Anime is often relegated to be a significant innovator in animation, action, and romance. However, a sect of it that doesn't get too much love from the casual viewing world is its capacity for comedy. To be specific, in a world full of Western comedies like Space Balls, The Naked Gun, and even Scary Movie, anime hasn't been given enough credit for its own parodies. This is a shame considering that a lot of them are quite a hoot.
Parody anime have a strong tendency to not only mock their base material but also celebrate them with an organic sincerity. And while those tendencies are to mock, that doesn't mean the product itself can't be good at what it's satirizing, sometimes to an improved degree. This list will be running down a few of the best parody anime that were way better than what they were satirizing.
10 Cromartie High School
Hoodlums and gangs within anime often get a bad rap. Within a society that often values compromise, intelligence, and hard work beyond anything else, those with a more aggressive demeanor or even those who can't conform to the society's high standard of performance are often segregated to sects of their own, even in high school.
Cromartie High School, however, removes all that dingy paint and reveals a much sillier side to the bad apples of Japan. The comedy lets even the rowdiest of folks (including Freddie Mercury) take a step back and just be stupid, high school kids.
9 Hetalia Axis Powers
For readers still taking history classes, feel free to throw away any textbooks or notes concerned with world history and just watch Hetalia. This adorable, little comedy is about the world's nations personified as cute anime boys that just like to mess around and have fun.
By doing so, Hetalia personifies even some of the more controversial and brutal parts of history with some lighthearted yet accurate humor. Now, if only the real world powers could just settle their differences by calling each other "Baka!"
8 Carnival Phantasm
Type-Moon is a game studio that has become quite famous for the harrowing and religiously strident adventures of its Fate characters, among other series. However, all that gloom, doom, and religious commentary are stripped away in this fun crossover with Type-Moon's other series, Tsukihime, and various other characters of Fate.
Carnival Phantasm to an extent is meant to be a parody, a comedic extension of all the harsh, alternate worlds that Type-Moon has created. However, as a charming Comedy/Slice of Life series on its own, Carnival Phantasm has managed to break the zeitgeist as one of the most distinct and beloved installments of the company.
7 Osomatsu-san
One of the most influential series in Japanese media, Osomatsu-san is a comedy legend that has persisted across anime for several decades, having found rejuvenated incarnations across different eras. Being the comedy legend that it is, Osomatsu-san is famous for a variety of comedic gags that still resonate within Japan today.
However, what puts it on this list is the eccentric group's tendency to take a few jabs at other media, letting film, society, and even its anime contemporaries know that no one is safe from a good chuckle or two.
6 Ouran High School Host Club
Ouran High School Host Club is one of the most famous, shoujo anime out there, often acting as a nostalgic favorite and introduction to romance anime for a lot of fans. This is incredibly interesting considering that the series itself is a wide parody of all the eccentric tropes known among the shoujo genre.
As a host club within a high school, this series literally focuses on cute boys (and one girl) putting on a clinic of hysterical seduction to grab their girls and the audience. In doing so, the series not only provides one of the most accessible avenues to shoujo anime but also manages to bring some sincere attention to its own romances.
5 Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun
Within the same vein as Ouran, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is a parody of shoujo tropes. However, this series is not only immensely more direct about being a parody, it outright tries to educate the audience on the matter.
This series focuses on a girl trying to confess her love to one of the cutest boys in school, only to find herself accidentally volunteering to be his assistant for his secret life as a famous Shoujo mangaka. As the duo make a shoujo manga, they and the world around them immediately subvert their ideals and make cute, original romances of their own.
4 SKET Dance
Shonen Jump isn't exactly known for creating slice of life/romance series. Luckily, the publication doesn't always have to when comedy and shounen tropes are some of their best angles. SKET Dance is a high school, romance anime that doesn't exactly work like its lovelorn contemporaries.
This one focuses on a trio of high schoolers as they aim to solve cases and help their fellow students across a variety of hilarious high school anime tropes, all while cultivating some shounen build and drama of its own.
3 One-Punch Man
Despite how awesome of a media giant it has become, let's not forget that One-Punch Man is kind of a parody of superhero and shounen action. If anything, major kudos to the series for turning what could've been a one-gag comedy into one of the most introspective and exciting action series out there.
Saitama's deadpan demeanor to his own abilities only serves to make him that much more of an OP character that is still incredibly likable.
2 KonoSuba
No matter how young and new, if something gets made enough and is popular enough, it is prone to parody. Isekai anime is no different. Once the success of these otherworldly anime really took off, it was about time that a series parodying all of the genre's tropes and ideals was released.
In comes KonoSuba, a wonderful isekai whose brave adventurers are not very brave or even that good at adventuring. Even with its potential to be a harem anime, KonoSuba subverts expectations by having its female characters be incredibly, incredibly flawed, making them more memorable and lovable in the process.
1 Gintama
Nothing else could really stand at the top of this list than the king of all comedy anime. The largest sliver of Gintama's parodies is dedicated to mocking shounen anime, addressing various tropes and characters that it not only outright references but also incorporates into some amazing action-packed stories of its own.
However, that's only scratching the surface. Gintama is responsible for an entire tsunami's worth of pop culture references across a variety of influences. The anime/manga often overwhelms its audience so much that a Google search might be required to grasp all the jokes. In some cases, Gintama might inspire fans to watch a few of the series it just practically promoted.
On top of that, Gintama does harems better than harem anime, hard-boiled stoicism just as well as any samurai flick, and galactic battles comparable to Star Wars. The series is also pretty funny, too.