Better Than It Sounds/Anime and Manga A-C

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Japanese cartoons are weird, man! Though I may be on to something with that blue hair. —Strong Bad, Strong Bad Email #57, "japanese cartoon"

The Japanese know a thing or two about making odd-sounding ideas work. After all, they make real odd ideas work all the time.

Please sort new titles alphabetically by the English release title into the appropriate sub-pages to avoid duplicate entries.

#

• 07-Ghost: An amnesiac royal gets mixed up with dead bishie bishops after bad dreams make him flee a military academy and his best friend turns into a developmentally delayed mascot character.
• 20th Century Boys: For some people, there is no life after middle school. Apocalypse ensues.
• 3x3 Eyes: Immortal dies repeatedly in increasingly bloody, hilarious ways.
• 666 Satan (manga) : A kid with odd eyes and hair wants to Take Over the World armed only with a boomerang and Satan.

A

• +Anima (manga): A bat-girl, crow-boy, feminine fish-boy, and a 17-year-old bear-person with an eye-patch travel through two fictional countries. Food is eaten, people are mauled, and friends are made.
  • Alternative: Some people are part-animal, and others aren't, and many of the ones who aren't part-animal want to either kill or become ones who are, and most of the ones who are part-animal don't want to be.
• A Letter to Momo: A 13 year old girl moves home after her dad dies. She is haunted by three Yokai whose sole purpose is to spy on her and steal her stuff.
• Afro Samurai: Afro sportin' samurai and wise-crackin' motormouth hunt for the "No. 1 Headband" in Schizo-Tech Black Feudal Japan so the former can become unquestionable biggest Badass in the world.
  • Afro Samurai:Resurrection: Most hated samurai in Black Japan loses headband to old foe and must fight him with the second-best headband for sake of zombie father.
• Afterschool Charisma: Clone High meets Cyteen in Japan.
• After School Nightmare: Several teenagers must try to solve their crippling psychological problems by repeatedly taking naps.
• Ah! My Goddess: Good-natured college kid wishes that he could find a girl, finds God instead.
• Ai Kora: A teenage pervert moves in with a twenty-something drunk, a thrifty, hot-headed red-head, a bespectacled closet fangirl, and a sarcastic singing Ninja, who proceed to teach him (the hard way) that women are more than the sum of their parts.
• Ai Yori Aoshi: College boy moves in with his fiancee. Their neighbors are weird.
• AIR: Gluttonous hobo and cursed loner fall in love. GOAL-ness ensues.
• Air Gear: Rollerblading is Serious Business, to the point where it defies physics. Half the rollerbladers seen are various shades of crazy.
• Akagi: A fourteen-year-old who looks like an adult plays games with gangsters on his days off. He wins. They're scarred for life.
• Akahori Gedou Hour Lovege: Two female pedophiles commit atrocities on a regular basis in the name of "Justice."
• Akikan: The government tries to decide what material to make its drink cans out of.
• Akira (film): A teenage biker becomes a powerful psychic. This is followed by multiple explosions.
  • Two boys are separated by the government and spend the rest of the movie searching for each other and crying out the other's name until one gets cancer and is killed by canned Jesus.
  • Akira (manga): An angry teenager takes advantage of a little boy, who eventually expresses his displeasure.
