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Bizarro Episode / Anime & Manga

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  • The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: The first two chapters of Volume 6 has Hahari unwittingly blanketing the entire world with her hair, the resolution of which involves the excess hair being eaten by the sun, which garners enough fuel to keep burning, thereby averting an early Ice Age. Nobody new joins the harem during the incident, and nobody who joins the harem afterward seems aware of the incident, let alone Hahari's involvement in it.
  • An unaired episode of Angel Beats! has most of the cast transform into crazed hyper-hams who seem impossibly over-the-top even compared to their normal hammy personalities. They continue to top each other and become more and more obnoxious and hyperactive throughout the episode, and eventually (though somewhat spontaneously) wear themselves out. And that's it. The episode was never broadcast, so, of course, none of the insanity that happens in it is ever brought up in other episodes, even though it clearly takes place sometime in the middle of the main plot.
  • The Space Station arc of Assassination Classroom (chapter 150-153) is resolved 3 chapters later with a near Snap Back to normal for attempting assassination, with Karma and Nagisa having no trouble convincing the astronauts to do what they want despite the astronauts pointing out their threat of a bomb is worthless. Only one chapter is even spent on the space station.
  • Bleach:
  • Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo has the episode in which Dengaku Man is launched up Bo-Bobo's rear end to form a Magical Girl, who then subdues her enemy by singing. It was so nice they did it twice, though with a picture book instead of singing. Also, there are meta-bizarros, when there are scenes that can be considered bizarre even within the context of the Bizarro episodes. For instance, during a pointless scene where Bo-bobo is riding a kiddy train ride at an amusement park, a giant baby bursts out of a tunnel, smacks some monkeys, and crawls away without ever being mentioned again.
  • Chou Kuse ni Narisou episode 12 is a Very Special Episode (or a parody of one) about discarded alligators, which left Viga confused when she reviewed the show for Idols of Anime:
    Viga: Is this a PSA for keeping alligators as pets? Was this ever a problem in Japan? What? There's a message about discarding idols as well? Old waifu pushed away for your new waifu? Remember, keep your idols spayed and neutered.
  • Even Code Geass gets in on the fun with Nunnally in Wonderland, which is interesting because it's a 30-minute OVA that stands on its own and because its characterization is consistent with the show's canon; something you really wouldn't expect in a Bizarro Episode.
  • Cowboy Bebop:
    • Episode 11 is a Bottle Episode that invokes Lovecraftian horror with an alien Blob Monster that attacks all the crew one by one and initially appears to kill them (just incapacitating them briefly, instead). The monster is eventually revealed to be a snack Spike forgot about in the fridge that rotted, mutated, and took on a life of its own, leaving behind a fridge full of cobwebs and grotesquely overgrown mold when it escaped after a year. The climax revolves around Spike disposing of the refrigerator through the airlock, while Ed disposes of the main antagonist by eating it. Moral of the story? Never leave food in the fridge.
      • Lampshaded by Ed in the "Next Episode" preview on the English dub, which leads to a humorous exchange.
        Edward: And so, they all passed away, every one. It was a short series, but thanks for your support. That was the last episode. May they all rest in peace. Amen. [pause] And for the next series, we bring you Cowgirl Ed, Ed is the main character! [giggles]
    • Episode 17 is the Trope Namer of Mushroom Samba, and focuses on the crew getting spectacularly stoned after Ed drugs them all with hallucinogenic mushrooms while she tracks down the guy who sold them to her.
    • Episode 20, "Pierrot Le Fou", feels almost like a straight-up horror episode like the aforementioned zombie episode in Champloo.
