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The 30 Best Anime Series of All Time By Austin Jones and Paste TV Writers | February 7, 2022 | 1:30pm TV LISTS Share Tweet Submit Pin The 30 Best Anime Series of All Time At Paste, we believe there’s an anime for everyone. With lists like this, diverse demographics are often left unconsidered, effectively sidelining female and LGBT viewers. Hobbyists and fandoms have long had distinctive, individualized communities, lively groups that often do not intersect except, maybe, at anime conventions, given over half of North America’s attendees are female. So why is it that lists like this leave out anime made by women, for women? And why can’t these anime be enjoyed by men, too? Working on this list allowed me to examine my own taste and the sort of aesthetic that guides me. I’ve long enjoyed shoujo for its florid style and high melodrama, but when I thought of anime that deserved to be on a list of the best ever, only shows with male protagonists came to mind. Prestige anime is often centered around a man and his struggles, themes that often disclude varied viewers and create an echo chamber of impenetrable, inarguable taste for fans to discuss. These anime are great, and you’ll find many of the expected takes on this list, but in compiling this I tried to consider every genre’s most exemplary offerings. Shows both young and old are represented, with at least one show for everyone no matter their age, gender, or sexuality. In these anime, almost everyone can be seen in some way, whether it be in the rosy meditations of a slice-of-life show or the bombast of thrilling action. The world of animation is constantly evolving, and we want to evolve with it. Our list is carefully curated with both accessible and challenging titles, a perfect landing pad for anime newcomers looking to dive headlong into shows that are essential, strange, or soothing. We hope you find something you’ll fall in love with. 1. Cowboy Bebop Watch On: Funimation, Hulu Original Run: 1998 Every debate over whether or not Cowboy Bebop—Shinichiro Watanabe’s science-fiction masterpiece—is the pinnacle of anime is a semantic one. It is, full stop. Its particular blend of cyberpunk intrigue, Western atmosphere, martial arts action, and noir cool in seinen form is unmatched and widely appealing. Its existential and traumatic themes are universally relatable. Its characters are complex and flawed, yet still ooze cool. The future it presents is ethnically diverse and eerily prescient. Its English dub, boasting some of America’s greatest full-time voiceover talents, somehow equals the subtitled Japanese-language original. Its 26-episode run was near-perfect, and episodes that might have served as filler in another series are tight, taut, and serve the show’s thesis even as they do not distract from its overarching plot, which is compelling but not overbearing. It’s accessible to new hands and still rewards old-timers with every repeated watch. Yoko Kanno’s magnificent, jazz-heavy soundtrack and score stand on their own. Its opening credits are immaculate. It’s an original property, not an adaptation. It feels like a magnum opus produced at the pinnacle of a long career despite being, almost unbelievably, Watanabe’s first series as a director. It is a masterwork that should justly rank among the best works of television of all time, let alone anime. —John Maher 2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Watch On: Crunchyroll, VRV, Funimation, HBO Max, Netflix Original Run: 2009-2010 For many, Brotherhood is the essential anime experience, and it’s easy to see why. A more faithful adaptation to Hiromu Arakawa’s mega-popular manga series than the original adaptation, Brotherhood contends with loss, grief, war, racism and ethics in mature and unique ways, ahead of its time in nearly every aspect. What’s more, the show is paced perfectly, with neatly wrapped arcs that lead into each other and bolster a greater global narrative on selected themes. Brotherhood is just the right length, never overstaying its welcome and proving how versatile and malleable the conventions of shounen anime can be. Brotherhood has a sizeable cast of characters all of different nationalities and ideologies, with motivations that often oppose one another—the show manages to use these moving forces to form factions, alliances, and foils that flow in multiple directions, paralleling the often messy, always chaotic nature of human relationships during wartime. The show’s emotional core revolves around the plight of the Elric brothers, Ed and Alphonse, two alchemists sponsored by the authoritarian Amestris military. It’s not your classic military drama, though, as Ed and Alphonse quickly learn how far Amestris’ authoritarianism stretches. Where Brotherhood excels lies in the sensitivity it expresses for every one of the characters’ fighting for their desires and contending with their mistakes, with particular highlights for the plights of minorities and women. Ed and Alphonse struggle with the fallout after attempting forbidden alchemy to revive their recently deceased mother. Later, their childhood friend Winry is portrayed heroically for acting as an emergency midwife. Scar, initially introduced as a brutal serial killer, is one of the last remaining indigenous Ishvalans, an ethnic group purged during a colonial war at the hands of Amestris—his odyssey continues to ring more and more resonant as we stray further into a post-terror world. It’s why the series continues to wow today: it eschews cliche to make cogent points on human consciousness. —Austin Jones 3. Neon Genesis Evangelion Watch On: Netflix Original Run: 1995-1996 By now, most