FLCL (2000)

6 episodes. A sixth grader in a town where nothing happens meets a bass-wielding woman on a Vespa, and their first encounter leaves him with tire tracks on his back and a horn growing out of his head. The shortest commitment here, and the one to pick if you have a single evening rather than a whole weekend. Gainax and Production I.G pack it with breakneck animation and visual jokes, and under the chaos it is a sharp little story about being twelve and impatient to grow up. It reads as nonsense on first watch and makes surprising emotional sense by the end. Later sequels exist, but this original run is the one to start and stop with.