Haruki Murakami's novels have a texture all their own: magical realism that slips quietly into ordinary life, disappearing cats, bottomless wells, jazz on the record player, and young people drifting through a faintly unreal Tokyo. It's a mood so distinctive it has its own adjective — Murakami-esque.
So does that mood ever make it into anime? The honest answer is interesting: there's no blockbuster anime adaptation of a Murakami novel, but his fingerprints appear in one show very directly — and his atmosphere haunts several others. Let's separate the two, because the difference matters.
The documented case: Mawaru Penguindrum
If you want an anime that genuinely engages with Murakami, start with Mawaru Penguindrum (2011), directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara.
Ikuhara is famous for layering his work with dense literary and cultural references, and Penguindrum is widely noted to reference Murakami directly — including the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" (from the collection after the quake). More than that, the entire series circles around the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack — the same real-world trauma Murakami documented in his non-fiction book Underground. Penguindrum's preoccupations — fate, survivor's guilt, the invisible threads connecting strangers, and a national wound that everyone would rather forget — sit squarely in Murakami territory.
This is the one anime where "influenced by Murakami" isn't a stretch. It's in the text.
The modern Murakami-esque: Sonny Boy
Sonny Boy (2021), written and directed by Shingo Natsume at Madhouse, is the show critics most often reach for the word Murakami-esque to describe — right down to its deliberately unresolved, "non-ending" ending.
A class of students is suddenly cast adrift between dimensions, gaining strange powers and confronting alienation, conformity, and the terror of freedom. Natsume has said his goal was to explore the friction between maintaining order and individual liberty — and the dreamlike, melancholic way the show handles it feels unmistakably like a Murakami novel.
Worth being precise, though: this is resemblance, not documented homage. Natsume didn't frame it as a Murakami adaptation. It simply shares the same DNA.
What makes something "Murakami-esque"?
Once you know the ingredients, you start spotting them everywhere:
- Magical realism — the supernatural treated as mundane, never explained.
- Isolation and drift — protagonists who feel slightly disconnected from the world.
- The unresolved ending — questions left deliberately open.
- Quiet melancholy — sadness without melodrama.
That's why fans of Norwegian Wood or Kafka on the Shore often gravitate toward atmospheric, surreal anime — the wavelength is the same, even when there's no direct line of influence. It's less a genre than a feeling.
An honest note
It's tempting to build a long list of "anime influenced by Murakami," but most such claims are interpretation rather than fact. Only Penguindrum offers concrete, in-text references. Everything else — Sonny Boy included — is better described as Murakami-esque: anime that conjure the same mood without claiming the same source. Knowing which is which is part of appreciating both.
If that dreamy, melancholic, slightly-unreal wavelength is what you're after, those are the shows to seek out.
Hunting for something quietly strange and overlooked? Browse our hidden gems or the all-time rankings for your next watch.
Sources: Mawaru Penguindrum — literary and cultural study (The Artifice), Magical realism anime for Murakami fans (CBR), Sonny Boy (Wikipedia))