Picking the best anime is one of the most enjoyable arguments you can have. The medium spans decades, covers every genre imaginable, and has produced some of the most emotionally impactful storytelling in any format — animated or otherwise. Whether you're a longtime fan who has watched hundreds of shows, or someone who clicked on this page because a friend wouldn't stop talking about some guy with demon powers, welcome. You're in the right place.
We've put together 25 picks that represent the best anime has to offer in 2026 — spanning shonen action, psychological thrillers, quiet slice-of-life, epic fantasy, and everything in between. Each entry includes where you can watch it, so you can jump straight in.
1. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Drama | Episodes: 64 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
Ask anyone who has been watching anime for more than a year which show to recommend to a newcomer, and the answer is almost always the same: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This is the consensus pick, the reliable answer, the one that almost never fails — and the reason it keeps getting that recommendation is that it genuinely deserves it every single time.
Brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric attempt to use alchemy to resurrect their dead mother, violating the fundamental law that forbids it. The price they pay sets the story in motion: Ed loses his arm and leg; Al loses his entire body and has his soul bound to a suit of armor. Their journey to find the Philosopher's Stone — and eventually to uncover a conspiracy that threatens their entire country — is one of the most complete narrative arcs in the medium. Action, humor, heartbreak, and genuine philosophical weight in equal measure. Start here.
2. Attack on Titan
Genre: Action, Dark Fantasy, Mystery | Episodes: 87 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Hulu
Attack on Titan begins as a survival story about humanity trapped behind walls, hunted by giant humanoid monsters called Titans, and ends as something so much more layered and morally complex that it's hard to describe without spoiling what makes it special. Few anime — few stories in any medium — manage the kind of tonal and narrative transformation this series pulls off across its four seasons.
The early seasons are relentless action and mystery. The later seasons are a slow-burning, devastating political and philosophical reckoning with questions of freedom, identity, and the cycle of violence. Season 4 in particular is among the finest long-form storytelling in anime history. Whatever your taste, Attack on Titan will find a way to get to you.
3. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
Genre: Action, Supernatural | Episodes: 55+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix, Funimation
Demon Slayer arrived and immediately reminded everyone why visual spectacle still matters. Ufotable's animation — particularly the Water Breathing and Flame Breathing sequences — is some of the most beautiful movement ever committed to an animated series. But spectacle alone doesn't build the following this show has, and Demon Slayer earns its audience with something simpler: genuine heart.
Tanjiro Kamado is one of shonen's most purely kind protagonists. His quest to cure his sister Nezuko, who has been turned into a demon, is driven not by revenge or ambition but by love and an absolute refusal to give up on her. The Mugen Train arc — also available as a film — remains one of the most emotionally devastating things the genre has produced. If you want action that makes you cry, this is the one.
4. Death Note
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery | Episodes: 37 | Watch on: Netflix, Crunchyroll
Death Note is the anime that has probably introduced more people to the medium than any other single show. A teenager finds a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it. He decides to use it to rid the world of criminals. A genius detective is assigned to catch him. What follows is a 37-episode cat-and-mouse psychological thriller that is one of the most tightly plotted things anime has ever produced.
The first half in particular — the duel between Light Yagami and L — is almost unbearably tense. Every scene is a game of chess, every line of dialogue loaded with strategy and counter-strategy. Even if you already know how it ends, watching it for the first time is an experience you will remember. Dark, stylish, and genuinely unsettling in its portrayal of a brilliant mind falling to corruption.
5. Jujutsu Kaisen
Genre: Action, Supernatural, Dark Fantasy | Episodes: 47+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll
Jujutsu Kaisen is the most kinetic shonen of the modern era. MAPPA's animation — particularly in Season 2's Shibuya Incident arc — pushed the boundaries of what TV anime can look like, producing fight sequences that rival theatrical releases in their choreography and impact. Gojo Satoru became an immediate cultural phenomenon, and the ensemble cast is deep and distinct enough to give almost every viewer a different favorite character.
