Dragon Ball Z - Saiyan biology and the Kamehameha
Dragon Ball Z is the easiest place to start a hard round, because the series is unusually strict about its own mechanics. Power is a measurable resource, transformations have conditions, and the Dragon Balls have rules about who made them and what happens when that maker dies. Fans who only remember the shouting tend to fall over at exactly those points.
The other trap in this section is filler. Some of what aired on television was never in the manga, so a question about Garlic Jr.'s henchmen quietly sorts the readers from the watchers.
Q1.Saiyan fighters draw their strength from a reserve of what inner energy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ki
Ki is the life force every fighter in the series channels, and attacks are simply ki shaped and released. It is why an exhausted fighter can be more dangerous than an uninjured one, and why the cast spends so much time sensing each other from across a planet.
Q2.Cutting off a Saiyan's tail costs him which transformation?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Great Ape, or Oozaru
A Saiyan who still has his tail and looks at a full moon swells into a giant ape with an enormous power multiplier and almost no self-control. Goku loses his tail more than once in the original Dragon Ball, and the transformation goes with it every time.
Q3.What is the name of Goku's signature two-handed beam attack?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Kamehameha
Master Roshi developed the technique himself, and Goku copies it after watching it exactly once - the series' first signal that this child is not ordinary. By the end of the franchise half the cast has its own variant of it.
Q4.How many children does Goku have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Two - Gohan and Goten
Gohan is born before the Saiyan saga and grows up on screen. Goten is born while Goku is dead after the Cell Games, which is why father and son do not meet until Goten is already a small boy.
Q5.Who created the set of Dragon Balls on Planet Namek?Tap to reveal
Answer: Grand Elder Guru
Earth's Dragon Balls were made by Kami, Namek's by Guru. That is why each planet's set is tied to the life of its maker, and why the cast has to fly to Namek at all when Earth's wishes are unavailable.
Q6.Garlic Jr.'s four henchmen are Spice, Vinegar, Mustard and who?Tap to reveal
Answer: Salt
Together the four are known as the Spice Boys. Garlic Jr.'s arc is anime-only - there is no manga counterpart - so this is one of the cleanest ways to tell a Dragon Ball reader from a Dragon Ball viewer.
Q7.Which Saiyan warrior is Goku's father?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bardock
Bardock was invented for a 1990 television special in which he attacks Frieza alone and dies for it, and for two decades that special was almost all there was. The Dragon Ball Super manga later went back and gave him a wife, Gine, a reason for sending the infant Goku to Earth, and a fight of his own on Planet Cereal.
Q8.Who is Goku's wife?Tap to reveal
Answer: Chi-Chi
She is the daughter of the Ox-King, and Goku agrees to marry her at the World Martial Arts Tournament largely because he has no idea what marriage means. She is the mother of both Gohan and Goten.
Q9.Goku dies for the first time fighting which enemy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Raditz, his own brother
Goku holds Raditz still so that Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon can pierce them both. It establishes the rule the rest of the series runs on: in Dragon Ball Z death is a plot device, not an ending.
Naruto - ranks, jutsu and the Team 7 triangle
Naruto rewards people who learned the system rather than the fights. The village has a working bureaucracy, ninja have grades, techniques are classified, and forbidden ones are forbidden for stated reasons. Ask about the ladder and the hierarchy and you separate the fans from the people who watched three arcs.
The early series also runs on a deliberately awkward triangle inside one squad, and the questions below use it as a spine.
Q1.Who is set up as Naruto Uzumaki's rival from the very first episode?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sasuke Uchiha
The two are then pushed onto the same three-man squad, which is the point: the rivalry keeps collapsing into friendship and back out again, and it carries the story all the way to the final fight.
Q2.Which is the highest rank in the ninja hierarchy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kage
The ladder runs Academy student, then Genin, then Chunin, then Tokubetsu Jonin for shinobi specialised in a single skill, then Jonin, and finally Kage. There is only one Kage per village, which is why the five Great Shinobi Villages between them hold only five of the title at any one time.
