Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (Season 1)

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (2002) is a GAINAX comedy anime you can watch online on iFILM. Chief director Hiroyuki Yamaga — one of the studio's founders — led twelve episodes alongside Hiroyuki Imaishi, who later made Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill.

A shopping arcade in Osaka is shutting down. Its two young residents, Sasshi and Arumi, fall sideways through reality into a chain of parallel worlds — medieval kingdoms, prehistoric jungles, deep-space stations. Each dimension is a dead-on spoof of a specific anime or video game genre. The show trades plot logic for high-density reference humour and escalating absurdism. Viewers who grew up on 1990s Japanese animation will clock most of the targets. Stream Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi online on iFILM.