  • D.Gray-Man has the Komuvitan D. arc, where the entire Black Order staff is turned into zombies by one of Komui's many defective inventions during the Science section's cleaning. It notably features Lenalee turning into a cat (sort of), Lavi and Kanda turned into kids, Bookman with rabbit ears, Timcampy getting hair, and a new Komulin robot who is a tad bit too sensitive and gets seduced by Allen. The conclusion is surprisingly moving though: the culprit was a ghost of one of the girls who died in the Black Order's forbidden experiments. And Komui remembers every one of these victims' names. It's sort of a Breather Episode, as it comes just after an arc where the Black Order was nearly wiped out by an Akuma invasion.
  • Darker than Black manga (Jet Black Flower) has... Gate Kitchen Battle.
    The announcer: Which team will please the palate of Hei-san, the Voracious Masked King?
    Hei: How the hell did this happen?
    Mao: Beats me, Hei. This is The Gate, after all.
  • Den-noh Coil's beard episode. A sentient computer virus that manifests as facial hair appears on everyone's face. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • Episode 13 of Digimon Adventure 02, "The Call of Dagomon" (a.k.a. the "Dark Ocean" episode). A tribute to H. P. Lovecraft written by Chiaki Konaka and unusually high on horror elements that was occasionally referenced, but never fully explained.
  • Among the Doraemon films, the fifteenth movie, Doraemon Nobitas Diary Of The Creation Of The World counts as this. The adventure is kicked off by Nobita asking for help to finish his summer homework, leading to Doraemon getting a 22nd-Century "World Creation Set" for Nobita's research. Cue Nobita Playing God and literally creating a universe of his own, only to repeatedly screw up because God Is Inept. Then characters from Nobita's self-created alternate 'verse somehow escapes into the real world, kidnapping Suneo and Gian before revealing they're not hostile; said kidnapper is an Identical Stranger of Nobita asking for the gang's help to complete his research (said stranger also have a Doraemon clone as his sidekick, named Emondora). The entire adventure contains precisely zero stakes or danger, and can be described as "watching Nobita doing his homework for 90 minutes, roll credits".
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Dragon Ball Z, probably the defining Shōnen action series, once had a filler episode devoted to Goku and Piccolo learning how to drive.
    • The movie Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn. It starts with one of King Enma's workers getting mutated into a giant reality warping baby, that talks like a Pokémon, traps Enma's palace in a barrier, which causes the dead to return to Earth, transforms the clouds into marbles and the blood pond into a giant jelly bean. Goku attempts to fight him while Paikuhan tries to free Enma, by INSULTING the barrier. Then Vegeta shows up, and he and Goku defeat this powerful demon that fights with Atari-esque special effects. All the while, Goten and Trunks have a cartoonish slapstick fight with Adolf Hitler and his army of tanks. Goku and Vegeta fuse as well. Ho Yay doesn't even describe it.
    • Dragon Ball Super has Episode 69, a crossover with Doctor Slump that is easily the strangest the franchise has ever gotten since its origins as a Gag Series. Arale provides a Curb-Stomp Battle to Vegeta, the earth randomly cracks in two, characters repeatedly break the fourth wall, and the main conflict is resolved by Bulma telling the people of earth to imagine the most delicious meal they could. Suffice to say, Dragon Ball fans who weren't familiar with Dr. Slump were left very, very confused. The episode manages to be bizarre enough that the following episode, a Baseball Episode that escalates into a brawl that threatens the entire universe, seemed tame in comparison.
  • Ergo Proxy: Episode 19 has Pino, in a dream, visiting a theme park called Smile Land, owned and run by a man called Will B. Goode, who also happens to be a proxy. The episode consists of Pino exploring the park along with a couple of its (presumably also AutoReiv) characters, and ultimately being convinced by Mr. Goode to avoid visiting the park when she, Re-l, and Vincent pass by it for real, since Goode doesn't want to fight but knows that Ergo Proxy will try to kill him. When Pino wakes up, she succeeds in steering Re-l and Vincent away from the park, which was never seen or heard from again.
  • The final episode of Excel♡Saga. Lampshaded at the very end when the creator of the manga shows up, ready to kill the director because of it. It's naturally intentional since the whole point was to make an episode that would get banned from airing by putting just about everything that can get it banned into it, right down to its run time being a minute too long.
