Image credits: Clockwise from top-left: The Summer Hikaru Died (CygamesPictures), Orb: On the Movements of the Earth (Madhouse), The Apothecary Diaries (Toho Animation Studio & OLM), City: The Animation (Kyoto Animation), My Dress-Up Darling (CloverWorks)
In many ways, 2025 was a banner year for anime: There were box-office smashes, such as Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle grossing close to $800 million worldwide, alongside a less quantifiable shift in culture, asstreaming services andHollywood studios sought to capitalize on this upward trajectory. Fittingly, this year’s lineup of TV series (close to 200 in total) was quite good, full of eclectic works brought to life by some of the most talented animators on the planet. Admittedly, this generous output hid the many underlying problems that continue to plague the industry (more on that next week), but judged purely on its upper crust, this was a formidable 12 months.
2025 provided historical epics, romance, inspired comedies,hot-blooded sports dramas, and superhero showdowns, some of which we’d even recommend to anime haters/newcomers (if this is you, check out this list’s top four, in particular). And for seasoned veterans, well-regarded outfits like KyotoAni and CloverWorks turned in incredible shows this year, delivering subtle character work and explosive fight sequences that gave animation nerds a lot to be excited about. There was an impressive number of great LGBTQ+ manga and Light Novel adaptations that were given the resources to succeed for once, some of whichbroke the dreaded one-season curse with news of renewals. Perhaps rarest of all, we got a true unicorn:a horror anime that didn’t stink.
We tried to reflect that range in this list of our 10 favorites from 2025. It isn’t exhaustive, and quite a few hidden gems, like the charming sci-fi workplace comedy Apocalypse Hotelor the weirdly thematically compelling buff Santa Claus TV show, were left on the cutting-room floor. However, with this selectiveness comes our full-throated recommendation* (disclaimer: at least one of these is pretty gnarly, so viewer discretion is advised).
We view this list as a way to emphasize that The A.V. Club is expanding its TV anime coverage (some readers may have already noticed this). The goal with this section is to do what we do elsewhere, digging into the form and function of these shows to deliver insights and placing these works in a wider context. Given the alarming amount of anime that comes out each year, we’ll be doing the legwork of trudging through the not-so-great stuff out there, like the many dismal seasonal isekais based on Light Novels from Shōsetsuka ni Narō, so we can highlight what’s worth checking out and discussing. Beyond this yearly wrap-up list, we’ll continue to provide seasonal recommendations for the fellow sickos who enjoy the ups and downs of watching anime as it broadcasts weekly, as we suss out together whether we’re watching a fully realized original like Odd Taxi or a promising marvel turned trainwreck like Wonder Egg Priority. To see what we mean, you can check out our previous seasonal wrap-up lists for winter, spring, summer, and fall.
And now, here are the 10 best anime series of 2025.
Honorable Mentions:Umamusume: Cinderella Gray, Secrets Of The Silent Witch, Anne Shirley, Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty, Dan Da Dan
There are few, if any, anime studios with a better reputation than Kyoto Animation, and its latest work is a convincing reminder of why. City the Animation is an absurdist slice-of-life comedy that puts its animators’ blood, sweat, and tears into every one-off gag, overselling each seemingly incidental bit until they boil over with such slapstick fervor that it would make the Stooges blush. Set in the appropriately named City, the story follows the inhabitants of this weird, warm little town as their everyday problems become everyone else’s; this is especially true for Nagumo, Niikuri, and Izumi, the college student trio at the center of this story. And while itshilarious gags and genuinely exceptional animation are the main hook, the secret ingredient is the unexpectedly profound emphasis on interconnectedness and community; these characters might sometimes mercilessly roast each other, but this show doesn’t have a mean bone in its body. As a spiritual follow-up to KyotoAni’s beloved comedy Nichijou, City the Animation had a lot to live up to. Somehow, it delivered.
While the first season of the bawdy rom-com My Dress-Up Darling had its charms despite aggressively oversexualizing its co-protagonist, the latest season was a clear step above that benefited from sharper writing and expressive character animation courtesy of CloverWorks. Continuing the will-they/won’t-they between the craftsman Wakana Gojo and the bubbly gyaru Kitagawa Marin, whose passion for cute anime girls is unmatched, the series overcomes the seemingly blatant male wish-fulfillment of its premise (i.e.,an isolated lonely guy somehow capturing the attention of a conventionally attractive popular girl) through communicating why they’re such a great match: they’re both open-minded, accepting of each other’s interests, and are simply very good kids. As Gojo sews Marin’s cosplay outfits, he slowly comes to understand that the misguided gender expectations that previously alienated him from his peers aren’t shared by everyone, setting the stage for the series’ wholesome comedy.