people have at least a cursory awareness of Neon Genesis Evangelion, whether it be from the overwhelming amount of branded merchandise or the consistent references in popular media. But for a show as ingrained in the animation canon as Evangelion, how we discuss it is in constant flux. Initially touted as a meaningful deconstruction of the mecha popularized by Gundam and Macross, the franchise later became bloated and rife with superfluous content much like the melodramas-as-merchandise they lampooned years before. Nevertheless, Evangelion’s influence is palpable with a cultural overlay that can be seen anywhere from Persona 3 to Gurren Lagann, becoming a phenomenon that seems to exceed the show’s literal text. Much like Star Wars, its original creator Hideaki Anno has lost control of the franchise’s growth and has since augured the end of anime as we know it, once saying Japan’s animation world is “moving by inertia.” —Austin Jones 4. Revolutionary Girl Utena Watch On: Funimation Original Run: 1997 With a psychic incision on adolescence, Kunihiko Ikuhara’s opus Revolutionary Girl Utena is a shining beacon for the shoujo genre. Inspired by the seminal works of Riyoko Ikeda and legendary all-female theater troupe Takarazuka Revue, Utena is a post-structural examination of queer identity and generational trauma filtered through a surrealist lens and romantic, heart-swelling backdrops. The show follows Utena Tenjou, a middle schooler obsessed with becoming a prince so that she might meet the prince who saved her when she was a young girl. She challenges the gender norms of her school (which may as well be a Grecoroman city-state with its own all-powerful student council and intersecting political structures) and charms the female student body with her unwavering dedication to safeguarding other women. After saving the school garden’s caretaker, Anthy, from her abusive boyfriend, Utena becomes embroiled in duels for Anthy’s possession, who is somehow instrumental to revolutionizing the world as we know it. The show is centered almost entirely around character drama, cleverly using stock footage and repetition to foster a mythic portrait of its central cast’s shifting, intersecting psychological profiles and taboo desires. With its decadent symbolism, Utena has marked itself on anime history as much as its fellow ‘90s pioneering peers Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion. —Austin Jones 5. FLCL Watch On: Crunchyroll, VRV, Funimation Original Run: 2001-2018 FLCL was intended to feel unlike anything else you’ve ever watched, anime or otherwise. It’s got an incredible Japanese alt-rock soundtrack from the band The Pillows. Its editing is frenetic. Its characters interact in extremes of manic, moody, or forlorn. Its plot—in which robots pop out of a young boy’s swollen, injured head, heralding the return of a powerful extraterrestrial being—kinda doesn’t matter. None of that stuff matters, according to series director Kazuya Tsurumaki. “Difficulty in comprehension should not be an important factor in FLCL,” he once wrote in a comment thread for Production IG. “I believe the ‘rock guitar’ vibe playing throughout the show is a shortcut on the road to understanding it.” Rock on, brother. —Eric Vilas-Boas 6. Tatami Galaxy Watch On: Funimation Original Run: 2010 Almost any of Masaaki Yuasa’s oeuvre could make this list, but 2010’s Tatami Galaxy is the director’s most quintessential work: the characters talk with speed that could make Aaron Sorkin blush; the style is lovingly surreal, with the material delightfully mundane; the content is as cerebral as it is immediately relatable. Tatami Galaxy’s central premise circles our protagonist (who is left unnamed) as he enters college, gradually becomes disillusioned, then meets a girl and boy his fate is indivisibly bound to, and something terrible happens, resulting in the reset of his college life. Tatami Galaxy is for any fan of Haruki Murakami’s particular brand of glum magical realism, for anyone who’s felt bone-deep ennui, or simply enjoys sumptuous animation. Though the show’s loop begins to feel like a recurring trip through Dante’s vision of hell, Tatami Galaxy highly rewards rewatches and shimmers with uncanny realism. You at least have to admire how much Yuasa’s able to fit in a 20 minute timeslot. —Austin Jones 7. Aku No Hana Watch On: Crunchyroll, VRV Original Run: 2013 You probably won’t like Aku No Hana. At least not on your first viewing. Proudly perverse, the show makes consistent references to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (of which it takes its name) as well as his contemporary Rimbaud. Among his Romantic peers, Baudelaire was the most troubled, struggling with alcoholism, aggrandizing debts, and syphilitic insanity. Somehow, a young middle schooler named Kasuga in modern day Japan found him relatable. Sensing his stranger-to-society tendencies, a fellow outcast named Nakamura catches Kasuga giving into his bawdy desires and blackmails him into a twisted friendship. The story never plays this for comedy, however—in fact, Aku No Hana is a sickeningly disgusting bildungsroman, a story about teens unable to conform and our disconnects between personal desires and social currency. Animated with a divisive rotoscope technique, Aku No Hana flirts with drab imagery for the sake of enhancing its cast’s despair, nauseating in its flashes of uninhibited beauty and restrained repugnance. Aku No Hana will leave you feeling disquieted, but also rather seen; its revelation lies in what we want to hide about ourselves, about the dark side of our psyche that creeps in shadow. There’s something life-affirming about that darkness. —Austin Jones