The 15 Best Anime of All Time, Ranked (2026)

Every list like this one is an argument, so here is ours with the reasoning left in: 15 series ranked on how well each finishes what it starts, what it changed, and whether it still works for someone watching cold. Figures checked in October 2026.

All 15 at a glance

#	Anime	Length	Studio
1	Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood	64 episodes	Bones
2	Frieren: Beyond Journey's End	38 episodes	Madhouse
3	Hunter x Hunter (2011)	148 episodes	Madhouse
4	Steins;Gate	24 episodes	White Fox
5	Attack on Titan	94 episodes	Wit, then MAPPA
6	Death Note	37 episodes	Madhouse
7	Code Geass	50 episodes	Sunrise
8	Vinland Saga	48 episodes	Wit, then MAPPA
9	One Piece	1,180+ episodes	Toei Animation
10	Gintama	367 episodes	Sunrise, then BN Pictures
11	Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War	50 episodes	Pierrot
12	Violet Evergarden	13 episodes + films	Kyoto Animation
13	Jujutsu Kaisen	59 episodes	MAPPA
14	Oshi no Ko	35 episodes	Doga Kobo
15	Demon Slayer	63 episodes + films	Ufotable

How we ranked them

Does it finish? A great middle is worth less than a story that lands, which is why Brotherhood beats shows with higher ceilings. Did it move the medium? Death Note changed how thrillers are staged, Demon Slayer changed what studios must deliver, One Piece changed the industry's economics. MyAnimeList scores (Frieren 9.25, Brotherhood 9.11, Steins;Gate 9.07) were weighed, not obeyed. By genre instead: our best shonen anime and best anime movies round-ups.

1. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: the one that finishes properly

Nothing here is built this tightly. Bones had a complete manga to work from, so the 64 episodes from April 2009 to July 2010 never stall for filler and never improvise an ending. The Nina Tucker episode is number four, before you have finished settling in, and by the Promised Day the conspiracy, the rules of alchemy and the brothers' guilt resolve in one movement. Edward carries it, but Roy Mustang, Scar and Greed each get an arc that changes them. One warning: the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist breaks away into its own plot partway through, so Brotherhood is the faithful one.

2. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: the quiet one that overtook it

Madhouse turned a fantasy about an elf mage outliving her party into the highest-scored anime on MyAnimeList, passing Brotherhood in March 2024. The structure is the trick: the quest is already over in episode one, so the series is about Frieren working out what Himmel meant to her, decades too late. Season 1 ran 28 episodes, season 2 added ten between 16 January and 27 March 2026, and a Golden Land arc season is set for October 2027. The Aura duel gets clipped most, but the first-class mage exam proves it does tension as well as grief. Our Frieren watch order has the sequence; one caveat, the manga went on indefinite hiatus in October 2025 for its creators' health.

3. Hunter x Hunter (2011): the one that keeps escalating

148 episodes from Madhouse between October 2011 and September 2014, and it gets harder rather than softer. Nen is the medium's most rigorous power system because its restrictions cost characters something real, and the Chimera Ant arc (episodes 76 to 136) spends 61 straight episodes turning a children's adventure into a war report. Meruem and Gon both end up where a villain and a shonen hero are not supposed to. The catch is the stopping point: the anime closes on the Election arc, long before the Dark Continent, and Togashi's manga only reached volume 39 in July 2026. Read the Nen explainer, then the watch order.

4. Steins;Gate: patience, then interest

White Fox's 24 episodes (April to September 2011) ask a lot up front and pay it all back. The first eleven are a microwave, a CRT television and a lab of students joking about conspiracy theories; episode 12 converts the show into a horror story about a man who can only save one person by unsaving another. Okabe is a rare lead whose personality cracks under the plot instead of hardening. Watch the series, then the 2013 film, then decide about Steins;Gate 0 (23 episodes, 2018), which runs an alternate worldline rather than continuing the story; our Steins;Gate watch order has the detail.

5. Attack on Titan: the phenomenon that landed its plane

Spoiler warning: this entry hints at the shape of the ending. Across 94 episodes, three Wit Studio seasons and a MAPPA final season that closed on 5 November 2023, the show rebuilt itself from monster siege to political thriller to tragedy, changing who you root for each time. Season 3 Part 2, the return to Shiganshina, is its strongest run and still sits in MyAnimeList's top ten; Levi's ambush of the Beast Titan is its best-staged action. The compilation film The Last Attack (8 November 2024) exists partly for viewers who bounced off the final season's pacing, and our watch order untangles the four-part finale.

