- Ayakashi Ayashi is pretty unsubtle about telling people to stop daydreaming and focus exclusively on real life. It's about giant monsters coming to life when someone is dissatisfied with living in a Crapsack World.
- To sum up, the writers of Blassreiter would like you to know that anyone who is mean to immigrants is pure evil, the media is full of idiot sensationalists, and if God is there He does not like you.
- Dancougar Nova got pretty Anvilicious in one episode, which made oblique references to the War on Terror being fought solely over oil, and featuring a nearly rabid, transparently American commander crushing the titular robot while declaring that because his nation is strong, it gets to decide what justice is.
- The most notable one is Cross Ange, never ever mistreat anyone or anything, whether it's one person or an entire race, especially if it's For the Evulz, jealousy or placing them as The Scapegoat. Otherwise, you're as good as dead by the same person or people.
- So many examples: Angelise herself in the very first episode, Zola, Rosalie, Hilda, Julio, Jill, the entire Mana society and finished with Embryo.
- Death Note gives hints that having the power to kill humans (simply by knowing their name and face) is bad, such as when Soichiro remarks that "The real evil is the power to kill people" early on in the series, though it only heavily goes the "It's really bad" route in the final stretch of the story.
- Earth Maiden Arjuna is the anime version of Captain Planet, with the superhero replaced with a Magical Girl as well as with more psychological angst.
- Fairy Tail: The series is infamous for laying the "friendship solves everything" moral rather thick. While The Power of Friendship is common amongst shonen, Fairy Tail in particular earns scorn for frequently using the "friendship" speech to have the protagonist pull a Heroic Second Wind to suddenly beat an opponent that was just curb-stomping them moments ago. It's even justified in-series by many types of magic receiving a boost in power from willpower and strong emotions, of which friendship is often one of the strongest they draw on.
- In The Familiar of Zero, the episode in which Mr. Colbert dies was a very thinly veiled message about why war is bad, the entire second season being about how War Is Hell.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: War Is Hell and you cannot escape responsibility for your actions. Even when it's revealed that the war in Ishval was started as part of an ancient conspiracy (and the order for outright genocide given by a key player of that conspiracy), Mustang, Hawkeye, and the other sympathetic veteran characters point out that they felt their orders to be wrong and carried them out anyway. Mustang's own ultimate goal is to get himself to the top of the military dictatorship, then end it so that he can be put on trial for war crimes. On the personal responsibility end, the Elric brothers refuse to take any route back to fixing themselves that would hurt other people when it was their own actions that caused their misfortunes. They even refuse to let their father expend his own energy towards it—Ed sacrifices his own ability to do alchemy instead.
- Being about how war affects humanity, the Gundam franchise has dropped many anvils over the years.
- Much of the protagonists' angst in Gundam SEED comes from the fact that they have to fight each other for reasons they don't know. Then the second half of the series comes and practically every second sentence that comes out of Lacus' mouth is relentless bashing of the Cycle of Revenge. Then SEED Destiny comes along and drops the same anvil all over again, along with a second anvil bashing Shinn's views of the world.
- In Gundam 00, the moral is "if you kill someone because you hate the person, no matter the reason, good chance that you end up worse than him".
- Another repeated message from 00 is that the only way to peace is through understanding others. It is repeated twice in the film's postcredits scene.
- Also, a quote from the leader of the Union..."They're aggressively ending conflict all over the world. Isn't that our job?"
- As said above, Gundam has dropped many anvils over its span. However, there is one common anvil that transcends each series: "If we all understand each other, we can all stop fighting, get along and be happy." This theme has existed since the first series (as it was the basis of Zeon Daikun's Newtype theory) and has been carried over the rest of UC (all the way to Gundam Unicorn) and even further into the Alternate Universes; among the latter, only G Gundam subverts the message due to its kung fu action movie themenote . Alongside, said message is usually presented as the basis of the resident universe's telepaths and their purpose; this is especially the case with the Innovators of Gundam 00note and the X-Rounders of Gundam AGEnote .
- While plenty of Japanese stories have made very notable Take Thats at the Workaholic nature of Japanese society, I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level takes this to especially heavy-handed levels, as both the premise and most of the plot revolve around protagonist Azusa Aizawa reincarnating due to karoshi (death by overwork), and she not only has made it her goal to live an unaging slow life where she never overworks herself again, but she also frequently defies many people's beliefs that pushing oneself for the sake of another is in any way noble. It's very much a strongly pushed message, but the story wouldn't really work without it, and given how it's still such a major thing in Japanese work culture, definitely a worthwhile Aesop.
