With the vast majority of anime, what they establish as the genre in the first few episodes will be the genre throughout the series.
If you are watching Non Non Biyori, you can expect a “cute girls doing cute things” show about shenanigans all the way to the end. If you are watching Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory, you will get “boobs in your face” ecchi all the way to the end. However, there are a few series that add in a shift in genre as an extra element to their storytelling.
Sometimes it is triggered by a particular event, sometimes creators do it for seemingly no reason at all. Regardless, if you like your anime to shift gears with genre, we’ve rounded up a few anime recommendations for that.
Best Anime With Major Genre Shifts
Gintama
Without watching it, you have probably heard of Gintama as a parody comedy anime. However, what you might not know is that it is also pretty good at serious action, too.
Gintama started as a series about a samurai in a world with little need for samurai (because aliens), so it mostly leaned on jokes. However, somewhere along the line, the plot led to a serious action arc, and it was actually good!
So they continued to sprinkle a little actual serious action throughout the whole thing. It is part of what makes Gintama a memorable show in its very own right.
The Dragon Ball Series
If you think back to the original Dragon Ball series, it started off as a bit of a parody of the “Journey to the West” classical story, but even before it moved onto the other entries, it became a tournament-style fighter.
Then Dragon Ball Z happened and the focus became increasingly less on comedy with silly characters and more on men ascending to the power of godhood.
While Dragon Ball/Z/GT/Super will always be comedic at times, it definitely came to lean more on action as it went on because that’s probably – judging by the amount of people who create power level ranking lists for the series on the internet – the bit that people liked.
Attack on Titan
This is perhaps the most notable example of genre shifting in modern anime. It starts off as a brutal survival story about the last bastion of humanity walled up against man-eating titans.
That in and of itself would have made a palatable and interesting story, but as you go on watching it, the world rather literally opens up before the characters and it becomes infinitely more political and less about the same type of survival struggle.
Luckily, it remains brutal throughout so we can sate our bloodlust.
Steins; Gate
Steins;Gate establishes itself as silly in the beginning.
It is about a silly “mad” scientist with a small lab in the otaku capital of Japan whose only successful experiment turns fruit into green ooze. However, when it turns out that it can also send e-mails to the past, the shift starts. Messing with the flow of time can be silly, but not in this series.
The changes start off simple enough and are fixed easily enough when they inevitably cause problems. However, the more they try to change the past, the more dire things become until the series is a full-on thriller and silliness has been drowned by intrigue.
Charlotte
Charlotte establishes itself as a nice school life series about a school for kids with (sometimes useless) super powers. It’s not action-oriented like My Hero Academia, but rather it is mostly slice of life-oriented.
However, after one very sudden event, the tone, and thus genre, of everything shifts to a much more serious side.
Unfortunately, because it has pacing problems, everything about this genre shift seems sudden.
Full Metal Panic
Full Metal Panic loves its genre shifts and will do so frequently from episode-to-episode.
Some episodes its it a school life series. Some episodes it will be more like a rom-com. Finally, some episodes will be amazing mecha action.
It really was Full Metal Panic’s passion for shifting gears that made it one of the more fun mecha series to watch.
Not everything is about adventure or life-and-death struggles. Some of it is being a professional soldier surrounded by normal high school students and cute tsundere girls.
Higurashi: When They Cry
Part of what makes the horror in Higurashi so effective is that it shifts from brutal bloody murder horror to cute and happy slice of life stories.
It is a shift big enough to give you whiplash, but establishing the cuteness of the characters makes it hit a bit harder when they are killing each other or begging for death.
Hunter X Hunter
This mind as well be a stand in for every major shounen series because the lion’s share of them do tend to take the JRPG path of progression in which they start off going to the grocery store, and 100 hours later, you are killing a god.
However, the progression and genre shift in Hunter X Hunter is particularly noticeable because of how innocent everything starts out and how horrific everything can end up by that there Chimera Ant arc. It goes from the youngest feeling shounen series to a pretty brutal seinen.
Interestingly enough, it does give itself lighter breather arcs that get back to that younger action series feel, but people don’t really light Hunter X Hunter for the lighter stuff, now do they?
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Even people who haven’t watched Evangelion themselves know what Evangelion is now thanks to the information-sharing nature of the internet, but I remember a time where that was not quite the case. Watching the series with no knowledge means you are going into the series expecting, and sometimes getting, a less happy monster of the week mecha story. However, by the end it becomes a psychological tale filled with existential angst.
These types of turns are how you get series labeled as “genre deconstruction.” Evangelion is to mecha as Madoka Magica is to magical girls. Both need to start off in-genre in order to deconstruct it. Though, I did not include Madoka Magica because it stayed in genre for very little time before going off the rails.
School Days
One more genre shifter that is labeled as deconstruction. What NGE is to mecha, School Days is to romantic comedies – or perhaps, romantic harem comedies.
School Days starts off akin to many of those shows where is looks like the main character has a love interest and another interested girl hanging in the wings, but then it takes a horrible (wonderful?) turn into the horror genre as jealousy and emotion rise to a boiling point.
Samurai Flamenco
Samurai Flamenco started off with promise by really leaning quite hard into the parody of the Power Rangers/Tokusatsu/Super Sentai genre.
Well, right up until it put its serious face on and actually became what it was parodying but with more mechs, magical girl elements, and increasingly outlandish action.
That kind of ruined it for a lot of people, I think.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
In the beginning, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya leans hard into making itself a school life comedy series. The characters bond and get into shenanigans, but eventually it becomes very apparent that other things are going on here – supernatural things.
That thread gets tugged and the whole rug comes unraveled, showcasing what is basically a god who is bored of this normal world. As such, while that reveal is in itself a genre switch, their various club shenanigans are also shifting between genres at times as well.
It’s a genre switcher with layers, like Shrek.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
Like what Higurashi did with slice of life and horror, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia does with horror and romance. The series splits itself between being a romantic series about a guy falling in love with a ghost and a more mystery-oriented series where they investigate paranormal activity at their school.
However, at one point they just straight up find her rotting corpse, which makes the romance part a little weird. There are moments in the series that are rom-com anime cheesy and horror anime disturbing.
Excel Saga & Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
Why these at the end, and why both of them together?
Well, these series are both ostensibly comedy anime. There is really no shifting that genre out of them.
However, they both get much of their comedy from shifting the genre nearly every single episode. If you want every genre, you will get it, but it will all be covered in an overarching cloak of comedy.
Interestingly enough, both series also dedicate a few episodes at the end to being serious about their plot.
Do you know more anime series that display pretty obvious shifts in genre throughout their run? Let fans know in the comments section below.