Q3.Gaara has a red kanji tattooed above his left eye. What does it mean?Tap to reveal
Answer: Love
He carved the character for love into his own forehead after losing the one person he believed had loved him. The word on his face is a scar, not a sentiment, which is the whole point of the character.
Q4.What is Naruto's favourite food?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ramen
Specifically the bowls at Ichiraku Ramen. The running gag has more weight than it looks: that stall is one of the few places in the village that treated him like an ordinary child.
Q5.Naruto steals the Scroll of Seals and learns one forbidden technique from it before he even graduates. Which one?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, the Shadow Clone Jutsu
The Academy's ordinary Clone Jutsu makes illusions. Shadow clones are solid, can fight, and return what they learned to the original. Naruto failing the easy version and mastering the forbidden one is the character in miniature.
Q6.Which pink-haired member of Team 7 does Naruto have a crush on?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sakura Haruno
Sakura wants Sasuke's attention, Sasuke finds her annoying, and all three are assigned to the same squad on purpose. The mismatch is what drives most of the early comedy and a fair amount of the later damage.
The 2000s wave - Death Note, Code Geass and the rest
By the 2000s anime had stopped being a specialist import - Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon and Pokemon had already done that work in the 1990s - and what the decade added was late-night blocks carrying series written for adults. The series in this section were the ones that travelled, and they have dated unusually well because most of them are short, finished and built around a single idea carried to its conclusion.
That also makes them good trivia, as long as the question sits inside an arc that has already happened. Death Note, Code Geass, Haruhi Suzumiya and Samurai Champloo all ended; Berserk and Black Lagoon never did. So the questions below ask what a thing is called and what happened, not where a story now stands.
Q1.Ryuk writes several fake rules into the Death Note. Which one turns Light's long confinement into proof of his innocence?Tap to reveal
Answer: The rule saying the owner dies if no name is written in the notebook within 13 days
Light has Ryuk plant it, then sits out more than fifty days in detention while Kira keeps killing - which reads to the task force as an alibi no forgery could produce. Ryuk writes two other fakes as well, one threatening everyone who has touched a burned notebook, so ask for this rule by what it does rather than just asking which rule is false.
Q2.What is the name of the school Lelouch Lamperouge attends in Code Geass?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ashford Academy
The school scenes are not filler. Lelouch runs a student council by day and an armed rebellion by night, and the series gets most of its tension from how little effort the gap between the two costs him.
Q3.In Berserk, what colour is the Behelit that Griffith carries?Tap to reveal
Answer: Red, the crimson Behelit
The Behelit, also called the Egg of the King, only activates when its owner has hit the absolute bottom, and the price it names is whatever he loves most. Griffith's is crimson, and he pays.
Q4.In Darker than Black, what is the name of the Contractor who lives in the body of a black cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mao
Mao lost his own body, and his contract lets him occupy animal ones instead. The result is that the team's steadiest strategist is a cat, which the series plays straight rather than for laughs.
Q5.What does the "SOS" in Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade stand for?Tap to reveal
Answer: Save the world by Overloading it with fun, Suzumiya Haruhi's Brigade
The acronym is forced because Haruhi forced it, and the joke lands twice: the club's absurd stated mission turns out to be literally accurate, since she can reshape reality and does not know it.
Q6.Which anime follows a girl named Fuu and two bodyguards hunting a samurai who smells of sunflowers?Tap to reveal
Answer: Samurai Champloo
Director Shinichiro Watanabe did to Edo-period Japan what he had already done to science fiction in Cowboy Bebop - scored it with music from the wrong century, hip-hop instead of jazz. The sunflower samurai is Fuu's missing father.
Q7.In Kanon, what kind of animal is Makoto Sawatari?Tap to reveal
Answer: A fox
Yuichi found her injured as a fox years before the story begins, and her human form is the fox's doing. It explains why she arrives with no memory to give him and why she cannot stay.
