Better Than It Sounds/Anime and Manga D-G

Please sort new titles alphabetically to avoid double-entries.

Dai-Guard: A bunch of low wage office workers save the world and are liable for the damages.
Dai no Dai Bouken: Dragon Quest: The Anime.
Dance in the Vampire Bund: A young man with a glandular problem has to keep a thirteen-year-old royal Tsundere mass murderer safe when she founds a nation for her extended family (of mass murderers). Her three cousins really want to love her.
Dancougar: An effeminate man quits his job and travels the world hunting endangered species.
Darker than Black: Chinese Electric Batman.
- Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini: The sequel, in which a ninja who has suddenly become a jerk teams up with a little girl to kill a comatose woman who is probably his ex-girlfriend.
Darling: Mangaka marries model, works nonstop for a month.
The Daughter of Twenty Faces: What if Lupin III ~~kidnapped~~ adopted an eleven-year-old rich girl?
Dead Leaves: This Is Your Brain On Drugs.
Deadman Wonderland: A young boy bleeds profusely in a never-ending quest for candy.
Death Note: Honors student plots to conquer the world by writing names in a book, uses sex appeal when that fails.
- Alternatively: A small but focused police effort is launched to stop a straight A-student from writing in his diary. Eventually the entire world suffers for it.
Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z: Transvestite Satan gets less screen time than in the American series, and this is a bad thing.
Dennou Coil: Kids play while wearing glasses. This often causes major problems across the city and has the potential to be life-threatening.
Dengeki Daisy: Schoolgirl regularly texts a stranger about her personal life. It turns out to be the school janitor.
Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko: Boy moves in with his lustful aunt and discovers that she helped a mattress father a child.
- Alternatively, Hikikomori silvery-blue haired girl with a Dark and Troubled Past thinks she is E.T..
Detective Conan: Kid Detective solves murders after barely escaping his own with a Fountain of Youth.
- Alternatively: Shrunken detective hides by living with his unsuspecting girlfriend and her deadbeat father. Awkwardness ensues.
Devil May Cry the Animated Series: A badass slacker and his friends must protect a little girl from Eldritch Abominations
D Gray Man: A boy repeatedly rips his arm off to fight a clown.
- Alternatively: Orphan boy raised in a circus by a clown rips off his arm (which is also a clown) to fight a Monster Clown, his crazy family who seem rather attached to each other and the boy, and their mechanical demons. Boy is helped by a girl who uses boots, her overprotective brother, a Badass Long Hair Japanese swordsman, and a Badass Bookworm with spiky red hair and a hammer that changes size in a world where Ho Yay abounds. It's terrifying.
Digimon Adventure: Children are sucked into the Internet and are assisted by advanced artificial intelligences while coming out of various states of denial.
- Digimon Adventure 02: A child genius takes online role-playing way too seriously. Five kids decide to troll him by destroying everything he's built online. They later become friends and team up to fight Anime Tommy Wiseau.
- Digimon Tamers: A kid tries his hand at God Mode Sue-ing and instead gets an un-house-trained dinosaur that hates rats.
- Digimon Frontier: Five kids are called upon to break up an abusive love triangle.
- Digimon Savers: Hot Blood. And plenty of it.
- Digimon Xros Wars: Three kids find a dinosaur musician and engage in a really big game of Risk.
  - Digimon in general: An ingeniously-disguised Merchandise Show designed to sell virtual pet toys which haven't been popular or even existed for over a decade.
Dinosaur King: Dinosaurs are Mons.
Dirty Pair: Two young women fight crime In SPACE!. Devastation occurs, but—and this is the important thing—it is never their fault.
DNA²: Teenager who is allergic to girls (really a lot), is accidentally turned into The Casanova by a time traveler who was sent to stop this. And he hates it.
D.N.Angel: Kleptomaniac teenager gets split personality and can't decide between twin love interests while alternatively fighting/befriending a classmate who also has a split personality.
Dog Days: An ordinary middle-school student gets dragged against his will into participating in a reality show that takes place on another planet.
DOGS Bullets and Carnage: A genetically modified albino, his one-eyed, red-headed cigarette-loving partner, a scarred woman with a katana and a retired assassin...try to figure out what the plot is about.
Doraemon: A time-traveling cat with no ears tries to prevent a loser kid from growing up to be an even bigger loser.
Dororo: A deformed swordsman quests to get his body parts back from his father's former business partners, teaming up with a kleptomaniac juvenile delinquent along the way.
