Out of all the anime being looked at here, Osomatsu-san is the one that I get the most excited for every week because you seriously just have no idea what you’re going to be getting in any given episode. The series is based on Fujio Akatsuka’s popular Osomatsu-kun series from the Showa era. The title has become quite an institution with a legacy behind it, first becoming an anime in 1966, and then again in 1988. The premiere of Osomatsu-san is even in celebration of creator Akatsuka’s 80th birthday.

The series stars the Matsuno sextupulets, who are all a nice collection of caricatures. The series’ utterly insane first episode—which has now been banned, both from television, the streaming site Crunchyroll, and the home DVD release due to breaking many of Japan’s bizarre, stringent copyright laws—deals with the sextuplets worrying that they’ll be out of touch in our modern era and transform themselves into a group of pop idols instead. It’s worth making clear that the simplistic animation style that Osomatsu-san usually has is completely overhauled into a new approach to sell this idea. As the episode goes on, the sextuplets keep reverting to their Showa style state, unable to escape their destiny, in an extremely meta installment.

This bizarre experiment sets the tone perfectly for the show, which is constantly changing its colors, almost like an anime version of South Park or Community, consistently taking on “concept episodes.” At times the anime is a collection of shorts, a timely Mad Max parody, or even seeing the brothers turn into girls in the recurring “Girlymatsu” segment. After their first season finale, the series returned as a serious drama for its third episode, rather than its typical fare.

This show laughs at things like narrative and patterns. In perhaps the boldest move I’ve seen any series make, their first season finale saw the previous episode re-airing, only with the cast doing commentary over top of it. An episode of commentary aired on television. And much of it deals with the cast discussing how such a concept is surely unpalatable.

Jump in on this show at any point and get ready for the avalanche of nonsense that will bury you.

Dagashi Kashi