Summary

• Anime characters break the fourth wall for comedic effect, interacting with the audience and commenting on their world.
• Gintama stands out for its numerous fourth wall breaks, adding humor by criticizing production and referencing anime tropes.
• Fourth wall breaks are also seen in other anime like Fruits Basket, Pokemon, and Haruhi Suzumiya, adding humor and breaking reality.

While the genre is often known for its absurd premises and over-the-top deliveries, many anime go above and beyond that by breaking the fourth wall in the best ways. A concept with roots in theater, the “fourth wall” is what separates fictional characters from the real-life audience; the latter is aware of it while the former is generally not. Breaking the fourth wall is when the characters in a story become aware of their status as such, commenting on their world or the fact that they’re being watched.

Sometimes, characters will even try to interact with the audience, or come to affect the way the story goes. This is most often played for comedy, which is especially effective in animation, because it’s easier to have animated characters interact with their environment. In rarer cases, it’s played for drama or even horror, with the characters despairing over being just part of someone else’s story.

10 Gintama Breaks The Fourth Wall However It Can

Based on the manga by Hideaki Sorachi

Gintama has long reigned as one of the funniest comedy anime ever made, with its cast of lovable goofballs and its perpetually over-the-top humor. Naturally, it has more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a stick at, from addressing the audience to loudly criticizing the production process to even explaining what anime filler is in “The Color For Each Person’s Bond Comes In Various Colors.”

The most outrageous instance of this joke comes from the episode “Screw Popularity Polls,” near the end of the series. Upon discovering that the author’s avatar scored higher in a fan popularity contest than she did, Otae leaps from the TV, aiming to kill him. As soon as she does, the entire show goes to pieces, enough to cause it to be canceled until an equally ridiculous solution is found.

9 Anime-Gataris Takes Anime Fanaticism to a New Level

Original anime written by Mitsutaka Hirota

There are many anime about making anime, and plenty more out there about school clubs just trying to have a good time. Surprisingly, there aren’t quite so many that focus on the humble anime club, like the one led in this show by Minoa Asagaya. Minoa’s club is on a quest to find the name of the obscure anime she’d adored as a child.

Their efforts shake their world up far more than they expected. The further they dig, the more they come to realize that they themselves are in an anime, and cannot escape even as their world starts unraveling. To their horror, they go from pointing out anime tropes and design choices to watching their and their friends’ personalities be rewritten before their eyes, unable to do anything about it because their lives and selves are not their own and never were.

8 Fruits Basket's Fourth Wall Breaks Get Better in the Dub

Based on the manga by Natsuki Takaya

Fruits Basket isn’t usually given to these types of gags, but Hatsuharu Sohma seems to bring them all out at once. The jokes centering around him go beyond poking fun at common anime tropes by, for instance, having him prove his two-toned hair is all natural. When his competition with Kyo turns violent, Tohru remarks from the sidelines, “Somehow, this has turned into a fighting anime!”

Many times, the best English dubs in anime can make a funny moment hilarious by the way they choose to translate or add to a particular line. In the same episode’s original subs, after Haru warns viewers not to try provoking their angry relatives at home, all Kyo snaps back is “Don’t do it here!” The dub has Kyo hang a lampshade on the fourth wall breaking joke when he also demands to know, “Who are you even talking to?!”

7 Pokémon: The Series Has Team Rocket Regularly Demolish the Fourth Wall

Produced by OLM, based on the video games by Nintendo and Game Freak

Several characters besides Misty interact with the show's narrator, usually to yell at him for getting something wrong.

Many characters in the longest-running anime of all time acknowledge that status with surprising regularity for a show whose humor doesn’t center around it. As comic relief villains, Team Rocket are far and away the most consistent jokers. For instance, in Pokémon 2000, they’re the ones most excited to be in a movie, and are pointed directly at the viewers as proof that lots of people saw their heroic sacrifice and are proud of them.

In “Hypno’s Naptime,” along with Team Rocket knowing they’re working within half-hour episodes, Misty yells at the narrator for congratulating her on acquiring Psyduck. Several times, when characters are separated by split-screens, they’ll fight over it to be the only one onscreen. It’s also repeatedly implied that the other characters can see fantasy sequences as well as the viewers can, and can interfere with them as well.

6 Kill la Kill's Villains are the Only Ones to Break the Fourth Wall

Original anime written by Kazuki Nakashima

Kill la Kill is a bonkers show in general, so it takes a lot to communicate instantly to the audience that a particular character is several notes more deranged than everything else going on around them. With Nui Harime, the best way to show it is to have her openly mess around with not just the other characters, but the setting itself as well.

