Anime / Osomatsu-san

And years later...despite being older than twenty, they couldn't find anything to do. They lazed around all day, and with only their bodies becoming adult, they had become Osomatsu-san.

— Episode 1, "Osomatsu-kun Returns!"

Osomatsu-san (おそ松さん) is the sequel to Fujio Akatsuka's famous Osomatsu-kun series created for Akatsuka's 80th birthday celebration. The series brings back the Matsuno brothers and their oddball cast of costars and shows what happened to them ten-odd years after the end of the first series. Of course, with a change in audience, the original series' slapstick Showa-era comedy gets traded in for meta humor and topics more relatable to the New Tens crowd to keep up with its contemporaries, but it loses none of the zaniness that the original series was known for.

The series premiered in October 2015. Crunchyroll licensed the anime for streaming under the title Mr. Osomatsu. At first, the series was announced to be a two cour anime, with the second half beginning in January 2016, but this was eventually rebutted once the series became a surprise success in Japan, and a second season was eventually greenlit, which had been scheduled for a October 2017 premiere. Viz Media announced the US license to both seasons in August 2017 with an English voice track included in home video releases due for March 2021. A Latin American Spanish dub was announced as well, making the first time anything related to Osomatsu-kun came out in that region, as it only was released in Spanish in Spain exclusively.

An OVA called Osomatsu-san: An Anecdote with Horses was made in cooperation with the JRA. Another bonus episode made in collaboration with the pachinko company Daiichi appeared in 2018.

2019 saw to a whole new medium to explore— a movie, aptly titled Osomatsu-san: The Movie, which explores the sextuplets going to a high school reunion, but suddenly getting pulled back to their senior year when they were 18 years old.

A third season was announced in 2020 and premiered on October 12th, 2020. This was followed by a spinoff, Matsuinu, where the cast is turned into super deformed dogs.

This series also has a mobile Tower Defense game called Osomatsu-san Hesokuri Wars: Battle of the NEETs, and a host of puzzle games on mobile.

Surprisingly, they've also expanded to the three dimensional realm as well. The series has two stage plays, each coupled with an F6 performance. They also scored a live-action movie for 2022, using idols from Johnny & Associates in the roles of the sextuplets.

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Tropes in Osomatsu-san include:

#-C

• Acme Products: One wonders how the Matsunos remain poor given just how many products in town either bear the "matsu" logo or have it in the name.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism:
  • Iyami was already pretty narcissistic, but when he strikes it rich in "Iyami's Great Discovery", he becomes even more of a loudmouthed, gaudy braggart.
  • The same thing happened in "Osomatsu-san Returns!", only with the sextuplets becoming fat hedonists (or in Ichimatsu's case, incredibly skinny and shriveled) relying on their friends and family making merchandise to stay afloat. Shonosuke even regards it as them getting a "half-assed big break" and "living it up half-assedly".
• Actor Allusion:
  • During "Jyuushimatsu Falls in Love", one of the outfits the brothers make Jyushi wear includes the Stone Mask as a face piece. Daisuke Ono played Part 3 main character Jotaro Kujo in Jojos Bizarre Adventure.
  • Jyushimatsu gets another one in a piece of Butler-themed merchandise. His pose, teapot and all, matched the pose Sebastian Machiellis from Black Butler made on the cover of one of the volumes.
  • In "The Perfect Christmas", Karamatsu takes off his shirt before blasting off everyone in front of him just to make way for Totoko. Yūichi Nakamura plays similarly topless Gray Fullbuster in Fairy Tail.
  • In "Dubbing-Matsu-san", Todomatsu scrubs his butt with scallops and then exasperatedly asks if this is what he studied abroad for. Miyu Irino did actually go on hiatus to study abroad earlier during the year that episode aired.
• Adaptation Distillation: The manga adaptation, written by gag artist Masako Shitara, is much Denser and Wackier than its source material. As such, character nuances are generally ignored and each cast member is primarily characterized by their most prominent trait for the sake of simplicity.
• Aesop Amnesia: On episode 24, most of the brothers decide to quit their NEET lifestyles by getting jobs and moving out of their parent's house. Nearly all of them agree that it's the right decision and that it would have to happen someday. Then comes episode 25; Osomatsu receives an invitation to a baseball tournament, reunites all the siblings again while yelling that it's no time to be thinking of becoming independent or working and they immediately come back, with Choromatsu saying he already turned in his resignation and quit his job (and presumably the others did it as well). It's made worse by Osomatsu, who was the only one in the previous episode to not move or get a job and was against the other five doing so, then saying that winning is the tournament is the sextuplets' chance to graduate from being shitty NEETs... which all other five technically had done already. This is all in the first five minutes of the episode.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • Episode 1 greatly parodies male idol shows like Uta No Prince-sama before launching into something else entirely.
  • Episode 3 has parodies of Saw and Anpanman.
  • Episode 14 has a couple to Fist of the North Star and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
  • Episode 19's "Period Matsu" was this for Japanese Period Dramas.
  • Chapter 7 of the manga is a Phonýmon parody chapter.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Inverted in "Proper Etiquette at the Races", where Matsuzo and Matsuyo are the ones mortified by their sons' behaviors while the Sextuplets are teaching manners.
• Ambiguous Situation: The girl Jyushimatsu falls in love with was suicidal before she met him, and she tells him that she can't get together with him because she planned on going back to the country to stay with her family. The story she appears in never goes into detail about that particular chapter in her life or why she needed to go after only a month in Akatsuka Ward, but it might have something to do with the girl on the adult DVD Osomatsu found that he considers telling Jyushimatsu about.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: After hearing about Karamatsu's kidnapping during "The Karamatsu Incident", Ichimatsu starts dancing with a much happier mood than usual.
  Ichimatsu: (wiggling) Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no...
• Anti-Climax:
  • "Letter" leaves the audience on a Cliffhanger where the brothers are separated and trying to do right by their new lives, Osomatsu remaining home, and Choromatsu's letter is received. Next episode reveals that he didn't receive the letter and was invited to a baseball tournament, which Osomatsu uses as an opportunity to round up his brothers, who immediately give up their new lives.
  • The season 2 finale goes further than that: The writers would rather kill the brothers off than let them find social or emotional stability.
• Animated Shock Comedy: The series has a similarly cartoony art style to its predecessor Osomatsu-kun, but unlike Osomatsu-kun it's aimed at an adult audience due to having a much raunchier sense of humor.
• Animation Bump: Episode 18 sees a huge upswing in animation near the end.
• April Fools' Day:
  • For the 2016 celebration, the official website briefly turned its visuals from the regular ones to those of the manga version of Osomatsu-kun. They even kept everybody as they were back then, too!
  • 2017's celebration had the cast of Byplayers cosplay as the brothers.
  • For 2018, the sextuplets were drawn In the Style of Osamu Tezuka's characters, as portrayed by professional Tezuka imitator Tsunogai.
  • 2021 sees to the announcement of the spinoff anime Todomatsu-chan, a gag on Todomatsu's decreased appearances in Season 3.
• The Artifact: Since the series is mainly about the brothers and exploring their characters, the supporting cast is consequently Demoted to Extra due to their status as the original series Showa era humor. While Chibita does find a niche as The Bartender, Iyami only really appears when the series feels like doing something more lighthearted, and Totoko is Demoted to Extra so hard she's hardly there. Totoko escapes this in later seasons by expanding on her rivalry with Nyaa Hashimoto, but Iyami unfortunately found himself stuck to the point where even the directors admitted they had no idea what to do with him.
• Artifact Title: Osomatsu-san is no more about the titular character as it is about his brothers. In fact, Osomatsu often takes a backseat to the other cast members' antics. Looks like some things never change, even after twenty seven years.
• Art Shift:
  • The first episode does this three times; it goes from the black and white look of the 60's anime to a colorful, modern look a la Uta No Prince Sama, and then finally settles a more streamlined version of the cast's original designs at the very end. The modern UtaPri look returns in "Christmas Osomatsu-san" for the "Perfect Christmas" skit and in the "Matsuno Matsunan" skit in Episode 16.
  • Cour 2's "Sanematsu-san" goes for a more realistic art style to go with its more dramatic plot.
  • All the ending themes are done in stop motion animation, but the first is done with food, the second with clothes and chalk, and the third with wooden pegs in a car.
• Ascended Meme: Back in the The '60s, John Lennon did a more graceful take on the Sheeeh pose when it spread as a meme. The pose bishounen Iyami strikes in the first episode is an even more exaggeratedly stylish version of Lennon's.
• Aside Glance: Iyami gives a pretty decent one when the other brothers and Totoko agree on continuing with the fishman stunt for Totoko's idol career.
• Ass Shove:
  • Ichimatsu almost falls victim to this during "ESP Kitty", as he was supposed to take an injection up the anus (with a very large syringe used for the injection) to receive the elixir that would help him communicate with cats. The cat itself jumps in front of his butt at the last minute and takes the shot instead.
  • Played straight in "It's a Birthday Party, Dajo", where all of the brothers get freakishly large flag poles shoved up their asses as part of the initiation process to being Hatabou's workers. If you look closely, one of the flag poles even has spikes on it.
  • Near the end of "Chibita's Revenge", Chibita finishes off his revenge scheme by applying mustard to the brothers' various body parts; Osomatsu is the one who gets mustard shoved up his ass.
• Audience Surrogate: Matsuzo, in what may be one of his only major roles in a segment, is just as confused and perplexed by the events of episode 25 as the audience is.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite all of their petty fights, the Matsuno brothers really do care about one another. Osomatsu even considers taking responsibility for them after a long talk.
• Back for the Finale:
  • Almost everyone comes back for the big baseball game in episode 25, and just like episode 18, all of them die. The only difference here is the presence of the country girl and Choromatsu's fiancée.
  • The Season 2 finale goes much the same way— all of the side characters from across the seasons come back for this episode and all of them are dead here too.
• Bad Boss: Iyami in "Let's Get a Job". He even calls the brothers "corporate slaves" to their faces once they get to the factory!
• Bait-and-Switch: With Status Quo Is God being a main cornerstone of the series, this trope is invoked very frequently. In fact, if something good happens to a character, one should expect this to happen sooner or later.
  • When the sextuplets question why Choromatsu would be manager for Totoko's idol career, they conclude that he must have gotten something out of it. Choromatsu, ashamed, admits that they're right, and stutters when he says that "s-s-se... she gave him a back pat".
  • During "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love", Osomatsu browses through the Adult Video section of a store until he finds a DVD of a girl he recognizes. When he comes home, he goes up to Jyushi with a serious look on his face, and tells him that he needs to say something important... which turned out to be griping about getting a girlfriend before he did.
  • A bit more subtly, "Todomatsu's Line" has one moment where Todomatsu is just about to tell everyone where Osomatsu is on his "brothers ranking", but is interrupted. Right after he is interrupted, the camera focuses on a sign saying "Oversized Trash"... But once he gets the chance to say where Osomatsu is in the ranking, it turns out that he and Karamatsu share first place.
  • Episode 24 of Seasons 1 and 2 for their respective next episodes.
    • Season 1: Even with Totoko's Day in the Limelight, it addresses that the characters were growing up and wanted to change in some way, finally gave Osomatsu some character development, and split up the brothers for a while. Then comes episode 25, which doesn't even attempt to resolve the situation and goes on with the comedy the show is known for.
    • Season 2: This Season's episode 24 has the brothers growing up very early with their father having a sudden illness. At the end of the episode, Osomatsu decides to announce something important to his brothers. In the very next episode, all six are instantly killed, and it turns out that all Osomatsu cares is whether they are still virgins.
  • Season 3's "Unit Formed" hints that Nyaa is going to form a group with Totoko. They do, but as wrestlers instead.
• Baseball Episode: Episode 25, and it's very in accordance with how this type of episode is usually played: the Matsuno family is selected to the 88th Invitational Something Tournament, to which they apparently never signed up in the first place and yet now they're completely set on winning. In fact, most of the cast returns as part of their team. The unusual factor for a baseball episode this time, of course, is that it's also the finale episode.
• Beach Episode: Season 2, Episode 5 is a series of short skits involving the cast at the beach.

