They say that a book shouldn't be judged by its cover. In that case, an anime shouldn't be judged by its promotion material or on its first few episodes alone. Every once in awhile there comes an anime that is nothing like what the fans thought it would be. Whether it be because of conflicting promotion material, a sudden wrench in the story, or many other factors, the anime is nothing like what was first promised.
Sometimes it is for the better and other times it is for the worst. Though, whether they were or not, these following ten anime tripped up fans and were nothing like they first seemed.
10 Madoka Magica
Let's start with one of the most famous examples. If you followed the promotion material before the anime aired, Madoka Magica seemed like a typical magical girl series with it pretty pink advertisements, adorable protagonist, and standard magical girl fare. Then the third episode rolls around, Mami gets her head bitten off, and all bets are off.
From then on the series puts its magical girls through a series of physical and mental anguish as they find out they are used as nothing more than sacrifices in a vicious circle to prolong the eventual heat death of the universe. Furthermore, all of the promotional material usually featured Madoka in her magical girl outfit even though she doesn't transform until the final episode.
9 Zombie Land Saga
Zombie Land Saga is probably the most recent example of an anime pulling the wool over its fans' eyes. Like Madoka Magica, the promotion material tricks the audience into thinking the show is anything but what it intends. What seems to be a gory show about a world overturned by zombies is actually about a crazy producer trying to turn a group of young zombie girls into idols to save the Saga prefecture.
Yeah... you read that right. What it then offers the viewer is a zany, comedic, and slapstick series about the misadventures of the producer and his undead idols as they try to climb the popularity charts.
8 School-Live
Here another zombie series that tries to trick the audience. This time though, it does the exact opposite of Zombie Land Saga. The first opening of the series alludes towards a slice of life series about the hijinks of a group of schoolgirls in the School Living Club. Then the end of the first episode hits us with the fact that everything has been filtered through the delusions of the main character.
The coping mechanism in response to the fact that the girls are currently holding up at the school as the few surviving students during a zombie apocalypse. The delusion eventually crumbling around the main character to reveal the sad truth. The opening then slowly changes to reflect that.
7 Elfen Lied
Elfen Lied starts with several scenes of nudity and gore as one of the main characters, Lucy, mercilessly rips through anything and everyone in the direct path of her escaping the facility where she is imprisoned. Then she gets shot in the head and the nudity and gore are interspersed between slice-of-life and romantic comedy hijinks. Wait... What?
The series then gets as split as her personality when she washes onto the shore and meets with Kohta and Yuka. The bullet giving birth to an innocent and immature personality called Nyu that switches back and forth between her first deadly persona.
6 The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Season 2)
After the ending of the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fans were excited to see the new adventures of the SOS Brigade and its assortment of memorable character. Oh boy... how they were disappointed.
Instead of 12 brand new episodes of content, the series decided to air the same episode eight times with only slight changes to each. The SOS Brigade members caught in a time loop, the series decided it would be "fun" to turn a short story in the fifth volume of the series into eight full and exact episodes. It torturing the fans that expected 12 episodes of new content in the second season.
5 Sagebu
At first, Momoka is a lot like the typical protagonist of a sports club anime. Seemly gentle and kind on the surface, she is bullied by a few members of her school and eventually reveals her true nature.
Sadistic and vengeful by nature, Momoka takes disproportional revenge on her bullies by doing whatever they did but worse. If they put a few tacks in her shoes, she fills their shoes up with a mountain of tacks. If they tossed out her bag into the schoolyard, she tosses their bags into the incinerator. And this is all after they apologized. She then sheds her facade completely and reveals the sadistic girl beneath that is willing her sacrifice all others to get ahead.
4 Higurashi When They Cry
Without any prior knowledge of the series or the original visual novel, Higurashi looks like a sweet series full of harem hijinks for the main character who is centered around a group of girls. Then everyone starts getting gruesomely killed off in every arc of the show and then one starts to wonder what to do with the lie the animation style told them.
While the art seems cute, horrible stuff happens to the characters. Including bludgeonings, stabbings, and a whole assortment of grisly deaths such as one that features a young girl sticking the blunt end of a knife into a wall and then sticking the sharp end into her neck repeatedly. "Fun times!" said the list writer sarcastically.
3 School Days
This is another series that looks sweet on the outside but hides a bloody secret within. If you are unaware of the original visual novel, it seems like the standard romantic comedy with a love triangle thrown in to keep up the drama. Then the main character slowly reveals himself to be a selfish asshole who will sleep with anything female that moves and all that slowly falls apart.
What then happens is that everyone turns out to be a terrible person and some are even willing to take it to the next step and become a terrible murderer as well. In fact, the last episode had to be replaced with Norwegian scenery and a very nice boat because the censors thought it was too bloody to show following the news of a young girl killing her father with an ax.
2 Spice And Wolf
Did you think you were getting a fantasy series featuring the adventures of a man and his cute wolf waifu? Nope! Instead, you get economics!
Many people weren't prepared to see Spice and Wolf become a crash crouse in Economics 101. Instead of swords and sorcery, the series focuses on supply and demand, trading, and money depreciation in a historical setting with European influences. Though, that unexpected shift was for the best since Spice and Wolf was one of the best anime of its time.
1 Samurai Flamenco
Samurai Flamenco may be underrated but it is definitely nutty. It comes off like a grounded series about a Tokusatsu fanatic donning a costume and trying to live out his dreams in the real world. Many of the opening episodes drawing similarities to Kick-Ass in their portrayal of the challenges someone would face trying to imitate fictionalized heroics in a real setting. Then episode seven happens and they throw a monstrous gorilla with a guillotine for a stomach at you to launch the series and any semblance of groundedness it had right into orbit!
From there, it becomes exactly what it tries to parody. The show falling into the deep end of stylized heroics and only getting nuttier from there. Going on to parody and properly play out other forms of heroics like Kamen Rider, Power Rangers, and even Watchmen.