When it comes to anime, it isn’t rare to find a series that uses elements of multiple genres. That is just how you craft a story. It is actually very rare to find an anime that can only be described as being in just one genre since you often need other elements to keep the story feeling fresh.
Just imagine where the romance genre of anime would be if so many series weren’t romantic comedies, embracing the sweetness of romance and the pleasant silliness of comedy. It would be difficult to capture the sheer joy that comes with falling in love without a little levity.
That said, there are anime that pick from A LOT of different genres.
Using key elements from many genres is generally not advised since it so often leads to pure chaos if not just muddled storytelling with a lack of focus. However, there are a few genre-spanning anime series that make it work.
Anime That Spans Many Genres
Dandadan
Supernatural + Paranormal + Action + Romance + Comedy
Usually, if you are using multiple genres, the author’s job is to wield the key concepts of those genres in a way that still tells a focused story. In its way, Dandadan does tell a focused story, but embraces the sheer chaos that can result from using too many genres. The real twist is that Dandadan pulls off that chaos.
Dandadan follows a girl raised by a spirit medium who believes in the supernatural, but would rather believe in landing a stoic hottie boyfriend. She stands up for a nerdy boy who is deep into aliens and the paranormal. After one argument about her not believing in aliens and him not believing in ghosts, she gets abducted by aliens, he gets possessed by a ghost, and they find themselves constantly having to deal with a new reality where ghosts and aliens keep bursting into their lives during their cute blossoming romance!
While combining the supernatural and the paranormal into one story was actually pretty smart for creating a unique plot, there is a distinct storytelling going in Dandadan that fans of shoujo romance are sure not to miss.
Dandadan is very much just two kids dealing with increasingly unhinged supernatural and paranormal events, but in between each event, you get a distinct romantic progression that is—very obviously—using shoujo romance storytelling.
It was an endearing thing to add in, and changes Dandadan from “just another shounen action series” to the sweet crack that shoujo romance fans don’t mind snorting up as they watched unhinged and emotionally devastating fights.
Full Metal Panic
School Life + Romance + Comedy + Action + Mecha + Political Intrigue + Sci-Fi + Supernatural
Full Metal Panic wants to be a lot of things.
It is a mecha action anime with political intrigue, but also, a school life romantic comedy. While all that should feel pretty unfocused, lucky for us, Full Metal Panic was given a long enough episode count to bring it all together.
Full Metal Panic starts simple enough. A teen soldier who grew up on the battlefield is assigned to guard a special girl by enrolling at her high school. However, its school life and romantic comedy sensibilities soon take a backseat when the main character still has to do his day job of piloting a ground mech to take down enemies making moves on his organization.
Alongside decent mecha action, Full Metal Panic starts to build out an increasingly gripping intrigue story that slowly unfolds over the course of the series.
Gintama
Comedy + Parody + Sci-Fi + Historical + Action + Drama
It’s a bit unfair to classify a parody anime as something genre-spanning because while some parody anime are aimed at a very specific niche, most parody anime will introduce whatever they need to make a joke that lands.
But Gintama is different.
Gintama is a parody anime and will make references to and parody literally anything. However, what makes Gintama a different beast altogether is that it is not just a parody comedy anime. There is an entire plot going on in Gintama,too.
Much of the time, Gintama follows a trio of odd job doers whose work starts weird and then goes entirely off the rails, but some of the time, there are serious action arcs going on that feed into a larger narrative.
The Monogatari Franchise
Supernatural + Harem + Romance + Comedy + Action + Drama + Psychological + Mystery
When you watch Bakemonogatari, you stay for the verbose diatribes and clever banter as the main character solves a variety of supernatural curses, problems, and mysteries for girls that sometimes fall, rather literally, into his life. Then, by the end of Bakemonogatari, you realize you were watching something very familiar in a distinctly unfamiliar package—a harem rom-com.
From there, it just goes on being a harem rom-com, but with a whole lot else going on so that you aren’t enduring the normal boring tropes, and if you are, you are heavily distracted by all the terribly weird things going on in the world of Monogatari.
There is a reason that the Monogatari franchise is so deservedly popular, and that reason is because it does so many familiar things in a deviously, impressively clever and unfamiliar way. It’s a series that combines so many different genre beats that it makes you believe that creativity and original ideas aren’t actually dead.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai
Romance + Comedy + Mystery + Supernatural + Psychological + Drama
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai uses many different genres in a distinctly Monogatari-esque way to do something very similar to a harem rom-com, but that feels very different.
Unlike Monogatari where every girl is a habitat of amorous feelings for the main character, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is more of a singular romance in that he bags himself a girlfriend in the first arc, but spends every other arc helping women with problems.
What sets Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai apart isn’t just its singular romantic progression first and harem helper storyline second, but the strong emphasis on the psychological issues driving these problems and the supernatural effects that they are manifesting in an otherwise very realistic world.
It feels like a rom-com, but instead of just using tired rom-com tropes, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai has a deep plot that it is exploring, and doing so through clever banter and intricate writing.
