Best Anime of All Time: My Definitive Ranking

I’ve watched anime for nearly two decades — the filler arcs, the recap episodes, the twelve-episode seasons that should’ve been six. I’ve also seen things that rewired what I think animation, and storytelling, can do. Ranking the best anime of all time is an act of violence against my own taste; every placement offends me a little. That’s why it’s worth doing.

This is the definitive ranked list, films included — series and films together, the way the medium deserves. A great film does in two hours what a series does in sixty episodes, and vice versa. Fifteen entries, ranked 15 to 1 and defended. You’ll disagree with at least three picks. Good. That means you’re a fan. (Want the TV-only canon instead, organized by era with no films? That’s our best anime series of all time.)

Table of Contents

• Best Anime of All Time: How the List Was Built
• The Untouchables: Entries 5 to 1
• The Modern Classics: Entries 10 to 6
• The Underrated Masterpieces: Entries 15 to 11
• How to Actually Watch These (and in What Order)
• Frequently Asked Questions

Best Anime of All Time: How the List Was Built

Let me show my work, because a ranking without criteria is just vibes.

Storytelling first. I’ll praise gorgeous sakuga all day, but a pretty show with a hollow script doesn’t make this list. These entries have narrative bones — structure, theme, payoff. If you’ve studied how to write a screenplay, you’ll recognize the architecture under even the weirdest ones.

Cultural weight counts. A show that changed what the medium attempted gets credit, even if something newer executed similar ideas more cleanly.

Rewatchability is the tiebreaker. The best anime of all time is great the third time — when you know the twists and watch for the craft: the foreshadowing, the motifs, the single perfect frame.

No nostalgia inflation. I loved plenty at fourteen that doesn’t survive adult scrutiny. Not here.

And I’m judging the anime, not the source manga. Adaptations rank on what made it to screen.

The Untouchables: Entries 5 to 1

5. Akira (1988). Katsuhiro Otomo’s film is the most important anime movie ever made. Hand-drawn, pre-digital, with light effects painted cell by cell — it still outclasses most modern films visually. More than craft, it proved animation could carry serious adult science fiction: political corruption, military overreach, teenage rage curdling into godhood. Every cyberpunk anime since lives in its shadow. The plot compresses six manga volumes into two hours and it shows — but nothing else made the world take the medium seriously like Akira did.

4. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Hideaki Anno took the most merchandisable genre in anime — giant robots — and turned it into a psychological autopsy of depression, fatherhood, and the terror of being known. The middle stretch is a masterclass in slow-burn dread; the ending is either a masterpiece or a budget crisis, and honestly it’s both. If you want to understand how movies are made under impossible constraints, Evangelion is the case study: limitations forced invention, and the invention became legend. No anime has been psychoanalyzed this much. That counts.

3. Cowboy Bebop (1998). The coolest show ever made — and the coolness is load-bearing, not decoration. Every episode is a genre exercise (noir, slapstick, horror), secretly unified by characters who can’t outrun their pasts. The English dub opened the door for a generation of Western viewers, “Tank!” remains the greatest anime opening, and the show’s willingness to be quiet and sad was radical. The finale is perfect. I will not be taking questions.

2. Spirited Away (2001). Miyazaki’s Oscar winner proved animation could take Hollywood’s top prize without sanding off a single strange edge. A ten-year-old works in a bathhouse for spirits to free her parents — a simple plot carrying enormous themes: growing up, greed, remembering your own name. Miyazaki storyboards without a finished script, following the images, and the result feels like a childhood dream with better composition than most live-action films. Every rewatch reveals a background detail you missed.

1. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). Sixty-four episodes. Zero filler. Two brothers, a military conspiracy, the price of playing god — told with clockwork plotting where every thread pays off. The best ensemble cast in anime, action that still holds up, comedy that lands, and an ending so satisfying it retroactively improves everything before it. Brotherhood respects its audience’s intelligence in a way shonen almost never does. If I had one show to prove anime is serious art, it’d be this. It’s the best anime of all time. Fight me.