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Choromatsu is disappointed in the turnout for interviewees, wishing that they were at least interesting. Then Jyushimatsu is up next on the interview list...
• Big Brother Bully: Todomatsu falls victim for this in episode 3 when he wins money on pachinko... only to have the rest of the brothers hunt him down with guns, cars, and police dogs to claim it. A magazine article released afterwards explains that had any of the other brothers won at pachinko, none of what happens in "Pachinko Police" would occur.
• Bittersweet Ending: "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love" ends with him and the girl he'd been seeing for a month separating, but he's able to make her smile one last time.
• Black Is Bigger in Bed: One of the questions in "Bath House Quiz" involves Choromatsu being shown a large, anonymous penis and then having to identify which ethnicity it belongs to. He guesses that it belongs to an African man because of the size, but it turns out to belong to Hatabou.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Osomatsu's response to being told he needed to ride an actual horse rather than any animal he could get his hands on? "Ride" the horse's penis.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • In Episode 1, MASA stands in for NASA.
  • In Episode 7, the boys go to a Starbucks-esque cafe called "Sutaaba". The English dub just outright calls it "Starbucks".
  • Todomatsu goes out with an "Amedas" gym bag in "Todomatsu's Line". ^note "Amedasu" means "rain is falling".
  • The much sought after lotion "SheShee" in "Matsuno Matsunan" is based off of a real life lubricant brand "PePee".
  • There was a cup of "Cup Nooooodle" ramen in "Jyushimatsu Festival".
  • "Totoko and Nyaa 2" has Nyaa use a version of Instagram called "Instagramatsu".
• Body Sushi: Episode 1 of Season 2 has a girl doing this for Jyushimatsu. Jyushimatsu, who's grown morbidly obese and as big as a whale, proceeds to pick her up and swallow her and the sushi whole.
• Born as an Adult: Godmatsu was this.
• Boy Band: The brothers form one in episode 1 to draw in a bigger audience, calling themselves F6 (Fujio 6).
• Brand X:
  • "Star Coffee"/"Sutaabaa" for "Starbucks".
  • The "bitten pear" variation of the Apple logo was seen during Episode 6.
  • There's "Hatabou Eats" for Uber Eats in "Delivery and others" as a type of Bland-Name Product example.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Episode 2, in "Let's Get a Job!" the sextuplets end up working in a Black Factory that specializes in the mass production of Dayoon clones. During "The Melancholy of Osomatsu", the clones seem to be distributed around the entire city (there's one in the meet-and-greet, one in a café, for example).
  • At the start of "This Is Totoko", Iyami was practicing his "Sheeeeh!" pose in case something mind-blowingly stupid happens in the future. At the end of the episode, he gets to use it when he sees the brothers unconditionally support Totoko's idol show even after seeing her in a gaudy fish outfit and having them pay for pricey merchandise and tickets.
  • During "Let's become Independent", Choromatsu tries looking for job ads in the paper and stumbles upon one that mentions a managing position. "This is Totoko" reveals that he got a job as the manager for Totoko's idol career.
  • During Episode 5's "ESP Kitty", Karamatsu is the only brother strangely absent from the whole story. At the very end of the short, the five that did show up walk home in a touching scene, and the camera then pans out to reveal Karamatsu, still severely injured and bitter from "The Karamatsu Incident".
• Bring My Brown Pants: In "It's a Birthday Party, Dajo", Jyushimatsu wets himself after witnessing two of the servants at Hatabou's house get shot in the head for a case of Mistaken Identity. Keep in mind, he already had to go, and the whole thing started because they were going to lead him to the restroom. They just made it easier for him.
• Broad Strokes: The series has an unusual approach to continuity, namely by both being heavily continuity centric and having Negative Continuity, sometimes in regards to the same skit. Generally speaking, anything relating to the Character Development is referenced later, while random elements like an ending where everyone suddenly dies is conveniently ignored.
  • The brothers' childhood seems to vary from episode to episode; "Jyushimatsu Festival" shows that they looked and acted no different than they did back in -Kun, but the broadcast version of "Matsuzou and Matsuyo" shows that they were pint-sized versions of their current characterizations (though Matsuzou's faulty memory can be chalked up to that).
• Broken Aesop: "ESP Kitty" had the Matsuno brothers realize how lonely and out of touch Ichimatsu's become (and their natural affinity for socializing didn't help), and so they come together to pull Ichi out of this depressing situation. This moral is kind of lost on them, as in the previous short, they did exactly the opposite with Karamatsu, largely ignoring his dangerous situation and expressing little to no concern for his well being. Karamatsu himself even lampshades it at the very end of the episode.
• Call-Back:
  • The sequinned jeans Karamatsu wears in "Let's Get a Job" show up in "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love", with Todomatsu once again complaining about how embarrassing they are.
  • When Dekapan is found dead in the (non-canon) detective skit from Episode 8, his corpse is frozen in a block of ice. The last time he was seen in Episode 7, he was frozen in a block of ice after having been caught in a snowstorm.
  • The sextuplets all do the F6 sign from "Osomatsu-kun Returns" in the second opening.
  • The social pyramid Todomatsu refers to in Episode 7 is from Episode 3.5, which was supposed to have taken place in between episodes 3 and 4 but was invokedreleased late.
  • Todomatsu brings up the events of "ESP Kitty" during a fight with Ichimatsu in "Accident?".
  • Osomatsu asks why Totty doesn't have a girlfriend during "Christmas Osomatsu-san", and then asks him why he's not dating either Aida or Sachiko since he was so determined to get with them. Todomatsu responds that they never contacted him after the events of "Todomatsu and the Five Demons".
    Ichimatsu: Huh. Why's that?
    Todomatsu: "Why"!? You really have the nerve to ask me that!?
  • Episode 18 also sees the return of the "Shonousuke Hijirisawa as an heirloom" joke.
  • "Final Sheeeh" has Dayoon shocking Iyami into an over-the-top reaction by showing him a giant turd, like how they were practicing in "This is Totoko". Bonus points since he rode in on the same bird he was fighting in the series visual (page image).
  • Before Ichimatsu becomes the last brother to leave home, he's seen eating exactly one half of a piece of imawagayaki, on a plate of about four of them. This calls back to "Four", where the brothers were fighting over four pieces of the treat and explain that they only eat halves because they constantly needed to split the pieces up somehow.
  • "Osomatsu-san, Such As It Was" features Iyami using the remote from "Iyami's Counterattack" to get rid of an entire baseball team.
  • In "Spring", Osomatsu walks past his brothers' old haunts from "The Melancholy of Osomatsu" when they all decide to find jobs. He's also shown working at the Chinese restaurant he and his brothers took turns pretending to be one person at.
• Calvinball: The brothers turn a game of mahjong into this when it becomes clear that Osomatsu will win if they keep playing by the rules. Choromatsu uses a marker to change the symbol on a tile, Karamatsu makes up a new yaku combo called "Godhand Jyushimatsu", Jyushimatsu strips, Ichimatsu creates a model of Hijirisawa Shonosuke's face, etc.
  Osomatsu: Don't do this just because you're losing!
• The Cameo:
  • Akko, Bakabon's Papa, and Rerere no Ojiisan appear on a couple of Todomatsu's many porno DVDs◊.
  • Famed Tokusatsu actor Shouei guest stars in "Totoko's Challenge".
  • Season 3 has background cameos of the internet personality Corpse Husband and a few other streamers in his circle.
• Canon Discontinuity: The series seems to ignore the 1980s iteration of Osomatsu-kun, and all references to a past series are of the original Showa Era version. Even more odd since Pierrot was the studio that made both the 80s iteration and this series, and the show takes many visual cues from that version.
  • As for the series itself, the show goes out of its way to pretend that "Osomatsu-kun Returns!" never happened. The last time it's mentioned at all is in "Let's Get a Job", and Choromatsu states that he wants no part in such a "fiasco" again when the other brothers propose it as an idea. Interestingly, some of the jokes used in "Returns" are used consistently in-show.
• Camp Straight: Todomatsu is incredibly girly, but is straight as an arrow.
• Casanova Wannabe: Karamatsu desperately wants girls to like him and think he's cool, so he plays up airs around them all the time.
• Cassandra Truth: The "Calming Detective" novel has Totoko finally admit to killing Karamatsu, but the investigators don't believe her at all, and they arrest Iyami instead. Iyami himself even suggests that this is actually a case of Selective Obliviousness and they're really doing it to protect their crush.
• Casting Gag:
  • Rie Kugimiya plays an Anime Chinese Girl with buns in her hair, and knows some form of martial arts, just like her previous role in Gintama.
  • As in Ultraman Ginga, Tomokazu Sugita voices the protagonist's Evil Counterpart.
  • English version: As with Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot, Michael Sinterniklaas again voices a Keet, Fun Personified sports-loving character who is identified with the color yellow.
• Caught with Your Pants Down:
  • In "Accident?", Osomatsu walks in on Choromatsu masturbating, which makes him angry and bitter for the rest of the day and eventually escalates to an all out brawl with all of the brothers participating.
  • It happens 5 times in a row when Osomatsu wrangles up all of his brothers during episode 25.
• Character Focus:
  • Episode 2's "The Melancholy of Osomatsu" serves as this for Osomatsu himself, showing that he really just wants to be able to hang out with his brothers like he used to do and how he comes to realize that he doesn't know everything about the siblings he's grown up with. "Letter" heavily focuses on his relationship with his brothers and acts as a significant Wham Episode.
  • Karamatsu gets in the first cour "The Karamatsu Incident", which pretty much immortalizes him has the show's resident Chew Toy.
  • Choromatsu had "Choromatsu Rising", highlighting his hypocritical nature.
  • "ESP Kitty", which takes a look at Ichimatsu and Jyushimatsu's relationship and explains why Ichimatsu's so emotionally distant towards everyone. It's not really a fun story. However, "The Ichimatsu Incident", which has Ichimatsu flipping the hell out over getting caught in Karamatsu's clothes, is.