Subtitles are used repeatedly throughout the show to introduce each new character Ryuko meets on her journey, but Nui is the only one who is introduced casually leaning on her own name. Split screens don’t stop her from bothering enemies and allies alike, she just reaches right over the line. Even the credits can’t keep her away: “Imitation Gold” seems to end on a high note for the heroes, only for Nui to interrupt the ED to gloat about how unstoppable Ragyo’s transformation is.

5 The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Revolves Around Breaking Reality

Based on the light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa and Noizi Ito

There are 12 volumes of the original Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series.

Haruhi has such off-the-charts world-bending powers that it’s all the SOS Brigade can do to keep her happy and her abilities in check. However, nothing is stopping her or the omniscient narrator from breaking the fourth wall to smithereens any time they like. As such, much of the humor in the show comes from how blatantly Haruhi gets to break the rules of reality.

However, the humor comes to a screeching halt when Haruhi’s desire for an eternal summer affects the viewing experience of every single audience member. The “Endless Eight” is the same episode shown over and over again with only infinitesimal differences, for eight real-life weeks. What better way could there be to make increasingly anxious audiences really feel the slog of Kyon and company living the same two weeks thousands of times over, never understanding why?

4 Ouran High School Host Club Embraces Being a Romantic Comedy

Based on the manga by Bisco Hatori

It’s no surprise that the students of Ouran Academy treat the fourth wall as merely a suggestion: being theatrically dramatic seems to be in their nature. Famously, Tamaki correctly identifies the show as a romcom and himself as Haruhi’s primary love interest early on, and warns the “homosexual ing cast” to give him space to do his thing (naturally, they all ignore him for their own grabs at the spotlight.)

In Mori’s first starring episode, Tamaki apologizes for his not having any episodes about him before; Mori, who never realized he was a background character, nearly cracks his neck in shock. When blood types are discussed, Haruhi apologizes to AB-blood-type viewers for Kyoya’s perpetuating harmful stereotypes about them. The unadapted manga kept it up, with narration poking fun at just how many times spring has sprung in their high school career and how graduation doesn’t seem to be anyone’s concern.

3 My Deer Friend Nokotan Is a Surrealist Ride

Based on the manga by Oshioshio

My Deer Friend Nokotan has been a hit in the Summer 2024 lineup of anime, especially among fans of weird and surrealist comedy. The entire premise of the show is absurd, as it's based on a transfer student with deer antlers disrupting the peaceful school life of an ex-delinquent. The show never takes itself too seriously, reveling in the antics of its cast.

No one except the protagonist, Torako, takes notice of Nokotan's antlers or of the absurd, reality-bending things that happen around her. These include plenty of fourth-wall breaking, of course, especially in the form of references and spoofs on famous movies and other anime, including Fist of the North Star, Rambo, and more. Of course, there is also plenty of dialogue between Torako and the narrator, too.

2 Pop Team Epic's Heroes Revel in Being in a TV Show

Based on the webcomic and manga by Bkub Okawa

This absurdist comedy boasts way more than one of the best anime openings of 2022, which fully embraces the shorts’ surreal nature. Popuko and Pipimi blatantly don’t think much of the producers and crew putting the show on, but adore being the stars and getting to do whatever they want. The only reason Pipimi repeatedly worries about Popuko drinking and smoking onscreen is that youth in Japanese media can’t be shown doing such things.

With how much the show and its leads embrace being completely unhinged, the fourth wall-breaking jokes sliding into horror feel just as natural. In the short “Please Subscribe,” Popuko insists that viewers subscribe to her YouTube channel, and promises to come for any who don’t. The screen glitches and goes black as she makes good on it: the next thing viewers hear is a doorbell and knocking on “their” door.

1 JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure's Openings Often Bend the Fourth Wall

Based on the manga by Hirohiko Araki

JoJo’s fourth wall breaks don’t tend to show up in the show itself, but its intensely creative opening sequences are a whole different ball game. When they’re not openly giving away important plot points, they’re hiding them to reveal later. Attentive viewers may notice that the second opening of Stardust Crusaders skips awkwardly at one point: once the gang begins their fight with Dio, it’s revealed that that was him freezing the credits with The World to mock Jotaro.

While Yoshikage Kira's Another One Bites the Dust power makes the opening of Diamond Is Unbreakable go back in time, Diavolo and Pucci are no slouches here, either. Diavolo uses King Crimson to erase some time from Golden Wind’s opening, too, until Giorno turns the tables in the final episodes with Gold Experience Requiem. Enrico Pucci takes the absolute cake with this in Stone Ocean’s final episode, when Made in Heaven reverses the opening sequence all the way back to Phantom Blood’s opening as Pucci resets the world and creates a new universe.