Q8.Which character holds the state title "Fullmetal Alchemist"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Edward Elric
The title is a standing joke in the series. Edward has two metal limbs, but it is his brother Alphonse whose entire body is a suit of armour, so strangers keep assuming Alphonse must be the Fullmetal Alchemist.
Q9.In Black Lagoon, what is the nickname of the Lagoon Company gunfighter Rebecca Lee?Tap to reveal
Answer: Revy
The Lagoon Company smuggles cargo out of a fictional Thai port, and Revy is the one who solves problems by shooting them. Her other nickname, Two Hands, comes from her habit of firing a pistol in each.
Bleach - Soul Reapers, Hollows and the Quincy
Bleach is hard for a specific reason: it has a glossary. Souls, Hollows, Quincy, gigai, Soul Society and the divisions of the Gotei 13 all have defined meanings, and the series expects you to keep them straight. A question here is less about remembering a fight than about knowing what a word means.
Useful for a quiz, too - a Bleach round can be graded simply by how deep into the vocabulary a player gets before stalling.
Q1.Which Soul Reaper gives Ichigo Kurosaki his powers at the start of Bleach?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rukia Kuchiki
She intends to lend him a fraction of her power so he can fight off the Hollow attacking his family. He absorbs nearly all of it instead, and cleaning up that accident is what the entire first arc is for.
Q2.What are the main antagonists of Bleach's first arc?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Hollows
Hollows are souls that stayed too long among the living and began devouring others. A Soul Reaper does not simply kill one, he purifies it - a distinction the series leans on hard once it starts asking who deserves that mercy.
Q3.Which Bleach character's power is the Shun Shun Rikka, the six shields of the hibiscus flower?Tap to reveal
Answer: Orihime Inoue
The six spirits live in her hairpins, and they work by rejecting events rather than repairing damage. That is why she can restore things that ought to be past saving, and why her power is treated as dangerous rather than gentle.
Q4.Which clan of spiritually gifted humans do Uryu and Ryuken Ishida belong to?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Quincy
Quincy destroy Hollows outright with spirit bows instead of purifying them, which throws the flow of souls out of balance. That imbalance is why the Soul Reapers all but wiped the clan out generations before the story opens.
Q5.Who hands Ichigo his first defeat after he becomes a Soul Reaper?Tap to reveal
Answer: Byakuya Kuchiki
Ichigo has nearly beaten Renji when Byakuya cuts his blade without him noticing and stabs him twice. It is the series announcing that captain-level opponents are not a harder version of what he has fought, but a different category.
Q6.Who runs the shop in the human world that sells Soul Reaper equipment?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kisuke Urahara
The Urahara Shop is a front. Urahara is a former captain of the Twelfth Division, exiled from Soul Society, and he understands Ichigo's situation from the first day far better than he ever admits to him.
Q7.Which Bleach character can transform into a black cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yoruichi Shihouin
Yoruichi is a former captain and Urahara's oldest friend. In the Japanese version the cat speaks with a man's voice, which the series uses to set up a reveal at the expense of first-time viewers.
Q8.What is the artificial body called that a Soul Reaper uses while recovering in the human world?Tap to reveal
Answer: A gigai
A gigai lets a spirit be seen, touched and hurt like anyone else. Urahara was already building a new kind of gigai before his exile, but what Central 46 tried him for was the Hollowfication of the eight Shinigami found in his lab. The untraceable, reiatsu-hiding gigai came afterwards - including the one he gives Rukia, which quietly hides the Hogyoku inside her.
Q9.Why does the date 17 June matter to Ichigo Kurosaki?Tap to reveal
Answer: It is the day his mother died
Masaki was killed by a Hollow while shielding him, and the family returns to her grave on that date every year. Ichigo spends most of the series treating her death as something he caused.
Rurouni Kenshin - Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu deep cuts
This is the hardest section on the page, and the reason is that Rurouni Kenshin writes its fictional sword school as if it were a real one. Techniques have names, stated mechanics and explicit weaknesses, and characters beat each other by exploiting those weaknesses rather than by shouting louder. That makes the questions genuinely answerable by anyone who paid attention.