  • The filler episodes in Fairy Tail.
    • The first is a series of short bonus stories from the manga (which are all a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment in their own rights) with the added story of a town of mages that accidentally cursed themselves to turn into monsters that the main characters all try to eat.
    • The second is a "Freaky Friday" Flip that ends up worse than unresolved — what started with just a few characters switching bodies ends with almost all of them switching bodies, and the ending explicitly states they will never be able to change back (though they somehow do between episodes). What makes this one even weirder is that it's mentioned again in a later episode; when Loki is revealed to be the celestial spirit Leo in disguise as a human, Natsu realizes that was why he felt so strange when he was in Loki's body, so one can't even claim discontinuity.
    • The third called "Fairy Tail of The Dead Meeeeeeen" is an odd take of on the Zombie Apocalypse with Ichiya making a "beautifying" perfume that spreads into the city and turns everyone who smells it into shambling Ichiya clones. Several typical zombie traits are replaced with Ichiya's quirks, such as moaning "meeeen" instead of "braaains", and infecting their victims by sniffing them instead of biting them. Natsu resolves the situation with a deodorizing spray. Ichiya is punished by the Magic Council and his perfume gets slapped with the forbidden magic lable.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has "Warehouse 13". The men on Mustang's staff (note, men — Hawkeye was not involved; nor were Ed or Al) believe they have seen the haunted military warehouse 13 and are terrified to walk by the warehouses at night. Mustang is the only one who really stays in character, denouncing the warehouse as foolishness and going out at night with his men to prove to them that it doesn't exist. What really makes this a Bizarro Episode is the fact that four trained military professionals are suddenly freaking out about an urban legend. That episode consisted of two shorts. The other one was Havoc discovering the girl he had a crush on was dating Mustang, so Havoc tried dating Armstrong's sister. The episode was a Breather Episode meant to lighten the mood of fans, as the series was seriously hitting Cerebus Syndrome and would only get darker from on.
  • The second episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig focuses on a one-off character, a pilot named Gino, who plans on assassinating one of his most recent clients. The whole episode is something of a Mind Screw, since it tends to flash in and out of Gino's fantasies about doing so. The only recurring characters who appear are Major and Batou, who only appear in rather minor roles that are, to add to the weirdness, totally different from who they are. At the end, it's revealed to be something of a sting to determine whether or not Gino would actually go through with the assassination. They just say he would never do it, the episode ends, and the whole thing is never mentioned again. The entire thing is a Whole-Plot Reference to Taxi Driver and only tenuously linked to the main Individual Eleven plot, as they're also investigating to see if he's a member, something only revealed in the last minute of the episode.
  • In Chapter 91 of GTO: The Early Years, Ryuji meets a girl at the beach trying to drown herself. He saves her, and they start hanging out. However, when he introduces his friends to his new "girlfriend", it's revealed that she's a drowned corpse. The only time this is ever mentioned is a Continuity Nod more than a hundred chapters later.
  • Inazuma Eleven episode 100. Hiroto and Kogure get lost in the woods, and are challenged to a match by a pair of Kappas, no character development happens, no new techniques are learned, and it's only mentioned in a blink and you miss it scene during a flashback.
  • Episode 65 of Inuyasha starts with the apparent Monster of the Week being defeated effortlessly. After that the episode focuses on the cast taking turns getting Mind Controlled by a mysterious entity, culminating in a possessed Inuyasha attempting to seduce Shippo (seriously). The possessor turns out to be a female flea betrothed to Myoga who's bitter at being abandoned. They all stage a flea wedding that Myoga flees by finding a fake groom and the episode ends with absolutely no effect on the overarching plot. And that's not even mentioning the part where a child inexplicably tries to pee on Miroku while he sleeps...
