As we pass the halfway mark for this fall in anime, it’s time to take stock of what’s been airing for the last six to seven weeks. The quick version? This season finds itself sandwiched between two of the more stacked lineups in recent memory, with an impressive summer in the rear view, and an upcoming winter bursting at the seams with long-awaited sequels and big-name newcomers.
Thankfully, though, just because it’s a more modest offering doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to watch. As the anime boom continues, we’ve reached a point where the idea of a “thin” anime season is very much relative. Case in point, we’ve got a new installment in one of the most popular action-comedies around, a decade-in-the-making conclusion to a hit, and a variety of strange and worthwhile productions from some of the most promising studios of the moment. Basically, there’s a lot of stuff to watch, especially if you’re open-minded. Here’s our rundown of the best anime of fall 2025 so far.
After a sucker punch opening that revealed May I Ask For One Final Thing is about a cool noblewoman who beats evil rich men to a pulp with her bare hands, I was honestly a little concerned if the series could maintain the surprise factor of its first round. Thankfully, it turned out to be the perfect wish fulfillment for the moment, as cruel exploiters get decked by a violence-loving heroine who delights in bringing justice to the wicked; that is as fun as it sounds.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, This Monster Wants To Eat Me begins with a very off-putting premise as its protagonist, Hinako, meets a monster who does, in fact, want to eat her. However, what comes after largely justifies this macabre setup, diving into the trauma of a girl who lost her family and struggles with suicidal ideation. While it takes around four or so episodes to get going, its characters and their messy relationships justify the wait, as it delivers yuri with an earned dark twist.
MAPPA’s Ranma ½ remake has largely retained its charm in its second season, delivering well-animated martial arts mishaps that have made the most of the will-they-won’t-they between its central pair. Unfortunately, the good times have been spoiled a bit by the Worst Character of All Time, a pervy old man introduced in the last episode who makes me want to turn off my television. Hopefully, he will soon be chucked back into the stygian abyss he crawled out of.
At once stylish, hilarious, and deeply wholesome, Spy x Family continues to switch genres as effortlessly as its central secret agent changes disguises. The story follows the Forgers, a “fake” family that consists of Loid, a spy, Yor, a hitwoman, Anya, a psychic gremlin child, and Bond, a clairvoyant dog, as they attempt to appear like a “normal” nuclear household. Loid pursues a mission to steer Berlint (a spin on Cold War Germany) away from war, and hijinks ensue.
The latest season has broken up the narrative’s slow-going with a welcome dive into Loid’s backstory, showing us the bloodshed that made him shed his original identity and go undercover. All the series’ regular charms are here as well: Anya remains the center of deeply goofy antics that underscore the mismatch between her impressive mind-reading abilities and little kid brain. Meanwhile, Yor gets caught up in similar misunderstandings due to being more accustomed to sticking an ice pick in someone’s brain than picking an appropriate topic of conversation. As long as Wit Studio and CloverWorks keep delivering such a snappy adaptation that channels the humor and sleek espionage of its source material, this will remain a must-watch series.
So far, Gachiakuta has successfully followed up on the punk rock anger of its premiere. Not only has it focused on the impulse to change this “shitty world” (as one character puts it), but it has also reflected on the toxic masculine anger that sometimes explodes from its troubled protagonist. In short, it’s a battle shonen with a lot on its mind and some of the sickest character designs you’ve seen in recent memory.
The story remains focused on Rudo, a scapegoat who was banished from a heavily stratified floating metropolis called the Sphere to the toxic wastes below. There, he’s become a member of the Cleaners, a group that uses weapons called “vital instruments” to battle monsters made of trash. The last few episodes have accomplished the tricky task of focusing almost entirely on a series of fights while still keeping its cast and their stories at the forefront; we’ve learned about a former wunderkind’s fall from grace, seen more of the villainous faction beguiling our heroes, and got a clever twist so shocking it looped around to being downright comedic. Style and substance aren’t mutually exclusive, and Gachiakuta has been a rare action anime that provides both.
Dear reader, I will level with you: I’m a little shocked to have My Hero Academia this high on this list. After many years of mediocrity and some negative buzz around the end of the manga, Bones has cleaned things up to deliver an onslaught of stunning animation that pays off arcs a decade in the making. This final season of this long-running superhero series is an extended fight for all the marbles, and despite the stakes being as high as possible (a potential global cataclysm and whatnot), this grandiose scale hasn’t come at the expense of the smaller stuff. Perhaps most radically, despite being told by virtually all those around him that he needs to kill his adversary, our protagonist has stuck to his guns, choosing to believe in the possibility of redemption (and that if he punches his foe really hard, he’ll eventually stop being evil). In short, this final season has been the series at its best, delivering innovative fight sequences and empathy in equal measure.
The top two shows of the fall both sound very made-up, and we’ll start with the more made-up-sounding of the pair. Sanda is about a teenage boy whose superpower is that he can transform into a yoked-out-of-his-mind version of Santa Claus. Somehow, that’s not the strangest part of the setup: taking place in a near-future Japan where the birthrate has plummeted past its current lows, children are (sort of) placed at the top of the social hierarchy and youth is prized above all else. However, despite kids being seen as the pinnacle of this society, they’re strictly controlled by their elders so they can be molded into obedient little servants of the state who will follow through with their arranged marriages.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a team-up between Paru Itagaki, the transgressive author behind Beastars, and Science Saru, one of the most imaginative contemporary anime studios, would lead to a fascinating result, but even with that context, this one surprised me. Through the first half of this season, it has thoroughly dunked on Japan’s conservative pro-natalist politics, criticized the anti-queer status quo, and ruminated on ageism and obsessions with appearing young. The emotional core of the series is a messy sapphic relationship that has blown past the subtextual level that most anime about LGBTQ+ topics maintain to avoid right-wing backlash. And did I mention the main character turns into buff Santa Claus and battles an evil cyborg man? While this is the kind of story that could rapidly unravel with a few poor narrative choices, if things remain as they are, Sanda will be one of the most underappreciated anime of the year.
Charging in with the gusto of a speeding stallion, Umamusume: Cinderella Gray is an ode to the power of sports, reveling in their ability to move, entertain, and inspire us. It also happens to be about girls who are also horses; horse girls, if you will. As an adaptation of a spin-off manga based on a mobile game, Cinderella Gray is several layers of IP nonsense deep, but much like its underdog protagonist, it overcomes all odds to deliver one of the most dramatically satisfying sports series in recent memory.
The story takes place in a world full of “umumusume,” human-horse hybrids, many of whom take part in a competitive racing circuit. But wait, it gets stranger! The umamusume featured in the series are based on real-life Japanese race horses, with the story loosely based on the actual results of those horses’ races. While all of that sounds a bit objectifying, weird, and off-putting, especially considering the rightly criticized ethics of real-life horse racing, this anime is simultaneously so absurd and adept at conveying the emotional highs and lows of its competitors that it largely sidesteps these concerns.
The key to its appeal is how skilled the series is at swapping perspectives, endearing us not only to Oguri Cap, the heroine of this Cinderella story, but also to her many rivals motivated by a similar competitive fire. It also certainly helps that CygamesPictures continues to prove itself as one of the most impressive up-and-coming studios around, visualizing these sprinters’ breakneck speed and the drama behind each seemingly impossible comeback. Don’t sleep on this one just because it seems like it’s for weirdos; you’ll be missing out on a winner.
