This one dares you to keep watching, and the people who make it past episode one never shut up about it. Hiroshi Nagahama throws out normal anime rendering entirely: flat blocks of color, thick comic outlines, halftone dot texture crawling over every frame, like a printed superhero book someone animated by hand. Stan Lee co-created it, and you can feel his fingerprints in the setup, an unexplained global event called the Reflection that hands powers out at random and lets the world sort itself into heroes and villains from there. Trevor Horn's score treats all of it like a rock record instead of a TV soundtrack, which is why the opening sticks in your skull for weeks. X-On barely explains himself, I-Guy performs for the cameras, and the mystery of what actually caused the Reflection gets fed to you in crumbs. Twelve episodes of a legend and an art-house director refusing to meet anyone halfway. Watch it with someone who will argue with you about it.

After an event known as the Reflection, some people in every part of the world are found to have gained super powers. A number of them become heroes, while others turn to villainy. No one knows how the Reflection came about or what caused it, and with so many mysteries left unsolved, the world falls into turmoil. The series mixes action, adventure, mystery and science fiction as it follows a planet unsettled by these sudden powers.