want to throw up last weeks dinner.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I really like to consume psychologically disturbing material for some reason and sadly sometimes manga is the best means of doing that. If any of you have any suggestions I'm open to them.

I was told about MPD Psycho not long ago, which is about a detective with multiple personality disorder. It's got fucked up gore from what little I've seen. If you've seen anything about a serial killer using women's brains as flowerpots, that's from this manga.

 

[Esquilax]

Kekkaishi might be obscure now but the anime was on adult swim years ago, the manga is good and I never see anyone ever say they've read it.

Nurarhiyon no mago is a good one, don't think I finished reading it.... I should look that one up again.... But pretty cool story.

Hoshin Engi is a weird one and I love it. They tried to adapt it to anime twice (Demon Hunter and Hakyuu Hoshin Engi) and fucked up because the story is so ridiculous. Based off the ancient Chinese folklore 'the investiture of the gods' it has daoists vs demons and aliens and shit. The character design is really neat and the mc is endearing and a goofy fuck.

 

[Private Tag Reporter]

I think you should check out this obscure mangaka called Noushintou Hoshi...

 

[Super Malario]

Paranoia Agent
Cops investigate an assault and discover a Lovercraftian plot in the city

One of Satoshi Kon's best works, such a shame he died just when he finally got the recognition and popularity he deserved.
Thread Tax: Planet Survival.
I saw that anime like 16 or something years ago and I remember really enjoying it, granted I haven't watched it since but I want to stay and say that itt's good. The plot revolves around 6 kids stuck on a planet after some accident and surviving in it until they get help, it also takes place in the future so there's some sci-fi elements.

 

[cactus]

Im waiting for the next Mononoke movie to release internationally, the whole franchise thing was a gigantic role in my life, even if it’s just a small fandom. I don’t know, that shit was just comforting to me as a otakucel of the sorts. And I have watched dororo, absolute peak anime, and the 1969 anime was brought up to me by my dad surprisingly. Didn’t know he was that much of a nerd as me.

Oh yeah, if I can catch that movie in theaters, I'm gonna go see it. But Netflix owns the rights now, so no idea if that's gonna happen.

That part about Dororo was more directed toward the whole thread haha.

Kekkaishi might be obscure now but the anime was on adult swim years ago, the manga is good and I never see anyone ever say they've read it.

Never read the manga, but I like Kekkaishi, I liked the gay sounding spirit dogs and I also caught it on Adult Swim. I even ended up downloading the opening and endings, "Mai Mirai" is a banger.

Another obscure one that aired on AS is Kikaider, I think it only aired once though and I caught it part way through the run.

 

[Stoneheart]

Future GPX Cyber formula.
great racing anime made by alot of mecha people.
futuristic gearporn from the 90s.

 

[skykiii]

Loving all the Pet Shop of Horrors love in this thread! That thing deserves more recognition. I need to finish the manga someday...

Anyway, here's some:

Iria: Zeiram the Animation
The title is due to this apparently being a prequel to a pair of live-action movies (which I've never seen). A bounty hunter woman tracks a powerful alien across the galaxy for six episodes, plus there's also some political intrigue.

Vintage promo.

Mermaid's Scar
A one-off OVA based on a chapter from Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid Saga manga (which is also recommended). DO NOT get this confused with the Mermaid Forest TV series (same source material but worse execution). This is one of those sad cases where there was never a DVD release and I've never heard of a subtitled version (that wasn't HK-tier).

This youtube upload is the entire VHS tape, including commercials at the beginning.

Gall Force: Eternal Story
If you can live with some cheesecake-y elements, this is a rather interesting sci-fi story that... goes places. The basic premise is it follows the crew of a ship during the final hours of an intergalactic war, and then weird things start to happen. The first two sequels are also good but have that "unnecessary" feel to them.