It helps that the series borrows real history. Hajime Saito was an actual Shinsengumi captain, and the Meiji setting is not decoration - the whole premise is a swordsman trying to exist in a country that has outlawed his trade.
Q1.What is Kenshin Himura's birth name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Shinta
The swordsman Hiko Seijuro the thirteenth thought Shinta too soft a name for a boy he was about to train, and renamed him Kenshin - "heart of sword". The rest of the series is about a man trying to stop being what that name turned him into.
Q2.Which character manages to dodge Kenshin's nine-strike Kuzu-ryusen?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seta Sojiro
Kuzu-ryusen attacks nine points at once precisely so that it cannot be blocked or evaded. Sojiro's answer is not defence but raw speed - he is simply not where the strikes land, and he counters on the way past.
Q3.Saito's Gatotsu has a zero stance for point-blank range and a downward stance off a jump. Which numbered stance is the anti-air one, thrusting upward?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sanshiki, the third stance
Isshiki is the standard shoulder-level thrust on a straight run-in. Nishiki is a jump followed by a downward thrust as Saito lands. Sanshiki hops and thrusts upward, which is how he answers an opponent in the air. Zeroshiki puts the whole upper body behind a thrust at point-blank range with no run-up or stance at all, which is why it works as a surprise.
Q4.Which technique does Kenshin use to defeat Udo Jin-e?Tap to reveal
Answer: Battojutsu Soryusen
A battojutsu draw is all or nothing: miss and the swordsman is completely open. Soryusen fixes that by following the blade with a second strike from the scabbard, covering exactly the moment of vulnerability the first swing creates.
Q5.What is Aoshi Shinomori's final secret technique?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kaiten Kenbu Rokuren
The name means roughly "spinning heavenly sword dance, six successions". Aoshi grips both kodachi backhand and lands six slashes in a single turn - the sixfold version of the Kaiten Kenbu he uses everywhere else in the series.
Q6.Which of Kenshin's own techniques does Yahiko Myojin improvise to beat Kariwa Henya?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ryutsuisen
Ryutsuisen, the dragon hammer strike, needs height, and Yahiko has none against an airborne opponent. He rides a screen door upward to get above Henya and brings a bamboo sword down, shouting the name of a move that is not his to use.
Q7.The first secret of Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki is god-like speed. What is the second?Tap to reveal
Answer: An additional step forward with the left foot
Battojutsu is taught as one step, forward with the foot opposite the sheath, and the school treats a second step with the sheath-side foot as something you simply do not do. That extra left-foot step is what accelerates the draw past ordinary god-like speed, lengthens its reach and shifts its timing. It is not unblockable: if the first swing is read and evaded, the vacuum left behind drags the opponent back into a second, heavier strike.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes an anime trivia question hard rather than just obscure?
A hard question has an answer a fan can reason toward - a rule of the power system, a rank in a hierarchy, the stated mechanic of a technique. An obscure question asks for the name of a background character. Every question on this page carries its reason with it, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
Should answers use the Japanese or the English names?
Accept both, and say which you mean when you ask. Kage Bunshin and Shadow Clone Jutsu are the same technique, and gigai and "faux body" are the same object. Dubs also change pronunciations, so a player who only watched in English is not wrong, just working from a different script.
Why do anime and manga answers sometimes disagree?
Long-running series run out of source material and fill the gap with anime-only arcs. Dragon Ball Z's Garlic Jr. saga does not exist in the manga at all, and both Bleach and Naruto have substantial filler. If your group mixes readers and watchers, state up front which version counts.
Are these answers still correct after new seasons and remakes?
Mostly, and that is why these particular questions were chosen. Nothing here turns on a record, a running count or a chart position, and where a series never finished - Berserk and Black Lagoon are both still open - the question asks about an arc that has already happened. A remake can change how a scene looks but not the fact that Kenshin was born Shinta.
Where should I start if this set is too hard?
Begin with our general anime trivia questions, which cover One Piece, Studio Ghibli, Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan at an easier level, then come back to this page for a second round with the same group.
