Sarazanmai forces three boys into the most humiliating possible intimacy to survive, then spends eleven episodes proving that's exactly what they needed. The comedy is real and earned, it lands hardest when the show stops winking and just lets these kids be desperately, openly themselves. Kunihiko Ikuhara built a story about secrets eating you alive, about how connection requires showing someone the parts you'd rather nobody see, and the animation moves like it understands this viscerally. The plot stays deliberately opaque until the final episodes, which will frustrate you, but that confusion mirrors what the characters feel. By the ending, you're not just watching three boys solve a mystery. You're watching three boys learn to want each other's presence more than they want to hide.

Three middle schoolers in Asakusa, Kazuki, Tooi and Enta, accidentally break a statue of the city's kappa guardian and meet Keppi, a strange kappa-like creature who claims to be heir to the Kappa Kingdom. He takes their shirikodama and turns them into kappa. To become human again, they must bring him the shirikodama of Kapa-zombies, creatures made by his enemies, the Otters. The catch is that they can only defeat the zombies by connecting with one another, and every time they do, one of their secrets is exposed to the others. As the fights go on, each boy's troubled past and inner conflicts come to light, and the three begin to learn what real bonds mean. Meanwhile, two policemen, Reo Niiboshi and Mabu Akutsu, are up to something at their police box. The result is a strange blend of comedy, drama and supernatural fantasy.