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya! was not subtle with many of its messages. Any lesson it had became a focal point of the whole episode and usually was a major part of the entire narrative, such as an episode about whaling taking place entirely in the water and on a whale. Furthermore, King Dedede—Card-Carrying Villain and Dream Land's troublesome ruler—was the one who would cause these problems, making him the scapegoat for "Don't be like this guy" messages. It tackled the topic of dentistry with the fact that you should brush well or else little purple men will destroy your teeth from the inside of your mouth, evil people pollute and destroy the ozone, industry causes acid rain and destroys plant life, it's wrong to make a collectible toy line in which every figure doesn't have an equal chance of being found (and thus all would be the same value), television lies and sucks people's life away, illegal dumping is wrong, tourists destroy landmarks and towns, lying about historical accuracy is wrong, and you should eat properly.
- In "Fitness Fiend", Dedede gets addicted to snacks and becomes grossly fat, unable to even stand up. This is followed by two characters announcing out loud this that is what happens if you only eat snacks, and stay up all night watching television, while Dedede is being paraded through the town and laughed at. All of this before the episode is even halfway through.
- Life (2002) keeps no subtlety in any of its themes. The whole manga is about a girl who is bullied, and the bullies themselves are two-faced Jerkasses.
- The work of Miura Koizumi often has characters speak out at length against discrimination against same-sex couples in Japan.
- Toward the end of Mr. Right Turned Out to Be a Younger Woman!?, Haruki Shiina, one half of the main couple, is injured in an auto accident. Her girlfriend Risa Takagai then spends most of a page talking about how some hospitals won't let same-sex couples visit their partners, even if one is dying, and that renters also discriminate against same-sex couples. In the final scene, Risa and Haruki attend a coworker's wedding, with Risa complaining about how they can't get married just yet, while Haruki, who has gotten over her desperate need to get married soon, proposes living somewhere that accepts their relationship.
- For Some Reason Suddenly I Wanted to Kiss the Coworker Who Sits Next to Me, another series by the same author, also briefly touches upon the problem. When Tomoka Hayami proposes moving in with her coworker and girlfriend Mami Kohashi, Kohashi spends an entire page telling Hayami that the office could find out if she changes her address and that renters discriminate against same-sex couples, as well ask asking if Hayami has considered her financial situation and whether properties will be available in April.
- The author of Naruto can't seem to be subtle about the whole "REVENGE IS BAD" thing, to the point that, until he kick-started the big war event, it took over the story.
- The infamous final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion are an Anvilicious Author Filibuster on the rather extensive psychological issues of the main cast (particularly those of Shinji Ikari), as well as a discussion of how some people avoid human contact out of fear of being hurt by others. Apparently we had not already seen enough of how screwed up the cast was.
- One Piece: Freedom is good, and taking away someone's freedom is just about the worst thing you can do to someone. Nearly every story arc has this message front and center, but nothing comes as blatant and unsubtle as the ultra-privileged World Nobles who are basically living embodiments of this moral, as they treat other human beings as playthings and slaves at best, and are able to enslave anyone they want with no consequence, or just trash to be tossed aside - they're made so comedically heinous it winds back up into being horrible, and they're drawn as ugly and uncool as possible so that there's not even a shred of Evil Is Cool about them. Every single time the World Nobles appear it's as if Eiichiro Oda himself is repeatedly smacking you over the head with the core moral of the story.
- Pokémon: The First Movie and the first straight-to-DVD special, Mewtwo Strikes Back and Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns respectively, club the viewer over the head with their messages. Thanks for telling us that fighting to the death isn't fun, that judging someone or yourself by the circumstances of birth is wrong, and that it's a good idea to protect natural resources. We would have never figured that out. They're not very hard to grasp, even before the giant swarm of killer bug Pokémon comes to help enforce the Green Aesop. Which then gets completely turned around when at the end of the first movie, Ash and co. have their memories erased about the entire event, making the lesson they learned forgotten and pointless.
- Coupled with a 20 minute prologue to explain Mewtwo's tragic backstory in the original Japanese version, to REALLY make it clear that animal experimentation is bad. Also serves the dual purpose of presenting the angst-filled Mewtwo as a tragic hero.
- Arguably, the whole point of Saikano is to drop a 13-episode anvil of War Is Hell. For everyone, not just soldiers.
- The Aesoptinum factor of Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry is made particularly obvious when not only is the research conducted on harmless aliens, but they look and act like little girls and anesthetic doesn't work on them. So every time one is dissected, they're being brutally tortured and the scientists just shrug and figure 'Hey, they'll get used to it eventually.'
- Every. Song. In. Every. Single. Macross. Title. If you still think Violence is the Only Option, then you're not paying attention.
- You don't have to be watching Yu-Gi-Oh! long to figure out that the main theme is friendship. Not only do many of the main characters constantly make speeches about it (with Anzu/Tea being infamous for it, although there are many characters who are just as bad, if not worse), but there are also numerous motifs and symbols throughout the series which are meant to represent friendship. These include Yugi's Millennium Puzzle, the smiley face drawn on the hands of the main cast, and several different Duel Monsters cards. On top of that, the first syllables in Yugi's and Joey's/Jounouchi's names are purposely meant to spell out the word "Yujo", which means "friendship" in Japanese.
- This is true for the whole franchise, with Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds and Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL having friendship themes and motifs.
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