The Lupin the Third franchise. 100% heist films, with great comedy.
Cowboy Bebop–major action, some light humor, awesome soundtrack.
Robotech.
Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers.
Thinking about how much anime we had available on regular TV growing up in Peru in the early 80s. Voltron, Mazinger Z, Steel Jeeg, Space Adventure Cobra, Speed Racer, Astro Boy, Sailor Moon, that one anime about a little boy named Marco trying to find his mother, all the way to Robotech/Macross. That’s just of the top of my head, we got Ultraman also.
Thanks, I’ll check it out!
My reaction as well!
Now that I’m in front of my computer instead of on my phone, I’m going to expand my list: I wrote this up back in June.
Some of my likes and dislikes.
Freiren of course is nearly perfect, especially for and old Middle Earth fan like me. Story is from the perspective of an over 1000 year old elf mage. She was in the party the defeated the big evil 50 years earlier.
There is a strangely powerful scene where she makes a whole field of flowers bloom. This doesn’t win a battle, or accomplish a great deed, it just ends up paying respect to one of her now dead human companions.
Konosuba is a fantasy isekai comedy. I put it on par with Futurama for humor. It is a lot of fun.
Spy X Family is a fun spy comedy series taking place in 1960s Central Europe like place. I can’t describe it without spoilers, but it is really fun.
I watched but didn’t like Deathnote in the end, none of the characters were interesting or likeable to me.
Oh, I hate Demon Slayer, that style and even the drawing are nothing I like to watch.
But if we’re going older, SteinsGate is an incredibly good timey-wimey story with many great characters. So good.
Some lesser known (I think) excellent animes are:
Ascendance of a Bookworm, about a young woman named Urano who dies and is reincarnated as Myne, a frail, five-year-old girl in a world where books are scarce. Myne, determined to surround herself with books, sets out to create them in this new world, facing the challenges of a low literacy rate and a rigid class.
There is a climatic scene in season 2, I think, where they made grass growing epic. To achieve this was remarkable.
An older fantasy rom-com called Spice and Wolf was really good with some of the best dub work I’ve heard. A remake with more story was done in the past year, but it wasn’t as good as the older one. A minor agriculture goddess takes up with a merchant in this one.
A decent place to start looking for top animes:
Top Anime - MyAnimeList.net
Top 100 Anime Series Of All Time
Highest grossing series: https://www.cbr.com/highest-grossing-anime-franchises/
If this takes off at all, I’ll add more.
Discussion for Delicious in Dungeon / Dungeon Meshi
Apothecary Diaries is excellent, Maomao is a fun character. It is a fun detective show.
I enjoyed both Dandadan and From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman which is much better than first impressions. The last is somewhat fan-servicey though. But the main character is anything but a lech at least.
Yep, also Samurai Champloo
This discussion is amazing, I have seen so many different anime’s mentioned, i’m enjoying reading this page. I didn’t know some of these anime’s but they seem interesting and I might start watching a few.
This is also one of my favorite anime’s, The first season is undoubtedly the best, but I was willing to watch the other season, and spin-off ggo. I do agree with the quality and entertainment declined, but IMHO I believe it’s because the confusion I got from going back and forth through the VR/dream and real world as there wasn’t much of a difference in the characters appearances. The first season kept everything nice and organized whereas I feel like the other seasons/spin-offs were kinda messy.
Yeah, this was an unlikely romantic drama. Very sweet in its way.
To add some not already mentioned:
Solo Levelling - In a world where gates to dungeons start appearing everywhere, a weak adventurer gets a second chance to level up. If you like lots of fight scenes against monsters, this is my fave of the genre.
Ruri Rocks - I can’t explain why I found an anime with the literal subtitle “Introduction to Mineralogy” so compelling, but it manages to bring the audience along with the main character as she develops her love for all things rock-related. It’s a nice, innocent anime with the side effect of being educational as well.
Lord of Mysteries - Mix together blood magic, gothic steampunk, Victorian policework, bizarre gods and cults, and supernatural conspiracies, and you get this. There are some spinoff series (one for added worldbuilding, and one in chibi mode for no particular reason).
Apocalypse Hotel - A bittersweet tale of a hotel run by robots (at least initially) that continues going after humanity has to abandon the planet due to a plague.
