Pop Team Epic

Pop Team Epic, adapted from Bkub Okawa's four-panel web manga Poputepipikku, turns absurdist comedy up to eleven with its pop culture references and surreal hilarity. Its two bona fide high school girl protagonists are the short, exceptionally quick-to-anger Popuko and the tall, unshakably calm Pipimi, a duo who throw genres against the wall and never wait to see what sticks.

Each episode is a rapid-fire collage of sketches in wildly different styles, from crude flash animation and stop motion to pixel art and lavish parodies of other anime, games and films. Parody is interlaced with drama, action and deliberate crudeness, all in service of the show's overarching goal: to become a real anime. Even the format is part of the joke, since each episode is played twice in a row with the same animation but a different pair of voice actors in the lead roles, often changing the feel of the material entirely. Unpredictable, self-aware and proudly ridiculous, Pop Team Epic is less a story than a relentless barrage of gags that dares the viewer to keep up.