Kuroko's Basketball

Kuroko's Basketball is a high-school basketball anime from Production I.G, adapted from Tadatoshi Fujimaki's manga, and its hero is the weakest athlete on the floor. Tetsuya Kuroko can barely score, but he is so easy to overlook that he spent middle school as Teiko's "phantom sixth man", threading misdirection passes that defenders never saw. At Seirin High he teams up with Taiga Kagami, a freshman who learned the game in the US, to beat the Generation of Miracles: Kuroko's five former teammates, now aces at rival schools. The manga ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from December 2008 to September 2014 (30 volumes); the anime began in April 2012.

Each Miracle plays like a final boss with one rule-breaking gift. Ryota Kise copies an opponent's moves after seeing them once, Shintaro Midorima sinks three-pointers from anywhere on court and Daiki Aomine scores from angles no real player would try, so every tournament becomes a puzzle: how do a passer and a jumper crack a genius? Shunsuke Tada directs it like a battle series, and GRANRODEO sang six of the seven openings, the exception being ZERO by Kuroko's own voice actor, Kensho Ono. The trade-off is plain: this is barely basketball as anyone plays it, and the final episode gives its last thirty seconds of play more than ten minutes of screen time.

The anime is complete: three seasons of 25 episodes each (2012, 2013-2014 and 2015), 75 in all. Season 1 follows Seirin's Inter-High qualifying run, Season 2 opens the Winter Cup and Season 3 finishes it, pausing for a four-episode Teiko flashback to Kuroko's middle-school years, and reaches the manga's final chapter. Three Winter Cup recap films followed in 2016, then Kuroko's Basketball The Movie: Last Game (2017), which adapts the sequel manga Extra Game and puts Kuroko, Kagami and the Miracles on one team against an American street side, Jabberwock. No new Kuroko anime has been announced as of October 2026.

It suits anyone who likes sport played as superpowered rivalry, the same appeal as Blue Lock. For the studio's more grounded take, Haikyu!! swaps named abilities for drilled volleyball technique, and our ranking of the best sports anime explains why it puts Haikyu!! first and Kuroko seventh. Fujimaki's later Jump series, Kill Blue, got its own anime from studio CUE in April 2026.