To all the anime fans out there: What's the most obscure anime you've ever seen?

[Enzeru92]

My most obscure anime has to be Gintama it has no clear plot with tons and tons of humor. What makes this one of my favorite anime is that it pokes fun at every other anime and itself, it goes as far as pretending to finish cause the "stuff is too lazy to finish it"

 

[Threesan]

If I could remember the name of an anime from five years agoi could tell you.

I can honestly say it was the best anime I have ever seen

Then gives us some hints. I'm sure someone here could put a name on it.

 

[NickCaligo42]

I remember seeing an early work by Miazaki called
"Nausicaa valley of the wind"

That's not obscure, that's a classic masterpiece widely regarded as some of his best work and which inspired countless games and other movies and shows, including the Phantasy Star series on the Sega Genesis, Iji, the best Game Maker game ever, and numerous other sci-fi/fantasy works. You know how we think of Dune in the west? Nausicaa is like that for Japanese animation.

You are right, though, it's beautiful.

I'm gonna have to say Monster. It's a mystery drama centered around a surgeon named Dr. Tenma, who unwittingly revives a serial killer named Johann and ends up chasing him around Europe to try and undo his mistake.

 

[Michizane]

i cant remember it's name and i cant be arsed to walk upstairs and find out but it's some messed up shit in which the demon world, beast world and human world all collide and as usual theres a lot of tentacle rape. best watched with a lot of alcohol...

Urotsukidoji, Legend of the Overfiend? Could be wrong and dear god do I hope I am, but that could be it

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

Some folks seem to be mixing up Esoteric(or even Arcane!) with Obscure.
I'm not even specifically a fan of anime but I do know of one that most folks may not have heard of that happens to be one of the first anime I have ever seen.
It's called The Sea Prince and the Fire Child (or The Legend of Syrius outside of America), a star-crossed lover tale, sort of like Pyramus and Thisbe/Romeo and Juliet but with a fire elemental and a water elemental.
As far as I know, it hasn't been released on DVD yet(professionally) despite nearly every other ill-known 80s cartoon has already been re-released, even Galaxy High! (They should give that show a revival, perhaps as an anime. Maybe if they'd like it in Japan, that would make it worthwhile watching for many American audience members?)

 

[Dr. Paine]

Eve no Jikan is the most obscure I've found... six episodes, I don't think it was ever released to the U.S.

Pretty good, though.

 

[Michizane]

If I could remember the name of an anime from five years agoi could tell you.

I can honestly say it was the best anime I have ever seen

Then gives us some hints. I'm sure someone here could put a name on it.

Yes please do. Always on the lookout for titles warranting people's "best anime ever" award.

 

[zana bonanza]

Not sure which of these would be obscure, so I'll just list the ones I know

Martian Successor Nadesco
Those Who Hunt Elves
Some episodes of Guren Lagan
Some episodes of S-CRY-ED
An episode or two of Mai-Otome

Was gonna list Utena, but I doubt that it's that obscure.

I think guren lagan is rather obscure.

Gurren Lagann is not obscure; they had a dub of it on the Sci-fi channel and a good sized English fanbase. It's just not mainstream. Shows like Naruto and Bleach are because they run on Cartoon Network and have a gazillion more episodes.

 

[Minjoltr]

Mononoke (not Princess Mononoke) which is quite Japanese (music, artistic style) and is visually rather funky or the BLAME! 'anime' which was terrible.

 

[ajb924]

Most of the anime made by Gainax is pretty obscure...
Every once in a while I'll watch an episode of Hitman Reborn or one piece and just be making my WTF face the whole episode, but it's rare for that to happen.

ALSO: I think obscure means odd and my post is based on such. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

 

[Zombus]

Element Hunters is by far the strangest anime I've ever seen. The elements (like from the periodic table) are suddenly blinking out of existance on earth so element hunters have to go to an alternate reality called nega-earth to get them back, but on nega-earth the elements fuze to become huge monsters.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

Shugo Chara. My friend introduced it when a few of us were in a chat room together. None of us besides her has ever heard of it before then.

 

[dirkdeldiablo]

Let's see...On my bookshelf sits Darkside Blues, a movie that, for some reason, despite no one but me ever having heard of it, got reprinted recently, though I have an old copy from a video store going out of business. ANN has under 250 reviews, so I'ma call it fairly obscure. There's Narutaru on my computer, a show where young kids meet cute dragon sidekicks, and also end up fighting to the death against a bizzare, creepy conspiracy. Also the cute sidekicks may or may not constantly hunger for blood. 388 reviews on ANN. I've got Masters of Epic on my computer, a short variety anime based on a Korean MMO. That's gotta be up there, at only 12 reviews. I've got Neo Tokyo, which is basically like Memories only by different creative talents, with 163 reviews. I also own Reign the Conqueror, at 599 reviews, although I'm not sure how obscure you could call anything by Peter Chung.(Just for comparisons on the standards of my measuring system: Anime News Network lists 7984 reviews of Cowboy Bebop, 5981 of Bleach, 7035 of Death Note, 9215 for Full Metal Alchemist. Probably could have found a better site/ more accurate measurement system, but eh.)

Sort of on-topic: I ran a college anime club. Go ahead and call me king dork.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

K-ON!.It's obscure and i love it.

K-On! is win. End of story.

 

[Canadaftw]

Ozamu Tezuka´s Belladonna (1975). I didn´t understand anything (the movie didn´t have subtitles), but it was pretty to look at.

I only watched less than 50 secounds of it and I have already un-hinged my jaw from the surprise, confusion and sheer "WTF WAS THAT"nes.

 

[dirkdeldiablo]

edit: Gigantor seems to be a lost classic seeing as no one i know has ever heard of it and it is a close to the genesis of anime as you can get on youtube seeing as how it was made in the 1940s/50s.

I recall that was one of the first anime I ever saw, aired on Sci-Fi channel weekday mornings before school. Also Adult Swim was showing it on regular rotation maybe a year or two ago. Despite this, I think it would be fair to say most people don't know that show; it's certainly less known that Astro Boy, an even earlier pioneer. Although there was a game released for the PS2 a while ago called R.A.D. (Robot Alchemic Drive) that was basically the same thing: kids with remote controls use giant robots to save the world.

Don't know why I singled this post out to respond to; just procrastinating on school work I suppose.

EDIT FOR AWESOME:

Ginga Nagareboshi Gin. It's about dogs who fight bears

dogs

fighting

bears.

BEARS!

Holy crap. Downloading this right now.

 

[zana bonanza]

ALSO: I think obscure means odd and my post is based on such. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

Don't apologize, just look it up next time if you're not sure.
In a nutshell, obscure means "not well known".

 

[Graustein]

Most obscure? Possibly Now and Then, Here and There. I found it while idly browsing TVTropes, but have seen precious few references to it there, and absolutely no mention of it anywhere else (except when I looked for it).
It's very dark, and pulls no punches. While I haven't seen all of it yet, there's child soldiers and implied child rape.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Jungle De Ikou.