The Japanese know a thing or two about making odd-sounding ideas work. After all, they make realodd ideas work all the time.
Please sort new titles alphabetically into the appropriate sub-pages to avoid duplicate entries.
07 Ghost: An amnesiac royal gets mixed up with dead bishie bishops after bad dreams make him flee a military academy and his best friend turns into a developmentally delayed mascot character.
20th Century Boys: For some people, there is no life after middle school. Apocalypse ensues.
3x3 Eyes: Immortal dies repeatedly in increasingly bloody, hilarious ways.
+ Anima (manga): A bat-girl, crow-boy, feminine fish-boy, and a 17-year-old bear-person with an eye-patch travel through two fictional countries. Food is eaten, people are mauled, and friends are made.
Alternative: Some people are part-animal, and others aren't, and many of the ones who aren't part-animal want to either kill or become ones who are, and most of the ones who are part-animal don't want to be.
A Letter To Momo: A 13 year old girl moves home after her dad dies. She is haunted by three Yokai whose sole purpose is to spy on her and steal her stuff.
Afro Samurai:Resurrection: Most hated samurai in Black Japan loses headband to old foe and must fight him with the second-best headband for sake of zombie father.
AIR: Gluttonous hobo and cursed loner fall in love. GOAL-ness ensues.
Air Gear: Rollerblading is Serious Business, to the point where it defies physics. Half the rollerbladers seen are various shades of crazy.
Akagi: A fourteen-year-old who looks like an adult plays games with gangsters on his days off. He wins. They're scarred for life.
Akahori Gedou Hour Lovege: Two female pedophiles commit atrocities on a regular basis in the name of "Justice."
Akikan!: The government tries to decide what material to make its drink cans out of.
AKIRA (film): A teenage biker becomes a powerful psychic. This is followed by multiple explosions.
Two boys are separated by the government and spend the rest of the movie searching for each other and crying out the other's name until one gets cancer and is killed by canned Jesus.
Alternately: Walking ethnic stereotypes and their relations with one another play out the course of human history from the Ancient Roman Empire to World War II to present time. With extra gay.
Azumanga Daioh: No real plot, just Japanese schoolgirls hanging out.
Or: Rich 10 year old genius and her friends go through their average lives.
B Gata H Kei: Virgin tries to get laid. She's not very good at it.
Baccano!: A number of people aboard a train find they have conflicting interests. An old man looks for friends he shared a drink with a long time ago.
Alternately: A genius little girl and a man try to solve a mystery about a train.
Or in joke form: A gang, a cult, and the Chicago Mafia walk onto a train one day...
Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu: The lowest tier class in high-school battles other classes using summoned beings whose power is determined by test grades in order to get better supplies.
Alternately: Kids use the powers of studying to overcome bullies.
Bakemonogatari: Japanese teenagers and their homeless friend fight monstersTALK. A LOT.
Or: Teenage girl falls in love with an enigmatic vampire after he saves her life.
Alternatively: Sayonara, Araragi-kun.
Bakuman。: An artist and his girlfriend avoid talking to each other.
Or, a manga about two kids drawing manga.
Bamboo Blade: Kendo instructor decides to settle a year-old bet by fielding an all-girl squad.
Berserk: A big guy with an unfortunate tattoo tries to get therapy for the girlfriend who hates him after his pretty-haired ex-best friend sells out the world for a makeover and a spiffy new Batman outfit.
Best Student Council: A girl whose best friend is a puppet dabbles in school politics.
Beyblade: An evil organization attempts to take over the world using spinning tops. It's Serious Business.
Or: A bunch of amnesiacs, one of whom thinks he's Batman, run around destroying a city with giant robots. Eventually revealed to be inconsequential.
Or: A man who looks like Bruce Wayne, who's actually a tomato, uses a Humongous Mecha named after an orgasm to fight other giant robots who aren't as suggestively named.
Binbou Shimai Monogatari: Two underage sisters live together in a run-down apartment and have to get by on their own. They love each other a lot.
Black Cat: A Technical Pacifist tries to stay out of a war between two groups of Well Intentioned Extremists. The Anime adds a subplot where he talks of the less sympathetic Extremist group's leader entirely in death threats for half the series.
Black Lagoon: A salary-man quits his job to run errands for and with unstable foreigners who frequently try to kill him. He still dresses like a salary-man, though.
Black★Rock Shooter: Two girls befriend each other in freshman year but drift apart. Meanwhile, their alternate universe counterparts try to kill each other. Les Yay references ensue.
For the TV series: Schoolgirl angst spawns a parallel dimension of nonstop violence. The therapist approves.