  • Episode 9's "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love" has Jyushimatsu go through a range of emotions as he falls in love with a girl, and explores his kindhearted nature. "Jyushimatsu Festival" was a whole episode dedicated to him and his silly antics.
  • "Todomatsu and the Five Demons" revealed to the audience what Todomatsu thinks of his brothers in social settings, and shows that he's been working at climbing up the social ladder to get out of the societal pit he and his brothers are in. The second cour has another episode, "Todomatsu's Line", that revolves around the other brothers pestering him about his secret life outside the house. And then in Episode 22 he gets "Todomatsu's Star of Hope", which further explores his character and how he perceives his brothers. As funny as it is, it still airs out some things Totty isn't proud of saying and ends pretty unhappily.
  • As far as recurring characters go, Iyami has quite a few of these episodes:
    • The second half of Episode 6 focused on Iyami, now homeless and jobless as a direct result of the Matsunos' shenanigans and largely forgotten by the public. The only thing of value he seems to have anymore is his teeth.
    • "Iyami, Alone in the Wind" is one of the few solo ventures he gets in Season 2.
    • "Iyami-san is Troubled" puts Iyami's status as The Artifact under the microscope, having him talk with the producer, Osomatsu, and Chibita about what he could do to make himself less dated.
• Character Title: The series is once again named after Osomatsu, the oldest of the sextuplets.
• Chick Magnet: Todomatsu is this, as a side effect of being In Touch with His Feminine Side.
• Childish Older Sibling:
  • While all of the Matsuno brothers are man children with little to no social skills, Osomatsu himself, the oldest of the sextuplets, tends to embody their childish and lazy nature most of all. This is especially notable when he interacts with Choromatsu, whose moments of rationale tend to come from exasperation at Osomatsu's antics.
  • A good amount of the time, all of the other sextuplets are this compared to Todomatsu, who's the most socially adept, and other than Choromatsu, the most frequent holder of the Sanity Ball. This is especially the case compared to the 5th sextuplet, Jyushimatsu, who's a hyperactive goofball who often seems to be living in his own world.
• Christmas Episode: Episode 11, "Christmas Osomatsu-san". The whole episode touches upon a lot of romantic tropes in various skits.
• Clip Show: The first cour finale, "End of Year Osomatsu-san Special", under the pretense that it was just a contest to see which Matsuno brother was the biggest loser.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Jyushimatsu, full stop. He's generally the silliest one of the brothers and has a permanent open mouthed grin on.
• Clueless Detective: Osomatsu plays one in "The Calming Osomatsu", where his sole purpose is to make a fool of himself in order to calm down the atmosphere of the crime scene.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each brother is associated with a color that will almost always appear in whatever outfit they're wearing and is visible in the highlights of their hair.
  • Osomatsu - Red
  • Karamatsu - Blue
  • Choromatsu - Green
  • Ichimatsu - Purple
  • Jyushimatsu - Yellow
  • Todomatsu - Pink
• Comicbook Time: All of the characters are quite aware that they'd been gone from television and the world of manga for years, but none of them seem to have aged a bit. This is finally changed in the last minute or two of the first episode, where the cast ages a full decade.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Totoko decides to finally find a suitor, she goes to a matchmaker and asks for a man with far too many qualifications on top of being an oil magnate. The matchmaker kicks her out for such an impossible requests, so Totoko revises her strategy to have a man who's just an oil magnate.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Jyushimatsu of all people does this during his skit with Ichimatsu in episode 17 (which is also his definite A Day in the Limelight episode). He starts asking what makes himself "him", externally or not, what differentiates him from the other Matsunos (and even impersonates them to see if he'd stop being himself by doing that) and more simply what is a Jyushimatsu. It actually manages to freak Ichimatsu out.
• Continuity Drift: The second episode includes a gag at the beginning referencing the first. This doesn't happen again, the F6 skits are squarely Alternate Universe material from then on and, while the previous episode implied the brothers spent ten years thinking about a revival, there are from then on multiple references to the boys' high-school lives.
• Continuity Cavalcade: "Iyami's Counterattack" sees a huge amount of characters and references to earlier episodes come together to compete in the big race.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Jyushimatsu still plays baseball like he used to do in Osomatsu-kun.
  • Chibita still recalls being the brothers' rival even after all these years, though his animosity towards them has long since given away.
  • Dekapan continues to use comically over-sized syringes to inject remedies into people.
  • The factory from "Let's Get a Job" shows up in both "Let's Become Independent" and "Iyami's Great Discovery".
  • Iyami's situation in episode 6 is a direct result of the stuff that happened in previous episodes. His homelessness is the result of the brothers stealing literally everything from his house, and his unemployment stems from the ESP Kitty chasing him off the job market by telling his customers the truth.
  • During "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love", one of the brothers suggests using the ESP Kitty from episode 5 to understand what Jyushi and his date are thinking. Ichimatsu replies that the serum wore off a long time ago.
  • During "Final Sheeh", Ichimatsu announces that he's brought some porn from Todomatsu's collection and then holds up a book with a bellybutton on it, a nod to his Fetish from "Todomatsu's Line".
  • In "Matsuzou and Matsuyo", Choromatsu and Ichimatsu try to rescue their father and brothers via a hot air balloon but get sidetracked by awkward small talk, a nod to their behaviour in “Choromatsu and Ichimatsu".
  • In the "Fireworks" segment from "Osomatsu-san in the Summer", Nyaa Hashimoto and her fiance who was introduced in "Totoko's Big Panic" can be seen sitting together in the background.
    • In the "This Year, We'll Finally..." segment of the same episode, Todomatsu mentions that Jyushimatsu is the only one of the sextuplets to have had a girlfriend.
  • The couple Ichimatsu meets in "Christmas Osomatsu-san" returns in "Osomatsu-san in the Summer", and it's revealed that they're now married and the girl is pregnant.
  • Nyaa Hashimoto does retain her romantic history hinted at over the series...or rather, it culminates in her getting pregnant offscreen and raising her baby as a single mother. Her boyfriend broke up with her in the interim.
• Continuity Reboot: Though this series is set about a decade after their Osomatsu-kun iterations, it seems to function like this. The boys themselves have bits and pieces of their original characterization, and some of the plots they did back then are revisited and revised as if they've never done them before.
• Costume Porn: Many of the outfits in Hesokuri Wars and Tabimatsu qualify as this.
• Cover-up Purchase: In one episode, the sextuplets give "virgin training" to their father in attempt to rekindle his love for their mother. One thing they teach him is to hide dirty magazines between ordinary ones to make it seem like an accident.
• Cower Power: Todomatsu tends to hide behind one of his older brothers whenever something scares him.
• Creator Cameo: Akatsuka himself shows up in the Season 2 finale, appearing from heaven.
• Cringe Comedy:
  • "Todomatsu and the Five Demons" delves into this, thanks to the setup of the brothers embarrassing Todomatsu at the cafe he works at. It gets even worse when the brothers then actively try to ruin Todomatsu's reputation as much as possible as payback for Todomatsu giving them a "The Reason You Suck" Speech earlier as well as lying about his social standing.
  • "The Ichimatsu Incident", if only for the fact that Ichi just can't express himself like a normal person and say that he actually wants to wear his brother's clothing sometimes. The situation gets even worse when Karamatsu wakes up and they both try impersonating each other.
  • "Choromatsu and Ichimatsu" revolves around the titular characters' extremely awkward attempts to connect with one another and have a conversation, since despite being identical brothers they've never actually hung out together without the other Matsuno brothers around.
  • "Osomatsu and Todomatsu" is about Todomatsu taking Osomatsu to a mixer and making his older brother promise that he won't say anything inappropriate to the girls they're meeting. Naturally, that's exactly what Osomatsu does, and Todomatsu makes it worse by embarrassing himself while trying to cover up Osomatsu's blunders.
  • "Ichimatsu Radio" has Ichimatsu invite Todomatsu to be a guest on his radio show. Said "radio show" is really just Ichimatsu pretending to host a radio show while he records it on casette; he tells stories (about himself), pretends to banter with imaginary staff members, answers fan mail (written by himself) and offers merchandise to the imaginary listeners. The entire time, Todomatsu inwardly comments about how sad the entire act is.
• Crossover:
  • The manga has the sextuplets run into the protagonists of Shitara's other manga Gal Japon.
  • For the Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever movie, the sextuplets each dress as one Kamen Rider from the Heisei era.
  • With Black Clover, having a collaboration campaign and cameo of the Matsuno sextuplets in Black Clover's 76th episode.
  • 2020 has the franchise do a brief crossover with the Wave Surfing Yappe film series.
• Cruel Twist Ending: "Friend" features Choromatsu reconnecting with an old high school buddy, Tacchan, in order to dig up something they buried together (which turns out to be porn). At the end of the segment, it's revealed that Tacchan was just a figment of his imagination, much like some of the imaginary friends the brothers had.
• Custom Uniform: During the F6 stunt, all of the sextuplets wore a variation of the Osomatsu Academy male uniform. The only one to try and wear it properly is Choromatsu.
• Cyborg: Iyami reveals himself to have a robotic skeleton during "Iyami's Counterattack". It's probably not a permanent thing, much like the rest of that episode.

