As long as its entertaining, there really isn’t anything wrong with any anime. Certainly the animation can be faulted, and the content can be dubious, but if someone is enjoying it – then it is a success to a varying degree. However, sometimes you can be enjoying a show, and in your more lucid moments, realize that it is really trying to sell you something. They are not straight up commercials, like that time Dr. Stone hyped Snickers or Gintama sold you Cup Noodles, but I feel like sales somewhere went up.
Best Anime That Seem Like Long Commercials
Dagashi Kashi
Snacks, snacks everywhere! Snacks and skits about them everywhere. All the snacks they show off in this excellent comedy are very real, and very on sale for hungry snack junkies. As the skits also are often centered around the snacks, they kind of work their way into your head and live there.
Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles
What Dagashi Kashi is to snacks, Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles is to ramen noodles. It doesn’t quite hype specific brands in the same way, but it is a show where you have the discipline of an old master if you don’t leave an episode wanting cup noodles or a visit to your local ramen place if applicable.
Super Cub
The show centers around – and is named after – the Honda Super Cub. While the model they use is older, Honda is still rolling out models of Super Cub. Furthermore, the series does a really good job of showing how a motor scooter can almost whimsically open up your world.
K-on
This one is perhaps a bit more surprising, but relevant all the same. Perhaps the fact that all the girls in the show use licensed and very real instruments in the show adds another element of depth to this quintessential cute girls doing cute things staple, or maybe its is to build Gibson and Fender hype. Not that they need it.
Love Live!! Sunshine
Specific to this particular series of Love Live, I feel it merits mentioning because it is essentially one big ad for the city of Numazu. It isn’t the first anime to sort of “wink wink nudge nudge” you about visiting a particular city, but the characters really make an effort to visit a lot of different – and real – locations in the city.
Takunomi
This series is selling you alcoholic drinks. Not really specific brands, but rather cocktails. What’s more, it is advertising to you the desire to have friends that you can go home to and have a night of cocktails with.
Wakakozake
Very similar to Takunomi, Wakakozake is all about a character going to enjoy a drink and eat some amazing and well-paired food. Instead of trying to sell you the dream of companionship and cocktails, I’m pretty sure this show is trying to get Japanese audiences to crave a visit to the izakaya.
Basquash
This is an anime about a basketball game played with mechs, but if you watch it, you will notice that Nike logos are prominent and everywhere. That trademark swoosh is even in the opening credits. There are plenty of series with cheeky little product placements in them, and they don’t merit mention. However, strangely enough, the Basquash creators actually had a pretty specific deal with Nike to advertise them. You could even buy the shoes shown in the show at one point, but good luck finding them now.
Pokemon / Digimon / Yugioh / Cardfight / Beyblade / Ect.
Sure, I could have padded out this list with all of these, but I’d just have the same thing to say about all of them. They are designed to sell you merchandise. They roll out new cards/monsters/whatever that just so happen to be on sale now and they become crucial and repeatable parts of the show. Some shows were spawned from merch, and others had merch spawned from them, but they all end up the same thing in the end.
Do you have more anime series that seem an awful lot like they are just 12-episode commercials for something? Let fans know in the comments section below.