The Modern Classics: Entries 10 to 6

10. Princess Mononoke (1997). Miyazaki’s angry masterpiece: a cursed prince caught between industrial humans and forest gods, in a film that refuses to pick a side. Lady Eboshi destroys the forest AND shelters society’s outcasts; the gods are noble AND terrifying. This moral complexity was unheard of in animated epics. Brutal action, transcendent score, no easy answers. Japan’s highest-grossing film ever at the time — it earned it.

9. Mob Psycho 100 (2016). ONE’s follow-up to One-Punch Man is the better show. An overpowered esper just wants to be normal — and Studio Bones turned his psychic battles into some of the most inventive animation ever broadcast. But the real story is emotional growth, and the finale’s thesis — powers don’t make you special, character does — is the warmest message in modern anime.

8. Your Name (2016). Shinkai’s body-swap romance understands that the best love stories are about longing, not possession. Two teenagers, swapping bodies across time, falling for someone they’ve never met — a premise that could’ve been a gimmick, executed with total sincerity. Luminous animation, a watertight third act, $350 million worldwide. Gateway drugs don’t get better.

7. Demon Slayer (2019). Proof that traditional shonen virtues — heart, sincerity, a genuinely kind hero — still work at the highest level. Tanjiro is the anti-antihero, and his decency is the thesis. Ufotable’s water-breathing sword techniques set a new bar for TV spectacle. Simple, executed perfectly, beats complex executed sloppily.

6. Attack on Titan (2013). The rare blockbuster that gets smarter as it goes — from humans-vs-giants horror to a devastating meditation on cycles of hatred and propaganda. Revelations in season three recontextualize season one; Isayama’s plotting rewards obsessive rewatching. The most important anime of the 2010s. Full stop.

The Underrated Masterpieces: Entries 15 to 11

15. Paprika (2006). Satoshi Kon’s final film: a dream-therapy device gets weaponized, and dreams invade reality. Inception before Inception, except Kon knew dreams are surreal and terrifying, not heist movies. The parade sequence is one of animation’s great set pieces. Start here to understand what we lost when Kon died in 2010.

14. Hunter x Hunter (2011). Looks like a cheerful adventure about a kid finding his dad; becomes one of the darkest, most morally complex stories in mainstream anime. The Chimera Ant arc — a slow-burn war story asking whether humanity deserves to survive — is the best arc in shonen history. It ends mid-story (manga hiatuses), but what’s complete is essential.

13. A Silent Voice (2016). KyoAni’s film about a former bully seeking redemption with the deaf girl he tormented — the most emotionally honest anime about guilt ever made. It doesn’t forgive its protagonist easily, and the sound design drops out to simulate her deafness. I cried twice. Not embarrassed.

12. Mushishi (2005). The anti-blockbuster: a wandering herbalist, supernatural phenomena, no villains, no cliffhangers — just quiet, watercolor-soft stories about people and nature. In a medium addicted to escalation, Mushishi’s restraint is radical. Television as a deep breath.

11. Perfect Blue (1997). Kon’s debut, still the most psychologically brutal anime film ever made. A pop idol turned actress loses her grip on reality — or is she the stalker? It blurs performance and identity so aggressively you can’t trust a frame. A horror film, a thriller, and a prophecy about parasocial fame, in 81 minutes.

How to Actually Watch These (and in What Order)

If you’re new, don’t start at number one — start where the barrier is lowest. Films first: Your Name, then Spirited Away, then A Silent Voice. Self-contained, gorgeous, emotionally direct.

Then a series: Cowboy Bebop (26 episodic episodes) or Mob Psycho 100 (short seasons, huge payoff). If those click, you’re ready for the heavyweights: Brotherhood, Attack on Titan, Evangelion.

Practical notes: watch subtitled first — the Japanese voice acting is part of the art (Bebop’s dub being the famous exception). If a show’s first three episodes don’t grab you, check whether it’s a slow burn before bailing — some of the best anime takes its time setting the trap.

And once you’ve watched a few, revisit filmmaking tips with fresh eyes. You’ll start noticing the directing — Miyazaki’s held shots, Kon’s match cuts, Watanabe’s musical storytelling. Anime rewards the attentive viewer more than almost any medium. That’s why we rank it, argue about it, and rewatch it.

Frequently Asked Questions