  • Episode 39 of Jewelpet Sunshine ditches almost the entire cast and its high school setting in favor of a road film plot set in an Arizona-esque landscape and starring two of the more childish characters in the series. And it ends with a failed alien abduction. Go figure. This is never heard from again, not even when Kanon goes Walking the Earth to find a clue to defeat the Dark Queen.
  • Kill la Kill is already a strange series, but the fourth episode closes the gap. The normally good animation becomes a lot sketchier, the plot isn't advanced in the slightest, the tone is a lot more overtly slapsticky, and it overall feels a lot closer in style and tone to Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt than the usual Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • The infamous "pie episode" of the Kirby anime. It follows the usual formula, but is centered entirely around the concept of throwing pie at people. Even the Monster of the Week throws pies, which taste so terrible that Kirby won't eat them. When it gets angry enough at everyone's disgust at its pies, it turns into a giant, floating stomach that tries to digest a few major characters. It's a very strange creature even by the show's standards, and it's never explained why Nightmare created it. Nightmare's creations usually either possess someone, ruin their life somehow, or skip straight to attacking (using things that are more intimidating than nasty food). Naturally, this episode has next to no relevance to the show's Myth Arc.
  • Kochikame has the episode in which a "hard boiled" detective shows up and completely changes the episode in order to make himself feel more hard boiled (eventually chief Ohara gets so upset over having the same scene repeated several times that he has Honda replace him). Needless to say, there's No Fourth Wall in this episode—he even gets to pop up during the On the Next segment (quite literally, too—Ryotsu has to force him out).
  • Episode 9 of KonoSuba: A secret Succubus Club opens up in town, and the whole episode is all about the Succubus women in lingerie feeling themselves up, nudity, and fanservice, with sexy movements that are suspiciously well animated and fluid. It contributes nothing at all to the series, and succubi are never brought up or shown again (they appear in other adaptations). Normally the show is very light on ecchi and focuses equally on the characters. Darkness is supposed to be hyper perverted and Kazuma is basically a Chaste Hero who finds his comrades repugnant. In this episode, Kazuma takes the sexual tension up to 11 when he thinks he's in a Succubus induced dream with Darkness when she accidentally walks in on him naked in the bath. Darkness herself is embarrassed which is supposedly out of character until her perverted facial expressions at the end reveal she may have been secretly aroused by the encounter the whole time, and the other two main protagonists are barely in focus. The entire episode appears to have been made to test the show's abilities on making perverted and embarassed faical expressions or titlating and seductive animations.
  • Episode 16 of Little Witch Academia (2017), the one where the main trio go to Finland to visit Lotte's parents for the holidays, is much wackier than the others. They have to deal with a phenomenon that turns people into moss-covered statues, Akko finds a Yeti and helps him against some trolls (internet ones, not mythical ones) and later hallucinates Santa Claus among other things, Sucy is completely snark-free and poor Lotte has nothing to do even in what was supposed to be her spotlight episode. And even the search for the Seven Words is treated as something comical, with the sitcom-like ending showing that Akko learned nothing from her ordeal.
  • Thanks to its hectic production schedulenote , Lupin III's Red Jacket series had some episodes that were clearly thrown together at the last minute, featuring odd plots, stream-of-consciousness and gag heavy tones, and were usually Off-Model to boot. They're particularly common towards the end of the series, as many of the show's staff and animators were pulled away to work on The Castle of Cagliostro feature film. Among the more famous are the one where Lupin is accused of stealing a cat that eats pencil shavings, the one where Lupin can use chewing gum as a disguise and gets chased around by the U.S. Military, and the one where Lupin wants to take Fujiko to the moon so he gets a rocket that runs on popcorn. And there's plenty more where those came from...
  • Martian Successor Nadesico has episode 21, which unlike any other episode in the series is told in non-chronological order, partakes in psychoanalysis of the characters, and features several sequences in a surreal "memory room" where the characters observe each other's repressed memories as Mahjong tiles. In other words, it's the Quentin Tarantino episode.
