PaRappa the Rapper is a 2001-2002 anime based off the PlayStation game of the same name; it was meant as a tie-in for the second game in the series. The anime ran for a total of 30 episodes (with the final 2 episodes being combined into a 1-hour special).
PaRappa is an anthropomorphic teenage dog with a passion for hip-hop. He's in love with an anthropomorphic flower named Sunny Funny. PaRappa also likes to spend his time with his friends PJ Berri and Katy Kat.
The anime is a Slice of Life work that expands upon the games and features several original characters. It, however, de-emphasises the rapping; PaRappa only raps once in the entire series (in the 30th and final episode, in fact).
Another anime would later start airing in 2016 titled PJ Berri No Mogu Mogu Munya Munya, which was made to celebrate the original game's 20th anniversary and the 15th anniversary of this anime.
This anime provides examples of:
- Adaptational Late Appearance:
- Chop Chop Master Onion is notably the mentor for the first stage of the original game, but in this continuity doesn't appear until the 13th episode.
- Prince Fleaswallow was the mentor for the third stage of the original game, but here doesn't show up until the 23rd of 30 episodes.
- Adapted Out: Oddly enough, some of the characters that appear in the very game series this anime was promoting, Lammy, Ma-San, and Joe Chin, do not appear at all here.
- Alliterative Family: PaRappa and Pinto are siblings whose names begin with "p".
- Amateur Film-Making Plot: The 24th episode has PaRappa and friends attempt to make a movie starring Chop Chop Master Onion after he had been tricked into assisting in one of Groober and Gaster's plans with the lie that they were making a movie about him.
- Artifact Title: There is very little rapping in this show.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
- In episode 25, PJ gets infected by a virus that causes him to grow every time he eats, making him grow into a giant the size of a tree by the end of the episode.
- In what's revealed to be Parappa's imagination, PJ walks through the city, taller than all of it, eating buildings. Parappa and his friends watch as PJ blasts off into space, somehow becoming big enough to start eating all the planets. Then the dream ends.
- Audience Shift: The game is for all-ages, but it was especially aimed at teenagers. Rodney Greenblat had wanted the anime to be aimed at teens but he was vetoed because Sony wanted a Merchandise-Driven anime aimed at children.
- Balloon Belly:
- PaRappa gets a bloated stomach in episode four after eating his school lunch.
- PaRappa and PJ are shown with big round bellies after eating at a restaurant in the eleventh episode.
- Banana Peel: The 28th episode has the witch slip on a banana peel and accidentally free PaRappa from his cage.
- Birthday Episode: The 20th episode revolves around Matt's birthday.
- The Burlesque of Venus: The 17th episode features an homage to The Birth of Venus where Katy Kat poses like Venus while wearing a wedding dress she designed and standing in the palm of a giant fake hand.
- Canon Foreigner: The anime contains several original characters including PaRappa's sister Pinto, Gaster, and Groober. Matt and Paula Fox, who are introduced in the first episode and quickly join the main fold of friends, are also original to the anime continuity.
- Christmas Episode: The 28th episode has PaRappa work up the courage to ask Sunny to dance with him at the Christmas party, then having to retrieve Sunny's heart when it gets stolen by a witch.
- Daydream Surprise: A recurring gag in this series.
- The fifth episode has a scene where PaRappa successfully reels in a gigantic fish and Sunny Funny, Paula and Katy swoon over him for it, afterwards it turns out PaRappa hadn't yet caught anything and was only imagining what he expected to happen.
- In the sixth episode, PaRappa appears to karate chop a tall pile of metal plates and impress Sunny in the process, but this is once again just PaRappa imagining what he expects to happen.
- The eighth episode has a scene of PaRappa, Sunny, PJ, Paula, Matt, Katy and their hippo teacher traveling to another planet and dancing with some aliens, which turns out to be a fantasy PaRappa is having while the teacher is approaching where he, Matt and PJ are building their rocket.
- Election Day Episode: The 14th episode has Matt and Paula run for class president.
- "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In the 25th episode ("Did You Say You Didn't Sleep?!"), PaRappa's friend PJ gets infected by a virus, which causes him to grow into a giant every time he eats. This causes PaRappa and his friends to get absorbed into his body and get rid of the virus in order to turn him back to normal.
- Fat and Skinny: Gaster and Groober are respectively skinny and fat.
- Film Felons: The 24th episode has Gaster and Groober dupe Chop Chop Master Onion into helping them in robbing a bank by pretending to be filmmakers interested in making a movie starring Chop Chop Master Onion. Fortunately, PaRappa and friends thwart the pair before anything serious happens.
