10 best trippy anime that you should watch

Trippy anime bends the rules of time, space, and sanity to create unforgettable viewing experiences. Mysterious storylines, dreamlike visuals, and surreal soundtracks invite viewers into worlds where nothing feels predictable.

These series and films push the boundaries of storytelling, drawing in anyone who loves exploring altered reality, psychology, or just going on a wild emotional ride. Below are ten of the most mind-bending titles that every anime fan should see at least once.

Expect glowing cityscapes, screaming guitars, lonely gods, pink smoke, and fractured timelines in these 10 trippy anime.

Note: The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

10 must-watch trippy anime that you should try

1. Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain (Image via Triangle Staff)

Student Lain receives an email from a dead classmate and slips into a wired universe where personal identity fragments. The show blurs the line between human consciousness and an online network called “the Wired,” asking if bodies even matter anymore.

Layered with grainy CRT monitors, muffled footsteps, and sudden color shifts, Serial Experiments Lain feels like looking inside a melting motherboard. The eerie silence and cryptic monologues stay with you long after the credits, inviting obsessive re-watches that reveal new glitch visuals each time.

2. Paranoia Agent

A mysterious kid on rollerblades dubbed “Lil’ Slugger” assaults stressed Tokyo citizens, triggering mass hysteria that grows into a living whirlwind.

This trippy anime stitches together linked stories about shame, greed, and escapism, showing how fear can mutate into a shared cultural monster. Its neon gutters and warped faces turn a modern city into a playground of nightmares.

Director Satoshi Kon slices open social anxiety, showing how modern media can amplify public hysteria. Stretching heads, flickering logos, and looping laughter create a surreal nightmare that warns about the dangers hiding in everyday TV ads and late-night rumors.

3. FLCL

FLCL (Image via Gainax, Production I.G, Starchild Records)

A surreal coming-of-age journey explodes across six episodes when a guitar wielded by a space-traveling woman smashes into Naota’s head and unleashes giant robots from his skull. FLCL wrangles bass riffs, bizarre robots, and dopey office work into an anarchic package about growing pains.

Viewers never understand every reference, yet the swirling chaos still nails the feeling of teenage overload. Rapid-fire cuts, comic panel overlays, and a blazing J-rock soundtrack tear across the screen like scribbles in a notebook.

Beneath the madness hides sincere worry about leaving childhood behind, proving that trippiness can be both loud and gentle at the same time.

4. Paprika

Psychologist Atsuko uses the DC Mini device to enter people’s dreams and help heal trauma, but the machine falls into sinister hands. Paprika folds business meetings, circus acts, and toy parades into a spiraling tapestry that spills outside sleep. Each frame bursts with surreal structures and anxious imagery.

Satoshi Kon’s final feature mixes noir mystery with colorful and shifting visuals, showing how dreams can rewrite reality if left unchecked. The climactic parade sequence remains the most energetic mass hallucination ever animated, encouraging viewers to ask which plane of existence matters.

5. Mind Game

Every frame shapeshifts in Mind Game, shifting from manga-style panels to surreal rotoscoping as characters flee the Yakuza and end up inside a limbo-like whale stomach. The plot keeps resetting in colorful and shifting loops, celebrating second chances and the sheer joy of staying alive.

Rubber-limbed characters explode in color bursts, then snap back into photographic stills. Experimental collage techniques, roaring rap tracks, and philosophical monologues merge into an instant adrenaline rush.

Deep belly laughs mix with sudden tears, making the entire film a one-of-a-kind ride about living to the fullest, even if time itself isn’t linear.

6. Mononoke

A nameless wandering medicine-seller exorcises Mononoke—spirits born from buried grudges—through stylized ukiyo-e visuals drenched in golds and reds.

Each arc reconstructs a mystery, morphing a seemingly normal setting into a colorful and shifting dream space full of origami cranes and blood curses. Traditional horror meets pop-art flair without missing a single heartbeat.

Symmetrical patterns, shutter effects, and haunting shamisen music render fear with painterly elegance. Beneath the decorative screens, this trippy anime portrays how human greed and guilt give shape to invisible creatures, proving that the prettiest settings can harbor the darkest truths.

7. Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Image via Gainax, Tatsunoko Production)

Teen pilots in giant bio-mechas protect a post-apocalyptic Tokyo from angels, yet the battles morph into personal breakdowns about self-esteem and trauma. Neon Genesis Evangelion spirals from slick mecha battles toward surreal psychological tapestries filled with oceans of despair and multi-dimensional crucifixes.

The third act dives entirely inside heads rather than into skyscrapers. The iconic “Congratulations” ending of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series and the separate Rebuild films keep fans debating what is real, angelic, or just another screaming ego inside a teenager’s cockpit.

8. Angel’s Egg

Silent, maze-like cityscapes host a girl cradling an egg while a cryptic boy wanders with a cross-shaped weapon. Dialogue is limited, but each shot is filled with medieval imagery and crumbling cathedrals rising from swamps like half-remembered prayers.

Director Mamoru Oshii relies on long, echoing footsteps and sweeping organ music to craft a haunting dream in this trippy anime. Every frame resembles a forgotten Renaissance painting soaked in rain, leaving viewers debating decades later about the egg, the angels, and the flood that erases everything.

9. Kaiba

Memories are stored as digital capsules inside cone-shaped chips, letting the rich hijack bodies while the poor drift through the clouds.

The amnesiac hero adopts the name Kaiba and is revealed to be Warp as he journeys across planets, using simple character outlines and puffy shapes to depict love and fraud. Simple character outlines pop against psychedelic starscapes, making cosmic cruelty look oddly cuddly.

Masaaki Yuasa’s smooth linework and down-tempo synth tracks inject retro cartoon vibes into deep questions about identity. The show sticks with viewers because its glowing hearts and shooting stars keep looping inside a simple, doll-like body that refuses to forget a lost childhood sweetheart.

10. Boogiepop Phantom

A month after a pillar of light split the sky, ghost rumors sweep through a city where students mutate into monsters of regret.

Boogiepop Phantom breaks up time and perspective through disconnected scenes, showing faded streets and grainy CRT static that creates a sense of visual discomfort. Each episode flickers like a dying streetlamp, mixing urban decay with supernatural dread.

Sparse dialogue, muffled school bells, and shadowy corners force audiences to stitch events together like jagged puzzle pieces. The result resembles stepping inside an old memory that keeps rewriting itself, whispering that growing up is the real horror show.

Conclusion

Trippy anime offer doorways into spaces the waking mind rarely explores: wired cities, lonely end-times, and colorful and shifting dreams.

Whether chasing cyber-ghost emails, riding a Vespa through exploding suburbia, or drifting inside whale intestines, these trippy anime titles prove that animation thrives when it dissolves rational safety nets. Add a few to the watchlist, dim the lights, and let ten bittersweet nightmares stretch reality into brand-new shapes.