It walks in dressed as a Saturday morning kids' show and then quietly hands you a story with more weight than it had any obligation to carry. A boy gets swallowed by his own cell phone, picks up three creatures whose names spell out the title, and 51 episodes later you realize the show has been building something while you weren't taking it seriously. The opening alone is a flex: 3D rendering that had no business looking that clean in 2008, riding a soundtrack that fans still bring up first when they talk about this thing. The sound design does half the world building, every ping and hum of the digital space earning its keep. Yuta is awkward as hell and the plot leaves a few threads dangling, and honestly that's part of the texture. If you were the kid who noticed the good show hiding inside the cartoon, this one has been waiting for you.

Yuta Akigawa is an elementary school boy living in a city where computers handle everything. One day he opens an email on his mobile phone and is drawn inside the device, into a place called net space. There he meets three odd creatures named Pit, Pot and Pat, known together as PiPoPa. From then on, the four share adventures that carry them back and forth between the human world and the net world. The long-running TV series mixes action, adventure, comedy and fantasy in a lighthearted tale of a boy and his unusual digital companions.