- Guilt by Association Gag: In the thirteenth episode, Chop Chop Master Onion makes Paula and Matt assist the rest of the gang in cleaning up his dojo even though it was PaRappa, PJ and Sunny's fault the dojo was left filthy and Paula and Matt had just met Chop Chop Master Onion.
- Institutional Apparel: The 29th episode features an Imagine Spot where PaRappa and Matt are behind bars and wearing striped prison uniforms.
- Interspecies Romance:
- PaRappa, a dog, is in love with Sunny Funny, a flower.
- The fifth episode has romance between a goblin named Ee-Rey and a flower named Princess Niisa, who looks like Sunny Funny but with blue petals.
- The seventh episode has Chief Puddle, a dalmatian, pursue a relationship with Anne Marie Tambourine, a rabbit.
- I Was Quite a Looker: In the second episode, Katy's boring neighbor Dorothy rambles on about this to whoever is willing to listen. Nobody believes her story of being a popular dancer until Katy finds some old posters in a decaying theater of her when she was a dancer.
- Lantern Jaw of Justice: The 24th episode features three policemen with prominent chins.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Paula falls in love with the deejay at Club Fun in the fourth episode, unaware that it's actually PJ. She's scandalized when she finds out they are one in the same, even though she could have asked almost anyone and they would have told her.
- Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes: In the 13th episode, Paula learns the Kiliman-gyro Chop from Chop Chop Master Onion and uses it to peel oranges.
- Mistaken for Gay: In the ninth episode, Gaster and Groober try to sneak into the dance party to steal valuables, but are denied admittance when they are mistaken for a gay couple. This leads to them making through by having Groober Disguised in Drag.
- Mistaken for Romance: The 26th episode has the rest of the gang think that Katy Kat is determined to ensure the ice hockey team win their final game because she is in love with Bob G, but it turns out in the end that she only wanted Bob G's jacket due to liking the design.
- Mister Seahorse: The 30th and final episode has the characters mistakenly believe that PaRappa is pregnant when PJ takes a stethoscope to PaRappa's hat full of bird eggs and states that he detects something will be born. Cue Imagine Spot of PaRappa's head bursting open to give birth to a bunch of mini-PaRappas.
- Music Genre Dissonance: The anime is about a hip-hop loving Funny Animal dog, but the first intro is funk and the second is Rhythm and Blues.
- Onion Tears: In the fifth episode, the Great King chops onions to make everyone in the two warring kingdoms cry.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The 17th episode features a wedding between rabbits where the bride is pink and the groom is blue.
- Poke the Poodle: Gaster begins the series at least mildly criminal by stealing PaRappa's bike and a box of garage sale money, but quickly devolves into criminal acts like tearing posters and picking coins up off of the ground.
- Potty Emergency: Parappa briefly has to pee in “It’s My Fault”, having to leave Boxy Boy (though he records a message on him, as asked) behind while he goes to the bathroom and starting the episode’s conflict.
- Potty Failure: In the seventh episode, Mr. Tambourine forbids his daughter Anne Marie from dating firefighter Chief Puddle because just seeing firefighters causes him to wet himself.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: The 18th episode ends with Groober and Gaster chased by bees.
- Scenery Censor: The 30th and final episode uses an example that doesn't involve nudity where the top of PaRappa's head is obscured by PJ's hand and a tree branch before his hat is returned.
- Shameful Shrinking: The third episode has the kids' teacher shrink while overhearing his students' complaints about how ineffectual he is at educating them.
- Spice Up the Subtitles: The English fansub on DefendPTR's channel adds swearing and harshens the dialogue compared to the original Japanese version, which was intended for children, infamously resulting in moments such as Katy calling Paula a bitch in Episode 1 and several instances where the characters call people they disapprove of "bastards".
- Toilet Humour:
- In the 14th episode, two boys are shown at the urinals when we see everyone listening to Katy Kat over the school's intercom.
- The 18th episode has a scene where PaRappa imagines various scenarios where he is startled by discovering bronze statues of Groober and Gaster in unexpected places, one of which has him discovering bronze statues in the bathroom right as he's gotten off the toilet.
- Trademark Favorite Food: The tenth episode introduces a baseball player named Schmidt who really likes eating bananas.
- Work Off the Debt: In the eleventh episode, PaRappa, PJ and Matt are made to wash dishes when they can't pay for the food they ordered, only to get kicked out of the restaurant when they break all the dishes they washed.