• Akumetsu: Masked vigilante rains punishment down on corrupt government officials and business executives by repeatedly exploding his own head.
• Amagami: Choose Your Own Adventure in a Dating Sim: The Anime.
• Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan: A schoolgirl gets a job at a teahouse to be close to the shop owner. WAFF and Squee ensue.
• Angel Beats!: A high-school student wakes up, joins an armed revolution against God, and goes to school. In that order.
  • In the first episode, he dies 102 times. Then he shoots a defenseless girl so his friends can steal food.
  • Haruhi hates the afterlife and dragoons people at her school into doing something about it.
• Angelic Layer: An abandoned girl has given up hope of meeting her mother and passes the time by playing with dolls.
• Animal X (manga): Boy-who-can-turn-into-a-T-rex meets boy-who-can-get-pregnant, ancient conspiracies and corrupt scientists ensue. Much, much more like The Left Hand of Darkness than your average Fetish Fuel Mister Seahorse fic.
• Animal Yokochou: A frequently neglected five-year-old girl has fourth wall-breaking adventures with her neighbors from another dimension.
• Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day: A lazy truant high school boy is unpopular because he's harassed by a ditzy ghost. Angst falls, everyone cries.
• Ano Natsu de Matteru: Dodecahedron of unrequited love interrupted by Intimate Healing from a hot Human Alien.
• Another: Ordinary High School Student meets girl. People die.
• Aoi Hana: Cool upperclassman basketball player picks up a rebound but fails to score.
• Apollos Song: A delinquent mental patient sees god, then goes through a series of bad relationships.
• Aquarian Age the Movie: A ten year old boy convinces four Magical Girls to kill him. They fail.
• Arakawa Under the Bridge: Insane homeless woman rescues drowning man, decides that henceforth, he will be her lover.
• Arashi no Yoru ni: A wolf and goat are persecuted because of their romantic love... er, friendship... wait, relationship. Ho Yay and Unresolved Sexual Tension masquerading as Carnivore Confusion ensue.
• Area 88 Japanese airline pilot is forced to kill people for:
  • cold hard cash, or
  • to prevent a woman-child losing all interest in him and marrying his enemy. In either case, warplanes appear onscreen and the main conflict is between 1) a boy and his conscience and 2) his obsession with a distant woman-child and someone else's war. Boy and conscience loses badly to said war and obsession with said long distance non-relationship. The show ends before we see the unhealthy marriage that results.
• Aria: Sexist hiring practices mean that a girl's only chance to do what she loves is to enter the tourist industry on Mars.
  • Alternatively: Gondolas on Mars. Scenery Porn ensues.
• Armitage III: Two cops investigate the death of a Country singer. On Mars.
• Astro Boy: Scientist makes his dead son the best robot in the world.
• Asura Cryin: A boy receives a suitcase that contains a Humongous Mecha that is powered by his Cute Ghost Girl.
• Axis Powers Hetalia: Flamboyant gourmand gains powerful friends and proves himself useless.
  • Alternately: History in manga form.
    • Or: History, the Abridged Series.
  • Alternately: Walking ethnic stereotypes and their relations with one another play out the course of human history from the Ancient Roman Empire to World War II to present time. With extra gay.
• Azumanga Daioh: No real plot, just Japanese schoolgirls hanging out.
  • Or: Rich 10 year old genius and her friends go through their average lives.