Zenshu - an anime artist finds herself stuck in her favorite anime film. Unfortunately it’s one where everyone dies. She has to either escape or change the story. Things go… unexpectedly.
So I’m a Spider…So What? Isekai about a class being transported to a fantasy world to fight a war…except one classmate is born into the world as a baby spider monster. She has to fight for survival in every way possible. Quite a good twist at the end of this, I thought.
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime - Is it weird that the episodes I enjoyed most in this series were the ones about civic planning? That’s definitely weird, right? Anyway - a peaceful nation of monsters is built despite the effort of various nefarious folk.
I’m just gonna add two which probably don’t warrant a full watch but have some standout scenes:
BOFURI: I Don’t Want To Get Hurt So I’ll Max Out My Defense - A young girl joins a VRMMORPG but with no gaming experience or guidance plays the game in her own mad way. The title’s a giveaway - she dumps everything into defense so can’t attack at first, and kills her first monster by standing there while it runs into her repeatedly. Anyway, there’s a scene in S2 where two other characters are planning an epic duel and she wanders through in a way only she could. I don’t want to spoil this one but it involves a giant crocodile, a large quantity of sheep’s wool, and some lasers.
Saving 80,000 Gold In Another World For My Retirement - A teenage girl left by herself discovers she can teleport herself to a fantasy world and back, and uses this power (and a lot of lying and manipulation) for personal profit. There’s a scene at the end where she transports an entire modern mercenary army to the fantasy world to fight off a monster invasion. If you’ve ever wondered how a flock of wyverns would fare against anti-aircraft guns, this is the anime for you.
Zenshu was a nice surprise, I never saw any talk on it anywhere and it was a fun one.
Bofuri is one I really like.
Yowamushi Pedal (watched on Crunchyroll) – although I am not a fast/race biker, I enjoyed this series.
Sword Art Online(Netflix) – I use to be heavy into Everquest, so the MMORPG aspects appeal to me.
Dr. Stone (Netflix) – just started season 2 – I like the “lets use science” even if difficulties glossed over. My favorite character is probably Chrome.
Delicious in Dungeon (Netflix) – Senshi rules!
At a gaming convention I watched Kino’s Journey which I enjoyed. I watched a few episodes on Crunchyroll with ads but then forgot about it.
There are other Netflix anime’s which I liked, but the above are the standouts
Brian
ETA: if your choices available on Netlfix, please indicate so I can add them to my queue
ETA2: There was a pretty active anime thread:
The release quantity of anime long ago far surpassed my ability to consume it, but here are some of my long-in-the-tooth favorites for series, setting aside movies which are a whole separate bucket.
Full Metal Alchemist - Outstanding Game-of-Thrones level drama. I prefer the original to the Brotherhood reboot, I think the original is in general paced more methodically and feels less frantic.
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya - The original first season is amazing, later season and movies are a mixed bag.
Haibane Renmei - A slow burn character fantasy/scifi mix, great comfort storytelling and characters
Inuyasha - Great overall action, humor, characters. Gets repetitive in its infinityteenth episodes, as anything does, so no harm to bowing out in the middle somewhere.
Girls und Panzer - I don’t normally go for fan service, but this one had so much unrestrained charm and fun with itself, I got chained to the wild ride.
Expected back in 2026 on Netflix. Yay!
You can find Freiren on Netflix along with Dandadan
Sometimes Netflix has Konosuba, but not currently.
You can get a 2 month Crunchyroll deal at Christmas time for $2.99 a month if you like. Then you can some of the more interesting ones. I do mine through Prime, but you can also go directly through Crunchyroll.
I’m on the Thanksgiving Deal currently.
I’ve only caught a few episodes of that but it seems like something I would like.
Which reminds me, technically Blue Eyed Samurai on Netflix isn’t “anime” because it was produced by a French and American studio. But fuck it. It’s still awesome and is clearly influenced by anime aesthetics.
Yeah, this would be one of my picks.
I don’t watch a ton of anime, but some. Does Avatar: The Last Airbender count? Movies? My top favorite anime movie is Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. It’s about a princess who can commune with giant magic potato bugs, so basically it was made for me.
Then there was the one with the dancing and singing sword, Excalibur. That was hilarious. Soul Eater?
