Life can be weird, and the best slice of life anime do a great job reflecting that. Even the most typical, mundane life can be full of strange new experiences. Thanks to imaginative storytelling possible in anime, those little moments of every day can really be given an opportunity to shine on-screen.
Of course, because so much imaginative storytelling is possible in anime, the medium also allows for deliberately fanciful, whimsical, and weird spins to be put on the slice of life genre. Whether it's stylish flourishes to capture the inherent strangeness of the characters' dreams and imagination or telling a story of the day-to-day life of fully supernatural characters, anime has put several memorably and enjoyably weird spins on the slice of life genre.
10 Oshi No Ko
Although Oshi no Ko has a reincarnation angle and exists as a murder mystery story, its primary focus is a rather unflinching look at life in the Japanese entertainment industry. Especially for viewers outside of Japan, it's an eye-opening examination of the difficulties faced by Japanese idols and actors.
The overall story arc is driven by the more fantastical elements, and most of the drama faced by the characters comes from the pressures of the industry itself. Despite the fantastical elements that are crucial to the overall plot, Oshi no Ko is nevertheless relatable to anyone who has tried to make it as an artist or entertainer.
9 Himouto Umaru-chan
At school, Umaru is the perfect student and a paragon feminine poise and grace. At home, she's an obsessive nerd who slacks off to play video games into the early hours of the morning, collects the latest manga, and survives primarily on a diet of potato chips. The change in personality is reflected by changing what she looks like when she's at home.
In public, she's drawn with the same style and proportions of the other characters. At home, she's drawn in a miniaturized, chibi style to emphasize her much sillier personality. It's a clever artistic choice that really makes the differences between Umaru's public and private personas shine and drives most of the series' humor. Despite Umaru's selfish and obsessive nature, she still develops meaningful relationships with her older brother and her friends, best illustrated by the memorable Christmas episode of the anime.
8 Wolf Children
Wolf Children follows the story of a single mother raising two children, with the twist that the father was a werewolf. Hana's children Yuki and Ame have both human and wolf forms, and have to navigate their childhoods while learning to accept that part of themselves. Despite its low-fantasy concept, Wolf Children is a fairly grounded and incredibly heartfelt family story.
Set apart by its fantastical elements, Wolf Children is a fundamentally relatable story of both a mother watching her children grow, trying to do what's best for that, and help them navigate a society that doesn't really understand them, and of children growing up and trying to discover their own identities.
7 Aggretsuko
Aggretsuko can best be summarized as Hello Kitty for millennials. Retsuko is a red panda who hates her office job and channels her resentment into singing Death Metal karaoke. It's a fundamentally relatable story about life as a working adult, but infused with the inherent humor of the visual and thematic disconnects created by a cast of cute animal characters doing completely normal human things. It's a very adult series, not in the sense of containing very much mature or graphic content, but in the sense of being about the various aspects of life as a young adult.
6 Nichijou
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Nichijou's title has been localized as "My Ordinary Life". It becomes apparent quickly that the world of Nichijou is anything but. The series is a very self-aware, very deliberate parody of the slice of life genre. Despite the school setting being fairly mundane on the surface, the series is full of eccentric characters doing ridiculous things.
For example, an eight-year-old scientific genius built herself an android companion, and no one seems to notice that the android has a giant wind-up key on her back. Another iconic moment from the series occurs when the principal of the school suplexes a deer. Things get even weirder from there, and Nichijou has gone down as an icon of comedy anime.
5 Lucky Star
Originally a four-panel gag manga, Lucky Star was adapted into an anime for and about anime fans. Most of Lucky Star's humor comes from references and fourth wall-breaking meta-jokes. For example, the manager of the local anime store is drawn in the deliberately incongruous art style of a shonen series and acts like a hot-blooded action hero fighting with the fate of the universe at stake rather than somebody trying to sell anime and manga.
Unfortunately, Lucky Star is very much a product of its time in Pop Culture history. Many of the references are no longer topical or relevant, so some of the humor has lost its effectiveness since the series' original run, but there's still enough humor in the character interactions to be worth recommending.
4 A Centaur's Life
Technically set on Earth, the key difference between the real world and the world of A Centaur's Life is that evolution took a drastically different turn, leading the world of the series to be populated by fantastical beings like centaurs, dragons, and angels as opposed to mundane humans.
Although the series is primarily a high school comedy, A Centaur's Life also examines how exactly the world actually works. The series goes to great lengths to make a plausible account of the history and societal development of a world inhabited by fantastical beings and what key differences would have emerged when compared to the real world.
3 Pani Poni Dash
The high school setting is just about the only normal thing in Pani Poni Dash. The teacher is an 11-year-old genius with a degree from MIT and a talking pet rabbit. She often needs to be looked after by the students. The students all have quirky personalities deliberately exaggerated for comedic effect. There's a cat claiming to be God living in one of the vending machines. A crew of aliens observe from their ship. The deliberately nonsensical events unfolding are combined with self-aware meta humor and even simple slapstick comedy to create a bewildering but thoroughly enjoyably work of absurd, surreal humor.
2 Aria
Set on Aqua, a terraformed planet Mars in the 24th century, Aria has a surprisingly high concept premise for a series where nothing really happens. Despite being set on an entirely different planet, Aria is a laid-back, relaxing slice of life series about a teenage girl named Akari who has come to the city of Neo-Venezia on Aqua to train as an Undine, Aqua's equivalent of the gondoliers in Venice.
While Neo-Venezia resembles the original Venice, there are aspects of the series that make it clear Aqua is a whole new world like airships and holographic video phones. Akari also has a tendency to encounter various supernatural phenomena, giving the series an understated but ever-present Fantasy element to the series.
1 Azumanga Daioh
Azumanga Daioh is less prominent now than it was back in the early days of its history, but the twenty-year-old anime still has its fans. Overall, the story of Azumanga Daioh is fairly simply, focusing on a group of girls as they make their way through high school. The storytelling methods, however, embrace the absurd. The characters experience absolutely ridiculous dreams, daydreams, and flights of fancy. The animation and character models is often deliberately exaggerated to emphasize the humor.
It's also worth noting is Azumanga Daioh is one of the best depictions of neurodivergency in pop culture. Even though characters like Osaka and Sakaki say and do strange things, they're still part of a tight-knit friend group that accepts and values them.
While life has plenty of oddities on its own, it's also possible to tell stories of everyday life that exaggerate the weird aspects of life or introduce deliberately weird new elements to mix up everyday life. This is possible on a whole different level through the imaginative magic and storytelling possibilities that slice of lifeanime offers.
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