Every year brings predictions that this will be the year anime finally breaks through to something genuinely new. 2024 actually delivered. Not with a single phenomenon but with a sustained run of exceptional work across multiple studios, genres, and registers that made the year one of the strongest in recent memory.
Here is our complete accounting of what made 2024 matter.
The Year in Numbers
2024 saw over 60 new anime series premiere across the four seasonal slots, with a record number reaching critical and commercial success simultaneously. Streaming continued to reshape distribution — Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Amazon Prime all expanded their anime catalogues significantly. More importantly, the quality ceiling rose. Series that in previous years might have been considered exceptional were competing against multiple peers of comparable ambition.
#1 — Delicious in Dungeon (Dungeon Meshi)
The consensus pick, and for good reason. Studio Trigger's adaptation of Ryoko Kui's manga achieved something rare: it was simultaneously the most accessible and the most sophisticated anime of the year. The food-as-world-building concept delivered in every episode. The ecological fantasy setting was the most thoughtfully constructed since Made in Abyss. Senshi is a character for the ages.
What makes Dungeon Meshi the year's best is its completeness. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It uses every one of its 24 episodes purposefully. And it leaves you with something genuinely worth thinking about: what it means to live fully inside the constraints of a mortal life.
Score: 10/10
#2 — Dandadan
Science SARU's supernatural romantic comedy was the year's most purely fun series and one of its most visually inventive. The Tatsuya Yoshihara action sequences set a new benchmark for television animation. Momo and Okarun are an immediately distinctive romantic pair. Turbo Granny is the year's best supporting character.
Dandadan earns its ranking by refusing to be just one thing. It is a horror series, a romance, a shonen battle story, and a comedy — and it commits fully to all four simultaneously. The result is unlike anything else in the 2024 lineup.
Score: 9/10
#3 — Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Continued from 2023)
Technically a 2023 debut, but Frieren's second cour ran through the first quarter of 2024 and dominated awards season. The Mage Exam arc divided some viewers but the finale delivered on every promise the series made. Frieren won every major anime award going and deserved all of them.
The series' argument — that paying attention to the people around you is the only way to honour them — is the most important thing anime said in the 2023-24 cycle.
Score: 10/10
#4 — Oshi no Ko Season 2
The entertainment industry critique sharpened, the characters deepened, and the stage play arc delivered genuine structural innovation. Oshi no Ko season two demonstrated that the series' first episode was not a peak it was chasing — it was establishing the register the whole story would eventually inhabit.
Score: 8.5/10
#5 — The Apothecary Diaries
The year's best historical series. Maomao is an all-timer protagonist. Twenty-four episodes without filler. The mysteries are sound, the world is rich, and the emotional throughline earns its conclusion.
Score: 9/10
Best Film — Gundam SEED Freedom
The theatrical release of Gundam SEED Freedom delivered exactly what mecha fans had been waiting twenty years for: a conclusion worthy of the original series. The battle sequences are the best in the franchise's history. An achievement in mechanical animation.
Best New Studio Performance — Science SARU (Dandadan)
Science SARU has been building toward something. Dandadan is the arrival. The combination of Yoshihara's action direction and Eunyoung Choi's distinctive character animation creates a visual identity impossible to mistake for any other studio.
Biggest Disappointment — Solo Leveling Season 1
The source material is the most popular manhwa in history. The anime adaptation delivered competent production with no visual personality. The action sequences, which should have been the series' strength, lacked the weight and consequence of the manga's equivalent moments. Season two has work to do.
Most Underrated — Undead Unluck
Passed over by many viewers due to a slow first arc, Undead Unluck delivered one of the most emotionally devastating finale sequences of the year. The David Production animation was exceptional. The central romance worked.
What 2024 Means
The year demonstrated that anime's commercial expansion has not diluted its artistic ambition. The best series of 2024 are not populist concessions — they are challenging, emotionally demanding, formally inventive work. Dungeon Meshi asks you to think about ecology and mortality. Dandadan asks you to hold multiple genre registers simultaneously. Frieren asks you to sit with grief without resolution.
This is what a healthy medium looks like. 2025, which brought the conclusions of several ongoing series and new entries from established studios, has work to do to match it.
The bar is high. That is a good problem to have.
Keep Reading: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End — Why It's a Masterpiece · Dandadan Review — The Most Unhinged Anime of 2024 · Delicious in Dungeon — A Masterclass in World-Building