B

• B Gata H Kei: Virgin tries to get laid. She's not very good at it.
• B't X: A guy takes a break from protecting Athena to fly around in a desert on a mechanical pony. Lots of people disapprove.
• Baccano!!: A number of people aboard a train find they have conflicting interests. An old man looks for friends he shared a drink with a long time ago.
  • Alternately: A genius little girl and a man try to solve a mystery about a train.
    • Or in joke form: A gang, a cult, and the Chicago Mafia walk onto a train one day...
• Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu: The lowest tier class in high-school battles other classes using summoned beings whose power is determined by test grades in order to get better supplies.
  • Alternately: Kids use the powers of studying to overcome bullies.
• Bakemonogatari: Japanese teenagers and their homeless friend fight monsters TALK. A LOT.
  • Or: Teenage girl falls in love with an enigmatic vampire after he saves her life.
  • Alternatively: Sayonara, Araragi-kun.
• Bakuman｡: An artist and his girlfriend avoid talking to each other.
  • Or, a manga about two kids drawing manga.
• Bamboo Blade: Kendo instructor decides to settle a year-old bet by fielding an all-girl squad.
• Bartender: He tends a bar.
  • Alternately: Alcohol solves everything.
• Basilisk: Romeo and Juliet... with ninja!
• Basquash: God created basketball.
• Batman: Gotham Night: Anime adaptation of a comic hero, made 60 years after the hero's debut.
• Battle Athletes: Girls train and compete for extreme Olympics, in Space.
• Beauty Pop: Teenage hairstylists compete with one another.
• Beck: A shy guy joins a band.
• Beelzebub (manga): A juvenile delinquent becomes the unwilling father of an infant demon prince and teaches him how to be a real man. Hilarity Ensues.
• Ben-To: Students having all out wars for half-priced lunchboxes.
• Berserk: A big guy with an unfortunate tattoo tries to get therapy for the girlfriend who hates him after his pretty-haired ex-best friend sells out the world for a makeover and a spiffy new Batman outfit.
• Best Student Council: A girl whose best friend is a puppet dabbles in school politics.
• Beyblade: An evil organization attempts to take over the world using spinning tops. It's Serious Business.
  • Metal Fight Beyblade: A Spin-Off with the exact same plot.
• Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian: A veteran and a little girl search for overdue library books.
• The Big O: What if Bruce Wayne had a giant robot? Has surprisingly little to do with orgasms.
  • Or: A bunch of amnesiacs, one of whom thinks he's Batman, run around destroying a city with giant robots. Eventually revealed to be inconsequential.
  • Or: A man who looks like Bruce Wayne, who's actually a tomato, uses a Humongous Mecha named after an orgasm to fight other giant robots who aren't as suggestively named.
• Binbou Shimai Monogatari: Two underage sisters live together in a run-down apartment and have to get by on their own. They love each other a lot.
• Birdy the Mighty: A policewoman with Bizarre Alien Biology from space meets Ordinary High School Student and does Fusion Dance with him. They Fight Crime.
• Black Butler: An effeminate boy sells his soul for a highly skilled butler.
  • Black Butler II: Another effeminate boy sells his soul for five highly skilled servants, including one highly skilled butler who wears glasses and is exponentially more emotionless than the last one. Conflict ensues partially because the second boy's soul is not as orgasmically delicious as the first one's.
  • See also: The description for Count Cain several pages back.
  • Or: Hellsing for girls. Substitute vampires for demons, cool for cool, Les Yay for Ho Yay, add more shota implications, more {{Fanservice, more plot, and you're set
  • Or: A boy and his butler live an adventurous life in England. Boy has completely useless servants. Butler is stalked by a gay death god. They fight crime.
• Black Cat: A Technical Pacifist tries to stay out of a war between two groups of Well Intentioned Extremists. The Anime adds a subplot where he talks of the less sympathetic Extremist group's leader entirely in death threats for half the series.
  • Alternatively: He's a former assassin with Improbable Aiming Skills. He's a former cop that can see into the future. She's a defused Tyke Bomb that can shape-shift. They Fight Crime.
  • Or: A young man with a sea-urchin on his head, his prepubescent rival, and his briefcase wielding best friend go to confront said young man's wannabe lover, and his army of tea-drinking mutants.