Trailer (this is for the first three movies)

Bubblegum Crisis
This is one of those cases where "obscure" is relative: fans of anime from way back when will know this one, but its probably forgotten in this day and age. Nobody has ever been able to decipher what the title is about--the basic premise is that its the future and this mercenary team called the Knight Sabers (women in power armor) are investigating crimes related to robots called Boomers. It has sort of a Robocop-ish feel to it.

There were sequel OVAs (Bubblegum Crash and AD Police Files) and some TV series. I can't speak to the quality of all of those though.

Best promo I found for this one was this one for the modern bluray release.

Ruin Explorers
A four-episode fantasy OVA that is obviously trying to be Slayers (itself a series I recommend but I wasn't sure if it counted as "obscure") but still has enough charm to hold its own.. and one of the characters is a dog who I swear is Muttley from Wacky Races.

Old VHS promo

Hikaru no Go
So this one has a fun story behind why it exists: the creators of the original manga (one of whom was actually a pro Go player) noticed that manga and anime would get kids to want to play stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh or Beyblade... why not do the same thing for a traditional board game?

The result is one of the best shonen series ever, and one barely anyone talks about. Though some aspects of its concept are clearly inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh (kid gets into a game after awakening a spirit), the direction is very different, telling more of a slice of life character growth story.

My one regret is this is one of those cases where modern HD versions tend to have shit subtitles. Nyaa still hosts a torrent of the old fansub by Elite-Fansubs, which is what I recommend if you can live with the visuals being not-HD.

(Couldn't find a promo for this one).

another way to find classics
Back in the day there were all sorts of ads and promos on VHS and DVD, in fact I have a volume of Devil Hunter Yohko that came with an "ADV catalogue" that's almost nothing but trailers, and sometimes I watch that just to remind myself of when anime used to be good.

You can still find a lot of them on Youtube just by searching things like "AD Vision promo" or "US Manga Corps promo" or the like, and in the day this was the primary way we learned about anime.

I used to be a huge weeb and trying to come up with items for this list actually sparked nostalgia, so I may come back with more later.

 

[Town Drunk]

You may have seen memes, but Squid Girl is probably a forgotten anime. I don't really like slice of life much, but that show was so silly, and yet had a lot of heart sometimes.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

Haibane Renmei
NieA_7
Dennou Coil

 

[米津玄師]

I should look into it, and there’s no translation? Dang, I’ll see what I can find in mangadex. Hopefully I can read it in Spanish if there’s a translation for that there.

I think a Spanish friend of mine was reading Dies Irae last I checked on him, but I don't know if he was reading a Spanish translation or the English one. Anyway, Dies Irae is available on Steam and has an official (English) translation. For the rest of Takashi Masada's (main writer of that game) works in that universe, they're unfortunately all untranslated, so you're either going to have to learn moonrunes or use translation software. That said, I can 100% guarantee that they're worth the extra effort. It's not every day where you read about people literally achieving godhood through sheer spite.

 

[normalfaggit]

Just go watch Kyou Kara Ore Wa. It's comfy delinquent comedy kino.

 

[TenMilesWide]

I was enjoying Iris Zero before it went on indefinite hiatus. Basic premise was like MHA meets Code Geass, everybody in this society has eye-based superpowers and they're judged harshly by that metric, with unpowered people at the bottom of the totem pole. The main character has no eye powers, and so must use his quick wit and powers of observation to overcome persecution and ingratiate himself to his highschool classmates.

 

[Arthur_Schopenhauer]

I was told about MPD Psycho not long ago, which is about a detective with multiple personality disorder. It's got fucked up gore from what little I've seen. If you've seen anything about a serial killer using women's brains as flowerpots, that's from this manga.

Yeah essentially: it's retarded in the best way possible and manages to be way better than death note

Spoiler: For those who don't have a bile fascination for how bad it gets

the MC was subjected to experiments as a kid by an evil organisation called "gakuso" that wants to turn japan into a puppet of the united states and fill it with ubersmench (dont worry it will make less sense as it goes on) so they interchange its personality with an artificial one created by the organisation.

