Sonny Boy

It starts as an ordinary school day — then an entire building and its thirty-six students vanish into a dark, empty dimension. Nagara, a quiet kid who mostly keeps to himself, finds himself stuck alongside Nozomi, a strong-willed transfer student, and Mizuho, who couldn't care less about fitting in. Then some students start developing supernatural powers, and things go sideways fast — the student council tries to take control, the powered kids push back, and suddenly survival becomes a political mess on top of an existential one. Sonny Boy is a 12-episode original TV series from Madhouse, and it's genuinely unlike most anime you've seen. The art has this hand-painted, surreal quality that shifts between beautiful and unsettling, and the soundtrack was curated by Shinichirō Watanabe, which gives it this eclectic, off-kilter energy. But the real draw is how it handles its themes — identity, free will, what it means to grow up — through these strange, almost dream-logic scenarios that reward you for paying attention. If you liked the surreal storytelling of The Tatami Galaxy or the psychological tension of The Lost Village, this hits a similar nerve but carves out its own space. It's not going to hold your hand or spell things out for you. Some episodes feel like tone poems, others like philosophy puzzles. It's the kind of show you sit with afterward, turning it over in your head. Definitely not for everyone, but if it clicks, it really clicks.