• Black Jack: A Tall, Dark and Snarky man and his Frankensteinian creation charge astronomical sums of money to cut people open.
• Black Lagoon: A salary-man quits his job to run errands for and with unstable foreigners who frequently try to kill him. He still dresses like a salary-man, though.
• |Black Rock Shooter: Two girls befriend each other in freshman year but drift apart. Meanwhile, their alternate universe counterparts try to kill each other. Les Yay references ensue.
  • For the TV series: Schoolgirl angst spawns a parallel dimension of nonstop violence. The therapist approves.
• Blade of the Immortal: A swordsman with internal parasites gets hired by a plucky orphan to kill "bad people."
• Blame!: An untalkative, millennia-old, amnesiac robot meanders around a mostly abandoned space station looking for genes.
• Bleach: Dead people fight other dead people but almost never to the death.
  • Or: Wannabe fashion designer (and possible Chessmaster and troper) shows off. Title has little to do with plot.
  • Bleach: Diamond Dust Rebellion: Secondary White-Haired Pretty Boy character angsts for 90 minutes.
  • Bleach: Fade To Black: Two siblings try to destroy the ruling class because a childhood friend can't remember their names.
  • Bleach: Hell Verse: Teen and his dead friends go to Hell to find a sister. Leads to massive trolling.
• Blood Plus: A teenage girl teams up with a cellist and a giant-revolver-wielding David Bowie to fight vampires.
  • Or: A teenaged girl has to keep her sister from getting pregnant.
  • Or: A teenage pop idol does horrible things at her manager's insistence.
  • Or: Two vampires carry out a campaign of genocide.
• Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan: A high school Lolicon must change his ways and his destiny, or else be murdered horribly. He still gets murdered horribly, however.
• Blue Comet SPT Layzner: A Five-Token Band of teenagers goes on a field trip to learn about technology, astronomy and politics.
• Blue Drop: An alien battleship captain pretends to be a Schoolgirl Lesbians and seduces a sociopath home-ed while rehearsing a School Play with her.
• Blue Exorcist: Satan's son resolves to kill his father by going to high school.
• Blue Seed: A girl prone to exposing her underwear, a snarky half-plant guy and a bunch of gun-wielding True Companions try to save humanity from Japanese mythology.
• Blue Submarine No. 6: A well intentioned extremist tries to teach the world a lesson in tolerance by drowning its entire population.
  • Alternatively: The Island of Doctor Moreau with fish-people.
• Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo: Hair-brained (and hair-nosed) hero fights personifications of premature baldness.
  • Chewbacca Defense: The Series.
• Boku no Pico: A pre-pubescent boy is precocious.
  • Pico to Chico: Two pre-pubescent boys are precocious.
  • Pico x Coco x Chico: Three pre-pubescent boys are precocious.
    • They all might be Worse Than It Sounds.
• Bokurano: Fifteen messed-up children play a fun game with Humongous Mecha. Neon Genesis Evangelion is happy and optimistic by comparison.
  • Or: Kids on summer camp decide to play a game. The adults think they should stop.
• The Borrower Arrietty (Studio Ghibli): A small-scale burglar and his family consider moving to a less dangerous neighborhood after catching their daughter giving some sugar to the boy upstairs.
• Boukun Tyrano San: A male T-Rex dies and is reincarnated 60 million years later as a high school girl; he's not happy at all.
• Brain Powerd: Giant organic monster makes organic robots that fight other organic robots so it can absorb all organic energy on Earth. An organic submarine fights this. There are lots and lots of organic parental issues.
• Bremen: An omnilingual clone of Jesus teams up with a guitarist with a mohawk, a car enthusiast bassist, and a transgendered dominatrix drummer to form a band. They beat the living shit out of those who get in their way.
  • Or: Amnesiac guy tries to find his girlfriend. Instead, he gets a rockband.
• Bubblegum Crisis: An Eccentric Millionaire, a Biker Babe, a Plucky Girl, and a Playful Hacker fight robots to 80s music.
• Bunny Drop: A man adopts his aunt.
• Burn Up Excess: Five pairs of breasts (and one guy) fight crime as a secret mercenary unit of the police.
• Burst Angel: Four pairs of breasts female bounty hunters (and a guy who cooks for them) defend the defenseless in a Crapsack World brought on by the abolition of gun control.
• Busou Renkin: Two boys go on life support and try to kill each other.