6. Death Note: 37 episodes of nerve

Tetsuro Araki's 2006 Madhouse adaptation wastes almost nothing. Light Yagami against L is a two-man chess match staged with cathedral lighting and a bag of potato chips, and its real achievement is legibility: you always know what each side has proved and what it is guessing. Opinion splits after episode 25, when L exits and his replacements cannot carry the same weight, though the warehouse confrontation is one of anime's great closing scenes. Our Death Note explainer unpicks the ending; the best psychological anime covers what to watch next.

7. Code Geass: strategy with consequences attached

Goro Taniguchi and writer Ichiro Okouchi built two 25-episode seasons (2006 to 2007, then 2008) around an exiled prince who can order anyone to obey him exactly once. It works because Lelouch keeps winning on cleverness and losing on consequences: the Lake Kawaguchi hotel hijacking and episode 22, Bloodstained Euphy, are the moments every fan raises, and both involve a plan succeeding far too well. Sunrise's mecha battles are chess problems with giant robots bolted on. The franchise is still active: Roze of the Recapture ran as four theatrical parts in mid-2024, and Star Chaser Aspal is set for 2027.

8. Vinland Saga: the best argument against its own genre

Two 24-episode seasons, two studios, two almost different shows. Wit Studio's 2019 run is a revenge story in which Thorfinn hunts his father's killer, and it burns through more cruelty in one cour than most series manage in full. MAPPA's 2023 Farmland Saga then takes the swords away and asks whether a former killer can earn anything, a choice that cost casual viewers and won most critics. Makoto Yukimura finished the manga on 25 July 2025 at 29 volumes, but the anime stops at chapter 100, leaving the Baltic Sea War and the voyage the title promises unanimated, with no third season announced as of October 2026.

9. One Piece: the longest payoff in fiction

Toei's adaptation started on 20 October 1999 and had aired 1,180 episodes by late September 2026, which is why most never begin. Two things shifted in 2026: the anime took a three-month break and returned on 5 April with the Elbaf arc, and Toei capped output at 26 episodes a year so each can carry more manga. Eiichiro Oda's manga has passed 115 volumes and 600 million copies, a Guinness record for a single-author comic, and has been in its final saga since chapter 1054. Luffy never needs a redemption arc; he was never the problem. Our One Piece watch order and filler list help.

10. Gintama: the funniest show here, and nearly the saddest

367 television episodes between April 2006 and October 2018, the first 265 from Sunrise and the rest from Bandai Namco Pictures, plus Gintama: The Very Final in January 2021 to adapt the manga's close. For roughly 50 episodes it reads as a gag anime about a lazy samurai in an alien-occupied Edo, then Hideaki Sorachi starts cashing in the jokes: arcs like Shinsengumi Crisis (episodes 101 to 105) and Farewell, Shinsengumi (308 to 316) hit harder than most dedicated dramas, because you spent a hundred episodes laughing at these people first. It sits tenth for two reasons: the entry fee is enormous, and much of the parody assumes you know what is being mocked.

11. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War: the best revival anime has had

Pierrot returned a decade after the original series stalled and animated the final manga arc properly, across four cours: The Blood Warfare (episodes 1 to 13, 2022), The Separation (14 to 26, 2023), The Conflict (27 to 40, 2024) and The Calamity, which premiered on 25 July 2026 and ends at episode 50, its last two instalments pushed to 20 and 27 October 2026. Darker colour work, Shiro Sagisu re-recording his own themes and a run of bankai reveals turned a show once mocked for padding into a spectacle. You do need Bleach itself first, at minimum through the Arrancar arc, so check the Bleach watch order.

12. Violet Evergarden: peak craft, total restraint

Thirteen episodes from January to April 2018, a side-story film in September 2019, and Violet Evergarden: The Movie in September 2020. A child soldier hired to write other people's letters sounds thin until episode 10, where Violet drafts fifty birthday letters for a dying mother to reach her daughter one a year. Kyoto Animation's lighting and background art are the obvious draw, and it took Best Animation at the 2019 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, but the ranking is earned by restraint: the show rarely tells you how to feel, and almost never scores a scene it can let sit.

