Every year the anime community spends twelve months arguing about which show is best, and then December arrives and everyone argues about the year-end list instead. 2025 was no different — except that this year, the arguments were harder because the options were genuinely excellent across the board.
This is my definitive top 10 for 2025. It's opinionated. Some of your favourites might be lower than you'd put them. Some shows you slept on might rank higher than you expected. That's what a real ranking looks like.
Let's go.
10. Dandadan
Score: 8.2/10 | Studio: Science SARU | Streaming: Netflix
Dandadan came out of nowhere and refused to be categorised. Part supernatural horror, part absurdist comedy, part surprisingly sincere romance — it shouldn't cohere and yet it does, completely. Science SARU's animation is as visually inventive as anything they've produced, and the central duo of Momo and Okarun have a dynamic that carries the show even when the plot goes completely off the rails. Which it does. Frequently. Gloriously.
9. Solo Leveling
Score: 8.4/10 | Studio: A-1 Pictures | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Solo Leveling's first season had one job: make Sung Jinwoo's power progression feel satisfying. It did that job so well that by the finale, viewers who had never read the manhwa were emotionally invested in a character who had gone from zero to demigod in twelve episodes. A-1's production was consistently excellent, the action sequences delivered, and the final episode set up Season 2 in a way that left the community counting down immediately.
8. Wind Breaker
Score: 8.5/10 | Studio: CloverWorks | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Wind Breaker was the surprise of the year. A delinquent gang anime that pivoted hard into genuine emotional storytelling, it built one of 2025's best ensemble casts and then put them through situations that actually mattered. CloverWorks' animation is at its best here — kinetic, expressive, and occasionally breathtaking during the fight sequences. If you slept on this one, go fix that.
7. Mushoku Tensei Season 2 Part 2
Score: 8.6/10 | Studio: Studio Bind | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Mushoku Tensei continued to be the most technically accomplished isekai in production. Studio Bind's world-building, the quality of the animation, and Rudeus's character arc all hit significant milestones in the second part of Season 2. It remains the gold standard for what isekai can be when it takes itself seriously.
6. Kaiju No. 8
Score: 8.7/10 | Studio: Production I.G | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Kaiju No. 8 was the shonen debut of the year. Production I.G handled the monster-scale action with a visual confidence that made every kaiju encounter feel genuinely dangerous, and Kafka Hibino's transformation mechanic was executed with enough restraint that it never became boring. The show left the community desperate for Season 2, which is exactly where you want to be at the end of a first season.
5. Delicious in Dungeon
Score: 8.9/10 | Studio: Trigger | Streaming: Netflix
Delicious in Dungeon did something that most adventure anime don't attempt: it made you care about the food as much as the characters. Trigger's adaptation of Ryoko Kui's manga found the perfect balance between the series' culinary creativity and its genuinely affecting character work. Laios, Marcille, Chilchuck, and Senshi became some of the year's most beloved characters, and the show's willingness to let its world have weight — real stakes, real history, real consequences — elevated it above genre comfort food into something more lasting.
4. Re:Zero Season 3
Score: 9.0/10 | Studio: White Fox | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Re:Zero's third season was the show at its most uncompromising. The Pleiades Watchtower arc pushed Subaru and the audience further than the series had ever gone, delivered some of the best character work in the franchise's history, and ended in a way that reframed everything that came before. White Fox's production was excellent throughout. If you've been sleeping on Re:Zero, 2025 was the year you missed out.
3. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War — The Conflict
Score: 9.1/10 | Studio: Pierrot | Streaming: Hulu/Disney+
Bleach's return has been one of the great ongoing stories in anime. The Thousand-Year Blood War arc continued to deliver spectacular battle sequences with production quality that would have seemed impossible for a Pierrot production five years ago. The Sternritter fights, the Bankai reveals, the escalating stakes — all of it executed at a level that has rehabilitated Bleach's reputation entirely. The community that wrote the series off during its original run has had to do a lot of quiet reconsideration.
2. Dandadan Season 2
Score: 9.2/10 | Studio: Science SARU | Streaming: Netflix
If Season 1 was Dandadan establishing its identity, Season 2 was it operating at full capacity. The emotional investment built in the first season paid off massively — the central relationship between Momo and Okarun developed in ways that were genuinely moving, the supernatural elements became more coherent without losing their chaos, and Science SARU produced some of the most visually distinctive animation of the year. By the finale, this had become one of the most complete anime experiences 2025 offered.
1. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End — Cour 2
Score: 9.6/10 | Studio: Madhouse | Streaming: Crunchyroll
Was there really any doubt?
Frieren's second cour completed what the first had begun: a meditation on grief, time, and the value of attention that landed with a precision and emotional weight no other anime in 2025 matched. The First Class Mage exam arc demonstrated that the show could deliver conventional fantasy tension when it wanted to, but the moments that will be remembered are quieter ones — Frieren's face when she finally reaches Aureole, the things she says and doesn't say, the specific quality of the ending.
Anime of the Year. Anime of the decade, by some arguments. Watch it if you haven't. Watch it again if you have.
Honourable Mentions
Oshi no Ko Season 2 — darker and more structurally ambitious than the first season, even if the pacing occasionally struggled.
The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 — Maomao continued to be one of anime's best protagonists, and the mystery plotting remained sharp.
Bocchi the Rock! Movie — not a full series, but the theatrical continuation of one of recent anime's most beloved shows was everything fans wanted.
2025 was a great year. 2026 is shaping up to be better. Keep watching.
Where to Watch
Most titles listed are on Crunchyroll or Netflix. Streaming availability varies by region.