.hack//SIGN: A kid gets trapped in a video game. His friends spend a lot of time standing around discussing the problem.
- Legend of the Twilight Bracelet: A boy falls in love with a very young mother and helps her find her kid, who has spent months in the video game.
Dragonaut the Resonance: Dragons try to blow up an asteroid. There are lots of boobs.
Dragon Ball: A young boy with severe brain damage repeatedly risks his life at the behest of a manipulative teenage girl.
- Or: A brain-damaged child fights a midget to satisfy his female companion’s lust for balls.
- Or: An alien wipes out an entire army because they took his dead grandfather's ball.
- Dragon Ball Z: Celestial bodies (both literal and figurative) murdered repeatedly, humans quickly rendered unimportant.
- Or: A blonde ape beats up a naked alien on a dead planet after the blonde ape's recently deceased rival killed the Power Rangers.
  - Dead Zone: Light blue midget elf kidnaps hero's son, becomes immortal and plots to kill God.
  - The World's Strongest: Mad Scientist's Brain In a Jar attempts to take over hero's body
  - The Tree of Might: Group of heroes blow up an energy-sucking tree
  - Lord Slug: Old green man makes a wish to become young green man.
  - Cooler's Revenge: Camp tyrant's brother seeks revenge.
  - The Return of Cooler: Said brother merges with Planet Eater and devours the planet of green men.
  - Super Android 13: Three blond heroes fight three killer robots.
  - Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan: Screaming psychopath beat up group of heroes because the hero wouldn't stop crying when they were babies.
  - Bojack Unbound: A Space Pirate that was trapped in a planet attempts to take over the world.
  - Broly - Second Coming: Screaming psychopath returns to beat up group of heroes again.
  - Bio-Broly: Screaming psychopath is cloned and fails to beat up group of heroes.
  - Fusion Reborn: An Eldritch Abomination causes dead villains and Adolf Hitler to escape from Hell; Two dead heroes and their sons merge together to stop them.
  - Wrath of the Dragon: Hero defeats a Kaiju with a Shoryuken
  - The History of Trunks: Teen goes back in time to prevent group of heroes from getting killed by killer robots.
  - Bardock - The Father of Goku: Hero's dad foresees his planet and people getting blown up by a camp tyrant.
- Dragon Ball GT: The aforementioned blonde ape gets turned into a nine-year-old kid and has ball-hunting adventures with his own granddaughter, a purple-haired CEO, and a robot. He later turns into a pink ape and fights dragons that don't really look like dragons.
- Dragon Ball Kai: The filler-free version about a group of heroes fighting intergalactic evil while getting killed, but they get better.
Dragon Crisis: Boy gets forcibly dragged by his cousin, in order to help gets this box from the Mafia, which turns out to have a dragon in it. Said dragon falls in love with him.
Duel Masters: An epic saga of card games, wisecracks, and hair.
Durarara!!: A Celt loses her head, a kid decides to become Anonymous and another guy decides to play them both for fools.
- Or Yandere: The Anime.
- Or A bunch of people in Tokyo have too much time on their hands.
Eden of the East: Amnesiac with shitload of money tries to figure out exactly who was phone. Johnnies ensue.
El Cazador de la Bruja: A(n) (Faux?) Action Girl and a Canadian Magical Girl with a Mysterious Past drive around South of the Border and in what is supposedly Latin Land. Tacos ensue.
Elfen Lied: Girl kills lots and lots of people with her mind. You sympathize.
The Enigma of Amigara Fault: People are called to join their perfect match, and do so.
Ergo Proxy: God, Pinocchio, and that chick from Evanescence are chased across country by an angry ex-girlfriend. Mind Screw and horror ensue.
Eureka Seven: Disaffected hipsters take on the military by surfing.
- Or: Teenage boy falls in love with a piece of coral.
- Or: Teenage boy falls in love with fourteen-year-old mother of three, runs away to live with terrorists who kill his adoptive parents.
- Or: Girl burns down house. Boy falls in Love At First Sight. Planet almost turns into a black hole.
- Eureka Seven: Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers: In an Alternate Universe, a young boy pilots a giant robot to save his girlfriend.
Eve no Jikan: A boy goes to a cafe where people and robots socialize without knowing which is which.
Excel Saga: A hyperactive young woman and her sickly partner try to Take Over the World in various genres.