D-H

• Darker and Edgier:
  • Parodied and combined with Real Is Brown during episode 3 of "Dekapanman". The colorful landscape becomes a total wasteland, and the hungry girl Dekapanman meets in episode 1 is revealed to be a starving orphan.
  • Episode 13 opens up with a skit that reimagines the premise of the show as a serialized adult drama devoid of any comedy. The ending reveals that the main character is not actually part of a group of sextuplets, but is merely insane and hallucinating having five brothers.
• Darkhorse Victory: At the very end of "Iyami's Counterattack", everyone participating in the race has been either turned into ash or exhausted. The only one in any condition to win left is Jyushimatsu, who didn't even care about the race, and a Segway-riding Shonousuke Hijirisawa, who hadn't even gotten any focus the whole episode and ends up crossing the finish line.
• Date Peepers: After discovering that Jyushimatsu has a girlfriend, the brothers follow him into town to spy on them. Later, they try to follow him to the train station the girl is departing from but Osomatsu forces them to stay at the oden stand.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • The aptly named "Chibita and Oden" revolves around Chibita talking about the historical and emotional importance of oden.
  • "Iyami and Chibita's Rental Girlfriend" was entirely centered around the duo as they teamed up once again to scam the Matsuno brothers.
  • "The Life of Chibita's Flower" concerns Chibita's relationship with a flower fairy.
  • "Totoko's Huge Panic" deals with Totoko's fears of being considered inadequate by others and becoming an Old Maid. She then develops a desire to get married, specifically to an Arab Oil Sheikh.
  • "Matsuzo and Matsuyo" takes a look at the Matsuno parents, their relationship, and how they revive their love for one another.
• Dead Sparks: Matsuzou and Matsuyo's relationship has delved into this. They're nearly driven to divorce because of it during "Let's Become Independent", and season 2's "Matsuzou and Matsuyo" revolves around Matsuzou trying to figure out how to bring the sparks back.
• Death Is Cheap: The characters may sometimes die in skits, but they always come back to life for the sake of the next one.
• Deceptively Silly Title:
  • "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love". You would think that the episode would be a sweet but silly segment where Jyushi gains a crush on someone, but you would be wrong. You would be so wrong.
  • It's the same way for "ESP Kitty", which starts off with a premise as silly as its title would imply, but ends up airing out Ichimatsu's dirty laundry for the rest of his brothers to see.
  • And yet again with "The Life of Chibita's Flower". One might be deceived, but those familiar with the original chapter from the manga that the episode was based on knows this story goes down a very tragic path.
• Demon Head: The Sextuplets do this to a Crossdressing Iyami, Dayon, and Chibita in Episode 10.
  Osomatsu: SHUT UP! Rental girlfriends? You guys are nothing but monsters! Look in the mirror, stupid.
  Choromatsu: My ass hair is on fire, you uglies!
  Karamatsu: Heh. I'm gonna barf.
  Ichimatsu: Begone. I won't be able to eat.
  Todomatsu: You're not even worth aroma planning.
  Jyushimatsu: (pointing at Iyami) One out! (points to Chibita) Two outs! (points to Dayon) Three outs! CHANGE!
  The Sextuplets: (all pointing, simultaneously) See ya, uglies! (walk away)
• Demoted to Extra: The whole supporting cast, but especially Iyami and Chibita, take a backseat to the Matsunos this time around. This is especially weird, considering that the two were the show's juggernauts back in the day and took the Matsunos' place as the main characters. Iyami's none too happy about it, and holds a rigged race to see who gets to be the new protagonist of the series.
• Derailed Fairy Tale: One skit has a scene focusing on a retelling of The Tortoise and the Hare, but continues after the tortoise gets to the finish line. Instead of the story ending on the usual cliche of the Hare ultimately getting the better of the tortoise after they stop sleeping, the story continues from there and shows that the race is never ending and that for every win the Hare gets, there will always be someone better than somebody else, including him, no matter how talented they are or how hard they work. Meanwhile, the tortoise gives up on life and slowly sinks into NEETdom while ruining his family life and giving into hedonistic pleasures.
• Deranged Animation: The animation dips into this towards the end of "Iyami's Counterattack", especially when Iyami turns himself into a robot out of sheer determination to win the race.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The Season 1 and 2 finales have elements of this:
  • After Choromatsu decides to send off his letter in "Letter", "Osomatsu-san, Such as It Was" reveals it immediately burst into flames before he could get it in the mailbox.
  • In "Cherry Blossoms", the brothers wise up to their own habits and decide to help out the household by getting jobs. They even look like they're getting some kind of fulfilment out of it...until Iyami accidentally crashes a plane into the boys and kills them the next episode, causing them to go back to immature bickering over who deserves to be in Heaven more when they're judged.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Zigzagged in "Iyami's Counterattack" with Totoko. Choromatasu and Ichimatsu both try to stop her road rampage by morphing into their F6 forms, but she stabs Choro in the head and keeps gunning for Ichi, saying that she's gotten tired of them already. Ichi then strips in front of her, causing her to lose focus and drive off a cliff. Played more straight later when she dives into a swamp with an F6 poster in it.
• Disappears into Light: The final fate of Chibita's Flower Fairy in episode 14. Though, it was to be expected, given the title of the short.
• Disaster Dominoes:
  • In "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love", a slab of hanpen that Chibita throws at Karamatsu bounces off him and onto Osomatsu, who freaks out and ends up elbowing Choromatsu in the face and knocking him into Todomatsu, who promptly topples off the bench and loses his shoe — which lands in the broth and ruins the oden. Chibita responds by calling them all idiots and then smacking Oso with his ladle.
    Osomatsu: Why me!?
  • In "Iyami's Great Discovery", what remains of Iyami's overbite is knocked out of his mouth, punted by a soccer player, taken by an eagle and then finally dropped into a volcano.
• Disowned Sibling: Played for Laughs. After Osomatsu thoroughly embarrasses Choromatsu in front of Nyaa Hashimoto, Choro hits him over the head and proclaims that Osomatsu is a stranger to him from that point on.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In Episode 2 due to Osomatsu messing around with his brothers, they decide to replace him while he was out. This is even more ridiculous when you realize that Osomatsu only really messed with two of his brothers, while the others either ran away or pretended to not know him.
  • Hatabou's servants in "It's a Birthday Party, Dajo" blow each other up for the slightest of inconveniences to the guests or to "Mr. Flag". For example, when they were about to take Jyushimatsu to the bathroom, all three servants present kill each other because they made the common mistake of mistaking one of the other brothers for Jyushimatsu.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Inevitable, considering that you'd have to distinguish between six identical looking characters. For this series, Osomatsu became the bull-headed older brother, Karamatsu became a desperate cool kid, Choromatsu became the Not So Above It All Straight Man, Ichimatsu became lazy and unmotivated, Jyushimatsu lost his mind (as well as most of his limb structure), and Todomatsu became the most secretive and In Touch with His Feminine Side.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Season 3 finale, rather than being explcitly about the brothers wanting to become more independent and ultimately not being able to commit (like the finales of the other two seasons), is a metaphor for it using a flower viewing. All of the brothers decide they want to go to one, but everybody but Choromatsu gets distracted on the way (save Osomatsu, who intended on and gets a beer), and while Choromatsu doesn't get what he wanted (whiskey to share), he ultimately pulls through with preparations and leaves. However, he realizes he doesn't want to be there and goes back to familiar territory, the bathhouse; when he asks if they should go back home or try for another flower viewing, Osomatsu not so subtly responds that they can leave "whenever they feel like they're ready".
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune:
  • "Six Same Faces", the ED, is sung by Iyami's voice actor and one of the brothers. Or, in one case, all of them.
  • The second cour song "Six Shame Faces" follows in its footsteps, having the sextuplets come back for this one but with Totoko singing the solo parts instead of Iyami.
  • Downplayed with the second season's first ED, "Let's Go! Sextuplets! ~Six Colored Rainbow~", which is mainly sung by ROOTS66 and only has the sextuplets say a few speaking parts.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title "Osomatsu-san Such as It Was". Literally, the title just means "This Was Osomatsu-san", which is fitting for a final episode. However, as it appears at the end of the dramatic "Letter", it was subtly telling audiences that the remainder of the series would literally be returning to how it used to be before the events of that episode.
• Downer Ending:
  • "The Life of Chibita's Flower" ends with The Fairy fading away in Chibita's arms and him not a step closer to creating the perfect oden.
  • "The Star of Hope, Todomatsu" ends on a pretty cynical note — not only are the older brothers left hurt and dejected by Todomatsu admitting that he hates them, but Totty himself screws up his chance at getting a girlfriend by inviting someone far more appealing than him to the mixer.
  • "Osomatsu-san, Such As It Was", the finale to the first season, ends up Playing it For Laughs; the brothers reunite and along with majority of the Supporting Cast, take part in a big Baseball Invitational. They managed to make it to the final round of the tournament only to get utterly Curbstomped by the opposing team. Even the brothers' attempt to invoke the Power of Love because Totoko promised to fuck them if they win ends up backfiring.
• Drama Bomb Finale:
  • Season 1's "Letter" sets it up, and then it's completely averted in the finale.
  • Season 2 ends up much the same; episode 24 has the boys begin to better themselves after Matsuzo gets a heart attack, and then episode 25 swings right back into full blown comedy.
• Dub Personality Change: In "The Karamatsu Incident," Ichimatsu's reaction to Karamatsu's kidnapping is to dance while sarcastically saying, "Oh no, oh no, oh noooo..." The dub makes him more outright malicious, calling for a "dead brother dance party".
• The Dutiful Son: Parodied to hell and back with Godmatsu. Within days of his "birth", he gets a job, tends to his parents and older brothers, and pays all of the bills he owes on time. He's the perfect Foil to the useless, slacking idiots that the regular Matsunos are.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Matsunos. The parents are filing for a divorce and have some petty odd ways of choosing which of their kids to take custody of, and the children themselves haven't grown up at all mentally.
• Establishing Character Moment: As episode 1 got taken off the air, "The Melancholy of Osomatsu" gives its audience a first look at the personalities that define the brothers for the rest of the show (and, indeed, was the first recorded so the seiyuu got a feel for the characters). Karamatsu is first seen imagining that girls are fawning over him, Choromatsu becomes the Straight Man to Osomatsu when he interrupts him at his idol meet and greet, Ichimatsu is seen alone feeding cats, Todomatsu hangs out with some girls and totally brushes off Osomatsu when he greets him, Jyushimatsu just swims in the river like a motorboat, and Osomatsu himself is laid back and tries to hang out with his brothers. Near the beginning, it also establishes Osomatsu's dependence on his brothers, something that gets brought up again in "Letter".
  • It can be argued that Choromatsu's character had been defined before "Melancholy", as in "Osomatsu-kun Returns" he's the only person to try and speak up about the absurdities of the revival attempt, and after he indulges in the F6 fantasy he plays the straight man role from the time they can act like themselves again onwards.
• Exact Words:
  • In Episode 4's "Let's Become Independent", Matsuyo and Matsuzo apologize to their sons for making them go through such a silly custody battle, and promise to come up with a better way to resolve the situation. Said "solution" is turning the selection process from an interview to something akin to a baseball draft.
  • One of Jyushimatsu's arguments during the same short was that he could pitch a baseball 80 meters. Matsuyo decides to actually test this, and because the ball only reaches the 78 meter mark he's put on reserve.
  • After misunderstanding some advice about reinventing her idol image, Totoko promises to get "one to two sizes bigger" before trying a publicity stunt again. She ends up getting her wish — she gets a super robot suit styled to look like herself that's about "1-2 sizes bigger" than her actual body.
• Fake-Out Opening: The very first episode has the very identical brothers attempt to find an audience for their new show some years after the end of Osomatsu-kun. Even when they finally end up as adults, the humor isn't nearly as referential, the show ends up as its own thing rather than a Osomatsu-kun remake/continuation, and the boys just become more and more different from each other.
  • The first episode of the second cour begins with a realistically drawn drama/horror skit centered around a character who, aside from being something of a realistic deconstruction of the brothers, is completely unrelated to the rest of the show. The episode reverts back to its regular style afterwards.
