It’s always fun when anime breaks the fourth wall a bit, making jokes they know fans will pick up on and appreciate or giving us the fanservice they know we want to see. Another fun trope it when creators make “anime within anime,” embedding a fictional anime show that characters inside an anime watch, which gives them a way to comment on otaku culture in fun ways. Sometimes the “fake” show even ends up getting animated and becoming a real thing.
In a recent bonus episode of Uzamaid!, aka Our Maid is Way Too Annoying, Misha is watching an anime about a clumsy maid who always manages to fall down exposing her panties, or letting the laundry blow away in the wind, or burning down the mansion she works in, which inspires Misha to consider a career as a maid. I asked our Twitter followers which examples of “anime-ception” they liked, and here’s what we came up with.
- In the anime about the anime industry Shirobako, the two shows the characters work on are called Exodus to Tomorrow and Third Girls Fighter Wing. Episodes of the actual shows are included as bonus OAVs for fans who bought the Blu-rays.
- In Macross Frontier, the characters film a re-enactment of the events of Macross Zero. Also, they imply that the reason the 1982 series and 1984 movie are so stylistically different is that one is a dramatization of the other.
- One of the most famous examples of the anime-within-anime trope is Kujibiki Unbalance, the show the otaku characters in the classic Genshiken watch, which got spun off into its own series, which makes references back to Genshiken.
- Inside Martian Successor Nadesico there’s a fake mecha anime called Gekigangar 3, which makes fun of classic mecha anime of the 70s. At one point, the characters of this show are watching Martian Successor Nadesico and complaining about filler episodes.
- Welcome to the NHK invents a magical girl series called Puru Puru Pururin
- The live action drama Densha Otoko contains an anime called Getsumen to Heiki Mina that’s an extended shoutout to the classic Gainax Daikon Opening Animation, complete with the song Time by ELO.
- Inside Sailor Moon there’s Codename: Sailor V, a magical girl show within a magical girl show. Actually, Sailor V came first, and Toei liked it and had Naoko Takeuchi develop it into the magical girl x sentai crossover that became Sailor Moon.
What’s your favorite example of anime-within-anime, or anime that breaks the fourth wall? Tell us on Twitter!
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