Appare-Ranman!
天晴爛漫！
- Adventure
- Adult Cast
- Historical
- Racing
- Episodes
- 13
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Apr 10, 2020 to Sep 25, 2020
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
In late-19th-century Japan, Appare Sorano is a brilliant but socially awkward inventor from a quiet rural town. Inspired since childhood by the promise of steamships that could bridge vast distances, he’s taught himself engineering from scientific texts and dreams of pushing past the horizon—across the sea, beyond the sky, and even toward the moon.
A twist of fate leaves Appare adrift on a tiny steam-powered craft, with the capable yet timid samurai Kosame Ishikki—assigned to rein in Appare’s eccentricities—floating nearby. Rescued by a passing steamship, the pair end up in Los Angeles with neither money nor a plan, and set their sights on the Trans-America Wild Race. Entering the competition lets Appare build an automobile of his own, while Kosame chases the prize money that could send him back to Japan, all while rival racers and unpredictable dangers in the wilderness test how far their journey can go.
Otaku Consensus
Appare-Ranman! earns its reputation as a lively anime-original detour from P.A. Works: Masakazu Hashimoto’s direction gives the series a colorful identity, and its best-received qualities are its originality, travel momentum, and animated mechanical spectacle. Fan and critic response trends positive rather than rapturous, with ANN user ratings clustering around Excellent, Very good, and Good, while the most persistent complaint is the early CGI and a feeling among detractors that the series’ payoff does not match its strong opening energy.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Appare-Ranman! if you want a compact, anime-original adventure built around eccentric engineering, turn-of-the-century mythmaking, and competitive momentum without the long-running shounen sprawl. It scratches part of the same itch as Redline for viewers who like impossible vehicles and heightened racing personalities, but its P.A. Works polish and historical-anachronistic texture make it feel more like a road-trip ensemble than a pure speed spectacle. The appeal is not realism; it is seeing cars, guns, swordplay, steampunk gadgetry, and frontier iconography pushed into one bright 13-episode package. If you like period settings that deliberately bend history instead of recreating it museum-style, this is a more distinctive pick than its mid-7 MAL score suggests.
Key Characters
- AAppare Sorano
Appare is memorable because the series treats his engineering obsession less as cute eccentricity than as the engine for its whole anachronistic, machine-worshipping worldview.
- KKosame Ishikki
Kosame works as the grounded counterweight to Appare, bringing samurai discipline, anxiety, and practical fear into a show otherwise eager to bolt into mechanical fantasy.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
This is an anime-original P.A. Works production, not an adaptation, with Masakazu Hashimoto credited for original story, direction, and series composition; that gives the show a more unified authorial shape than many committee-driven adventure titles.
- 2
The AniList tag profile is unusually specific for a TV adventure: Cars at 99%, Historical and Foreign at 88%, Steampunk at 80%, and Anachronism at 64%, which matches the show’s deliberate collision of period imagery and impossible machinery.
- 3
The production separates character, sub-character, mechanical, prop, and title-logo responsibilities across Yurie Oohigashi, Masami Gouda, Shiho Takeuchi, Asuka Inoe, and Satoru Fukushima, reflecting how much of the show’s identity depends on design language rather than only action choreography.
- 4
Its 13-episode run aired from April 10 to September 25, 2020, giving a one-cour series an unusually stretched broadcast window and making its finished form feel tied to the disrupted 2020 anime season.
- 5
Reception is notably split around the visuals: web coverage and user reviews praise the originality and animation, while negative reactions repeatedly single out the CGI as the barrier that caused some viewers to drop it early.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Masakazu Hashimoto is credited three times on the project: original story, director, and series composition, making Appare-Ranman! one of those TV originals where the core concept and episode structure are closely linked to a single lead creator.
- Fun fact 2
- Anime News Network’s user-rating sample skews favorable: among 122 ratings, the largest category listed is Excellent with 30 votes, followed by Very good and Good with 27 votes each.
- Fun fact 3
- Across database metrics, the show sits in the respectable-but-not-breakout zone: MAL lists it at 7.24 from 53,868 votes, rank #3455, and popularity #1866, while AniList records a 70/100 score and 559 favourites.
- Fun fact 4
- The series’ tag mix includes Guns at 74%, Swordplay and Samurai at 41%, and Martial Arts at 40%, which explains why its action identity is broader than a normal racing anime even though Cars is its dominant tag.
- Fun fact 5
- Availability noted by Anime News Network spans major digital platforms including Crunchyroll, Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Google Play Movies, giving the series wider legal access than many lower-profile 2020 originals.
Studios
- P.A. Works
