Paranoia Agent

This anime series was on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim last summer. Unfortunately it hasn't been on since.

It isn't the standard less-intelligent anime, to be honest. It's kinda a "Law and Order meets X-Files" kind of show. It revolves around a series of brutal street assaults in Tokyo. There is one key connection - the assailent, who apparently is a rollerblading, baseball-bat wielding school boy, sixth or seventh grade, who is initially given the title "Lil' Slugger." ("Shonen Bat") The victims are not clearly connected, with one exception - all of the people attacked were under severe emotional stress and backed into corners that they couldn't get out of, that is until Lil' Slugger came along. Soon two police investigators are on the case and delve into the dark secrets behind the attacks, which leads back to one person, the cause of the attacks, and a dark decades-old lie that set everything into motion.

Plenty of questions. What is Little Slugger? Is he a real person? Is he some unexplained entity? Is he a collective delusion or urban legend? How are the victims connected? What's the motive?

It's quite a unique series. It's only 13 episodes. The show has plenty of intrigue and some jaw-dropping plot twists. I'm not really an anime fan at all but this one I really enjoyed. (Plus it has one of the most incredibly surreal a and spooky openings from any series I've ever seen - a montage of the main characters laughing and being generally happy about being in incredibly deadly/dangerous situations (best part is the police investigator on the tower as a giant mushroom cloud grows in the city right behind him).)