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15 Best Anime That Deserve Their Rotten Tomatoes Scores

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The scores don't lie.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - April 25th 2026, 13:00 GMT+2

Solo Leveling — 15. Solo Leveling (2024-)
Solo Leveling turns the weakest hunter in the world into an unstoppable force through a video game-like leveling system that feels designed to hit every power fantasy button at once. The animation studio A-1 Pictures throws serious budget at fight scenes that look more like boss battles than traditional anime combat, complete with glowing stat windows and dramatic level-up moments. Every episode builds toward Sung Jin-Woo becoming more ridiculously overpowered, and the show never pretends to be embarrassed about how much fun that formula can be. The critics who dismissed it as shallow completely missed the point of why people wanted to watch someone climb from zero to hero with this much visual flair. | © Crunchyroll

Cropped Kaiju No 8 — 14. Kaiju No. 8 (2024)
Kaiju No. 8 takes the tired premise of giant monsters attacking Japan and makes it work by focusing on the cleanup crew instead of the heroes. Kafka Hibino spends his days mopping up kaiju guts for minimum wage while dreaming of joining the Defense Force, until he accidentally becomes the thing he used to scrub off sidewalks. The show finds real humor in treating monster cleanup like any other blue-collar job, complete with workplace complaints and overtime pay. What could have been another generic kaiju battle anime becomes something warmer because it cares more about the janitor than the giant robot. | © Crunchyroll

The Summer Hikaru Died — 13. The Summer Hikaru Died (2025-)

The Summer Hikaru Died turns a simple premise into something genuinely unsettling: your best friend comes back from the mountains, but he's not quite himself anymore. The horror works because it never rushes to explain what happened or what the thing wearing Hikaru's face actually wants. Instead, it lets dread build through small wrong details and the growing realization that grief might be easier than whatever this is. Most body horror relies on gore, but this one finds terror in the gap between memory and recognition. | © Netflix

Dandadan — 12. Dandadan (2024)
Dandadan throws teenage romance, alien abductions, and ghost possession into the same blender, then somehow makes all of it work without losing its mind. The show bounces between gross-out comedy and genuine emotional beats so fast it should give you whiplash, but the characters feel real enough to anchor even the wildest supernatural chaos. Most anime would collapse under this much tonal shifting. This one just keeps finding new ways to surprise you with how much heart it can pack between the screaming and the flying genitalia monsters. | © Crunchyroll

Trigun Stampede — 11. Trigun Stampede (2023-2026)
Trigun Stampede takes the beloved 1990s space western and rebuilds it from the ground up with full CGI animation that actually works. The new art style captures the desert planet's harsh beauty while giving Vash's gunslinging sequences a fluid physicality that traditional animation couldn't match. Studio Orange proves that computer animation can have soul by keeping the original's blend of goofy humor and surprising emotional weight intact. The result feels both faithful to what fans loved and bold enough to justify starting over. | © Crunchyroll

Delicious In Dungeon — 10. Delicious In Dungeon (2024-)

Delicious In Dungeon turns dungeon crawling into a cooking show, and somehow that ridiculous premise works perfectly. The series follows adventurers who decide to eat the monsters they fight, turning every battle into a question of whether that dragon would taste better roasted or grilled. Studio Trigger brings the same manic energy they used on Kill la Kill to medieval fantasy, but here it serves recipes and relationship building instead of pure chaos. What could have been a one-joke concept becomes surprisingly heartfelt about food, friendship, and finding joy in the strangest places. | © Netflix

Kill la Kill — 9. Kill La Kill (2013-2014)

Kill La Kill takes the concept of magical girl transformation sequences and turns them into a weapon of pure chaos. The show throws teenagers, sentient clothing, and fascist student councils into a blender with enough neon colors and screaming to power a small city. Studio Trigger commits so completely to the absurdity that what could have been embarrassing fan service becomes something closer to performance art about the ridiculousness of fan service itself. The result feels like watching someone weaponize anime tropes against anime itself. | © Netflix

One Punch Man — 8. One Punch Man (2015-)
One Punch Man takes the most basic power fantasy and turns it into an existential crisis. Saitama can defeat any enemy with a single punch, which sounds exciting until you realize how crushing that kind of invincibility becomes when there are no real stakes left. The show finds genuine comedy in watching a godlike hero deal with mundane problems like missing grocery store sales, while everyone around him struggles with threats he could end by accident. It proves that sometimes the most interesting thing about unlimited power is how boring it makes everything else. | © Crunchyroll