C

• Candy Boy: A pair of fraternal twin sisters really like each other. Stuff happens.
• C the Money And Soul of Possibility: Ordinary college student plays financial card games. It's more awesome than it sounds.
  • Or: Stock Market: The Anime. Definitely much better than it sounds.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: A cute little girl navigates a world of very confusing and complex love relationships, while collecting cards in her spare time.
• Castle in The Sky: Boy Meets Girl... more specifically, a girl on the run from pirates and a government agent who convinces the military to help him steal a necklace.
• Casshern Sins: A Bishonen android walks the earth... what's left of it.
• The Cat Returns: A girl rescues a cat and is rewarded by nearly being forced to marry him. She's eventually rescued by a magic lawn ornament, a talking crow, and a fat guy.
• A Certain Magical Index: In a world where magic and esper powers are the norm, an Unlucky Everydude who may or may not be the protagonist of a gal-game goes through life by punching anomalies back to normal and bemoaning his misfortune.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun: A girl with a magnetic personality abuses street thugs, her roommate, and vending machines.
• Change 123: A girl with three fathers struggles with mental illness and finds two possible boyfriends.
  • Alternatively: Boy finds and befriends girl with four personalities. Boy falls for the only one that isn't a martial artist. Other personalities are fine with this. Teen Genius tries to fuse girl's personalities with her Super-Powered Evil Side. The Law of Conservation of Detail is upheld obsessively.
• Chintsubu a.k.a. Chinko no Tsubuyaki: A hilarious Yaoi manga whose title translates to "The Mutterings of the Penises." And this is meant to be taken literally.
• Chi's Sweet Home: A kitten finds a home. That's it.
• Chobits: Boy falls in love with a girl whose artificial body and overprotective sister ensure that they can never have sex.
• Chocolate Underground: A totalitarian regime takes the Atkins diet too far.
• Chocotto Sister: Santa gives a boy a little sister for Christmas. She really loves him in return.
• Chrono Crusade: A monster uses a watch to suck away a girl's soul. He may love her. Together, They Fight Demons.
• CLAMP School Detectives: An Absurdly Powerful Student Council solves mysteries in its spare time.
  • Who wears short shorts? They wear short shorts.
• Clannad: A delinquent meets the sickly daughter of Kamina and Belldandy, and they (re)start a club with his best friend and some other girls.
  • Or: A pair of high school students meet a ghost who hands out carvings of echinoderms; they decide to help.
  • Season 2: Nothing goes right for the delinquent. Ever. Once his life is thoroughly obliterated, a junk robot in a different world makes everything better.
• Claymore: A surly woman with a giant sword wanders around a laboratory seeking revenge on a little girl.
• Code Geass: Convoluted Love Dodecahedron develops between British teenagers attending high school in Japan; the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
  • Or: Terrorist takes over the world with mind control. Pizza is involved.
  • Or: Self-Made Orphan learns about the power of sacrifice.
  • Or: High school student starts World War III to learn who killed his mother. When he learns that she isn't dead, he kills her himself.
  • Or: Teenage prodigy rebels against his family, drags the entire world into it.
  • Or: Bored, disaffected young noble is handed absolute power over others, abuses it for great justice.
• Count Cain: A boy and his butler solve murders and sometimes commit them. Sometimes there are zombies and often there is incest.
• Cowboy Bebop: Bounty hunters in space barely make enough money to eat properly. The soundtrack is popular.
  • Or: Bounty hunters fight Chinese mafia, but not in space.
  • He's an ex-chinese mafia member turned bounty hunter looking for his girlfriend and wanting to kill his former best friend, he's a hard nosed former cop with a serious chip on his shoulder, she's an attractive amnesiac con-artist with a compulsive gambling problem, she's a mad child prodigy hacker. Together They Fight Crime/ Perpetual Poverty / each other.
  • Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door: A justifiably disgruntled "dead" veteran tries to wipe out humanity by showing them butterflies.
• Cross Game: Little girl dies in the first episode. Her boyfriend goes on to court her younger sister. Oh, and there's baseball.
• Crows: High school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
  • Worst: A new generation of high school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
• Cubex Cursedx Curious: A cursed cube tries to become a human.
• Cyborg 009: Nine strangers leave their current employer.
  • Alternative: A large mufti-national arms dealer creates perfect killers, but the killers still have hearts and rebel.
  • Alternative: People are kidnapped and experimented on. One scientist part of the project rebels and starts a resistance.
• Cyborg Kuro Chan: A cat one day woke up and found himself turned into a cyborg by a mad scientist. Hilarity ensues.
  • All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: A cat one day woke up and found herself turned into a cyborg by a mad scientist. Hilarity ensues.