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15 Anime Series With the Best Animation

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Animation sets the bar.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - May 14th 2026, 21:00 GMT+2

Takopis Original Sin — 15. Takopi's Original Sin (2022)
Takopi's Original Sin turns a cute alien octopus into the most devastating thing you'll see in anime. The series uses deceptively simple art to tell a story about childhood trauma, bullying, and the kind of damage that follows kids into adulthood. What starts as an innocent tale about an alien trying to make friends becomes something much darker, with animation that shifts between adorable and genuinely disturbing. The way it uses minimal movement and quiet moments makes every emotional hit land twice as hard. | © Shogakukan

The Apothecary Diaries — 14. The Apothecary Diaries (2023-2024)
The Apothecary Diaries takes the familiar setup of a smart girl in an imperial court and makes it work through sheer attention to detail. Every poison investigation gets the same careful treatment as every fabric pattern, creating a world that feels lived-in rather than designed for drama. The animation studio clearly understood that subtle character acting matters more than flashy action sequences when your protagonist solves mysteries through careful observation. Maomao's deadpan reactions to palace intrigue hit harder than any sword fight. | © Crunchyroll

Pluto — 13. Pluto (2023)
Pluto takes Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy universe and rebuilds it as a noir thriller where robots can feel genuine emotion and humans still choose cruelty. The animation captures every micro-expression and hesitant gesture that makes these artificial beings feel more authentic than most flesh-and-blood characters. Each episode moves with the patient rhythm of a detective story, letting complex moral questions breathe instead of rushing toward explosive answers. Studio M2 spent years crafting visuals that make you forget you're watching drawings move. | © Netflix

Paranoia Agent — 12. Paranoia Agent (2004)
Paranoia Agent turns urban anxiety into something you can actually see, with animation that bends and warps to match Tokyo's collective psychological breakdown. Satoshi Kon's final TV series makes paranoia feel physical through distorted perspectives, shifting art styles, and characters who seem to melt under the weight of their own stress. The show's visual approach changes completely from episode to episode, sometimes realistic, sometimes abstract, always unsettling in ways that stick with you long after watching. Animation becomes the perfect medium for exploring how fear spreads through a city when reality itself starts feeling unreliable. | © Adult Swim

Gurren lagann — 11. Gurren Lagann (2007)
Gurren Lagann takes the simple concept of giant robots and pushes it until physics gives up completely. The show starts with Simon digging tunnels underground and escalates to mechs throwing galaxies like frisbees, somehow making every ridiculous leap feel earned through pure momentum and screaming determination. Studio Gainax animated this thing like they were personally offended by the idea of restraint, cramming each fight scene with so much kinetic energy that the screen barely contains it. The finale doesn't just break the laws of science; it commits war crimes against them. | © Crunchyroll

Cowboy Bebop — 10. Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999)
Space jazz and cigarette smoke drift through every frame of Cowboy Bebop, an anime that moves like film noir set among the planets. The bounty hunters aboard the Bebop feel like real people with actual histories, not just anime archetypes waiting to explain their tragic backstories. Director Shinichiro Watanabe builds each episode like a different genre experiment, shifting from comedy to melancholy to action without ever losing the show's core rhythm. Twenty-five years later, nothing else has captured that specific mix of loneliness and style. | © Adult Swim

Cropped Puella Magi Madoka Magica — 9. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica looks like a typical magical girl anime until it reveals what making a contract with a cute mascot actually costs. The soft pastel colors and rounded character designs make the psychological horror hit twice as hard when girls start losing their minds and bodies to despair. Studio Shaft's surreal witch labyrinths feel like nightmares designed by a children's book illustrator, all twisted collages and impossible geometry that make every battle sequence genuinely unsettling. It is the rare anime that uses its animation style as a trap. | © Crunchyroll

Attack On Titan — 8. Attack On Titan (2013-2023)
Attack on Titan starts with humans cowering behind walls from giant naked monsters, then slowly reveals that every single thing you thought you understood was wrong. The animation sells both the visceral horror of titans devouring people and the mechanical precision of the 3D maneuvering gear that lets soldiers zip through the air like angry spiders. By the final season, the show has transformed from a monster-fighting spectacle into a meditation on cycles of violence that makes you question who the real monsters were all along. What looked like a simple survival story becomes something much darker and more complicated than anyone expected. | © Crunchyroll