  • Episode 7 of the second season of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. The main characters are trapped in a doll house and living an hypothetical second life. The plot itself is strange, giving how the previous episodes focused on a kidnapping, but the "Second lives" make this episode even weirder: from Sophia's life as a fairy to Keith's genderswapped world, this episode is the strangest one of the whole series, even surpassing other weird episodes, such as the "Book by the Name of Desire" one and the "Forest Ghost" one. Kind of justified because it's based off a bonus story from one of the volumes of the manga wherein the main cast was asked about what they would reincarnate if they had a chance to (Keith's for instance is just him genderswapped). Still though...
  • Naruto:
    • The "prison escape" arc during the Part 1 filler: Two of the main villains are giant men shaped like giant Russian dolls (tiny at the top and wide at the bottom) and equally bottomless; their battle cry is "Food! Food! Food!", and Naruto plays hide-and-seek with them (?). Meanwhile, it turns out that the Big Bad of the day is none other than Mizuki, who is now fully Ax-Crazy and has an old grudge against Iruka. For some reason he has grown giant muscles over the previous year, so the previous Bishōnen now looks like one of those scary bodybuilders with a serious case of Testosterone Poisoning. And Orochimaru supplied him with a potion that turns him into a sort of tiger-thing. Pass the mind bleach, please.
    • Many of the one-episode fillers are bizarre. The first of these was the Hot Springs Episode 97, which is so different from Naruto in animation, story and style, it makes you wonder if you're watching the right show.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • "Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!" is an entire Hard-Work Montage episode featuring Shinji and Asuka's attempt to work together as a team to defeat an Angel, with hilarious but, ultimately, successful results. The whole episode parodies itself very heavily and breaks so sharply with the overall feel of the rest of the series that it deserves special mention, mostly because most of the show exists in a soul-draining state of depression, and this one episode practically turns the show into a lighthearted comedy.
    • The final two episodes. After a massive buildup, you'd expect a dramatic and conclusive finale, right? WRONG! Due to budget constraints and a Creator Breakdown, the show ends with a surreal, introspective dream sequence that became the Trope Namer for Gainax Ending. The story got back on the rails in time for The End of Evangelion, though. (Well, it was still mind screwy and controversial as hell, but at least it provided a conclusive ending. Or did it?)
  • Episodes 291 and 292 of One Piece anime are set in a setting similar to Edo-period Japan (with Devil Fruits), with Luffy as a police detective facing off against Buggy and Galdino, who are criminals trying to collect on Pandaman's debts.
    • Episode 336 is entirely in a Chibi art style, with Chopper as a TV-addicted superhero, and Usopp as his arch-nemesis who wants to recruit better henchmen because his current ones (Sanji and Zoro) are useless.
  • The final episode of Ookamikakushi was probably meant as a Slice of Life Distant Finale...featuring, among other things, Nemuru and Mana fangirling over a weird frog/rabbit character and Hiroshi crossdressing and getting hit on by gangsters.
  • The episode of Ouran High School Host Club wherein (young) Haruhi suddenly steps into a pastiche of Alice in Wonderland with characters from the show in all the major roles. Of course, this is really All Just a Dream, but surprisingly, the entire episode is not only entirely in continuity but it actually is important for developing several of the characters. Especially Haruhi's mom, who doesn't appear in person in any other episode. Because she's dead.
  • "The Hot Spring Planet, Tenrei", an episode of Outlaw Star. The rest of the series is a lighthearted Space Opera action show, but this episode briefly turns it into a Fanservice-laden slapstick comedy. While different in tone to the rest of the series, this episode is noteworthy for actually explaining the backstory of the caster shells, so it's not entirely pointless.
  • Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: CHUCK TO THE FUTURE. Even in a comedy show with all kinds of weirdness and loose continuity, this is the strangest segment. Starting off as a fight between the two Team Pets, it ends up being a sequence of surreal (but well-animated) nonsense. And despite the title, none of them seem to involve time travel.