What elevates JJK above pure spectacle is its willingness to go to genuinely dark places. Characters you love will not survive. The world's rules around curses and cursed energy are internally consistent and creatively applied. And Season 2's pivot from coming-of-age story to full-scale tragedy is one of the most striking tonal shifts in recent anime memory. Required viewing.
6. One Piece
Genre: Adventure, Action, Comedy | Episodes: 1100+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
One Piece is the longest-running and best-selling manga of all time, and its anime adaptation — now more than 1,100 episodes in — is one of the most ambitious ongoing narratives in the history of storytelling. Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat crew's journey across the Grand Line to find the legendary treasure One Piece is a story about freedom, found family, and the willingness to dream impossibly big.
Yes, the episode count is intimidating. Yes, there is filler. The recent Egghead Island arc, however — animated with production values that match anything currently airing — is a reminder of why millions of people have been loyal to this story for 25 years. If you want to start somewhere, the Whole Cake Island arc or Wano arc are excellent entry points into the show at its modern best.
7. Vinland Saga
Genre: Historical, Action, Drama | Episodes: 48 | Watch on: Netflix, Prime Video
Vinland Saga is one of the most mature and demanding anime ever made, and it rewards the patience it asks for with something genuinely rare: a story about a warrior who has to learn that being a warrior is not enough, and maybe is the problem. Set in the Viking age, it follows Thorfinn from a boy obsessed with revenge into something far more complicated and, by Season 2, far more humane.
Season 1 is a brutal, beautifully animated war story. Season 2 — which takes place almost entirely on a quiet farm — is a meditation on trauma, slavery, and what peace actually costs. The contrast is intentional, jarring, and profound. Vinland Saga asks what violence does to the people who practice it, and it answers that question with more honesty than almost any other piece of fiction.
8. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Genre: Fantasy, Slice-of-Life, Drama | Episodes: 28 | Watch on: Crunchyroll
The sleeper hit of 2023 and early 2024 — and for many people, the anime that quietly became their favorite thing they watched that year. Frieren follows an elven mage who outlives her adventuring companions and, decades later, begins to process what she lost by not paying attention to the time she had with them. It is a fantasy anime about grief, memory, and learning how to be present.
The animation from Madhouse is exquisite. The pacing is deliberately gentle in a way that some viewers will find meditative and others may find slow, but those who fall into its rhythm tend to find it deeply affecting. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is proof that the most powerful anime doesn't always need to shout. Sometimes it just needs to sit beside you.
9. Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Sci-Fi, Neo-Noir, Action | Episodes: 26 | Watch on: Funimation, Hulu
There are anime from the 1990s that feel dated. Cowboy Bebop is not among them. Watanabe Shinichiro's 1998 masterpiece — about a crew of misfit bounty hunters drifting through a colonized solar system to one of the greatest soundtracks in animation history — remains as stylish, melancholic, and alive as the day it aired. The final episode still hits like a freight train.
Bebop works because its characters are defined by what they're running from rather than what they're chasing. Spike Spiegel's past, Faye's forgotten history, Jet's compromises — every episode peels back another layer while still delivering genre entertainment that holds up against anything made since. If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen what anime can do when everything clicks perfectly into place.
10. Hunter x Hunter (2011)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Dark Fantasy | Episodes: 148 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
Hunter x Hunter is one of those rare shows where every arc is substantially better than the one before it. Gon's journey to find his missing father and become a Hunter starts as a bright, energetic adventure and gradually becomes something darker, more complex, and ultimately one of the most psychologically rich narratives in all of shonen. The Chimera Ant arc alone — which takes up roughly 60 episodes — is considered by many to be the greatest arc in anime history.
The 2011 Madhouse adaptation is impeccably paced and beautifully produced. Killua and Gon's friendship is one of anime's great relationships. And the show's willingness to interrogate the ethics of its own genre — what does it actually mean to be a hero? — gives it a weight that lingers long after the credits roll.
11. Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Mecha, Psychological, Sci-Fi | Episodes: 26 + film | Watch on: Netflix
No list of the best anime is complete without Evangelion. Hideaki Anno's 1995 landmark deconstruction of the mecha genre remains one of the most analyzed, debated, and influential pieces of animation ever made. It begins as a show about teenagers piloting giant robots to fight alien monsters and systematically dismantles every expectation that premise sets up, ending in a place of raw psychological exposure that shocked audiences in 1995 and still does today.
The Netflix restoration made it accessible to a new generation, and the Rebuild of Evangelion film series offers a different take on the same story. Start with the series. Whether or not you love it, you will understand something about anime — and yourself — that you didn't before.
12. My Hero Academia
Genre: Superhero, Action, Shonen | Episodes: 138 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Netflix
My Hero Academia wrapped its run in 2025 and cemented its place as one of the defining anime of the 2010s and early 2020s. Set in a world where 80% of humanity has superpowers, it follows Izuku Midoriya — born without powers — as he inherits the world's greatest ability from his idol and works to become the world's greatest hero. The show's consistent message about earning your place through effort and character rather than talent is delivered with enough sincerity that it never feels preachy.
The ensemble cast is enormous and lovingly developed over eight seasons. All Might is one of the great mentor figures in shonen. And the villain Tomura Shigaraki's arc — from nihilistic destruction to something more complicated — is among the series' best writing. Watch it as a complete story now that it's finished.
13. Chainsaw Man
Genre: Dark Action, Horror, Supernatural | Episodes: 12 (+ movie) | Watch on: Crunchyroll
MAPPA's adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga landed in 2022 like a sledgehammer. Chainsaw Man is loud, grotesque, emotionally immature in ways that are entirely intentional, and genuinely unlike anything else in the medium. Its protagonist Denji — a teenager who merges with his Devil dog Pochita to become a hybrid chainsaw-wielding monster-hunter — wants, above all else, to feel soft skin and have a warm meal. The contrast between that mundane desire and the extraordinary violence he commits and endures is the engine of the whole thing.
The animation is cinematic. Each episode has its own unique ending sequence. The supporting cast — particularly Power, who became an instant fan favorite — is vivid and strange in equal measure. The Reze Arc movie continues the story and is equally essential.
14. Spy x Family
Genre: Action, Comedy, Slice-of-Life | Episodes: 37+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
Spy x Family is one of the most purely enjoyable anime currently airing, and its premise alone should convince you: a spy has to create a fake family in 30 days to complete his mission. He adopts a child — who is secretly a telepath — and recruits a woman as a fake wife — who is secretly an assassin. None of them know the others' secrets. The child, Anya, is the funniest character in modern anime.
It's warm, funny, frequently action-packed, and structured around the joy of watching three broken, lonely people accidentally become a real family despite themselves. Wit Studio and CloverWorks' production is consistently gorgeous. Spy x Family is the show you recommend to anyone who thinks anime is "too dark" or "too intense." It is comfort television that also occasionally has spectacular fights.
15. Solo Leveling
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Power Fantasy | Episodes: 24+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll
Solo Leveling is the most nakedly satisfying power fantasy in modern anime — and it makes no apologies for that. Sung Jinwoo begins as the weakest hunter in a world of monster-filled dungeons and, through a series of circumstances, becomes the first and only person able to level up like a video game character. Watching him go from zero to the most powerful being on Earth is the entire point, and A-1 Pictures' adaptation delivers it with exceptional animation and style.
The appeal is simple and pure: competence porn at its finest. If you've ever wanted to watch someone get so good at something that the entire world has to recalibrate around them, Solo Leveling is your show. Season 2 is currently airing and continuing to deliver.
16. Blue Lock
Genre: Sports, Psychological | Episodes: 24+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll
Blue Lock takes the sports anime genre and injects it with an almost villainous competitive philosophy. After Japan's national team fails at the World Cup, a radical program is established to produce a single world-class striker by pitting 300 of Japan's best teenage forwards against each other in an elimination tournament where only one can survive. It is not a show about teamwork. It is a show about ego, obsession, and the psychology of becoming the best.
