Most daring, cruel, and hilarious anime about prisoners.
In Japanese animation, you can end up in prison for literally anything and anywhere – football players and Internet-addicted school kids end up behind bars, and the severity of the robes and the gloom of the settings in some titles are fully compensated for by witty jokes in others.
1. Cyber City Oedo 808, 1990-1991
The hacker Gogl, the handsome Sengoku and the graceful albino Benten get a second chance. They have been released from prison on the condition that they become police officers and start catching criminals.
For each capture, the newly minted bounty hunters will have two years knocked off their unrealistically long sentences. They will have to catch both vampires and living skyscrapers, and special collars will monitor the discipline of the convict cops.
2. Deadman Wonderland, 2011
The story takes place in 2023, ten years after an earthquake that flooded half of Tokyo. The main character, Ganta, accidentally becomes a participant in a strange extreme attraction called Deadman Wonderland.
He did not kill his entire class, but was framed by the real killer, the mysterious Red Man, who left a strange crystal inside his body. The guy was quickly found guilty of the bloody massacre and deprived of his freedom.
The young men who ended up behind bars with Ganta must entertain anonymous spectators by participating in deadly games. Trying to outlive the other prisoners, Ganta focuses on getting revenge on the Red Man.
3. Blue Lock, 2022-...
The Japanese Football Association is forced to take the only step that will allow them to do the unthinkable – win the World Cup. Coach Jinpachi Ego is tasked with creating Blue Lock – a prison where three hundred young and talented football players will compete against each other to find the best striker.
The main character Yoichi decides to become the best player and develops magical super soccer powers.
4. Rainbow: The Seven from Compound Two, Cell Six, 2010
The series is set in 1955, in a country ravaged by poverty and unemployment after its defeat in World War II. Desperate people turn to crime and fill the new penal colonies.
In the dark anime, six guys end up in a maximum security juvenile prison called Shonan, where they endure cruel abuse from a doctor and a warden.
In the cell, the boys meet Sakuragi, an old inmate who will teach them how to survive behind bars. They must learn to remain human, no matter what it takes, because one day they will have to get out.
5. Nanbaka, 2016-2017
Nanbaka is a comedy anime about four prisoners with varying degrees of eccentricity. Despite the fact that prisons in the world of Nanbaka seem to have a rather soft policy regarding the behavior of prisoners, no one has ever escaped from this prison.
The secret place is full of dangerous traps that the guys with colorful haircuts keep avoiding, and the attentive warden Hajime keeps putting them in cells.