13. Jujutsu Kaisen: modern shonen's high-water mark

MAPPA's first season ran 24 episodes in 2020 and the second 23 in 2023, giving the Shibuya Incident (its episodes 6 to 23) the kind of budget usually reserved for films; Anime of the Year at the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards followed. Gojo is the archetype half the industry now imitates, and the series is unusually willing to kill the people you are counting on. Season 3, The Culling Game: Part 1, ran 12 episodes from 9 January to 27 March 2026, and a fourth was announced straight after the finale with Takeru Sato taking over as director. It ranks here because the Culling Game's rules take real work to follow; our cursed energy explainer helps.

14. Oshi no Ko: idol industry horror

Spoiler warning: the premise is the first episode's twist, so jump ahead if you want it clean. Doga Kobo opened with a feature-length episode and a reveal that recasts everything after it, then spent 35 episodes on how the business processes the people inside it: Ai Hoshino's manufactured sincerity, a dating-show arc where the edit recasts Akane Kurokawa as the villain and the pile-on that follows nearly ends her, a stage-play arc in which a bad adaptation of a hit manga gets rescued in rehearsal. Season 1 ran 11 episodes in 2023, season 2 13 in 2024, and season 3 another 11 up to a one-hour finale on 25 March 2026. A fourth and final season was announced that same day, with no window attached. Our Oshi no Ko explainer recaps it.

15. Demon Slayer: the one that made anime mainstream

Ufotable's adaptation is why people who watch no anime still know what a Hashira is. The story is the simplest here, a kind boy avenging his family; the craft is the least arguable, across 63 television episodes from 2019 to the Hashira Training arc in 2024. Infinity Castle Part 1 opened on 18 July 2025, runs 155 minutes and closes on Tanjiro and Giyu Tomioka finishing Akaza, a fight that spends its last minutes on the demon's human life rather than the kill. It has taken roughly 820 million dollars, the highest-grossing Japanese film ever; Parts 2 and 3 had no confirmed dates as of October 2026. See our Demon Slayer watch order.

Where to start if you have watched almost nothing

Choose by appetite, not rank. For a complete story inside 70 episodes, go Brotherhood, then Death Note, then Steins;Gate: three of the medium's best endings in a fortnight of evenings. For something gentle that still carries weight, open with Frieren and follow it with Violet Evergarden. For spectacle, Demon Slayer's first season or Jujutsu Kaisen season 1 will convince you in an afternoon. Do not start with One Piece, Gintama or Bleach: all three ask for a hundred hours before showing their best work.

Four that just missed the cut

Solo Leveling took Anime of the Year at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards and is the entry we cut from our previous 15: enormous fun, but it trades depth for dopamine. My Hero Academia won the 2026 award for its final season, the first concluding season to take the prize, yet its middle years sag on a rewatch. Bones poured the most expressive animation here into Mob Psycho 100's three seasons, on a far smaller canvas. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure reached Steel Ball Run, which premiered on Netflix in March 2026 and resumed weekly from late September; if that run holds, JoJo makes the next revision.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best anime of all time?

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the most defensible answer. Its 64 episodes adapt a completed manga end to end, with no filler and no invented ending, and it held MyAnimeList's top user score until Frieren passed it in March 2024.

Is Frieren really better than Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood?

By user score, yes: Frieren sits on 9.25 on MyAnimeList against Brotherhood's 9.11 as of October 2026. We still rank Brotherhood first because it is finished, while Frieren has 38 episodes and a third season arriving in October 2027.

What anime should a complete beginner watch first?

Pick a finished series under 70 episodes: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (64), Death Note (37) or Steins;Gate (24). Demon Slayer's first season (26) is the easiest sell on visuals alone. Avoid One Piece and Gintama as a first watch.

Which anime on this list are completely finished?

Brotherhood, Hunter x Hunter (2011) as an anime, Steins;Gate, Attack on Titan, Death Note, Code Geass, Gintama and Violet Evergarden are all complete. Not finished as of October 2026: One Piece, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War (last two episodes on 20 and 27 October 2026), Jujutsu Kaisen, Oshi no Ko, Frieren and the Demon Slayer films.

Is One Piece worth starting in 2026?

Yes, if you treat it as a long-term habit rather than a binge. It passed 1,180 episodes in September 2026, but Toei now caps the anime at 26 episodes a year and adapts the manga more tightly, so newer arcs move faster. A filler guide cuts about a hundred episodes.

Why are Naruto and Dragon Ball not on this list?

Both are historically enormous, and neither holds up as well on a first watch today: roughly 200 of Naruto Shippuden's 500 episodes are filler, and Dragon Ball's influence now shows up second-hand in the shows that copied it. Essential for understanding shonen, not among the 15 best.