Eyeshield 21: A coward adopts a secret identity, acquires a horrible nickname, gets repeatedly shot at and visits Las Vegas because his upperclassman thinks they can win the Japanese high school Super Bowl with three guys and a dog.
Fairy Tail: One Piece with wizards.
- Or: An eighteen year-old female wizard wants to join a group of wizards who are known for causing large-scale property damage. She succeeds, only to find out that most of the guild are varying shades of crazy
- Or: Members of a mage guild known for causing large scale property damage save parts of the world several times. Strong themes of Nakama are common. Dragons and an evil wizard are referenced often, but almost never seen.
FAKE: (Practically) Everyone Is Gay and a police officer.
Fang of the Sun Dougram: A rich delinquent joins a Latin Americanesque people's liberation army.
Fate Stay Night: A male Ordinary High School Student in love with King Arthur learns about mythology.
- - Alternatively, a male Ordinary High School Student makes a conclusion on one of the consequences of murder.
- Unlimited Blade Works: Superhero from the future attempts to kill self, thwarted by self. Ancient king/God learns the value of fake weaponry.
- Heaven's Feel: Nice girl goes insane, eats a town despite Medusa's best efforts. Ordinary High School Student decides ethics suck and beats up a priest.
  - Alternatively, a guy tries to personally give his girlfriend an abortion. The local priest highly disapproves.
- Fate/Zero: Kings argue about philosophy when not trying to kill each other.
Fist of the North Star: A guy who looks like Bruce Lee and dresses like Mad Max walks the earth. Anyone who crosses his path is already dead.
Five Centimeters Per Second: A lonely man avoids calling his girlfriend.
- Or: cock blocked by a train
FLCL: A young boy has disagreements with his new maid.
- Or: Girl puts hole in boy's head with a pull-start bass guitar. Robots ensue.
- Or: City of deeply-messed up people disturbed by space aliens. Giant iron activated by mechanical dog.
- Or: Nobody has any clue what the title means.
- Or: All the weird of Neon Genesis Evangelion, packed into a much shorter time.
- Or: Boy with a lumpy head is molested by his housemaid and a homeless person. Robots ensue.
- Or: A young boy's coming of age story where giant robots come out of his head.
- A young boy growing up in a small town where nothing interesting happens learns how to play baseball, ride a motorcycle, and use a guitar. He finds that women are hard to understand, is embarrassed by sudden changes in his body, realizes that adults aren't any more mature than kids, and defies authority figures in order to make his own choices.
Floral Magician Mary Bell: Flower-themed knock-off of Minky Momo arrives in town. Friendship ensues.
Flunk Punk Rumble: The class rep continually bugs a delinquent until he does what she wants.
Franken Fran: A cute female Frankenstein's Monster makes like Black Jack. Scarring imagery ensues.
Free Collars Kingdom: Two groups of cats fight over ownership of a building.
Freezing: Girls fight each other and Eldritch Abominations and have younger boys as partner who acts as support. Also the main character Hates To Be Touched
Fruits Basket: A schoolgirl avoids living in a tent by moving in with an incestuous family with intimacy issues involving animals. Not a porno.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Military specialist searches for a magic rock recipe to get his brother out of a can. In one version of the story, the rock is their father, in the other version the rock is us.
- Or: Children see a Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know, run around country looking for another one.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: The long-awaited, highly anticipated manga-based edition of the franchise. The Big Bad just wants to be pretty.
- Or a bishonen sets out to return his brother to his bishonen form, but end up saving their country from another bishonen. Lots of Author Appeal, Aesops, and Moments of Awesome ensue.
- Alternatively: A short double-amputee and an everything-amputee go on a quest to find a magic rock.
Full Metal Panic!: A ruthless (and tactless) soldier guards an angry girl from terrorists. Humongous Mecha ensue.
- Or: Tsundere who happens to have massive engineering knowledge meets a bunch of crazies, falls in love with the one whom she catches stealing her underwear.
- Or: A teenaged special forces soldier stalks a civilian schoolgirl. Hilarity Ensues.
Full Moon o Sagashite: An Ill Girl's last wish is to become a great singer to get noticed by the boy she loves.
- In the manga: Ill Girl wants to become well known singer before dying to reunite with her dead boyfriend, but gets better.
Fushigi Yuugi: A girl has to figure out how to get possessed by a bird while surrounded by pretty men.
Futaba Kun Change (Manga): A boy gets in touch with his feminine side by... getting in touch with himself.
