Aside from age-inappropriate or socially-controversial tags, I wouldn’t recommend otaku culture and others that require prior knowledge to get the jokes or the story.
Aside from age-inappropriate or socially-controversial tags, I wouldn’t recommend otaku culture and others that require prior knowledge to get the jokes or the story.
Certainly Gintama. Several of the main characters are parodies of actual Japanese historical figures few westerners would recognize, and there are a ton of points where it plays off of everything from other influential anime that non-anime fans might at least be tangentially familiar with (Gundam for example) to classic rakugo stories that they definitely will have never heard of (Jugemu).
On the other hand, while a lot will go over your head you will also learn a lot. Watching Gintama was what set off my evolution from “boy who watches popular shounen” to “otaku who is in the know”. Well aging past being a teenager helped as well of course.