History Anime / Sarazanmai

* ForWantOfANail:
** [[spoiler:Had Tooi never thrown out his soccer memorabilia and went to Azuma bridge, he would have never met Kazuki and gave him his miçanga. And had ''that'' never happened, Kazuki wouldn't be able to reach out to Enta, who would have remained alone and friendless.]]
** [[spoiler:The BadFuture shown in the final episode shows what the plot might have gone like if the main trio was connected without working through their problems, emphasized by each "episode" in the sequence having the exact same title as the series' own up to that point.]]

''Sarazanmai'' (さらざんまい in Japanese) is an original 2019 anime by Creator/KunihikoIkuhara of ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' fame and joint-animated by {{Creator/MAPPA}} and Lapin Track. It has character designs by Migi and it is regarded as his first anime to center on male protagonists[[note]] Though it can be argued that the true proactive protagonists of ''Anime/{{Penguindrum}}'' were male, the story focus was primarily on the heroine Himari[[/note]], something he has stated he wanted to do for a long time until an idea was finally greenlit.

* LuckyTranslation: Every episode has Keppi tell the boys to steal the kappa zombie's shirikodama with the command "kapparae!" ("snatch it!"). French just so happens to have the word "accaparer", which not only has a similar meaning but is almost an anagram and keeps the kappa pun, so the French translator went straight for it.

* AnimalMotifs: Kappa, being also what the characters are [[BalefulPolymorph turned into]]. Otters are also given importance, since they're said to be a kind of kappa in some areas of Japan.

* BalefulPolymorph: The premise of the show is the three main protagonists having their shirikodama forcefully removed, turning them into kappa.

* DisproportionateRetribution: When all three of the main characters call Keppi a frog, he gets [[BerserkButton so angry]] that he swallows them whole, forcefully extracts their shirokodama and [[BalefulPolymorph turns them into kappa]].

* {{Kappa}}: Kappa are very prominent in this story, and the three main characters are [[BalefulPolymorph turned into kappa]] themselves. The fact that they're turned into kappa by having their shirikodama removed is an allusion to many folktales about kappa doing that to their unsuspecting victims.

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: [[spoiler: In the spin-off manga, Reo and Mabu are depicted as kind police officers raising a baby they found together in a fairly light hearted and for the most part, mundane setting. In the anime, however, they’re AmbiguouslyEvil partners with different personalities. Reo comes off as more disdainful than his Manga counterpart and Mabu appears to be more [[TheStoic stoic]] than his originally seen CloudCuckooLander nature. They also perform “Desire Extractions” on whoever comes into their police station, which ends up killing the unlucky victim and turns them into the zombies that the main characters have to remove the shirikodama of. While their actions turn out to be for sympathetic reasons, what’s made clear is that they’re far less kindly than their manga counterparts.]]

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: [[spoiler: In the spin-off manga, Reo and Mabu are depicted as kind police officers raising a baby they found together in a fairly light hearted and for the most part, mundane setting. In the anime, however, they’re AmbiguouslyEvil partners with different personalities. Reo comes off as more disdainful than his Manga counterpart and Mabu appears to be more [[TheStoic stoic]] than his originally seen CloudCuckooLander nature. They also perform “Desire Extractions” on whoever comes into their police station, which ends up killing the unlucky victim and turns them into the zombies that the main characters have to remove the shirikodama of. While their true motives have yet to be revealed, what’s made clear is that they’re far less kindly than their manga counterparts.]]

* Painful Transformation: During their transformations into kappa, Kazuki, Toi, and Enta can be heard screaming as their shirikodama are extracted from their butts.