  • Pokémon: The Series has too many of these to count:
    • The first was the episode "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak". In this episode Ash and the crew get off a boat on a beach, Brock spots a mysterious girl and falls head-over-heels, but Ash and Misty miss her completely. Team Rocket gets off the same boat, and James suffers the same situation. They run into a strange old woman, who informs them of this condition, and the next day, both of them are kidnapped by the ghost. When they are found, they have become completely obsessed with the girl, and the old woman from the earlier scene explains that the girl is a spirit who wishes to steal their souls. The spirit turns out to be a Pokémon named Gastly, who defeats Ash's and Team Rocket's Pokémon by turning into their weaknesses (AKA: a mousetrap for Pikachu, a ball of yarn for Meowth, a fire extinguisher for Charmander, a real(!) mongoose for Ekans, and he combines an illusionary Venusaur and Blastoise to make a "Venustoise" for Squirtle and Bulbasaur). However, the sun rises and Gastly vanishes. Ash and co. and Team Rocket party for the night, and the episode is never mentioned again. The Gastly was also the old woman, actually working for the sake of the ''real'' Maiden, who stood watching at a cliff waiting for her lover to return from a voyage and promises to one day find her lost lover. And also to make some money on the side, but that's never really adequately explained either.
    • The one involving TIME TRAVEL! Brock, May, and Max lose Ash in the woods. Ash meets a cloaked woman in the middle of the woods who is singing a little song about Baltoy and treasure. She has an old book, but Ash doesn't pay it or her much attention at the time. Later, he meets a much younger girl who's searching for a treasure with (you guessed it) her Baltoy. She tells Ash she's searching for a treasure hidden somewhere in the woods, and opens a little book that talks about the treasure. It has a little song in it, which she starts singing. Ash interrupts and starts singing the rest, recognizing the song is the same one the woman was singing. The girl is surprised since the book only just came out. Ash explains about the woman and they eventually find her battling Team Rocket. They win and she takes them to a cave, where they fall down a hole in the floor, leading to a tunnel. As they reach the end of the tunnel, the woman takes off her cloak's hood, revealing herself to be an older version of the girl. She then explains that the giant stone tablet thing at the end of the cave is a time machine activated by a Baltoy. Then she goes back to the future. Then the girl leaves and Ash meets back up with his friends. AND ASH NEVER SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT THE TIME MACHINE!!!
    • May and Meowth had a Time Travel episode too. Only instead of a Stable Time Loop, they end up changing the course of history so that a guy doesn't die anymore and a town expands into a city. And instead of a time machine they get zapped by a magic locket. Because of love, or something. Anyway, neither May nor Meowth sees fit to tell anyone about the whole futzing about with time.
    • An episode involving a sadistic Togepi, a rocket, and Rayquaza. It's probably one of the funniest surreal episodes and needs to be seen to be believed. The episode also marks the first time Pikachu is referred to as male in the Japanese dub. This doesn't stop him from getting shipped with Piplup, especially considering what happened seven episodes later...
    • One episode has it all: Ash and James dressed up as eggplants, an old man attempting to sell souvenirs at every chance he can, Nurse May, Dancing Queen Jessie, a crossdressing Meowth and Wobbuffet, Wobbuffet's flute-playing skills, and to top it all off... A GIANT CLAYDOL. Even funnier is that the Claydol actually falls in love with and chases Wobbuffet!
    • One episode of X and Y has Ash and Pikachu taken through a mirror into a parallel universe with psychedelic colours and everyone's personality is opposite to the normal world. Mirror!Ash is a timid crybaby, Mirror!Clemont is an athletic wizard, Mirror!Serena is a loud-mouthed Jerk with a Heart of Gold (and has a Kansai accent in the Japanese dub), Mirror!Bonnie is prim and proper with no sign of her usual Little Miss Snarker attitude and Mirror!Team Rocket are servants of justice. It's revealed that if someone stays past sunset, they can never return to their original world. Normal!Team Rocket also turn up in the mirror world and don't make it back before sunset, but show up in the next episode anyway with no explanation. The whole thing is never mentioned again.