The result is one of the most tense, unpredictable sports anime ever made. You root for your favorite players knowing the structure of the show means most of them will fail. Every match is a character study. And Isagi Yoichi's evolution from anonymous teenager to something genuinely threatening is one of the great protagonist arcs of recent anime.
17. Haikyuu!!
Genre: Sports, Drama | Episodes: 85 + films | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
If Blue Lock is the dark side of sports anime, Haikyuu!! is the soul of it. This is the volleyball series that convinced people who have never watched a sports anime — or volleyball — to cry at a serve. Production I.G's adaptation of Haruichi Furudate's manga is one of the most emotionally intelligent sports stories ever told, building its matches as psychological battles between characters the show has spent dozens of episodes making you care about.
The rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama is the spine of the series, but every team in every match is humanized to a degree that makes the wins and losses land with equal weight. The final match of the series — Karasuno vs. Kamomedai — is the single best sports sequence in anime. The films that conclude the series are essential.
18. Naruto / Naruto Shippuden
Genre: Action, Adventure, Shonen | Episodes: 720 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Netflix
No coming-of-age story in anime history has been as formative for as many people as Naruto. The show that defined a generation of fans — following an orphaned outcast with a demon fox sealed inside him who dreams of becoming the greatest ninja in his village — is still required watching for anyone who wants to understand what shonen is and what it can do at its best.
Yes, there is filler. The canon story, however — Naruto's journey through the Academy, his rivalry with Sasuke, the time-skip into Shippuden, and the final war arc — is one of the longest and most emotionally sustained narratives in the genre. The bond between Naruto and Sasuke remains one of anime's defining relationships. Start with the original series, skip the filler guides available online, and settle in.
19. Steins;Gate
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Visual Novel Adaptation | Episodes: 24 | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Steins;Gate is the best time travel story anime has ever told — and one of the best in any medium. A self-styled mad scientist accidentally discovers the ability to send messages into the past and begins experimenting with changing history. The show spends its first half as a slow-burning mystery-comedy and its second half as a full-blown emotional disaster, and the transition between the two is executed with surgical precision.
If you find the early episodes slow, persist. Steins;Gate is deliberately calibrating you before it pulls the floor out from underneath. The payoff is extraordinary, and the ending — for viewers who engaged with the characters — is devastating in exactly the right way. One of the most complete anime experiences available.
20. Mob Psycho 100
Genre: Action, Comedy, Supernatural | Episodes: 37 | Watch on: Crunchyroll
Mob Psycho 100 is the other major work by the creator of One Punch Man — ONE — and in many ways the more emotionally sophisticated one. It follows Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama, an overwhelmingly powerful psychic who wants nothing to do with his own power and would rather just be a normal middle-schooler. The show uses his emotional repression as both its comedic engine and its central dramatic tension.
Bones' animation is some of the most inventive and expressive of any TV anime — the fight sequences are astonishing, but the quiet moments are equally well-crafted. And Mob's journey toward understanding that being impressive is not the same as being good is one of anime's most unexpectedly moving character arcs. All three seasons are essential.
21. Berserk (1997)
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Action, Horror | Episodes: 25 | Watch on: Crunchyroll**
The original 1997 Berserk adaptation remains one of the darkest and most visceral pieces of animation ever made. Following the mercenary Guts and his complicated relationship with the charismatic and devastating Griffith through the medieval fantasy world of Midland, it builds toward one of the most notorious endings in anime history — the Eclipse — with a deliberateness that makes the horror of it completely earned.
The 1997 series is incomplete as an adaptation (read the manga for the full story), but what exists is a genuine landmark. The arc it covers — the Golden Age — is considered some of the finest long-form storytelling in dark fantasy anywhere. Not for the faint-hearted. Absolutely essential.