After its middle seasons delivered years of mediocrity, My Hero Academia completed its surprising comeback with its eighth and final season, delivering stunning action sequences backed by equally hard-hitting emotional climaxes. Punches were thrown, duels a decade in the making were had, and it all concluded with a poignant reminder that saving the world takes collective effort. Here, our protagonist Deku faces a potentially world-ending threat, but the stakes remain impressively personal, touching on questions of redemption and the limits of forgiveness. And yes, to avoid beating around the bush, dang, those fights sure are good. While during previous seasons, studio Bones had frequently split work between this TV series and its tie-in movies, this time around, they were fully focused on this last hurrah. This allowed many of the studio’s best freelance animators to turn in some incredible work; Yuki Sato’s cut in Episode 163 “Quirk: Explosion!!” is the kind of thing that sakuga nerds live for. Matching its animation fireworks with an impressive amount of heart, My Hero Academia’s final season is a reminder that action anime hasn’tfully devolved into empty spectacle and TikTok-focused aura-farming (like Solo Leveling, *cough cough*).
2025 brought us no shortage of great romance stories, and The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity stood among the best thanks to its thoughtfully written characters and confident direction. The story follows two teens: Rintaro, a teen boy whose outwardly frightening appearance has given him an undeserved bad reputation, and Kaoruko, a member of an all-girls academy who can see past surface-level assumptions. As the two contend with the heated rivalry between their schools, their secret relationship eventually creates friction among their classmates. Much like My Dress-Up Darling, the previously mentioned romance series from CloverWorks, this one pushes back against gendered assumptions and stereotypical “bubbly girl, gloomy guy” pairings, as Miyuki Kuroki’s expressive storyboarding and direction conveys the sincerity of the connection between these two. She leads us on with a soft touch before demolishing the audience with heartfelt moments, like a mom finally seeing her son find friends who appreciate his kindness, or a surprise flashback that cleverly recontextualizes a previous meet-cute, all without coming across as overly sentimental. There’s an art to being sweet but not saccharine, and this series finds it.
6. There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…
This girls-love rom-com (usually referred to as WataNare, a portmanteau of its Japanese title) delivered both popcorn fun and something more as it successfully transitioned from speed-dating to a more serious situationship. Renako is a first-year high school student who manages the impossible when she ditches her loner past and joins a clique of popular girls. The problem? One of the girls in the group, Mai—a rich and famous model—declares she’s in love with her. Worried about all the complications this could cause among her new friends (and also deep, deep in the closet), Renako finds herself in an escalating series of contrivances that make her wonder if she wants to be more than friends with multiple members of this group. While elements of its premise initially make it seem like a gender-swapped trope-fest, Renako eventually uncovers the hidden depth behind each of these girls, from the seemingly bitter Satsuki to the outwardly angelic Ajisai, as she gets to know their dreams and foibles (and also makes out with them). As a show that’s at once hilarious, smarter than it initially appears, and very gay, WataNare is a breath of fresh air.
5. Takopi’s Original Sin
Content Warning: This series contains extremely graphic depictions of bullying, child suicide, depression, child abuse, and animal abuse.
It’s not uncommon to come across works in animanga spaces that go out of their way to disturb and disgust with graphic acts of violence, an inclination that frequently reads as more juvenile than “adult.” However, while Takopi’s Original Sin flirts with this type of edgelord presentation, it ultimately justifies its unfiltered depictions of bullying, abuse, and depression by proving introspective instead of exploitative. For something so harrowing, the setup isn’t exactly what you expect: An adorable pink alien nicknamed Takopi crash-lands on Earth, where they meet Shizuka, a nine-year-old girl. The alien (who is from a utopia called Happy Planet) promises to use their tools to bring Shizuka joy; unfortunately for this extraterrestrial, things don’t exactly go as planned, as this girl’s life is currently a living hell complicated by vicious bullying, abuse, and absentee parents. While there’s certainly an argument that this series crosses the line at times, its shifting aesthetic portrays these tonal extremes with a mixture of childlike fantasy and stomach-churning realism, as the series encourages the viewer to genuinely empathize with victims of abuse instead of barraging them with toxic positivity. It can be a truly sickening watch, but Takopi’s Original Sin successfully shines a light on a subject matter most would rather ignore.
