Anime Obscure Anime

[gatsu032]

Besides boomer anime and some forgotten ova or seasonal, the only good obscure anime that I can recommend would be Ongaku. Is a great little independent movie about some school punks that form a band.

 

[Naltic]

So a bit ago I posted a thread about Obscure Manga where I asked for recommendations and I also posted some of the ones I have read/found. Now I want to try the same thing but with Anime, here are a couple I have found.


Gosick:

This one is actually one I watched waaaaay back when I was in like 5th-6th grade, I liked it a lot and the plot is really well made. Pretty much it's a detective anime where the girl (pictured in the photo above) and the guy (also pictured in the photo) meet up at an auditorium/greenhouse where they discuss the unsolved crimes and later in the episode go the place where the crime happened and try to solve it. I don't know much other than that as It's been really long since I have seen it, but I do know that it's really good.


Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash:

Now here is one that is a hidden gem for isekai/fantasy anime. This anime is exactly what you want from an isekai without it being so boring, cliche or fan service:y. From how the fights, the teamwork and the overall story is panned out truly makes one enjoy it like no other isekai. Highly, highly recommend watching it.


Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad:

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, is, in my opinion the best band anime to ever exist. From the characters to the overall plot and music, there is nothing not to like about the anime. The only downside I can see is how slow the pace can be, but other than that I highly recommend watching it.

Well, these are all that I can bother writing about, do you guys have any obscure anime that you have found?

 

[DunkeyKong]

Not sure how obscure it is but

Kaiba

Space Dandy

 

[Deleted member 884]

As I recommended in another thread:

 

[destinyduelist]

Already recommended this in a similar thread, this one might even get merged there, but this is one of the best obscure anime out there. It's masterclass animation and storytelling with a very unique art style.
Trava, and it's on YouTube for your easy viewing pleasure:

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2025

Space Dandy

I wouldn't exactly call Space Dandy obscure at all, but it sure is underrated. It's awesome and easily in my top 5 or at least top 10 anime of all time.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Kurozuka

 

[igotpsychicpower]

Angel Cop , an anime about an economically booming Japan that is infiltrated by ((terrorists)) who want to take over the country.

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2025

Golden Boy , one of the best ecchi anime for sure

 

[Sumea]

In my Books, Gosick is not that obscure, it was super popular for the moment it was and then fell there.
I would say same, but much more sad that Space Dandy is in same boat, that hing is a master piece and it's OST is superb.

Now... I have few decades of nerdy like for anime behind me and depending on person some of these might not be very obscure at all but still recommending them. These are even in my estimation more "kinda obscure"


Kino's Journey 2003 (not you Remake/Continuation season, you are very mediocre especially in comparison)
Extremely good for opening up philosophical concepts and questions to people not so primed for them, and extremely unique setting for making these short stories of philosophical musing. The visuals and music especially underline the beauty and lack of it.


Mushi-Shi
Also a very story-of-the-episode structured show with muted atmosphere and interesting concepts for life values and philosophies underlined by slight super-natural nature to the world.


Patlabor
Especially the movie trilogy
Likely overshadowed by works like Akira, this is one great series of movies that makes even non-mecha fans appreciate the "genre" for enriching the narratives with semi-futuristic mystery solving, political strong-arming and philosophies of different characters. I cannot recommend the TV anime, because I have not seen it, and it's very different, apparently entirely disconnected from the movies. I can unrecommend the live action movie though.

 

[Naltic]

In my Books, Gosick is not that obscure, it was super popular for the moment it was and then fell there.
I would say same, but much more sad that Space Dandy is in same boat, that hing is a master piece and it's OST is superb.

Now... I have few decades of nerdy like for anime behind me and depending on person some of these might not be very obscure at all but still recommending them. These are even in my estimation more "kinda obscure"

View attachment 37795
Kino's Journey 2003 (not you Remake/Continuation season, you are very mediocre especially in comparison)
Extremely good for opening up philosophical concepts and questions to people not so primed for them, and extremely unique setting for making these short stories of philosophical musing. The visuals and music especially underline the beauty and lack of it.

View attachment 37797
Mushi-Shi
Also a very story-of-the-episode structured show with muted atmosphere and interesting concepts for life values and philosophies underlined by slight super-natural nature to the world.

View attachment 37799
Patlabor
Especially the movie trilogy
Likely overshadowed by works like Akira, this is one great series of movies that makes even non-mecha fans appreciate the "genre" for enriching the narratives with semi-futuristic mystery solving, political strong-arming and philosophies of different characters. I cannot recommend the TV anime, because I have not seen it, and it's very different, apparently entirely disconnected from the movies. I can unrecommend the live action movie though.

eh, I wouldn't really say Mushi-shi is obscure, I have heard a lot of people talk about it. But other than that, good list.

 

[DunkeyKong]

I wouldn't exactly call Space Dandy obscure at all, but it sure is underrated. It's awesome and easily in my top 5 or at least top 10 anime of all time.

It sure is, it does deserve more recognition ngl

 

[J.B’s rabbit den]

Kiko-Chan smile and Hanako-San gakitta

 

[Leifang]

Kuuchuu Buranko, about psychologists office, one of the best things I've watched:

 

[Megalodonix]

UFO Robot Grendizer

This one is pretty much unheard of (as far as I know) outside of some countries in Europe and the Middle East, which is weird considering its creator, Go Nagai, is known for some really successful works such as Devilman and Cutie Honey
Almost every Gen X-er and Millennial in the Middle East knows about or has watched this as a child
But aside from that, I'd treat it as an obscure anime

 

[Clippy]

We already have a thread for that here. Yo, @RageBurner time for your baptism of fire in merging.

