Dorohedoro is a delightfully bizarre and visually striking anime series that immerses viewers in a dark and twisted world of sorcery and macabre humor. With its unique blend of supernatural elements, gritty action, and offbeat comedy, the show captivates with its eccentric characters and intricate plot. The animation is stunning, bringing the gritty cityscape of Hole to life, while the engaging storyline keeps you hooked with its mystery and intriguing revelations. Dorohedoro is a wild ride that embraces its quirkiness, offering a fresh and exhilarating experience for anime fans craving something delightfully unconventional.

At first glance, Monster doesn’t seem like the typical anime of the 2000s. With its muted colors, realistic action, and Eastern European setting, it seemed like a more subdued series compared to other thrillers. But because it feels so realistic, Monster is one of the most thrilling psychological series that happens to tackle the value of a human life, as the compassionate doctor Kenzo Tenma grapples with the weight of having saved a boy who grows up into a manipulative psychopath. Mangaka Naoki Urasawa and showrunner Masayuki Kojima directly challenges their respective philosophies through excellently paced investigations, well-developed characters, and the thorough examination of the different ways humanity has failed each other, and it’s downright beautiful to see how this anime adapts Urasawa’s complex, sophisticated story so faithfully.

In fantasy worlds, races with different lifespans are a given, but rarely does a work actually contemplate how these variations would affect relationships between them. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End starts after a great war, at the moment of peace, and to the titular elf, her shared journey with the human Himmel and their party feels like a blip in her life, their ten years of friendship blurred amongst her thousand years… until Himmel dies, which shifts her perspective on mortality. Frieren won’t have that much extravaganza we’re used to in other fantasy shows, but the way Frieren tries to reconnect with her former comrades, and the way she remembers their memory through flashbacks, all become a gentle and moving meditation on purpose, meaning, and connection, all paired with outstanding art and some of the best worldbuilding we’ve seen in anime.

On-screen, we’ve seen downtrodden Cinderella-esque leads, we’ve seen humans transform into animals, and we’ve seen whole families cursed, but Fruits Basket takes all these plot devices and transforms them into something completely different. As Tohru Honda gets to learn about the mysterious Sohma family, and she and friends gets into fun and wacky hijinks with the curse, the series takes the legend of the Chinese zodiac as a unique and effortless means to discuss systemic, generational abuse and resulting trauma that can occur within a family. The classic shoujo manga was first adapted into anime in 2001, but we’re recommending the later 2019 adaptation, which goes more in depth and depicts the complete story.

Fun, wholesome, and relatable, Haikyu!! celebrates the highs and lows of high school volleyball. The show starts off focused on two freshmen volleyball players from opposing middle school teams, who have to learn teamwork in order to be accepted into their high school club. While the team might initially come across as self-conscious, over-the-top, highly dramatic characters, it’s clear that they’re coming from a shared love for the competitive sport (and that they also just happen to be going through puberty). However, the show’s strategic storytelling makes us care about the team: explanations about volleyball tactics are taught just at the right moment in order to heighten the stakes of every player’s move. Simultaneously, every player moves into each new plot point as a natural consequence of their backstory and their perception of each event. Haikyu!!’s agile approach makes the show a compelling watch, and a great place to start if you’re new to anime.

An oni/human hybrid, a severed head in a birdcage, and a bayonet-wielding maid step into a vampire’s house to solve a murder.

And that is truly the essence of Undead Murder Face. Blending gothic with supernatural, creatures of global and Japanese lore converge in a turn-of-the-century historical anime. In only two episodes, the show establishes the Westernization of Japan and how it leads to erasing foundational parts of their culture while mixing in a unique fantasy element to the story. Most interestingly, the impressive animation (especially the transitions), eerie close-ups and ominous nightscapes are punctuated by curious moments of comedy. And it all accumulates into a sensational concept that’s worth the watch.

Based on an arc of the classic Space Age manga, Phoenix: Eden17 reimagines the future of space exploration into a contemplation of human nature. While the show’s pacing speeds through its plot points within four episodes, each reveal feels gut wrenching, as Romi consistently has to deal with changes in Eden, Earth, and what happened to her loved ones. Modern-style animation is used, but inspired the original style of its time, creating a modernized version of the original mangaka Osamu Tezuka’s stunning images. But it’s the series’ ideas that make the show unique. Greed, betrayal, isolation, and human error causes all the disasters in this show’s universe, and even when you know it’s coming, it’s still hard not to feel the devastation the characters feel. Despite being based on a manga created decades ago, Phoenix: Eden17 still feels like an entirely singular work. Given modern animation, the ideas of the father of manga feel like it’s something never seen before.

Featuring almost no external conflict for its protagonist to face, this story of a young, ill-tempered calligraphy artist—sent to recollect himself at an island community—makes the private process of soul-searching as inspiring as it is cathartic. It’s a series that understands how one’s art is informed almost subliminally by the smallest observations and interactions, transforming the act of personal expression into a tribute to the people and places who give this expression real weight. So even if Barakamon spends most of its time on quaint, everyday experiences without any heightened drama, you get the sense that something significant is shifting within Seishu with every day that passes. It’s a warm, beautiful anime about some of the biggest existential questions, delivered in a modest, good-humored way.

Simple yet captivating, Skip and Loafer is a slice-of-life anime with a refreshing approach to the high school experience. While the anime genre is mostly known for its bright, high-saturated colors and action-filled, fantastical plots, this show celebrates the ordinary, with its pastel toned design, sweet humor, and clean animation. The series is centered around the main duo Mitsumi and Sosuke, but it never skimps on their friendships with their group. In fact, despite the classmates’ different backgrounds, the show’s thoughtful introductions make it easy to see why they would all care for each other, even as we get to know their insecurities. Skip and Loafer feels like a hug from the childhood best friend you had (or the one that you wished you had) – the one who you hung out with after school, the one who inspired you, and the one that changed your life for the better. Every episode is just full of pure, simple joy.

Meet Rilakkuma, a relaxed teddy bear (which is indeed what his name translates to in Japanese), and Kaoru, a Japanese office worker in her mid-thirties, who lives with said bear as well as a smaller white bear named Korilakkuma and a yellow chick by the name of Kiiroitori. As whimsical as all this may sound, the show offers up endearing and humane life lessons to go with all the heart-warming cuteness as Kaoru navigates being single, her apartment building being demolished, and her job stressing her out. It combines charming stop-motion characters with great writing, adorable animation, and a beautifully quiet tone. You might be surprised at the profundity of a show that, at the surface, is about a Japanese girl with cuddly toy roommates. It’s hard to compare it to anything else!