Considering the abundance of great sports anime, it’s no small feat that Medalist stands on the podium next to the best of them, a moving figure-skating series that excels thanks to a well-rendered protagonist and an elegant portrayal of this sport. Following Inari, an 11-year-old girl who starts figure skating “late” (apparently, most serious competitors begin in early elementary school, which is a nightmare), we watch her underdog journey unfold alongside her lovable first-time coach, Tsukasa. While this may sound like a familiar routine, it all comes down to execution: despite an otherwise unremarkable oeuvre, Studio ENGI turned its reputation around with sharply directed motion-captured skating scenes that sell the drama, tension, and absurd skill behind these performances. Meanwhile, events place us in the headspace of Inari and her coach, as the former finds the confidence she’s always lacked through competition, and the latter attempts to help his pupil through situations he similarly struggled with. At its core, Medalist passionately conveys the human element of sports: the long practice sessions, the burning drive needed to succeed, the tactical turns of each competition, and the elation of success.
Orb: On The Movements Of The Earth is a historical drama that grapples with the beauty and ugliness of human curiosity, spanning decades as a band of iconoclasts risk their lives to get to the bottom of a cosmic mystery: is the Earth really the center of the galaxy? The question of heliocentrism seems an odd one to stake it all on, but as this unlikely band of collaborators pass the torch from one generation to the next, it becomes borderline impossible not to be swept up in the grandeur of it all, as these people grow past the confines of their times in the pursuit of knowledge. In a battle against a (slightly fictionalized) 16th-century church that deems terrestrial existence to be the “lowest” point in the universe (as a means to justify inequality), there is undoubtedly a political dimension to this pursuit. At the same time, though, there is also something more basic, more elemental that guides these characters, as they each grow and change while driven by the kind of fire originally passed down by Prometheus. Smart and thrilling, Orb: On The Movements Of The Earth grapples with profound problems and comes to similarly profound answers.
It’s well-documented at this point, but horror and anime don’t generally mix. It’s hard to capture the gristle and gore of live-action filmmaking in animation, and it’s even harder to do it on the timescale of a weekly airing TV show. However, despite this inherent challenge, The Summer Hikaru Died thrived across 13 episodes of queer body horror that delivered ambiance, intrigue, and Eldritch beings beyond mortal understanding. The queasiness begins with the setup. Yoshiki, a closeted kid living in the boonies, realizes a horrible truth: the person he’s been hanging out with for the last few months, who looks exactly like his best friend Hikaru, isn’t Hikaru at all, but an unknowable goo creature that slithered into his corpse and absorbed his memories shortly after he died. While this discovery would normally be the part where the protagonist whips out a double-barreled shotgun (barring the fact that Japan has strict gun control laws), this series takes a far more interesting route. Yoshiki decides to live in peace with “Hikaru,” beginning a confusing existence that leaves him in a perpetual state of grief. From here, the pair set out on a thorny journey, one that includes external goals like getting to the bottom of this village’s generational sins and supernatural history, as well as internal ones like grappling with the stifling realities of being a gay person in a rural community where queerness is flippantly referred to as a “disease.” Gripping, symbolically dense, and beautifully realized, CygamesPictures put its parent company’s gacha earnings to very good use.
Against all odds, The Apothecary Diaries somehow manages to get better with every arc, which is no small feat given it’s been a picture of consistency. This medicine-themed mystery series follows Maomao, an apothecary conscripted into a fictionalized rendition of Imperial China’s Inner Palace. And while she’d like to keep her head down to limit the chance of it getting lopped off by an obtuse political system, she can’t quite help putting her Holmesian deductive skills to the test as she uses her understanding of medicine and science to untangle weekly whodunits. But while the series is excellent at delivering episodic detective work, it truly excels in how it fits these seeming one-offs into a bigger picture, both literally and thematically. We watch as Maomao exposes wrongs tied to the deeply patriarchal structures of this place (a literal harem for the Emperor), as political struggles reveal complex characters who are entangled in convoluted plots. And while all of that is certainly quite weighty, there is also plenty of time for slice-of-life shenanigans as our heroine makes it abundantly clear she’s a little freak who enjoys concocting poisons way too much. The Apothecary Diaries has been great from the beginning, but the latest season concocts brutal twists that make the most of our attachment to these characters. 2025 was yet another hell year, but at least this show was here to slightly ease these maladies.