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
Isekai + Parody + Fantasy + Slice of Life + Action + Mystery + Adventure + Sci-Fi + Drama + Ecchi
Before isekai became the cookie-cutter genre of overpowered protagonist adventuring in another world and picking up cute female companions like Pokemon that it is today, isekai adventures before it became an actual genre had a little more creativity.
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is an isekai series about a kid maybe having a mental breakdown and using his hops to different dimensions in each episode to explore his nerdy interests and parody a whole bunch of other anime genres.
So one episode may be parodying old martial arts movies while the next may be a noir mystery thriller. Each new episode is a comedy parody, but each new episode is following the overarching plot of those genres while trying to figure out what is going on and why it is going on.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Supernatural + Action + Mystery + Slice of Life + Horror + Comedy
An epic adventure is the perfect recipe to introduce a lot of genres into your story. However, Jojo isn’t just an epic adventure, it is a multi-generational epic adventure. While it is always some form of shounen action anime, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure makes it bizarre.
Each season of Jojo follows a new member of the Joestar family, and while your family may have lived in the same town for generations, the Joestar diaspora is global. So one season you may follow a Japanese teen hunting an immortal bisexual vampire across the globe, and another season you may be watching a full-on Mafia intrigue story in Italy.
Planetes
Space + Slice of Life + Drama + Romance + Action + Intrigue
Planetes starts off really simple and doesn’t actually seem like it would be more complex than just the various character relationships going on.
In Planetes, you essentially follow space garbage collectors who clean up space debris. It starts as very much a sci-fi slice of work life show that focuses on the job and the people that work there.
However, as Planetes goes on, the complexity and depth of the plot builds past the “Servant X Service, but in space” slice of work life comedy into a full on action intrigue plot that the characters got accidentally caught up in.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
Horror + Mystery + Romance + Supernatural + School Life
There aren’t a huge amount of genres at play and melded together in Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, but what makes it merit a mention is the genres that it does work with are ones that are not usually seen together.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia follows a male student who gets pulled into the paranormal investigation club by a female ghost that has haunted the school for 70 years after being killed there who is trying to solve her murder.
The main mystery is actually wrapped up pretty quickly with other smaller mysteries thrown in. However, the oddest part of the series is that it features a building romantic relationship between the student and ghost, featuring them growing closer and also enjoying more slice of life events. This is all juxtaposed with legitimate horror and mystery.
They pull it off pretty well, though. Instead of giving too much tonal whiplash, the romance is at least a little tinged with a dark possessiveness that keeps things from being too twee.
Space Dandy
Space + Sci-Fi + Parody + Comedy + Horror
It’s a big universe out there, and a dandy guy is out there hustling and exploring it every day.
Space Dandy has a simple premise. A simple man is working hard to explore planets and record alien species in order to afford going to space Hooters.
Due to the episodic nature of the series and the vast expanse of unexplored space being whatever the storyteller wishes it to be, Space Dandy has a wide array of different adventures. From accidentally unleashing the zombie apocalypse to Groundhog’s Day-style time looping, Space Dandy keeps each episode new, but each new genre-dabbling adventure is still wrapped in the permanent cloak of a space-faring sci-fi genre.
Mob Psycho 100
Comedy + Slice of Life + Superntural + Action + Drama + Psychological
Mob Psycho 100 is a bit like Gintama in that it is very often a comedy, and often a parody comedy, but there is definitely a serious story that is building up and going on in it too.
Mob Psycho 100 works with a familiar concept of a special main character having wildly overpowered psychic abilities that he could use for combat, but instead he actively tries not to. He’d rather not be pathetically physically weak and have charisma with his crush instead.
While you get legitimately enjoyable slice of school life comedy about an awkward teen, you also get a paranormal/supernatural mystery solver and some of the most unexpectedly well-animated action that feeds into an increasingly serious plot.
One Piece
Adventure + Action + Comedy+ Mystery + Drama + Political Intrigue + Sci-Fi + Horror
If you are going to make an adventure anime and intend for it to be a long-running epic, you should definitely try to touch as many genres as humanly possible in order to keep your story feeling fresh, new, and, well, adventurous!
That’s what One Piece has been doing.
One Piece well-known as being a pillar of shounen action, but One Piece is as excellent an adventure story as it is an action anime.
The crew travels the globe and you could be enduring a twisted prison break in one arc while fighting a huge pitched battle against suped-up marines the next. You never quite know what you are going to get in each new arc in One Piece. It will be feeding into the overall treasure hunt plot and developing the characters, but every arc could be so wildly different in theme from the previous one that it never stops feeling like a true unexpected adventure.
The only genre that is still missing as a focus in One Piece in romance. There’s some romance in the series, but as the author believes that his audience doesn’t have much interest in it, the substantial developments that define the romance genre has been missing from this adventure, at least for the main cast.
Do you have any more anime recommendations that really span the genres? Let fans know in the comments section below.
