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• Weirdness Isolation

Now remember, as far as anyone knows, we're a perfectly normal family...

An ensemble of bizarre characters who are related, or might as well be. Unlike the Dysfunctional Family, we as the audience plainly see the family is extremely well adjusted, supportive and loving — more so than some "real" families.

This is coupled with a range of quirks easily labeled "bizarre" by any of their peers.

It's also very convenient for heroes to have these, as they're not bound by the Masquerade, weirdness is normal.

Arguably started with the oscar winning play/film, You Can't Take it With You, and The Addams Family on television. Later supplanted by the trend of "realistic" but dysfunctional families (except in anime), probably as a deconstruction of the traditional family system.

Arguably part of the natural growth of a Pretty Freeloaders group.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• The Kurata family in Kodomo No Omocha.
• The Paper Sisters and the famous writer Nenene from the tv series of Read Or Die basically adopted each other.
• The Kawai family from the Pretty Sammy series (Alternate Universe #276 of the Tenchi Muyo multiverse). Her parents were so insane but easygoing, she didn't need Parental Abandonment to have the freedom to run around fighting monsters.
• The residents of Aoi House.
• Yuu and Miki's parents in Marmalade Boy met, liked each other so much that they divorced and remarried each others' spouses, and then all moved in together into one big house.
• The Shinju-yu (manga)/Pearl Piari (anime) from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, where the main trio lives with their Weasel Mascot and Cool Big Sis.
• Meimi and her parents in Kaitou Saint Tail.
• Both the household of the Takamachis and the Harlaouns of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
  • For that matter, the Yagami household. It consists of a crippled girl and her humanoid program Guardian Knights, the Wolkenritter.
• Yuan's family in Samurai Deeper Kyo. Also, the Shiseiten, if you look at them as a family and not Nakama.
• The Hiiragizawa household in Card Captor Sakura. The "dad" looks like a ten-year-old kid, and his "children" are a genderless magical being posing as a teenage schoolgirl and a winged cat that looks like a toy most of the time.
• The main cast of Kyouran Kazoku Nikki is the perfect example of this.
• Although with only two members, they don't make as dramatic a showing as some examples listed above, arguably the Koiwais from Yotsuba&!. Certainly, in his way Dad is nearly as quirky as Yotsuba, if more laid-back about it.
• The Furukawa family from Clannad featuring a kind mother who is a lethal baker, a Hot Dad who is still a kid inside and a shy but cute daughter who's somewhat of an airhead. As Tomoya puts it,
  This family specializes in incredibly stupid conversations

Comic Books

• The Crosovers, who buck the idea that the Quirky Household residents don't need to worry about The Masquerade, because every member of the family is maintaining a different Masquerade. Dad's a Flying Brick superhero, mom's a vampire hunter, the Bratty Teenage Daughter is a Sword And Sorcery heroine, and her kid brother is communicating with The Greys.

Film

• The titular Robinsons from the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons.

Literature

• The Moomin family, from the childrens' book series by Tove Jansson.
• Roleplay example — the cafe in Kokoro.

Real Life

• This editor knows several families like this... one of which owns a woodcut that reads "Remember, as far as anyone knows, we're a perfectly normal family."
• This troper was a member of one of these, before it became fractious. Still hopes to start one of his own, one day.

Role Playing Games

• There Is No Such Thing As Notability—Often in multifandom Role Playing Games on LiveJournal, characters will form together in a (very quirky) nakama depending on where they live. For example, the game Polychromatic has characters from Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, Chrono Crusade, and Count Cain among others that have settled in a building known as "The Opera House". The result is a chaotic but tightly-knit group of character that often treat each other like family. (Poly has Loads And Loads Of Characters, so this is just one example of many.)

Television

• Subverted by The Young Ones, in which none of the characters in the house can actually stand one another for any significant length of time. This doesn't count as an instance of Dysfunctional Family, as the characters in a Dysfunctional Family show are permitted to get along with one another despite their differences.
• The Coneheads from Saturday Night Live.
• The Addams Family was mentioned above, but their knockoffs The Munsters (and The Gruesomes on The Flintstones) qualify as well.
• Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally. On Earth.

Theater

• Made famous in the 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway theatre hit, You Cant Take It With You, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, making this a fairly well aged ensemble.

Webcomics

• At many points, the cast of Sluggy Freelance.

Web Original

• Protectors Of The Plot Continuum features a few. Possibly the most extreme are Agents Trojanhorse and Paddlebrains. Trojanhorse is a relatively normal woman, despite her fixation on Slash Fic ("I can't go back to the real world! Heterosexual relationships are the majority there!") Paddlebrains is, to give a simplified description, a copy of Sirius Black in the form of a redheaded chainsmoking woman. As of current canon they are not in a relationship, despite Pads' best attempts and one incident where they slept together while genderbent, but a Where Are They Now? "Ten Years Hence" fic shows them in a committed relationship, with some children, including Pads' biological son Spencer Black and an adopted daughter named Marsha. Marsha is a full-sized non-anthropomorphic talking Triceratops - to be exact, a clone of Cera from the Land Before Time continuum.

Western Animation

• The Planet Express staff from Futurama straddle the border between the Quirky Household and Nakama. In the episode "Future Stock", Fry even says, "We're not a traditional family, like the Johnsons next door or the lesbian coven across the street, but we're still a family!"
• The boarders in Hey Arnold are portrayed this way in several of the later episodes.
• The residents of Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends.
• The Oblongs. 'Nuff said.

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