Sonny Boy

Sonny Boy Is a sci-fi anime about a class of high schoolers who suddenly find themselves adrift in a multitude of other worlds where time doesn’t seem to exist, all with their own reality-breaking rules. To make matters more dire, a random assortment of these high school kids are imbued with powers, some more useful than others. Naturally, Lord of the Flies-esque tribalism ensues as some of the students with newfound powers reject returning to the norms of their halcyon classroom days.

When the kids aren’t infighting, they are discovering the extent of their powers and trying to discover the rules that dictate each world they drift into. This extended metaphor translates neatly into how these high schoolers understand their place in the real world.

Sonny Boy evokes the feeling of an arthouse-style feature-length film along the lines of director Shingo Natsume’s previous work The Tatami Galaxy. Each episode, particularly after episode three, focuses on a different high schooler and the strife they faced in the real world and how it manifests elsewhere. Sonny Boy tells a complete and satisfying story, which makes it tragic that I almost didn’t get to watch it this year because it is my favorite anime to come out of 2021.