Anime is a strange and unique art form. I love it.

The series "Excel Saga" was hugely popular series in Japan, and is hitting it off reasonably well here too. It was a comedy pisstake of so many other genres with some classic running jokes; many references to American films were included which helped it's transition to the English speaking world. One of the running jokes was the constant harassment of the original comic book (manga) artist, torturing him with the liberties they were taking with his original works. In the first episode they comically include the creator's assassination, but very quickly realise the story won't go very far without an artist, and so bring him back to life (to be assaulted numerous times throughout the series anyway). This is a very brief parody of this classic scene.