    • Even the "Who's That Pokémon?" eyecatches had a few strange moments. In one episodenote , the WTP of the day was a one-off human character with a Verbal Tic, and in anothernote  it was Jessie in a Venomoth costume (the same one she stole earlier in the episode). Note that these oddities were only present in the Japanese version, with the dubbed versions instead showing Pidgeotto and Cubone respectively.
  • The Prince of Tennis:
    • The series has many of these, but the beach volleyball OVA episode takes the cake. The characters think they're on a volleyball team instead of a tennis team (in fact, the word "tennis" is censored even in-universe), Invincible Hero Ryoma is a horrible player, Inui gets his swim trunks pulled off, and let's not even mention the old coaches' punishment game...note that while this all adds up to a massive Bizarro Episode, it's also one of the funniest.
    • The chibi episodes also count. There will be random filler episodes every so often where the entire main cast becomes Super-Deformed and play out episodes that are weird even in the context of a weird show. Fuji and Oishi usually become women in these episodes.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena: "Cowbell of Happiness" and "Nanami's Egg" feel like this compared to the rest of the series, and trust us, that's saying something. However, because this is Revolutionary Girl Utena, even these episodes contain themes and ideas that help to explain the rest of the series. Not that you're likely to notice the first time in the middle of the giant WTF it induces.
  • Sailor Moon has Sailor Moon R's episode 67, a Beach Episode that features the main characters having an island vacation in which Chibiusa befriends a dinosaur and the main characters use their superpowers to save said dinosaurs from a volcano. Yea, that's right. The main characters fight a volcano to save a pair of dinosaurs. The show normally doesn't venture into such fantastical territory being acceptable, and the existence of living dinosaurs never comes up in the show again. It's generally considered one of the most pointless episodes of the entire show since absolutely nothing happens to progress the plot or flesh out the main characters. DiC never dubbed it into English and ADV Films left it off its English subbed DVD releases entirely, as it wasn't in the masters obtained from DiC (they initially claimed Toei Animation didn't give them the episode due to Naoko Takeuchi not liking it). Most people only complained that it made their DVD collections incomplete, as opposed to genuinely missing the episode. Viz eventually released the episode stateside as part of their dub of the series.
  • The zombie episode of Samurai Champloo, which has overtly supernatural elements that would be out of place in the rest of the series, and ends with the main characters either dead or undead. A very brief and light Lampshade Hanging later, and next episode, it's like none of this ever happened.
  • Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is a Gag Series, but a few instances stand out. The first episode of the second series has its own Gag Sub with the characters speaking gibberish. There's the time that Harumi listens to an episode of ''Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei'' on the radio which can be heard indistinctly in the background, and most of all, the instance where Chiri becomes a German-spouting giantess with an unstoppable knife and fights off an alien invasion.
  • The ninth episode of Space☆Dandy involves two of the main characters landing on a planet composed of giant, intelligent plants, with vibrant, changing colors, that almost looks like they were on an acid trip.
  • Almost all of episode 7 of Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry, "Lavinia's Lovely Plot", is markedly different (and far more Fanservicey) from the dark tone of the series. Very little of what happens here is mentioned again, made especially jarring by the fact that Strain is only a thirteen-episode anime.
  • The original Tenchi Muyo! TV series made some waves at the time of its original broadcast by taking a couple of weeks off from the storyline to air a series of "alternate-universe" vignettes starring the main characters in very different settings (one of which actually spun off into its own franchise). Definitely the first time this trope had ever been used in anime, and possibly a first for Japanese television as a whole!