Cropped Carole Tuesday 2019 — 7. Carole & Tuesday (2019)
Carole & Tuesday builds its entire world around the idea that music made by humans still matters in an age of AI-generated everything. The show follows two girls from opposite backgrounds who meet by chance and start making songs together on Mars, but the real magic happens in how their acoustic guitars and handwritten lyrics feel revolutionary in a society that has automated creativity itself. Director Shinichiro Watanabe fills every episode with actual musicians performing original songs, turning what could have been another "follow your dreams" story into something that genuinely celebrates the messy, imperfect beauty of human expression. The music industry setting gives the series permission to be hopeful without being naive about how hard it is to make art that connects. | © Netflix

Pluto — 6. Pluto (2023)
Pluto takes the detective story framework from Astro Boy and rebuilds it as something much darker and more philosophical. The series follows robot detective Gesicht investigating murders that target both androids and humans, but the real weight comes from how it treats artificial consciousness as genuinely equal to human experience. Each episode peels back layers of memory, trauma, and identity until the line between human and robot psychology disappears entirely. What starts as a murder mystery becomes a meditation on what makes consciousness worth protecting. | © Netflix

Neon Genesis Evangelion — 5. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996)
Neon Genesis Evangelion starts as a mecha show about teenagers piloting giant robots to fight mysterious angels, then gradually becomes a psychological breakdown happening in real time. Hideaki Anno turns what could have been straightforward giant robot action into something much stranger and more personal, especially as the series approaches its famously divisive final episodes. The show refuses to stay in any comfortable genre box, shifting from apocalyptic battles to therapy sessions without warning. When the budget ran out, and the ending turned into a literal conversation with the main character's psyche, it somehow made the whole thing more memorable than a normal conclusion ever could have. | © Netflix

Cowboy Bebop — 4. Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999)
Cowboy Bebop builds its world through cigarette smoke, jazz riffs, and the kind of worn-down spaceships that feel lived-in rather than shiny. The show follows a crew of bounty hunters drifting through a solar system where every planet feels like a different genre of story, but the real magic happens in how it lets silence and music do most of the emotional work. Spike's past catches up to him in ways that feel inevitable rather than convenient, and the finale lands with the weight of someone who has been running from the same fight his entire life. Nothing else quite captures that specific mix of noir cool and cosmic loneliness. | © Adult Swim

Cropped Vinland Saga 2019 — 3. Vinland Saga (2019-2023)
Vinland Saga starts as a Viking revenge story and then does something most action anime would never dare: it makes violence feel hollow and asks what comes after all that anger burns out. The second season abandons almost everything fans expected from the brutal first arc, following Thorfinn as he works on a farm and slowly learns that strength without purpose just makes more enemies. What sounds like a complete tonal shift actually reveals the point the whole time. The show commits to the idea that real change requires giving up the thing that made you feel powerful. | © Netflix

Cropped Frieren Beyond Journeys End — 2. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (2023-)
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End starts where most fantasy stories end, with the hero's party splitting up after defeating the demon king. The twist is that Frieren is an elf who experiences time completely differently than her human companions, so their decade-long adventure was just a brief moment in her thousand-year lifespan. Watching her slowly realize that those fleeting human connections actually mattered creates a kind of quiet devastation that most anime never even attempt. The pacing moves like Frieren herself thinks, which means some viewers will find it too slow, but others will discover something close to meditation. | © Crunchyroll

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood — 1. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009-2010)
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood takes the premise of two brothers trying to resurrect their dead mother and turns it into something much darker than most anime would dare. The alchemy system feels like actual science with brutal consequences, where every magical solution demands an equivalent sacrifice that usually hurts more than it helps. Edward and Alphonse start as kids making the worst possible mistake, then spend 64 episodes discovering that their personal tragedy connects to a conspiracy that makes their original problem look small. The show earns its reputation by never letting anyone off easy, especially when they think they've found the right answer. | © Funimation

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Not every anime earns praise. These fifteen titles won over critics and audiences alike, and the numbers prove it. Their Rotten Tomatoes scores aren't a surprise; they're a verdict.

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Not every anime earns praise. These fifteen titles won over critics and audiences alike, and the numbers prove it. Their Rotten Tomatoes scores aren't a surprise; they're a verdict.