Chainsaw Man — 7. Chainsaw Man (2022)
Chainsaw Man turns every fight scene into a blood-soaked carnival where chainsaws rip through concrete and body parts fly with cartoon physics. Studio MAPPA commits completely to the manga's unhinged energy, making Denji's transformations feel genuinely dangerous rather than just flashy. The animation switches between smooth character moments and explosive action without warning, which perfectly matches a story about a teenager who can literally become a walking weapon. Most anime about devils and monsters try to be either scary or funny, but this one succeeds at being both simultaneously. | © Crunchyroll

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 — 6. Jujutsu Kaisen (2020-2023)
Jujutsu Kaisen turned anime fight scenes into a masterclass of kinetic energy and visual weight. Studio MAPPA made every punch feel like it could crack concrete, every curse technique pop with supernatural force that actually looks supernatural. The animation doesn't just show characters moving fast. It makes you feel the impact when Yuji's fist connects or when Gojo unleashes his limitless technique in ways that seem to bend reality around the screen. | © Crunchyroll

Trigun Stampede — 5. Trigun Stampede (2023)
Trigun Stampede completely rebuilds the 1998 original with 3D animation that somehow makes gunfights feel like dancing and desert landscapes look alive. The CGI work here doesn't try to mimic traditional 2D anime but instead creates something that moves with its own rhythm, especially when Vash starts pulling off impossible trick shots. Studio Orange figured out how to make digital animation feel warm and expressive rather than cold and plastic. Every action sequence flows like choreography, turning what could have been stiff computer graphics into something that actually enhances the storytelling. | © Crunchyroll

Cyberpunk Edgerunners — 4. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes the messy, bug-riddled video game universe and turns it into something that actually works as a story. The animation style mixes traditional 2D with sharp 3D elements that make Night City feel both lived-in and impossibly slick, while the neon-soaked violence hits harder than anything the source material managed. Studio Trigger knows exactly how to escalate cyberpunk carnage without losing track of the characters getting destroyed by it. Every episode pushes deeper into body horror and corporate nightmare fuel until the whole thing becomes a gorgeous argument against the world it's depicting. | © Netflix

Cropped Frieren Beyond Journeys End — 3. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (2023-2024)
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End makes immortality feel like the loneliest curse imaginable, following an elf mage who outlives her human companions and spends decades processing what their brief friendship meant. The animation captures time's weight through deliberate pacing and seasonal changes that mark years passing in minutes, turning quiet character moments into something almost meditative. Studio Madhouse renders magic with a painterly softness that makes every spell feel both ancient and intimate. The show turns a standard fantasy adventure into something closer to grief therapy, where the real quest is learning how to remember people properly. | © Crunchyroll

Demon slayer — 2. Demon Slayer (2019-2023)
Demon Slayer proves that sometimes the simplest stories hit hardest when they look this good. The animation turns every sword swing into a watercolor painting, and every demon encounter into a light show that somehow never feels like an empty spectacle. Tanjiro's quest to save his sister works because the emotional beats land just as hard as the visual ones. Studio Ufotable managed to make traditional shonen storytelling feel fresh again by pouring movie-level budget into every single episode. | © Crunchyroll

Violet Evergarden — 1. Violet Evergarden (2018)
Violet Evergarden turns letter-writing into something that looks impossibly delicate and expensive, with every scene polished until it practically glows. The show follows a former child soldier learning to understand emotions by becoming a ghostwriter, and KyoAni's animation makes even simple gestures feel like they matter. Each episode builds around a different client's story, letting the studio showcase everything from bustling cityscapes to quiet countryside moments with the same obsessive attention to detail. The tears feel earned because the animation makes you believe in a world where words can actually heal people. | © Netflix

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Most anime tell a good story. A select few make you stop and stare at the screen because what you're watching is genuinely beautiful. These are the series where the animation itself became part of what made them unforgettable.

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Most anime tell a good story. A select few make you stop and stare at the screen because what you're watching is genuinely beautiful. These are the series where the animation itself became part of what made them unforgettable.