(NOTE: in this series personalities are like software, they can be copied, deleted, and you can turn a retard in a wheelchair to a gigachad with 200IQ by implanting the right personality, also with the right personality you can develop psychic powers)

The MC loses his girlfriend and that awakens two artificial personalities implanted by gakuso, these two are Amamiya (aka the autist with 4500IQ) and Shinji (aka the psycho), the two personalities need each other in order to continue existing and If they fuse inside the right body they will create a messiah called lucy moonstone. The MC fights against serial killers created by gakuso alongside his friends: the dumb guy, the "loli" (is a 30yo midget who sometimes cosplays as a loli) and the girl with big tits and no personality: Isono Machi.
Also the MC dies but the autist personality keeps being copy-pasted to a lot of unimportant characters and the plot centers on his friends and tetora trying to recover it. (i will explain who tetora is later on)

Who is lucy moonstone??? Well that is one of the biggest mysteries of the series, Lucy moonstone was a tranny-rockstar-suicide cult leader who killed more than a million people with his psychic powers and incredible charisma, gakuso wants to revive him by creating an artificial personality that by being implanted in the right body can give the user the psychic powers of lucy moonstone.
You are following me, right????
Well apparently the messiah who needs to be implanted with artificial personalities is a gene modified kid called tetora who was implanted as a baby with the artificial personality of shinji (the psycho) and has psychic powers. The issue is that if he is not implanted with the Amamiya personality he will die. Also tetora is implanted with the personality of Machi's sister after surviving a terrorist attack that involves crashing an airliner with an aircraft carrier, that makes tetora mellow his edgy psycho ways a little.

Then it's revealed that lucy moonstone never had psychic powers and that all the events of the series were orchestrated by a demon inside Isono Machi that has been jumping from one body to another for 2000 years at minimum (this is only mentioned after 130 chapters of clusterfuck confusing plot) that wants to give birth to the antichrist and needs the two personalities implanted inside of her in order to get pregnant. Tetora the kid sacrifices himself by entering Machi's body and commiting suicide in order to destroy the demon.

The series is told in the most confusing way possible not because the plot is complicated (it's just dumb). For example, many characters are killed just to reveal that they never died because they implanted their personality in other body and said personality has been "dormant" for 30 chapters just to "wake up" in the right moment reveal everything is part of a gorillion iq points keikaku plan that makes no sense unless you are retarded and kill the bad guy with a gorefest execution that will make cartel members blush.

So: 4/10 it has good gothic art, lots of high quality guro and a lot of shitpost-worthy moments in the last chapters like when a old fat marine biologist is raped by a genemodded octopus or when tetora kills a bunch of old fat rockabilly mercs. Read it if you want, it has been finally translated and its on mangadex so enjoy if you want to feel like a 15 year old again.
Also tetora the kid kills a politician with an olympic baseball psp throwing technique.

 

[Neurotypical Mantis]

 

[zzzten]

Don't have time to watch anime
Here's a list of manga I keep an eye on. Not sure if they are obscure

Manga
- Bungo (baseball manga)
- Catenaccio (soccer manga)
- Rebuild World (post civilization setting | people scavenge for highly advanced ancient tech | protagonist is an orphan that is able to interact with an old-world AGI)
- Versus (Isekai where several different civilizations facing various calamities get transported and merged into one world) <--- author of onepunchman Artist of eyeshield21
-S.T.A.R Strike it rich (kengan asura except all women. same author/artist)

Manwha
-Surviving the game as a Barbarian (The only modern manhwa i've read that isn't utter garbage)
-Veritas (Martial arts/super powers)
-Change Guy (Martial arts)

two anime I like:
Kaiji (Gambling anime/Psychological Drama) (Also has a manga)
One outs (Gambling anime/baseball) (Also has a manga)