  • Episode 19, as foreshadowed in episode 18, begins by adopting Shonosuke Hijirisawa as the show's new main character, renaming the show to Shonosuke Hijirisawa-san and parodying the first episode's beginning by replacing the sextuplets with Shonosuke and his sixteen identical brothers. However, the show quickly reverts back to Osomatsu-san due to the producers not knowing what else to do with the new show.
• Fanservice:
  • Parodied in the first half of the DVD exclusive episode, which consists of nothing but a montage of the brothers' F6 forms doing sexy things in cool outfits while saying cliched lines. As the segment goes on, the outfits and scenarios, which start out fairly standard (Choromatsu as a scientist, Todomatsu as a sensitive artist, Karamatsu as a cool biker, and so on) become increasingly more surreal and harder to follow (such as Osomatsu as a tenko drummer, Karamatsu emerging from the bathroom, and Jyushimatsu battling a wild horse while wearing nothing in but a fundoshi), but the brothers continue to act as though what they're doing is cool and sexy.
  • One skit in Season 3 has detailed butt shots of Karamatsu and Todomatsu. While most scenes involving butts are played for comedy, this time in particular the butts are highly detailed and has visible outlines of what appears to be briefs or a thong.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In "We Caught A Cold", Jyushimatsu somehow multiplies himself and then shrinks those copies down so they can enter the other brothers' bodies and cure their colds. While the plan works and the brothers are cured, it has a side effect of all of them acting like Jyushimatsu.
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: "The Ichimatsu Incident" revolves around Ichimatsu getting trapped in one of these as he tries to hide the fact that he's wearing Karamatsu's clothes from Osomatsu. Near the midpoint of the episode, Osomatsu bluntly confesses that he's always wanted to try wearing Kara's jacket, which prompts Ichimatsu to mentally lament that he could have avoided the entire farce if he had just admitted that he had wanted to wear it as well.
• Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Parodied (like many other romantic tropes) in "Iyami and Chibita's Rental Girlfriend", where Jyushimatsu and Iyayo spend a date on one of these, but he has to hold his breath the whole time or the price of the date goes up. He couldn't take it and jumps out the window.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: "Totoko's Panic" ends with Totoko deciding to leave home to go to Singapore, in order to reinvent herself and become a better person. Guess what happens to the Matsunos in "Letter"?
  • Even better: her trying to find herself and flippantly coming back because she decided it wasn't worth it is Foreshadowing to the fact that the brothers come to the exact same decision in "Osomatsu-san, Such as It Was".
• Forceful Kiss: Played for laughs in "We Caught a Cold". Everyone gets sick except Oso, so Ichimatsu infects him by putting him in a wrestling hold and then french-kissing him.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • "Sanematsu-san" completely takes the focus away from the cast of the show to instead focus on a pitiful salaryman named Sanematsu as he goes through a day of work. The entire thing is done in the style of a subdued, adult live-action drama rather than a gag anime, meaning there's little to no intentional comedy. Though, the reveal that he's delusional was a bit of a surprise.
  • "Real Life Matsus" takes the setting completely away from the 2D plane, and follows a group of actors with paper masks of the Matsuno brothers walking around Chiba. It's also a no-dialogue skit
• Four Is Death:
  • Played with and for laughs. In the skit properly named "Four" the Matsunos get four Imagawayaki and struggle to decide how to share it,^note Choromatsu explains they'd just do Rock–Paper–Scissors to decide who gets it if it were one or two desserts (since there wouldn't have enough for all of them anyway) or five (since the odds of not getting it are lower), and if it were three they'd just split them in half to make it six. mentioning as well how due to its near impossibility to share it between the six of them, four is their mortal enemy as well as "the Devil's number!" that always brings misfortune on them.
  • Ichimatsu certainly believes in the trope, considering he's the fourth-born. As he explains to his unnamed date in "Six Same Faces", he feels like he's the unluckiest of the brothers and causes despair wherever he goes. Doesn't help that he has the gloomiest personality out of all six of them, and he actively says things like wanting to kill everyone. He even proves to be a danger to himself, as we see in several skits that he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's out of the house and can't even feed himself (to the point of becoming rail-thin in an AU) when he's got his freedom.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: The Delivery Skit segments usually involve taking a particular fairy tale and warping it to bizarre levels. Made even more fractured by how they always pop up with no lead up or reason behind them.
• Fusion Dance: One season 2 episode has the brothers fuse into "Perfect Matsu", a multicolored mess of a human with an abnormally large bowlcut.
• Future Me Scares Me: During "Osomatsu-san Returns!", the young brothers watch TV and find their future selves are smarmy assholes wallowing in half-assed fame and putting in even less effort to work now that they've got tons of money. They freak out and spend the second half of the episode working hard to find out the "proper" way to earn fame.
• Gag Echo: Todomatsu's Harsh Word Impact below comes to bite him in the ass when his older brothers spit his words back at him while deliberately embarrassing him at work.
• Gag Penis: Hatabou, as revealed during the Bathhouse Quiz in "Tidbits Collection".
• Gambler's Fallacy: Iyami uses this principle to reason how he manages to win several rounds of Rock–Paper–Scissors in a roll in the skit "Arcade Iyami": on the way to the arcade, he lost in rock-paper-scissors to other people as much as possible, therefore raising his probability of winning over and over.
• Gender Bender: Iyami and Chibita got ahold of drugs that turn them into beautiful girls. They used it to charm the Matsus out of their money.
• Gender Flip: Osomatsu-san likes to do this because only three of its usual main cast (Matsuyo, Totoko and Nyaa) are female. In the second cour of the first season and the first cour of the second, there were the "Girlymatsu-sans" who resemble the Sextuplets but are female, with a job, and not related. By the second cour of the second season, new characters (often female) are assembled out of the Sextuplets to better suit the one-off stories' needs. All these female characters' voices resemble their male counterparts as they are done by the same voice actors.
  • A special mention to Season 3 Episode 21, where Nyaa is a boy, whose appearance easily trumps the rest of the cast.
• Glad I Thought of It: Every time one of the brothers tries to console Totoko with another idea to mix up her gig, she immediately snaps back to attention saying the exact same thing.
• Gainax Ending: The second cour finale was very inconclusive and random even by the standards of this show. The final scene shows the six brothers, dead from lack of oxygen, floating in space after losing their baseball battle with the 4th Galaxy High School. Their bodies eventually form the hiragana for "end".
  • It should be noted, however, that both "The Final Sheeh" and the horse racing-themed OVA end in a very similar manner.
• Generic Cuteness: In Totoko's case. Despite being seen as cute to the Matsunos and some crowds of men, her design doesn't look all that different than the typical female design in this series. It does emphasize how her looks are all that she's got going for her.
• Good Is Impotent: Godmatsu, the manifestation of the sextuplets' collective good, gets easily crushed to death by Akumatsu, the manifestation of the sextuplets' collective evil. Downplayed in that the Matsuno brothers had very little good that could contribute to Godmatsu's being.
• Grand Romantic Gesture: During the "Perfect Christmas" sketch, all of the brothers save Ichimatsu try this for Totoko, with Karamatsu buying an expensive dress, Jyushimatsu managing to turn off all the lights in the world to make a "Merry Christmas" sign and doodle of her face with some of the lights, Choromatsu creating a whole LED Christmas tree for her, Todomatsu taking her flying (literally), and Osomatsu making it snow.
• Groin Attack: "Osomatsu-san, Such As It Was" has three separate instances, each with a different set of characters.
  • Totoko tries to crush Osomatsu's balls as punishment for screwing up the very first round of the game, but it doesn't quite have the intended effect.
  • At the start of the second match, Choromatsu makes a member of the other team miss a catch by casually kicking them between the legs.
  • Karamatsu can be seen holding someone in place and stomping on their crotch during the crowd shot of the cast fighting the opposing team.
• Harsh Word Impact: Todomatsu is absolutely merciless when he tells his brothers that he doesn't want them to come anywhere close into Sutabaa. He confesses that he finds them too embarrassing, that they stick out like a sore thumb in the cafe's chic atmosphere, and that their presence is worse than having an Amazingly Embarrassing Parents around. As the insults stack up, the other brothers are seen getting riddled with metaphorical arrows.
• Heel Realization: As soon as Matsuzo gets his heart attack, the sextuplets finally got it sunk into their brains that their lax NEET lifestyle won't last forever, especially given the family breadwinner has failing health. So they decide to honestly pursue work for once in their adult lives.
• Hitchhiker's Leg: When Dayoon and Dekapan lose their rides, they come up with this to hitchhike after seeing how successful two busty blonde American girls were at it. Needless to say, it didn't work.
• Homage: "Mahjong" is one to Akagi, with Karamatsu talking about the sextuplets' different play styles during a game of mahjong. Unfortunately, the Matsunos actually suck at it, so most of the narration ends up being about their losing styles instead.
• Honest Axe: Parodied in the "Aesop's Fables" delivery skit, where a man (Jyushimatsu) gets a small man for denying two items that don't resemble anything like the fishing pole he dropped (two statues of Asura).
• Honey Trap: Totoko uses a G-rated version of this trope during "This is Totoko", which had her bring the Matsunos and several other men into her room in order to get them to pay for tickets and merchandise for her budding idol career. She also got Choromatsu to be her manager by giving him a back pat. By episode 25, she skips any subtlety and tells the sextuplets that they can have sex with her if they win a baseball game.
• Horse of a Different Color: In the JRA special, Osomatsu tries to enter a horse race with a cheetah, Karamatsu shows up on a motorbike (which he insists is fine because it has horse power), Todomatsu shows up in a Ferrari (and likewise argues that the car's horse emblem means it should qualify), and Ichimatsu shows up riding Jyushimatsu (who is naked for some reason). All their attempts get shot down by Choromatsu, who they then label a killjoy.
• Hope Spot: Osomatsu gets this twice.
  • Towards the end of Season 2's "Osomatsu and Todomatsu", it seems like Osomatsu is actually getting along with the girls at the mixer despite all the highly inappropriate comments he made towards them earlier. The next day, he sees them and asks if they want to get together again... but they bluntly turn him down, saying that they only acted chummy with him as a way to ease all the tension and they aren't interested in him at all.
  • Season 3's "Just Don't" has Nyaa Hashimoto falling madly in love with him until the very end, when all of a sudden, she wakes up realizing how wrong it is and abruptly calling it off.
  • Other characters may have this as well. For example, the legendary "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love" may also count.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Osomatsu and Todomatsu calling Choromatsu "Cherrymatsu", even though they're just as romantically unlucky as him.
  • Choromatsu is notorious of being extremely easily distracted by cute girls (especially Nyaa-chan), and is often as stupid or vain as his brothers, yet he continues to act as if he's the Only Sane Man.
    • In Season 3 Episode 2, he expresses doubt in relying on AI when he is addicted to a Nyaa-chan themed VR dating game just moments before (complete with suggestive postures). Osomatsu is so disgusted that he promptly produces a VR device and puts it on Choro, causing him to get high instantly and look like a fool in front of his brothers, but once the device is removed, Choro takes no time to resume his Straight Man persona. Osomatsu grudgingly expresses astonishment.
    Osomatsu: You still can say this? How amazing.
  • In "Six Same Faces", Ichimatsu tells his brothers that picking one sextuplet girl or the other doesn't even matter, given that they all have the same face. He might want to take a look at his brothers.
  • When Osomatsu gets the brothers back together in Episode 25, he tries to convince them to join a baseball game so they can get out of their NEEThood. Except he was the very person that opposed that sort of change in the previous skit.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, Karamatsu comments that Todomatsu "loves himself too much" for painting himself like a Bishonen.
    Ichimatsu: Did that just come out of your mouth!?
    Karamatsu: Huh?
  • Osomatsu seldom hides his tactless approach of hitting on girls, but when Nyaa-chan accepts his offer of a date in an equally tactless manner, he's freaked out as much as everyone else. He ends up asking one of his brothers to go in place of him, causing his brothers to immediately despise him and call him out of it.