 

[Duke_11037]

View attachment 37814
Kiko-Chan smile and Hanako-San gakitta

I remember a podcast I watched talking about this ages ago. Did the anime ever get a fansub?

 

[diapered]

In my Books, Gosick is not that obscure, it was super popular for the moment it was and then fell there.
I would say same, but much more sad that Space Dandy is in same boat, that hing is a master piece and it's OST is superb.

Now... I have few decades of nerdy like for anime behind me and depending on person some of these might not be very obscure at all but still recommending them. These are even in my estimation more "kinda obscure"

View attachment 37795
Kino's Journey 2003 (not you Remake/Continuation season, you are very mediocre especially in comparison)
Extremely good for opening up philosophical concepts and questions to people not so primed for them, and extremely unique setting for making these short stories of philosophical musing. The visuals and music especially underline the beauty and lack of it.

View attachment 37797
Mushi-Shi
Also a very story-of-the-episode structured show with muted atmosphere and interesting concepts for life values and philosophies underlined by slight super-natural nature to the world.

View attachment 37799
Patlabor
Especially the movie trilogy
Likely overshadowed by works like Akira, this is one great series of movies that makes even non-mecha fans appreciate the "genre" for enriching the narratives with semi-futuristic mystery solving, political strong-arming and philosophies of different characters. I cannot recommend the TV anime, because I have not seen it, and it's very different, apparently entirely disconnected from the movies. I can unrecommend the live action movie though.

I agree with you on gosick. I never watched it (I think? It's hard to keep track), but it does sound familiar and I remember people talking about it. idk if I would say those other ones are obscure... Pretty much most MAL searches for recommendations etc. will pull those up... I had the box set of kino's journey and this was before I really searched for stuff on the internet.

Also, if we wanted to get technical

This is not the right word. Something cannot be "undiscovered" if some one has watched it

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2025

Also, when I had lots of time on my hands, I committed to watching EVERY seasonal show I could by sub groups, so I could probably just post something random like

and is that obscure? anyone watched this all the way through? It was like fighting puppets which was interesting, and I watched it all the way through (from my screenshots), but I would think not many have seen it and I completely forgot about it. I barely remember even talking about it when it was airing. I could be wrong though.

Anyway, sorry to "word police", the annoying "well technically" people like me deserve all the hate they get, but I couldn't resist ;_;

 

[Heretic]

One that I always talk about or come back to that not many people I know have seen is "M. D. Geist" which follows a super soldier who escapes from a sort of stasis prison, and tries to get revenge on the people who put him there, and start a war without end. It's only the two ova's so it's short. It's SUPER violent. and the music and character designs are pretty great. Again though, cannot stress this enough, super violent. May not be something most people would enjoy.

 

[Naltic]

I agree with you on gosick. I never watched it (I think? It's hard to keep track), but it does sound familiar and I remember people talking about it. idk if I would say those other ones are obscure... Pretty much most MAL searches for recommendations etc. will pull those up... I had the box set of kino's journey and this was before I really searched for stuff on the internet.

Also, if we wanted to get technical
View attachment 37855
This is not the right word. Something cannot be "undiscovered" if some one has watched it

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2025

Also, when I had lots of time on my hands, I committed to watching EVERY seasonal show I could by sub groups, so I could probably just post something random likeView attachment 37865
and is that obscure? anyone watched this all the way through? It was like fighting puppets which was interesting, and I watched it all the way through (from my screenshots), but I would think not many have seen it and I completely forgot about it. I barely remember even talking about it when it was airing. I could be wrong though.

Anyway, sorry to "word police", the annoying "well technically" people like me deserve all the hate they get, but I couldn't resist ;_;

I guess you are right, I should have used hidden gem since while Gosick is known, it's not really "well-known" as much nowadays as it was back in the day.

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2025

We already have a thread for that here. Yo, @RageBurner time for your baptism of fire in merging.
View attachment 37844

well, I didn't know that existed.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

There's already an obscure anime forum that I made in December last year: https://retrogametalk.com/threads/obscure-anime.1307/

@Waffles or whichever other mod that's currently online, can you please merge the forums? Thank you.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

(Bump to merge).

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

I'll mention Please Twins! as being possibly an obscure anime.

Thank you @Waffles for merging the duplicate forum.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

Not SUPER obscure but the dub of Bacanno is my second favorite show in general. It's fucking incredible and I'd absolutely recommend everyone at least give it a shot.

 

[J.B’s rabbit den]

I remember a podcast I watched talking about this ages ago. Did the anime ever get a fansub?

A few yeah on YouTube for Kiko-Chan Smile,but Hanako-San I’m no so sure about

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

So a bit ago I posted a thread about Obscure Manga

I'm going to guess it was mine: https://retrogametalk.com/threads/obscure-manga.4370/, though there's no reply of yours on that forum of mine.

 

[SpaceCadetGenocide]

What're some anime that you may have watched that are obscure or you at least think might be obscure?

I would like Kakyuusei, Happy Happy Clover, Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto, Fighting Foodons, maybe some more if I look at what all I've watched.

This is one of my favorite animes, I'm not sure how obscure it is (though I personally see it as such with a lack of discussion besides very sporadic fanart posting from JP twitter. It's a funny shonen about famous composers being reborn as "Classicaloids", and they can perform magic with music. It's a fun watch and its one of my unlike pipe dreams for "Please get a season 3!", although the twitter account is still somewhat active and last year, they did a classical music performance in Hamamatsu IIRC. It helped me get into classical music afterwards