Blade Of The Immortal: A swordsman with internal parasites gets hired by a plucky orphan to kill "bad people."
Blame!!: An untalkative, millennia-old, amnesiac robot meanders around a mostly abandoned space station looking for genes.
Bleach: Dead people fight other dead people but almost never to the death.
Or: Wannabe fashion designer (and possible Chessmaster and troper) shows off. Title has little to do with plot.
Bleach: Diamond Dust Rebellion: Secondary White-Haired Pretty Boy character angsts for 90 minutes.
Bleach: Fade To Black: Two siblings try to destroy the ruling class because a childhood friend can't remember their names.
Bleach: Hell Verse: Teen and his dead friends go to Hell to find a sister. Leads to massive trolling.
Blood+: A teenage girl teams up with a cellist and a giant-revolver-wielding David Bowie to fight vampires.
Or: A teenaged girl has to keep her sister from getting pregnant.
Or: A teenage pop idol does horrible things at her manager's insistence.
Or: Two vampires carry out a campaign of genocide.
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro Chan: A high school lolicon must change his ways and his destiny, or else be murdered horribly. He still gets murdered horribly, however.
Or: Kids on summer camp decide to play a game. The adults think they should stop.
The Borrower Arrietty (Studio Ghibli): A small-scale burglar and his family consider moving to a less dangerous neighborhood after catching their daughter giving some sugar to the boy upstairs.
Boukun Tyrano San: A male T-Rex dies and is reincarnated 60 million years later as a high school girl; he's not happy at all.
Brain Powerd: Giant organic monster makes organic robots that fight other organic robots so it can absorb all organic energy on Earth. An organic submarine fights this. There are lots and lots of organic parental issues.
Bremen: An omnilingual clone of Jesus teams up with a guitarist with a mohawk, a car enthusiast bassist, and a transgendered dominatrix drummer to form a band. They beat the living shit out of those who get in their way.
Or: Amnesiac guy tries to find his girlfriend. Instead, he gets a rockband.
Castle In The Sky: Boy Meets Girl... more specifically, a girl on the run from pirates and a government agent who convinces the military to help him steal a necklace.
The Cat Returns: A girl rescues a cat and is rewarded by nearly being forced to marry him. She's eventually rescued by a magic lawn ornament, a talking crow, and a fat guy.
Change 123: A girl with three fathers struggles with mental illness and finds two possible boyfriends.
Alternatively: Boy finds and befriends girl with four personalities. Boy falls for the only one that isn't a martial artist. Other personalities are fine with this. Teen genius tries to fuse girl's personalities with her Superpowered Evil Side. The Law of Conservation of Detail is upheld obsessively.
Chintsubu a.k.a. Chinko no Tsubuyaki: A hilarious Yaoi manga whose title translates to "The Mutterings of the Penises." And this is meant to be taken literally.
CLANNAD: A delinquent meets the sickly daughter of Kamina and Belldandy, and they (re)start a club with his best friend and some other girls.
Or: A pair of high school students meet a ghost who hands out carvings of echinoderms; they decide to help.
Season 2: Nothing goes right for the delinquent. Ever. Once his life is thoroughly obliterated, a junk robot in a different world makes everything better.
Claymore: A surly woman with a giant sword wanders around a laboratory seeking revenge on a little girl.
Code Geass: Convoluted Love Dodecahedron develops between British teenagers attending high school in Japan; the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
Or: Terrorist takes over the world with mind control. Pizza is involved.
Or: High school student starts World War III to learn who killed his mother. When he learns that she isn't dead, he kills her himself.
Or: Teenage prodigy rebels against his family, drags the entire world into it.
Or: Bored, disaffected young noble is handed absolute power over others, abuses it for great justice.
Count Cain: A boy and his butler solve murders and sometimes commit them. Sometimes there are zombies and often there is incest.
Cowboy Bebop: Bounty hunters in space barely make enough money to eat properly. The soundtrack is popular.
Or: Bounty hunters fight Chinese mafia, but not in space.
He's an ex-chinese mafia member turned bounty hunter looking for his girlfriend and wanting to kill his former best friend, he's a hard nosed former cop with a serious chip on his shoulder, she's an attractive amnesiac con-artist with a compulsive gambling problem, she's a mad child prodigy hacker. Together they fight crime/ perpetual poverty / each other.
Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door: A justifiably disgruntled "dead" veteran tries to wipe out humanity by showing them butterflies.
Cross Game: Little girl dies in the first episode. Her boyfriend goes on to court her younger sister. Oh, and there's baseball.
Crows: High school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
Worst: A new generation of high school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