I-M

• Identical Stranger: "Dayon and Dayon" involves Dayon meeting a man who looks exactly like him (also named Dayon, but left to his surname Kimura to distinguish the two). The pair hit it off surprisingly well after some missteps, and Dayon is even seen as a member of Kimura's extended family. The very next day, the news ousts Kimura as a molester, nipping their friendship in the bud.
• I Have Your Brother: Chibita tries to make the Matsunos pay for their tab by kidnapping Karamatsu and asking for a million yen in return. Subverted on the brothers' part, as they couldn't care less what happened to him.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: The "Jar" segment from Episode 15 of the second season has the Matsuno brothers struggle to open a jar of seaweed paste, which simply won't budge no matter what they try. Finally, Matsuyo tries to open it herself. She can't open it and just throws it out the window.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After noticing that Jyushimatsu was born with that ridiculous grin on his face, Osomatsu and the others immediately decide to go drinking.
• In Name Only: Despite having the cast and crew of Osomatsu-kun and sharing some similarities and plots with the previous series, the show doesn't go out of its way to establish many connections with its predecessor series. And indeed, a lot of the characters act differently than how they did in -Kun proper. This has some justification, seeing as it's been ten-something years since the end of -Kun.
• Insane Troll Logic: In "Chibita and Oden", when Chibita asks Karamatsu to list some goals in order to figure out what kind of job he should get, Karamatsu once again put on airs and says he wants self-improvement, to make people happy, and world peace. Chibita somehow concludes that this means he wants to run an oden shop.
• Internal Homage: The entire first chapter of the manga is this to a chapter of Osomatsu-kun, which has Matsuyo leave the house and the boys encountering a robber who constantly mistakes them. Even the first scene◊ of the chapter mirrors the opening sequence from the -Kun story, having the brothers come up to their mother and ask her about food. See here◊ for the original sequence.
• Interrupted Suicide:
  • A young woman was about to kill herself by falling of a beach-side cliff when she spotted Jyushimatsu practicing his batting as the tides were coming in. After getting absorbed by the waves, she rushes down to rescue him and tries to pump the water out, but he ends up spouting water from every hole on his head every time she tried to pump, and she ended up able to laugh again, kicking off a much happier month between the two of them.
  • "Iyami-san is Troubled" starts with the producer trying to halt Iyami's hanging attempt, then moving on to Osomatsu and Chibita coming in to talk him out of it.
• invokedIt's Not Supposed to Win Oscars: In "Dayon's Counseling Room" when Osomatsu has some time to himself, he admits that the pressure of starring in a comedy anime is catching up to him, and he proposes that the show should be listed under the genre of "Anime at One's Own Responsibility". This way, the team doesn't have to try so hard to be funny, and if things weren't as hilarious as the previous week's episode, the blame would be put squarely on the viewers' opinions.
• Japanese Delinquents:
  • In "Todomatsu and the Five Demons", Totty pushes his older brothers into a bathroom to try and end their Sutabaa rampage. When he turns around to check on them, they're all dressed like old-school delinquents and smoking cigarettes at the back of the room.
  • The brothers and Totoko play a set of these in "School Matsu", but for the most part they're completely ineffectual and yell in most of their scenes.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: When Matsuzo and Matsuyo announce that they're going to get a divorce, the brothers try to convince them to change their minds, but only because they want to keep living under their roof. Matsuyo sees right through their act.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Iyami is a selfish con artist who has a big opinion of himself despite not having much going on. His schemes tend to backfire on him and he tends to suffer because of the Matsuno brothers' actions (either indirectly or directly).
• Kill Sat: It turns out that Iyami's true intentions with the Iyami Kart race were to take the main character position for himself and kill everyone else in his way. How does he accomplish this? By setting off a satellite laser that killed almost everyone in he vicinity of the race, including innocent spectators.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Once Karamatsu makes a joke about the Matsunos needing to "wave a white flag" to get a job,^note Because they had to ask Hatabou, whose servants did nothing but make flag puns Ichimatsu shoots him with the same missile launcher Mr. Flag's servants were using.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • After the hell Iyami put the Matsunos through in Black Factory, he gets a taste of his own medicine when his teeth are exploited for their mineral value at the same place at the end of Episode 6.
  • Todomatsu got his after he pissed off his brothers and lied about his life situation in order to pick up chicks. The brothers basically embarrassed him to the point where his reputation with the Sutabaa baristas is shattered beyond repair.
  • When the brothers discover that Iyami and Chibita scammed them out of millions of yen in "Iyami and Chibita's Rental Girlfriend", they lock the two in a tiger cage and charge them an even larger sum of money to rent the key (with the amount increasing each time they accept).
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo:
  • Episode 6 has a montage of a bunch of famous celebrities (such as The Beatles and Godzilla) mimicking Iyami's trademark "Sheeeh!" gag. All of the celebs in question have their faces obscured despite Iyami mentioning most of them by name.
  • Barack Obama shows up in the same episode, and is even named as such. Despite this, his likeness was altered to include a mustache and a head of curly hair.
  • In one of the commentaries, Takahiro Sakurai states that the soccer player from the Disaster Dominoes sequence in "Iyami's Great Discovery" is supposed to be based off of one of the players on the U.S. women's soccer team.
• Lazy Bum: Ichimatsu. He even admits that he has no desire to do anything. At the employment office, no less.
  • Subverted in one short when he actively applies for a job at a cat café, and then Doubly Subverted when he gets the job just to be a cat and sleep around.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • "Iyami's School" is about Iyami teaching the fundamentals of comedy to the Matsunos, but the way he criticizes their comic delivery and what they do with it closely mirrors some complaints the audience may have with any given brother. It also not so subtly tells the audience the trouble with doing comedy.
  • "Ichimatsu and Choromatsu" revolves around the titular brothers finding it awkward to interact with each other after being left home alone, with Choromatsu mentioning that it's rare for them to be alone together. The pair actually don't get many skits or scenes together in the show and this skit is essentially dedicated to lampshading their status as The Friends Who Never Hang.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Choromatsu is set off the instant the idol fiasco is mentioned in "Let's Get a Job", stating that he's not having himself or his brothers "put on [that] hellish display ever again".
• Literal Metaphor: Several in "Super Detergent":
  • When the boys turn invisible save for their organs, they spend a good chunk of the episode looking inside each other.
  • Ichimatsu literally has a glass heart, while Todomatsu doesn't have one at all.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The Crunchyroll subs chose to translate the prefix for thing ending in "-matsu" that aren't the characters names. This causes a few bits of wordplay to be lost, most notably being the demonic combination of the brothers vices, who is named Akumatsu, a play on "Aku" (evil) and "Akuma" (demon).
  • Episode 10 featured a joke in which Todomatsu chastises Jyushimatsu for constantly moving his king piece to the incorrect position. The joke here was that he chastises him with sentences mostly consisting of "ou"" (king) and Jyushimatsu responds with an understanding "oh". But of course, that doesn't quite come across in translations.
  • During Todomatsu's quiz, he asks his other brothers if either karintou or omanjuu were sexier. The question is actually a vulgar pun; the "kari" in karintou can also be written as the word for a penis tip, and omanjuu sounds similar to omanko, slang for vagina. The translation just changed it to "sticks or buns".
• Love Potion: In "Matsuzou and Matsuyo", Matsuzou gets a love potion from Dekapan so he can rekindle the passion between him and Matsuyo. He ultimately decides not to use it and throws it away...only to accidentally infect the entire city with uncontrollable lust.
• Market-Based Title: In the English-speaking market, it's known as Mr. Osomatsu.
• Manchild: All of the Matsuno siblings, as they act even worse than they did as children. The first episode even introduces them as adults "despite only growing up physically".
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl:
  • Gender-Inverted in "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love"— it's the quirky and goofy Jyushimatsu that fills this role for the suicidal and lonely country girl. However, she makes a change in him as well, having him calm down his outlandish antics and end up more polite (though, given the tone of the series, it doesn't last long after this episode). The episode catches the two's relationship on the tail end of their time together, when she's more or less found happiness in their companionship.
  • Played straight (and even literally) in "The Life of Chibita's Flower", when a Flower Fairy that materialized after Chibita waters a wilting flower starts to take him on dates to get him to stop focusing on oden all of the time.
• Marry Them All:
  • In "Christmas Osomatsu-san", the sextuplets go to Totoko's house to ask her to date them. Not "one of them" or "each of them", just "them".
    Totoko: I appreciate the sentiment, but I really don't think it's feasible considering it would be six to one.
  • One of the idol parody skits has the F6 competing for Totoko's affections. The dispute ends up being resolved by Todomatsu suggesting they just share for a day.
  • In one of the Doramatsu Drama CDs, Ichimatsu suggests that if Totoko gets married to one of the brothers, they can still pull this trope off by each of them rotating the spouse position every day (save Sundays, which she gets to herself).
• Massive Numbered Siblings:
  • The Matsuno brothers, as always.
  • During "Hijirisawa Shonosuke-san", the main cast is a group of heptadecuplets.
• Makeover Montage: Parodied during the date preparation sequence in "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love". The majority of the outfits are ridiculous on their own, but the kicker is him somehow ending up in a tribal costume twice.
• Mistaken Identity: Happens multiple times during the "OAW" segment in "Tidbits Collection".
• Mind Screw: "Sanematsu-san". Out of nowhere, the second cour begins with a segment depicting a set of older brothers with different names but suspiciously similar lives to the Matsunos, all to a different art style. What this actually represents is never explained.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • After Jyushimatsu is rejected in "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love", the brothers head over to Chibita's stand to cheer him up. The night starts off lighthearted and comical... but then Jyushimatsu starts crying.
    • Episode 9 in general was this. It starts off with a wacky misunderstanding and Chibita's first real comedic role. What is this followed up with? Jyushimatsu, of all people, falling in love with a suicidal girl and ultimately parting ways with her after she has to go back to the countryside.
  • "Iyami's Counterattack" starts off as a lovable session of Wacky Racing starring the entire cast and then some. Then you get to the end and things turn utterly terrifying.
  • "Godmatsu" begins with the brothers slowly becoming jealous of the titular character's goodness and then eventually plotting to kill him. Not out of the realm for a normal episode, until it ends in a dramatic Cliffhanger where they actually succeed by virtue of Curb-Stomp Battle and revealing that their rotten sides combined are stronger than their combined good side.
  • Episode 24 starts with Totoko finally getting her own Day in the Limelight, with the comical skit centered around her realizing that she's jealous of her acquaintances getting married, and deciding to get an oil magnate as a husband. Basically your usual fun, nonsensical skit. The immediate next skit, "Letter", changes the focus back to the Matsuno brothers, is quick to remind us that it's the penultimate episode of the second cour and cements itself as one of the biggest Tear Jerkers of the anime. In fact, when Totoko herself happily comes back to make a cameo in "Letter", it's quite the Mood Dissonance.
    • And then Episode 25 fires right back, rendering everything in "Letter" moot in the first 2 minutes of the show and launching straight back into rapid-fire comedy.
• Morton's Fork: Season 2 opens with the younger brothers wondering how popular they are in the future. They see that they turn into fat assholes that make their money off of vulgar humor and merchandise, and subsequently get beaten up by the rest of Akatsuka Ward. When they try to avoid this fate, they get beaten up by the rest of Akatsuka Ward for their efforts coming off as shoddy. As the narrator puts it: "They were shit when they didn't try, and they were shit when they tried."
• Moving the Goalposts: Choromatsu says that he wants a girlfriend, so Osomatsu tells him to hit on a cute girl. He doesn't because she's too out of his league. Osomatsu then starts pointing out less pretty, easier targets to hit, but Choro keeps making excuses for himself (she might be a better person than him, he wants someone on his mental wavelength, etc.) until it becomes clear that he's setting himself up to knock himself down.
• Must Make Her Laugh: Jyushimatsu falls in love with a girl who likes his outdated gags but can't date him because she's leaving town. After exchanging farewells, Jyushimatsu runs alongside her train carriage making weird faces to try and get her to laugh during their last moments together.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After squabbling about the absolute disaster that was the first episode, the brothers question if this turn of events would be what their creator would have truly wanted, and state that it wouldn't really matter, considering he's dead and all. However, they finally get their answer when the photograph of their beloved creator fell off the wall and broke. The brothers shut up, apologized to their creator, and tried to come up with a plan for a better revival together for the next ten years of their lives.
• Mystery Meat: In "Tell Us, Hatabou!", Hatabou is fired from his "information selling" business and tries to become rich again by selling various meat dishes. It works, since the costumers go wild over them. However, every time one of the Matsunos ask what kind of meat is it, Hatabou immediately freezes and evades the question, leaving everyone around understandably alarmed. And the skit finishes with it unanswered.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The planetary motif in season 1's openings is a callback to Pierrot's openings for their 1988 adaptations of Osomatsu-kun and Tensai Bakabon, which also used planetary imagery.
  • In Episode 2's "Let's Get a Job" and Episode 3's "Pachinko Police" sketch, Ichimatsu and Choromatsu are shown as an overseer and a police squad leader respectively. In the Osomatsu-kun one-shot "Osomatsu-kun Grows Up", Choromatsu becomes a policeman while Ichimatsu becomes president of a company.
  • The 1st ending theme has Iyami mention that he should be the main character of the anime because he's obviously the best of the cast. Pierrot actually did this with the 1988 Osomatsu-kun anime, with Iyami indeed as the main character alongside Chibita. The idea gets brought up a couple more times in the show.
  • In "Jyushimatsu Festival", as the on-screen scrapbook of pictures depicting Jyushi growing up flips pages, it briefly passes over him in his -Kun getup.^note It's the one in the center
  • From the same episode as above; before the "Professor Jyushimatsu" segment, the camera focuses on a pile of books and paper, which includes two books with "1962" and "1988" labelled on it. The former is the year in which Osomatsu-kun was first serialized, and the latter is the year that Pierrot aired its adaptation.
  • The Beggar Robot from the -Kun episode of the same name shows up as part of the robot baseball team in "Osomatsu-san, Such as It Was".
  • Osomatsu and Todomatsu still get mixed up by Iyami pretty frequently, referencing a Running Gag back in Osomatsu-kun where the two would be mixed up with one another.
  • One of the girls that shows up at Todomatsu's party during "Osomatsu-san Returns!" looks like a relative of Dekopacchi.
  • Osomatsu's version of a "proper" anime had him as a salaryman in his 30's, with his town in a subdued version of the watercolored backgrounds found in the 1988 adaptation of -Kun. This was one of the early concepts for the show before they switched to the bright poppy version of the show we know today.
  • When the brothers think they've got it made when their show became successful (in both timelines even), they all triumphantly shout "That's the way it should be!"^note "Kore de ii no da!", also translated as "That's the way!" or "It'll be alright." The saying was the well-known catchphrase of both Bakabon's Papa and Akatsuka-sensei himself.
  • Season 2 Episode 4 had a giant throwback to the '88 adaptation's "Osomatsu-kun Ondo".
  • Chibita at one point starts humming to the '88 theme song.