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann turns bizarre in episode four: The heroes don't seem to have anything better to do than trying to get some food, Kamina almost kills Simon "to make him more manly", there is a lot of lecturing on how to combine as brotherly as possible, the art resembles a low budget Tokyo Ghoul and the animation suddenly drops in quality. The only thing relevant to the plot is Kittan and his sisters being introduced, wearing psychedelic costumes while riding cows backwards. The consumption of Boota's tail is instrumental in defeating this episode's enemy mecha, which is piloted by a bunch of pink puffballs that are supposedly beastmen but look nothing like any of the beastmen seen before or since (which are generally human-animal hybrids to varying degrees). Overall, the episode can best be described as a fever dream where characters you recognize look noticeably different and spend a long time accomplishing nothing. Supposedly episode 4 was made as a jab at other anime that decrease in overall quality after the first few episodes, but it was still effed up.
  • Uta Koi's episode 6 "Uta Hen+". Despite the fact this anime starts off with some weird intros at times, this one is weirder than most and then spirals out of control on the weird scale. Best part? One of the characters points out the weirdness... and then proceeds to make it get even more hilariously and disturbingly weird. The next episode proceeds as normal.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • This show managed to get a bizarro season. Between the quarter-finals and the semi-finals of the Battle City tournament, they arrive on a submersible military base and have to fight the digitised minds of all previous high ranking officials of KaibaCorp in a mindscrewed reality, at the behest of Seto Kaiba's anime-exclusive Virtual Ghost half-brother, Noah. The season also introduced the Deck Master to the games, a process that makes no sense whatsoever (but what else is new). And to secure it as a total mindfreak, the digital mind of Kaiba's father tries to turn into a giant being of fire and eat their jet as it's leaving. Lampshaded when Kaiba says he never wants any of them to mention it again. And Tristan gets turned into a monkey. Lay off the crazy juice, Japanimators.
    • Then there's the "Abandoned Dorm" sub-arc in GX. While "investigated" several times in Seasons 1 and 4, answers about what it actually was were few and far between, and usually resulted in bizarre Shadow Duels that get hardly a mention afterward.
    • Episode 17 of GX features a stake-out to catch someone stealing randomized sandwiches (most containing disgusting fillings, one containing a golden egg laid by a rooster, and yes, the impossibility of this is acknowledged in-universe). The culprit turns out to be a former student who now lives in the wild as a Tarzan Expy, who is "drawing" the correct sandwich as a way to improve his card-drawing skills, which is treated as something you can physically train in rather than dumb luck. (His other method of training is pulling cards out of a waterfall. Seriously.) He and Jaden duel, Jaden wins, he promises to stop stealing... and the next "sandwich day", he's back to looking like he used to as a student, all the bulk he gained when he went wild having disappeared somehow.
    • And finally, there's the "Crashtown" arc of 5D's. In the middle of a season-long arc of finding the Three Emperors of Ylliaster, let's intercut a Noah-like arc in the Wild West involving a former villain from Season 2, and put Yusei in a poncho. Needless to say, until the real season started getting hit with Wham after Wham, this was the point in which fans were starting to wonder whether the cast had used their Duel Runners to jump the shark.
    • Bizarro Episodes in Yu-Gi-Oh! go as far back as the original manga's 21st chapter. The story had just come off its first true Story Arc, which introduced the first Millennium Item wielder other than Yugi and set up a whole bunch of things that wouldn't pay off for years of real-time. The very next chapter is a lighthearted romp about Tamagotchi-style digital pets, and a bully who has his pets kill all his classmates' pets. This wouldn't be all that strange were it not for the strongly implied fact that the digital pets are alive, and even that would be only moderately strange were it not for the fact that not a single Shadow Game is played in this chapter; the Shadow Games have been repeatedly demonstrated to bring the pieces involved to life, but this is the one and only chapter in the series where sentient game pieces seem to exist without a Shadow Game.

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