Battle Royal High School

Animes with body horror and are gore.

Thanks to the user eblf2013 for collaborating.

Every anime directed by Ichirou Itano. Also includes series he only partially directed (i.e. Patlabor ep. 6).

Decided to make a stack for the OVAs and movies you used to be able to find on Blockbuster shelves or on late-night TV anime blocks right before infomercials or softcore porn. Behold, hyper-violence, bad animation, paranoid politics, incomprehensible writing, awful dubs, gratuitous nudity, and that special something that makes bad things great sometimes.

Bonus final row dedicated to Yoshiaki Kawaijiri, the man, the myth, the legend.

I remember going to the video store, browsing the shelves, and picking out a movie based on the box art alone. I'd look at the front, I'd look at the back, and more often than not I'd put it back on the shelf. Occasionally there'd be something like Ghost in the Shell or Ninja Scroll, and I knew I just had to rent it, or more accurately get my parents to rent it.

This isn't just a list of movies that were available on VHS at my local video store, this is also a list of movies that I would have rented had they been there. They have box art and synopsis appeal, regardless of the reality contained within.

This is my virtual VHS store, where we say Japanimation and we don't stock TV shows unless they're only a few episodes long. I hope you like violence and nudity. Things here also generally skew older, keeping with the VHS theme.

This is the bad stuff list. If you want the good stuff list, go here: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/9517

Tags: Old, Oldtaku, Retro, Violent, 1980s, 1990s, Trash, So bad it's good

Before the likes of Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon conquering the kids in the west, it was actually Akira that opened the door and made people realize that the cartoons coming from Japan weren't what you would expect from Disney or your TV channels.
A huge flood of VHS tapes came showing animations with mature themes, absurd plots, and enough graphic sex and violence to make parents freak out... what a glorious time!
They don't make cartoons like this anymore.

This is a comprehensive list with stuff from very good to very trashy, but all in the same spirit.
Some early 00's also included.

ps: I also recommend, but can't include here, Kage (OVA).

Glorious 80's and 90's (Sci-Fi, Neo-Noir and Crime Drama)
https://myanimelist.net/stacks/30604

Anime which showcases an exaggerated amount of blood and visceral scenery often.

Every cinema or direct to video anime film that came out in 1987.

Part 1: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/34037

1986: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/34034
https://myanimelist.net/stacks/34035
1988: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/34043

Mostly includes OVAs and Movies.

Part 1 here : https://myanimelist.net/stacks/37307

A mix of 80's & 90's ova series that I have seen.
Some great, some not so much... you be the judge of what's good though.

Short form anime series on this site can often be underappreciated. In the same way poetry is radically different from fiction novels, which are radically different from screenplays and so forth, I view shorter series, typically OVAs, in the same way. Too frequently they're compared to TV series, and there will be many comparative allusions roughly paraphrasing, "You can't expect much from the story/characters because of how short it is", or other similar comments. The value of the efficacy of the presentation in both shorter and longer series are for the most part incomparable to each other. They both strive to do very different things through very different means despite the shared medium of "anime". Of course, what constitutes the differences or goals of a creator is quite vast, but the point is that from my personal view, because the context of the existence of shows that would either be shorter in length or longer are so different and require much different means for communicating the information that they present, I think they should be judged by different standards. How a person judges them is up to themselves, but I do believe short series are worthy of the praise that many would only attribute to more lengthy series. What I want to do is give reverence for the fun-sized length series I have come across and enjoyed to some degree.

What constitutes a “short” series is something shorter in length than a standard minimum length TV series, which is 12 episodes in length. The focus is not on the number of episodes, but rather judging roughly the amount of time. So, if there is a series with 24 episodes, but they are only 3 minutes in length, for example, that would constitute a short series.

After the release and success of Akira in the US and UK, Western companies like Central Park Media and Manga Entertainment began licensing as many films and OVAs as they could get their hands on to satiate a market hungry for strange, violent animation. Some of them were genuinely great and are still regarded as classics to this day, but the vast majority were schlock made to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This was essentially the anime equivalent to the American grindhouse/exploitation boom of the 70s and early 80s, where films were marketed on their ability to shock and provoke.

Here are a handful I feel would serve as a good primer to this specific moment in anime history. While many of these films and OVAs are undeniably terrible, this is an era I do have quite a soft spot for and there are definitely some gems worth checking out too.