22. Overlord
Genre: Isekai, Dark Fantasy, Strategy | Episodes: 52 | Watch on: Crunchyroll
Overlord flips the isekai genre's standard template completely. Rather than a hero arriving in a fantasy world to save it, the protagonist Ainz Ooal Gown — a regular salaryman whose consciousness is trapped in the body of an undead skeleton sorcerer at the moment a fantasy game shuts down — finds himself ruling an impossible dungeon with fanatically loyal followers who believe him to be an all-knowing deity. He is not. He's figuring it out as he goes.
The comedy of an awkward man attempting to project omnipotence is excellent. But Overlord is also genuinely dark — Ainz's perspective as a morally detached ruler who sees the world's inhabitants as pieces to be used is consistently unsettling. It is the anti-hero isekai done at its most committed, and its four seasons build an increasingly complex political world around him.
23. Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Horror, Action | Episodes: 24 (Seasons 1-2) | Watch on: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Tokyo Ghoul's first two seasons — Root A ending aside — are among the most stylish dark fantasy anime produced in the 2010s. Kaneki Ken, an ordinary college student who undergoes an involuntary transformation into a half-ghoul after a horrific encounter, is one of the genre's great tragic protagonists. His disintegration across the first season — the gradual acceptance that he is no longer fully human — is handled with a psychological acuity that sets it apart from similar shows.
The opening theme "Unravel" remains one of the most emotionally resonant anime openings ever composed. The first season in particular is close to a masterpiece of dark urban fantasy. Watch Seasons 1-2; the manga continues the story with more fidelity than later anime adaptations.
24. Your Lie in April
Genre: Romance, Drama, Music | Episodes: 22 | Watch on: Netflix, Crunchyroll
Your Lie in April is one of the most beautiful and most painful anime ever made, and it is not shy about either quality. A piano prodigy who lost the ability to hear his own playing after his mother's death is brought back to music by a free-spirited violinist with a secret of her own. The result is a meditation on art, loss, grief, and what it means to keep going when continuing feels impossible.
The musical sequences — animated by A-1 Pictures with extraordinary care — are some of the most moving moments in the entire medium. If you are emotionally vulnerable, watch this carefully. Your Lie in April will find the soft places and press on them. It is worth every moment of it.
25. Oshi no Ko
Genre: Drama, Psychological, Mystery | Episodes: 11+ (ongoing) | Watch on: Crunchyroll
The most surprising premiere of 2023 — a first episode that ran 90 minutes and immediately became one of the most talked-about pieces of anime in years. Oshi no Ko begins with a premise so unexpected that describing it spoils the impact, but it rapidly becomes a biting, unsentimental examination of the Japanese idol and entertainment industry, the gap between public personas and private pain, and the way celebrity culture consumes the people inside it.
The animation is striking. The writing is sharper than almost anything currently airing. And the central mystery — who murdered Ai Hoshino, the idol at the story's heart — drives the narrative with genuine urgency. Oshi no Ko is the show that surprised everyone, and it has only gotten richer as it continues into its second season.
Quick Reference: Where to Watch
| Anime | Streaming |
|---|---|
| Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Attack on Titan | Crunchyroll, Hulu |
| Demon Slayer | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Death Note | Netflix, Crunchyroll |
| Jujutsu Kaisen | Crunchyroll |
| One Piece | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Vinland Saga | Netflix, Prime Video |
| Frieren: Beyond Journey's End | Crunchyroll |
| Cowboy Bebop | Funimation, Hulu |
| Hunter x Hunter | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Neon Genesis Evangelion | Netflix |
| My Hero Academia | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Chainsaw Man | Crunchyroll |
| Spy x Family | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Solo Leveling | Crunchyroll |
| Blue Lock | Crunchyroll |
| Haikyuu!! | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Naruto / Shippuden | Crunchyroll, Netflix |
| Steins;Gate | Crunchyroll |
| Mob Psycho 100 | Crunchyroll |
| Berserk (1997) | Crunchyroll |
| Overlord | Crunchyroll |
| Tokyo Ghoul | Crunchyroll |
| Your Lie in April | Netflix, Crunchyroll |
| Oshi no Ko | Crunchyroll |
Think we missed one? Head to the Forum and make your case — we love the argument.
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