One that may be a little obscure that I loved was Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. It’s about a woman warrior who has to guard a young prince who, uh, I think he has a dragon inside him? It’s not really important. It’s a beautifully paced and tender story about their friendship and it’s also uniquely situated in a specific time and culture that is rich, detailed, and comforting. It’s the most Zen show I’ve ever watched (I mean actual Zen, ritual and presence.)
The warrior woman is also a stone cold badass, she’s just quiet about it.
It looks like the discussion has opened up beyond my “favorite” anime, so, I’ll add two that are amongst my tops.
Overlord - I mentioned this in one of the other prior threads linked above. It has a remarkably complex story, and the evolution of the protagonist as well as many of the support characters is terrific (or horrific depending on your POV). The world building is superb, and while almost everyone is selfish to evil, most of them aren’t doing it just for the evluz.
I’m not sure I’d recommend this to @Kron though. There’s quite a range of ages amongst the character, including a few that would be the sort of teenagers we’re avoiding, and there’s definitely a good bit of fanservice.
Another not mentioned, is the short series Afro Samurai. It’s a glorious mishmash of western (especially man with no name moments), samurai flick, scifi, and character drama. The voice acting is superb with a number of my favorite voice actors, and the story is full of inevitable tragedies. The contrast with Afro and Ninja is gloriously chaotic but somehow works, and leads to a great deal of speculation in fandom.
The soundtrack (which I also love) reflects the mixed themes, and it’s short enough to tell the story without overloading on the repeated fights the way a longer series might. Yes there are kids (mostly the flashbacks) and yes there’s plenty of fanservice, so again, probably NOT for @kron.
I found the sequel anime movie/series to be fine, but it didn’t have the same punch, nor did it really add much to the core. Worth watching, but not really needed for me.
I personally do not count Western (or Korean, or Chinese) animation content done in a somewhat-animeish style as being anime. To me the term is strictly for Japanese productions. But opinions vary on that.
Well, for those who might accept it, there is a 2023 American animation series called Scavenger’s Reign about a group of people marooned on an alien planet. It combines science fiction with fantastical alien ecosystems and dark body horror. Let’s say Miyazaki meets Alien. It is superb.
But what do you call a Japanese production in a Western, Korean, or Chinese style?
Lord of Mysteries, which I mentioned earlier, is a Chinese series based on a Chinese webnovel. Does that mean it doesn’t count?
All time favorites:
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - the most well-rounded (action, humor, character beats, drama, philosophy, etc.). If I made a radar chart for all the shows, this would be high on all the axis. Rarely the best show at individual values, it would have the best overall average.
- Attack on Titan - has the oppressive aura like the best zombie stories but combining it with top-notch animation and a very strong anti-war message. It takes itself a little too serious for my taste
- Frieren - the chill vibes and slow world-building hide a strong metaphor for learning how to attach yourself to the world and be present in it. Emotional connections are deeper and more important than any flashy magic even though there might be a really good tome in that treasure chest.
- Mob Psycho 100 - hard to put into words what makes this stand out above so many others. I think it is the vibes and that Mob is mostly concerned with self-improvement through hard work that has nothing to do with all the craziness around him or power leveling.
If I filled out a top ten, it will change multiple times a day. I’m too fickle and there are too many good shows.
Honorable mention:
- Ranking of Kings haven’t seen it mentioned yet - this has the closest vibes to FMA:B or Avatar the Last Airbender
- Spy x Family though I mostly read the manga. It is able to oscillate between mature adults and silly children in a really effective way. The kids here feel real in that they are free to be stupid and silly.
- Konosuba (probably the funniest anime I’ve seen especially most recent season which is hard because translating humor across cultures is extremely difficult)
- Re:Zero - lots of fun. Never know when the next “death” and reset will come. Allows you to stay on edge of your seat and not worry about plot armor
- Haikyu!! - the best sports anime. An absolute blast with great action, music, and humor. This one is the most likely to get you off the couch to be active. Love how all the “villains” are treated as normal high school kids with their own stuff.
Some problematic shows (usually bad to really bad fan service) but have a lot of other things to offer: Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, Mushoku Tensei,
Haven’t watched yet but assume will be near the top when I do: Berserk, Monster, Steins Gate