N-R

• Nighttime Bathroom Phobia: In one episode, Todomatsu (the youngest brother) has Choromatsu walk him to the bathroom late at night, much to the latter's annoyance.
• No Fourth Wall: The first thing the brothers do when they appear on screen is comment on how long it's been since they got any TV screen time. They even have a picture of their deceased creator in their house, for crying out loud!
• Noodle Incident:
  • The exclusion of "Osomatsu-kun Returns!" from streaming sites and DVD collections retroactively turned Choromatsu's outburst about not wanting a repeat of "that idol fiasco" in episode 2 from a Call-Back into this.
  • A lot of what Todomatsu does outside of his family misadventures, given that he never tells anyone what he's doing. Apparently, this includes going mountain climbing twice, one time of which was a solo hike up Mount Fuji.
  • The Girlymatsu skit in episode 19 is rife with this, as the girls (now old ladies) start comparing the biggest incidents of their youth. Apparently Ichiko loaned a lot of money which she never got back to a guy who said he was the son of some queen's older twin sister, Todoko had a "water purifier incident", Karako chased some youngster at work and ended up getting caught in a tanuki trap, Choroko got obsessed with an actor enough to go all the way to Johannesburg and faced forced repatriation, Jyuushiko got involved in a Love Triangle with her boss and a coworker which led to bloodshed and Osoko just got out of prison after embezzling 1.5 billion. These are literally the only contexts we're given.
  • The audience never actually sees how the Matsuno brothers summon Evilmatsu, so whether it operated under the same mechanisms that gave birth to Godmatsu is unknown.
    Totoko: I can't believe it... This, and then that happened, and now this...
• Non-Indicative Title: "Totoko's Challenge" is less about her trying to win the eating competition and more about getting angry at the brothers making a show of themselves in the crowd and hogging all the attention from the judge.
• Not What It Looks Like: Osomatsu walks in on Karamatsu and Ichimatsu, shirtless and wrestling each other for their clothes. When he sees them, one's rather suspiciously hanging over the other, and, well...
• Not So Above It All: Choromatsu has a Straight Man persona but still has his moments when he acts just as stupid as his other brothers, most notably when he's attending the concert of his favorite cat-themed idol. But really, all of the brothers rotate the Only Sane Man position whenever the joke seems more fit for it, with Choromatsu just happening to stay in that role the longest.
• Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Jyushimatsu takes the country girl on one of these, but his arms are rowing so fast that her side of the boat flips up.
• The Olympics: Season 2 features a Winter Olympics episode just in time for the 2018 PyeongChang games. They parody Skeleton.
• Once a Season:
  • All three seasons open like so: upon realizing that they're back on television, the now-older sextuplets try to reinvent themselves in order to appeal to a wide audience. We first see their future selves as overwhelmingly popular young adults beloved by all with their own share of quirks, then the second half of the show is devoted to parodying popular trends in anime at the time it was written. It all goes to hell in a hand basket not long after that, and the boys end up spending the next ten years wondering what to do with their lives (and no plan of what to do for episode 2).
  • Just like season 1, Season 2 ends with the last episode directly rendering its dramatic penultimate episode void, then moving towards wacky comedy again. The only difference is the boys get killed off at the start of the episode rather than the end.
• On the Next: Each of the sextuplets gets a chance to announce the upcoming episode in their own little way.
• Orwellian Retcon: In between the first and second cours, Jyushimatsu and Todomatsu's bios on the site were rewritten to fit better with the series itself. Totty's originally said he was loved by all as The Baby of the Bunch (when in reality, most of his family members consider him a "dried up monster" and his status as the youngest leads to a lot of friction between him and his brothers) to instead referencing his In-Series Nickname, while Jyushimatsu's statement of him being a "nuclear missile" was changed to "being a bit difficult to understand".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Jyushimatsu crying over being dumped in "Jyushimatsu Falls In Love" is taken quite seriously.
  • Likewise, the other brothers are visibly alarmed when Karamatsu punches Osomatsu and then hauls him outside in "Letter".
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • "The Calming Osomatsu" is a skit in which Jyushimatsu plays a serious and easily agitated forensic investigator; none of his usual speech patterns or characteristics show up during said skit.
  • Most of the brothers (save Jyushimatsu) drop their quirks during "Todomatsu and the Five Demons" after they get pissed off at Todomatsu.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Jigusou picking the wrong brother to torture during the "OAW" segment.
  • The 22 second long smash cut in "The Calming Osomatsu". Even Todomatsu gets fed up.
    "Seriously, that's enough!"
• Parasol of Prettiness: Todomatsu shows up holding a pink parasol in the first episode.
• Parody Sue:
  • The F6 are these, and big time. They're incredibly handsome, much more suave and charming than the regular Matsunos, sweep Totoko off her feet at almost every turn, and girls and boys flock to them in droves. It gets so ridiculous in some skits some are even willing to sacrifice their livelihoods and the narrator will agree with them to make them all comfortable.
  • Godmatsu, as a side effect of being the Matsuno brothers' concentrated good will. He's kind and willing to help his family out, but it doesn't stop there. He somehow gets a job and money in mere days, has Matsuyo and Matsuzo kissing his feet for putting money towards the house, and starts dating and flirting with Totoko in less than a week. Also, the more bad will the brothers have, the more good will falls from them and makes him that much better than them.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: During Chapter 7, Choromatsu plays an aspiring pouch monster trainer, and calls out his various monsters (read: his brothers) in order to help catch another one. One whines about the whole ordeal, one just wants to be the cute mascot, one would fight to kill instead of capture, and the last doesn't actually do much.
• Poor Communication Kills: When Matsuzou tries everything he can to get the love back in his relationship with Matsuyo, he complains that she's the reason why it's all going down. He admits later that his own bottled-up worries about their relationship contributed to the decline of their old lovey-dovey ways, and by the end the pair actually talk it out — at least, until their kids crash the scene hopped up on love potion.
• Power Up Letdown: Drinking Dekapan's stain remover granted the boys Invisibility... for everything but their organs. They're all pretty bummed about it, but Todomatsu's more bummed about the fact that they can't do the stock sitcom plot of perving out on Totoko at the girl's bath before it wears off at an inopportune time than the fact that he's invisible.
• Public Bathhouse Scene: A common occurrence between the brothers.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Played for Laughs in "The Calming Osomatsu". The police manage to capture the killer with Osomatsu's calming presence, but not before Ichimatsu and all of the mansion staff get killed while Oso is fooling around.
• Race for Your Love: Jyushimatsu does this in "Jyushimatsu Falls in Love" to try and catch up with the country girl he was trying to date. He doesn't end up making her stay, but he's able to make her laugh one last time before she goes.
• Rags to Riches: The basic plot of "Iyami's Great Discovery", which has the titular man rise from homelessness to an international star because of the mineral value in his infamously large overbite.
• Raging Stiffie: Jyushimatsu gets a boner from over-excitement when Todomatsu mentions a mixer in the skit "The Star of Hope, Todomatsu". It doesn't go down for a good part of the skit (though we don't actually see it since it's strategically covered), even after he puts ice on it and submerges himself in a tank filled with iced water.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Todomatsu gives one to all of his older brothers in "Todomatsu and the Five Demons", as noted in Harsh Word Impact above.
  • Todomatsu and Osomatsu give Choromatsu an extended one in "Choromatsu Rising because of his hypocritical nature.
  • Although Iyami's criticizing the boys' comedic styles in "Iyami's School", it also doubles as a great talk down to them regarding their personalities and how audiences react to them.
• Reboot Snark: The season openers each focus on rebooting the series, with each episode taking on a different aspect of reboots:
  • "Osomatsu-kun Returns!" deals with the series' own status as a reboot, represented as the cast of the 1966 Osomatsu-kun anime trying and failing to figure out how to modernize the series. The result is an In Name Only and Reference Overdosed mess.
  • "Osomatsu-san Returns!" focuses on the "proper" way to reboot a series, as told through the '66 sextuplets hating how crass and selfish their -San counterparts are and resolving to find a better way. Despite their ideas (a lowkey Time Skip, a Retraux throwback, all the way up to a live-action adaptation), none of them can come to an agreement.
  • "Untitled" begins with an announcement that the cast is being changed into less controversial versions of themselves, shown through putting the sextuplets through Gender Flips, Race Lifts, and personality swaps to see if the results are more likeable.
• Red Herring: "The Calming Osomatsu" is about the police trying to capture a serial killer who's wiping out the residents of a mansion. The prime suspect should be Ichimatsu, who's dressed like Jason and covered in blood, but none of the investigators acknowledge his presence and he's eventually killed off by the actual murderer.
• Rescue Romance: With a twist — the girl Jyushimatsu eventually falls in love with was suicidal. She climbed a seaside cliff to throw herself into the ocean but then witnessed Jyushimatsu getting swept away by a wave and rushed in to save him. Jyushimatsu notes that by letting her rescue him, he had inadvertently saved her life as well.
  • Osomatsu pulls one off as well: He saves Nyaa Hashimoto's child from falling into water, causing Nyaa to develop interest in him, which quickly turns into a crazy crush when Totoko tries to talk her down.
• Retool: By their own self-admission, this was what the cast was going for in "Osomatsu-kun Returns!". What actually happens to the show is a little similar; the characters share some similarities with some of their previous characterizations while exaggerating or even changing others, and the humor updated itself to keep up with 2010s audiences.
• Retraux: The beginning and end of the first episode is Deliberately Monochrome with grainy film effects and Limited Animation, imitating the original 1966 Osomatsu-kun anime. The look returns for the Hijirisawa Shonosuke-san segment in episode 18 and the first episode of season 2.
• Rewatch Bonus: A minor one, but first time viewers are unlikely to notice how Jyushimatsu's crotch is strategically kept out of frame in every shot he's in prior to him getting called out on having a boner by Todomatsu.
• A Rotten Time to Revert: "Iyami and Chibita's Rental Girlfriend" centers around the titular duo disguising themselves as rental girlfriends to swindle the Matsuno brothers out of millions of yen. They are successful for the majority of the episode up until they go on a dinner date with them, where the transformation starts to wear off. They immediately try to hide the changes and escape, but are ultimately exposed, leaving the enraged brothers to get their revenge by locking Iyami and Chibita in a tiger cage in the middle of the woods and charging them an even larger sum of money to rent the key (with the price going up every time they accept).
• Ruder and Cruder: In a show that's already pushed boundries in Japan for its vulgarity, the English Dub is a even more profane Gag Dub that proudly worships its assigned TV-MA/M rating (notable as the series is rated TV-14 on Crunchyroll and streaming) adding in far more sex jokes, swearing, and bits of questionable dialogue that weren't in the original (one episode has Ichimatsu asking a couple about vore, another moment has the line Give Us The Good Stuff Daddy)
• Rule of Three:
  • Jigusou mistakes Ichimatsu for his intended target 3 times during the "OAW" segment.
  • From the same episode, Dekapanman gets shot in the head for doing perverted things 3 times.
  • Episode 6 does this a couple of times: one with Mr. Flag's servants killing each other/themselves for failing, and with the shocking aftermaths of three separate horse races.
• Running Gag:
  • Karamatsu offering help or support to his brothers, and all of them blowing him off in the middle of his offer. Also, Karamatsu getting ignored in general.
  • Todomatsu promising to do something noble or admirable and then doing something selfish instead.
  • The brothers calling Totoko cute while she's doing something that's distinctly not.
  • Whenever something good is happening to the characters, it isn't going to last.