Futari wa Pretty Cure: Magical Girls beat the crap out of David Bowie and company while remaining "just good friends".
- Futari Wa Pretty Cure Max Heart: Magical Girls cure amnesia by hunting down cute creatures.
- Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star: Expies liberate fountains from a guy with a pinecone on his head.
- Yes! Pretty Cure 5: At the request of an extra-dimensional schoolteacher, a talentless girl with ADHD grabs schoolmates at random to oppose a corrupt company.
- Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GOGO!: Evil museum threatens McGuffinland, is opposed by flying mailman.
- Fresh Pretty Cure: Oddly-named girl learns to dance for the sake of her idols.
  - Or: Citizens from Logan's Run attempt to find a giant hard drive by filling a not-quite-as-giant cylinder with piss.
- Heartcatch Pretty Cure: Two girls, one an Innocent Flower Girl and the other a not-so-innocent Genki Girl who forces the first one to like fashion, take on an evil desert. Fairies poop seeds to help them out.
- Suite Pretty Cure: The only people who can prevent an invasion by musicians are two Vitriolic Best Buds and a singing cat.
- Smile Precure: A storybook-loving Genki Girl recruits four other girls to help save a fairy tail world from fairy tail-related foes.
- Pretty Cure All Stars DX: The "Just Friends", the expies, the talentless girl and her friends, and the dancers team up to fight a monster.
- Pretty Cure All Stars DX 2: The previous four team up with the Innocent Flower Girl and not-so-innocent Genki Girl to fight monsters in an amusement park.
- Pretty Cure All Stars DX 3: The previous five (plus a Wholesome Crossdresser Student Council President and a former Broken Bird) team up with the Vitriolic Best Buds to fight all of their previous foes. They get Brought Down to Normal for all of five minutes
- Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage: New girl in town becomes heroine for a day, befriends jelly monster.
Gad Guard: The chase is on to track down a boy and his Humongous Mecha-in-a-box.
Gakuen Alice: X-Men with Japanese elementary school kids.
Galaxy Angel: Five female archaeologists suck at their jobs.
- Galaxy Angel (manga): Five female soldiers and their commander oppose a prince who refuses to die when he's supposed to. Only one or two of them actually get any screen-time.
Gankutsuou: A futuristic aristocrat tries to redeem his mom's old boyfriend.
- Or: The Count of Monte Cristo In Space!
Gantz: Dead people fight aliens at the command of an alien orb that likes to make crude jokes. Horrible bloodshed and gratuitous nudity are in heavy supply. Their guns make people explode.
Gao Gai Gar: Robot powered by courage fights robots powered by stress. Jupiter helps both sides.
- Gao Gai Gar FINAL: Robot powered by courage flies into space to fight a doctor who thinks he's God.
Ga-Rei (Manga): A girl's best friend can't decide whether or not to stay dead.
- Ga-Rei Zero: The prequel, with additional Les Yay.
Gasaraki: Right Wing Extremists force boy to summon demons from the Moon with Noh dancing. Grain exports are serious business.
Gate Keepers: In 1960s Japan, teenagers pull superpowers out of their holes.
- Gate Keepers 21: In 1990s Japan, different teenagers pull superpowers out of more holes.
Genkaku Picasso: An aspiring artist is forced by his dead not-girlfriend to invade people's minds with his sketchbook and play psychologist.
Genshiken: A bunch of nerds sit around in a room writing pornography and talking about formulaic harem anime.
Geobreeders: Hapless salary-man unwittingly signs on with a company run by five Ax Crazy women. Their job: blowing up cats.
GetBackers: Two young men with superpowers, occasionally aided by their other super-powered friends, return stolen goods for a price.
Getsumen to Heiki Mina: Bunny girls beat up alien sports fans with vegetables.
Getter Robo: Three Hot-Blooded pilots control the first Combining Mecha to fight dinosaurs, sometimes along side an Engrish-speaking cowboy. The fat guy dies at the end.
- Getter Robo G: A new fat guy joins the other two and pilots a new mecha to fight demons. He doesn't die.
- Getter Robo Go: A new team pilots a new version of the robot that runs on plasma energy. Everyone hates it.
- Getter Robo Armageddon: In a Crapsack World, a new team pairs up with the old team using a kickass version of the robot while fighting eldritch abominations. Then, they go and blow up Jupiter.
- Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo: The fat guy dies in the beginning so that the team from the hated series becomes cooler. Even the cowboy is cooler. And they still fight dinosaurs.
Ghost Hound: Three middle-school students are drawn into the raging battle between psychology and parapsychology. Freud ensues!
Ghost Hunt: She's a spooky story-loving high school girl! He's a paranormal investigator! Together, they ~~fight crime~~ go hunting for spirits!
Ghost in The Shell: A lawbreaking police Canon Sue uses work to surround herself with coworkers that remind her of opposite attributes of her own personality, fight her customers and have sex with a mass murderer and conceive and raise too many children with said mass murderer.
- Innocence: Depressed cop and his partner talk about philosophy with everyone they meet. There is also a plot involving dolls.
- Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex: Armed children help the police stop crime and contemplate the meaning of their existence.
- 2nd Gig: Ugly, virginal social engineer tries to overthrow Japan. Policewoman meets boyfriend.
- Solid State Society: Heavily armed police special force fights a group of child-abducting senior citizens.
Ginban Kaleidoscope: An ill-tempered figure skater temporarily becomes purgatory.
Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin: Talking stray dogs try to save town from rogue bears.
Gintama: In a world with an alternate history, a group of people who by all means should be fighting for justice instead take on odd jobs to pay their rent.
- Or: Sporadically employed veteran with unhealthy eating habits makes his way in post-war Bakumatsu-era Japan. With aliens.
Girl Friends: Four schoolgirls discuss nail polish and question their sexuality.
Girls Bravo: A gynophobic loser accidentally travels to Lady Land and is followed back home by some of the locals.
Girls Saurus: An Ordinary High School Student takes up boxing to get over his fear of women. Hilarity Ensues.
Glass Maiden aka Crystal Blaze: A loser turned private eye saves a naked amnesiac glass ~~sculpture~~ sculptor, only her old bosses want her back.
Glass Mask: Two girls take hardcore acting lessons from a heavily-scarred old woman.
Gokusen: A math teacher convinces her class she's a fan of yakuza films.
Golden Boy: An idiot savant with a toilet fetish travels Japan taking odd jobs, alternately irritating and entrancing nearly every woman he meets.
Golgo 13: The hero is a man who can and will kill anyone, with one bullet, from anywhere, for the price of a mere one million dollars.
GoLion: Survivors of a nuclear war battle an evil empire with five mechanical beasts that form a Super Robot.
Gon: Tiny T-Rex walks the Earth. Kicks a lot of ass.
Good Morning Call!: A boy and girl share an apartment. Hilarity Ensues as they try to keep it a secret.
Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun: Badass Normal has a serious girl problem. Obviously, this means he should get MORE girls forced onto him by his friends and family.
Gosick: Sherlock Holmes is a lonely little blonde girl, and Watson is an exchange student. They solve crimes.
Grave of the Fireflies: In a horrible world, two wonderful children experience horrible horrors before dying horribly. The critics go wild.
Gravitation: Wannabe singer falls in love with a famous author who calls his lyrics crappy.
Great Teacher Onizuka: A Nigh Invulnerable twenty-two-year-old punk gets a seemingly normal job. He proceeds to wow just about everyone, including the audience.
Grenadier: Ms. Fanservice with a Bottomless Cleavage wanders around, shooting people and persuading them that guns are bad (in that order). The primary antagonist is a clown who floats around killing people with an air-gun.
Guilty Crown: Girl with BroCon wants to mate with brother; said girl causes the Apocalypse.
Gunbuster: High school girls learn to pilot a Humongous Mecha, time dilation causes angst, and breasts bounce for the first time ever in anime.
Gungrave the Anime: White-haired young daughter of a deceased mafia boss inherits a 6+ foot tall undead bodyguard armed with big freaking guns who's on a quest for revenge.
- Once Upon a Time in America anime is interrupted by House of the Dead anime.
Gunslinger Girl: The day-to-day activities of Italian social services.
- Alternatively, Italy makes amnesiac little girls fight terrorism. Everybody sits and wonders ethics of doing so.
Gun X Sword: An angry man-child and his hangers-on foil another man-child's plan to make friends. There are giant robots, too.
- Or: Angry man with robot prevents world from becoming a better place by defeating a very, very happy man.
- Or: Brokenhearted Badass takes road-trip with bossy teenybopper and learns to love again. Saving the world considered nice side-effect to premeditated murder.
Gyo: Attack of the fart-powered walking fish.