S-W

• Sanity Ball: The Only Sane Man position usually bounces between Choromatsu and Todomatsu, but everyone has had at least one moment where they were the sanest person in the room.
• Santa's Existence Clause: In "Christmas Osomatsu-san", it's revealed that Jyushimatsu is the only brother who still believes in Santa Claus. While the others are dismissive of this and go to sleep, Jyushimatsu still stays up late to wait for Santa. Then the real Santa does show up...and it turns out what Jyushimatsu really wanted was to capture him.
• Scooby Stack: When Karamatsu has his Gonk flower fairy stay at the house, the other brothers are peeking in on him this way.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the second match in "Osomatsun-san, Such As It Was" Jyushimatsu wins a round for the other team by hitting a stray homerun instead of catching the ball and, oblivious to his mistake, starts celebrating while the other Matsunos stare in disbelief. After a moment of silence, Ichimatsu walks off-screen muttering that he's going home.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • While the "Iyami's School" segment mostly criticizes people who underestimate the difficulty of comedy, Iyami's critiques of Jyushimatsu (his jokes rely too heavily on being random for the sake of being random and have little genuine comedic value beyond being weird) and Choromatsu (his "routine" of pointing out the ridiculousness of the other characters doesn't count as humor and only makes him come off as boring and annoying) seem like they were written to directly address complaints that viewers had made about both characters.
  • Similarly, Season 2's focus episode on Iyami, "Iyami-san is Troubled", had the producers straight up admit they had no idea where to take the character and cited that as the reason for his reduced role in this continuity.
  • Season 3's first trailer showed the voice actors being (mock) interviewed about their then-upcoming return to the series, and in one montage they all admitted that they only returned because of invokedmoney.
• Seppuku: Totoko commits this in episode 25 after the Matsuno brothers fail to win the baseball game.
• Sequel Series: To Osomatsu-kun.
• Serious Business: Mahjong, to the Matsunos. Karamatsu's narration classifies all the brothers into specific categories of players in full detail, the brothers' own Internal Monologues about each other's possible hands and strategies are really intense, as are their hand movements just to move the pieces, and they exchange some menacing death threats when Osomatsu suggests them playing for real. They even get naked in the end, partially as a strategy to stop Osomatsu's winning streak.
  Karamatsu: Usually, we're just shitty NEETs. But when Mahjong is involved...
• Setting Update: The series takes place in the mid 2010s despite being set 10 years after the Studio Zero production (according to "Osomatsu-kun Returns!") and the 1980's version (in characterization).
• Shut Up, Kirk!: When Chibita finally gets the chance to tell Osomatsu why his brothers don't want to hang out with him, he urges Osomatsu to try respecting his brothers and acting more responsible as the firstborn of the sextuplets. Osomatsu basically replies that he and his brothers don't work that way, and that at times he just wishes he didn't have any siblings at all. The end of the episode ultimately proves Osomatsu right.
• Sibling Rivalry: At their worst, the sextuplets have this towards one another. Either they're unintentionally pissing each other off, or they deliberately set out to ruin each other's day. Osomatsu even lampshades this as early as the second episode:
  "Just because I have five brothers doesn't mean I have five comrades! I have five enemies!"
• Sick Episode: Episode 14, which has all of the brothers getting colds.
• Slice of Life: What most of the quieter moments of the series are like. The "Girlymatsu-san" shorts are way more down-to-earth than the regular life skits, being about a group of horrible women who just do normal things.
• Slasher Smile: Ichimatsu and Choromatsu◊ during the "Pachinko Police" skit, and again with the other brothers when they take cold blooded revenge on Iyami and Chibita. Ichimatsu has a tendency to do this a lot when he's royally pissed.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
  • Todomatsu tends to get more lines and screen-time than any of the other brothers, boasting three separate Day in the Limelight episodes while most characters are lucky to have even one. A cast interview mentions that his disproportionate role is due to the production team liking Miyu Irino's vocals.
  • While neither of the two can compete with Totty in the dialogue department, Jyushimatsu and Ichimatsu get quite a significant amount of focus as well. Jyushimatsu, as mentioned in A Day in the Limelight, had a whole half hour devoted to skits about him, and Ichimatsu gets a lot of fleshing out in both the first and second cour of Season 1.
• Status Quo Is God: The show beats the characters over the head with this and then some. Anyone who gets a job is doomed to lose it come the next skit. Anyone who gains a love interest can't keep them come the end of the episode, for better or for worse. If they've killed each other or someone else, destroyed the city, or made some seriously stupid mistakes, it's all good. Even when the worst has happened, and the boys are all split from each other with no bright moment in sight for that episode, that's perfectly a-okay because they'd give it all up anyway to play baseball. At least part of it's justified on the sextuplets' side: see Tall Poppy Syndrome.
  • Nyaa Hashimoto retires late in Season 1 to get married, only to return to show business in Season 2. In Season 3, the reason is revealed to be her husband having left her, making her a Struggling Single Mother.
• Stealth Insult:
  • When Choromatsu tries to do damage control after Osomatsu calls a couple of Gonk girls ugly in the Valentine's Day chapter of the manga:
  Choromatsu: He's not usually like this. Being called ugly today must hurt your feelings more than it usually does...
  • The second Valentine's Day special is made of this. As the brothers give each other chocolates, they each give each other scathing backhanded compliments.
• Stealth Pun: All of the brothers dress up as Ryu during the Street Fighter eyecatch, making them literal Shotoclones.
• Suspect Existence Failure: The "The Calming Detective, Osomatsu" skit, being a parody of detective stories, plays it uniquely. In it, the characters are investigating a serial murder case. With Ichimatsu plainly standing in the background carrying bloody weapons and wearing Jason mask. Then he dies later in the episode. It's unique since only the viewers experience this trope. The characters never notice Ichimatsu's existence at all, not even when he chases Detective Osomatsu with weapons in hand.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • The second season opens up with the Matsuno brothers becoming a sensation among girls, much like in real life, but their female fans are all completely blind to how narcissistic, crude, and just plain disgusting they are. And overall, no matter the quality of what they put out, everyone's just looking to invokedmake a quick buck and don't much care how it's seen to others.
  • Season 3's opening episode takes a potshot at people who want the series to be more family friendly or want to cover more diverse material.
• Take That, Critics!: "Estimated Value" shows a pair of nitpicky robots following the sextuplets around and snidely commenting on why everyone in town's a horrible person. The brothers naturally find it annoying, mirroring reactions to complaints that the show is a World of Jerkass.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome:
  • Godmatsu is kind, handsome, and willing to work to have his family be happy. Naturally, the brothers decide they want to cut him down to size.
  • This is why Todomatsu is what he is. As much as he tries to get out of the NEET social hell he's stuck in, his brothers always manage to drag him back down somehow. He also shows he's not any different from them when he also joins in the desire to take Godmatsu down. Episode 22 has him giving a speech about it, begging his brothers to let him succeed just once so he can pave a way out of the darkness caste they're all stuck in.
  • "Virgin Hero" revolves around the brothers plotting against a group of college students hosting a barbecue because it's an unwanted reminder of how empty their own lives are. Their attitude about this type of situation is summarized best by Karamatsu:
    "That's why we do not strive to go up. Rather, we achieve happiness by dragging the rest down."
• Telepathy: The ESP Kitty from the short of the same name. It can listen to anyone speak, then repeat what they were truly thinking as they talked.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: The dynamic established between Totoko and Kin-chan in “The Cutie Next Door”. Kin-chan is a short-haired tomboy who forms a sweet and genuine friendship with the brothers, while Totoko is a feminine woman with Girlish Pigtails, but is also a selfish jerk who is only friendly with the brothers when she wants something from them.
• "They're Not Real" Reveal: The Season 3 episode "Imaginary Friend" focuses on the Matsuno brothers recalling when they all had imaginary friends in high school. Meanwhile, Choromatsu Matsuno reunites with his high school friend and both go on a subplot together. At the end of the episode, the audience learns that even the school buddy was an imaginary friend, as no one but Choromatsu could see and interact with him.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • After two straight cours of being the Butt-Monkey and being unable to impress anyone with his antics, Karamatsu finally gets to act like a proper older brother and is shown living on his own successfully during "Letter". Even though the next episode sees the Status Quo restored, Ichimatsu accidentally compliments his dreams.
  • In "Letter", Totoko finally offers to go on a date with Osomatsu, but he's so broken up over his brothers leaving that he doesn't even respond to her.
  • The Movie reveals that there was at least one girl in high school (Takahashi) that liked the brothers as they were, but her present day fate is ambigious and she's heavily implied to have died.
• Time Skip: After their disastrous stunt trying to make their show popular with modern audiences, the brothers actually sit down and try to think of a newer, better way to accomplish their goal. When the audience next sees them, they'd been sitting down in their living room for a full decade in their time.
• Toilet Humor: As expected from a director of Gintama. Special mention goes to the "Dekapanman" segments and Osomatsu's wiener guessing game in the bathhouse.
• Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup: Osomatsu's plot to make the show popular falls through when the cast starts putting in too many conflicting genres and anime references to tell a coherent story.
• Too Much Information: Exploited by Todomatsu in " Todomatsu's Line" in order to make his brothers stop asking about his life outside the house.
• Truth in Television: "Let's Get a Job" has the brothers enter into the hellish Black Factory for work, where they work endlessly and generally have poor healthcare. This is a riff on the phenomenon of "Black Companies", where companies hire multiple young workers and work them under harsh conditions with little pay.
• Ugly Spouse Sentence: The Season 1 episode "The Life of Chibita's Flower" follows the titular character as he gets into a relationship with the Anthropomorphic Personification of a flower he once took care of. Said flower girl also turns out to be an extremely cute and loyal woman. When Karamatsu Matsuno finds out about this, he tries to grow his own flower so he can get a cute girlfriend, but his poor upkeep leads him to summon a butt ugly, nagging shrew of a fairy who quickly makes him her Henpecked Husband.
• Ultimate Universe: Takes inspiration from both the original Osomatsu-kun manga and its two adaptations.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: This is a slice of life comedy about six quirky brothers and the weird people around them. Despite that, some episodes have some tragic skits, where the comedy is toned down a great deal.
  • Episode 5's "ESP Kitty", in which Lazy Bum Ichimatsu is forced to face his insecurities and social issues. It reveals that Ichimatsu is actually lonely, but afraid of making friends, something a lot of socially awkward people can relate with.
  • Episode 9's "Jyuushimatsu Falls in Love". It's really jarring when the Perpetual Smiler Cloud Cuckoolander Jyuushimatsu broke down crying due to heartbreak. It gets darker when it's implied the girl he's in love with is a suicidal porn star. Unlike "ESP Kitty", which at least ends with a gag, this skit ends on a completely serious note.
  • Then we have Episode 24-B, "Letter", which forces the brothers to put things into perspective after Choromatsu decides to leave home. Fights are had, relationships are splintered, and some of them are worse off than how they were the rest of the series with Jyushimatsu working at the Black Factory with a broken arm and Ichimatsu nearly starving to death.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Karamatsu gets sick trying to get ice water from the mountains for his equally as sick brothers. For his trouble, they quarantine him in a blanket and wipe their hands clean of the incident. Granted, the whole gesture was completely unnecessary, but still...
• Unobtanium: The metal alloy in Iyami's teeth.
• Un-person: Todomatsu didn't show up for half the episode in S2 episode 11, and both credits and episode reflected it by erasing him from the opening and refusing to acknowledge his non-presence with the other brothers. The second half of the episode reveals that it's because the Matsuno family disowned him and revoked his status as a sextuplet.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Osomatsu casually reveals himself to be Santa Claus (with some absurd weather powers) during "The Perfect Christmas", but all that Totoko has to say is "Oh, really? I never knew!"
• The Unreveal: We never learn about the contents of Choromatsu's letter since it inexplicably bursts into flames when he attempts to send it.
• Vague Age: The brothers during 60's style segments. Their character designs look roughly the same if not a bit taller, and they don't act as bratty as they did in the original series. Add this to the fact that they have subdued versions of their usual voices, and you have one wondering what age they're exactly supposed to be.
• Valentine's Day Episodes: The second chapter of the manga dealt with this, as the brothers went around town dumpster diving for chocolates after Totoko rejected them.
• Wacky Racing: "Iyami's Counterattack", where the whole thing is a tournament to see who gets top billing for the remainder of Osomatsu-san but in reality is rigged by Iyami so he'd be the last man standing. Everyone wants in on it, but no one who's gunning for it wins. Instead, Shonousuke Hijirisawa, who comes pretty much out of nowhere, ends up winning the whole race.
• Waxing Lyrical: When Karamatsu starts getting annoyed with Jyushimatsu's antics, he starts spouting lyrics from Yutaka Ozaki's "OH MY LITTLE GIRL" through gritted teeth.
  "OOOH MY LITTLE JYUSHIMAAAATSU. I NEEEEED JYUSHIMAAAATSU."
• Wham Episode: Word of God outright invoked this trope in "Letter", and it played the part very well, making the audience think that the brothers may really be affected by the episode's events. However, it's ultimately subverted, since the episode didn't shake up anything for the characters and they went back to their usual antics the very next episode.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: All six Maesetsu Gejikou teasers have the Matsunos reacting to the news of getting their movie with horror, as they can't fathom why anyone would want to make a film about a bunch of pathetic NEETS.

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