Kaiju No.8

Cowboy Bebop

Few shows wear their cool as effortlessly as Cowboy Bebop. Set aboard the spaceship Bebop, it follows a crew of broke bounty hunters — the laid-back Spike Spiegel, the gruff ex-cop Jet, the con-artist Faye, a genius kid hacker, and a suspiciously smart corgi — drifting between planets and paydays that never quite work out. Each episode plays like its own short film, and the jazz-soaked soundtrack does as much storytelling as the dialogue. Underneath the episodic bounties runs a quieter current: these are people running from their pasts, and the show knows none of them can outrun it forever. That tension between breezy space-western fun and genuine melancholy is why Bebop is still the series people recommend first to anyone curious about anime — it asks almost nothing of newcomers and rewards them completely. There's no long manga to catch up on and no sprawling franchise to untangle. It's a tight, self-contained 26 episodes plus a film, built to be watched in order and remembered for years. If you only ever finish one series on this site, this is a very good candidate. See you, space cowboy.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes the sprawling video-game world of Night City and does something the games rarely have time to — it makes it hurt. Studio Trigger's ten-episode run follows David Martinez, a street kid who loses everything and claws his way into the life of an edgerunner: a mercenary who trades pieces of his own body for chrome, speed, and a shot at mattering in a city that eats people like him for breakfast. It's loud, neon-drenched, and animated with the kind of kinetic swagger only Trigger brings — but the reason it landed so hard is the love story at its center and the slow, dreadful math of how much humanity you can sell before there's nothing left to save. You do not need to have touched the game to feel every second of it. At ten episodes, Edgerunners is one of the most complete emotional gut-punches anime has produced in years, and a rare tie-in that stands taller than its source. Come for the style; stay for the ending you'll be thinking about long after the credits.

One-Punch Man

One-Punch Man takes the entire superhero power-fantasy and detonates it with a single joke: what if the strongest hero alive were so overpowered that nothing was a challenge anymore? Saitama trained until he could end any fight with one punch — and got exactly what he wished for, along with a crushing boredom no victory can cure. Bald, unbothered, and secretly the mightiest being on the planet, he shuffles through a world of monster attacks and hero rankings looking for one opponent who can make him feel something again. The genius is that it's both a razor-sharp parody and, whenever it wants to be, a genuinely jaw-dropping action series — the fights around Saitama are enormous, and the artwork (in the webcomic-turned-manga by ONE and Yusuke Murata) is astonishing. His deadpan indifference only makes the spectacle funnier. The Murata manga is the visual showcase; the anime's first season is one of the best-looking adaptations ever made and a perfect introduction. Come for the punchline, stay for how beautifully a series can send up its own genre while outclassing most of it.

Dandadan

Dandadan is what you get when aliens and ghosts crash into the same story and neither backs down. High schooler Momo believes in ghosts but not aliens; her classmate Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. To settle the argument they each visit a haunted site — and both are spectacularly proven right, with Momo awakening psychic powers and Okarun getting possessed by a cursed spirit. Now they're stuck chasing UFOs and vengeful yokai together while nursing a very awkward crush. Yukinobu Tatsu draws it at a full sprint, with some of the most kinetic, imaginative art in current manga and a tone that flips from genuine horror to gross-out comedy to sweet teenage romance without missing a beat. It's chaotic on purpose, and that chaos is the point — you never know whether the next page brings a monster, a joke, or a heartfelt confession. The manga is ongoing and the anime adaptation brings its manic energy roaring to life. If you want something loud, weird, funny, and secretly tender all at once, Dandadan is one of the freshest series around.

Dr. STONE

High-school student [Taiju Oki](/characters/taiju-oki) is about to confess his feelings to [Yuzuriha Ogawa](/characters/yuzuriha-ogawa) when a strange light sweeps across the planet and petrifies humanity. Thousands of years pass before Taiju finally breaks free. Civilization has vanished, but he soon finds that his friend Senku awakened earlier and has already begun experimenting with ways to survive — and, more importantly, to reverse the petrification. Their first attempts to revive humanity bring them into conflict with [Tsukasa Shishio](/characters/tsukasa-shishio), an extraordinarily powerful young man whose idea of rebuilding the world is fundamentally different from Senku's. Senku wants the knowledge and technology of the old world restored for everyone. Tsukasa sees humanity's reset as an opportunity to prevent the old social order from returning. A survival problem therefore becomes a struggle over what kind of civilization should replace the one that disappeared. The scope grows quickly once Senku encounters people who have built lives in the post-petrification world. [Kohaku](/characters/kohaku), [Chrome](/characters/chrome), [Ruri](/characters/ruri) and the inhabitants of Ishigami Village turn his one-man reconstruction project into a community effort. From there, each breakthrough creates the possibility of the next: medicine leads into engineering, engineering opens new routes of travel and communication, and those advances gradually allow the cast to investigate the petrification itself. Dr. STONE keeps widening its map without abandoning the basic progression that began with Senku gathering materials by hand.

Land of the Lustrous

In a world inhabited by crystalline lifeforms called The Lustrous, every unique gem must fight for their way of life against the threat of lunarians who would turn them into decorations. Phosphophyllite, the most fragile and brittle of gems, longs to join the battle. When Phos is instead assigned to complete a natural history of their world, it sounds like a dull and pointless task. But this new job brings Phos into contact with Cinnabar, a gem forced to live in isolation. Can Phos’s seemingly mundane assignment lead both Phos and Cinnabar to the fulfillment they desire? (Source: Kodansha USA) Note: Nominated for the 8th Manga Taisho in 2015.

Gantz

Tokyo teens Kei and Masaru are killed by a subway train but awaken in a room with an ominous black orb that gives them weapons, suits and orders. Fighting bizarre alien monstrosities in a deadly game, will they win their freedom or die for the final time? (Source: Dark Horse)

Fire Force

Terror has paralyzed the clockwork metropolis of Tokyo! Possessed by demons, people have begun to burst into flame, leading to the establishment of a special firefighting team: the Fire Force, ready to roll on a moment's notice to fight spontaneous combustion anywhere it might break out. The team is about to get a very unique addition: Shinra, a boy who possesses the unique power to run at the speed of a rocket, leaving behind the famous "devil's footprints" (and destroying his shoes in the process). Can the Fire Force discover the source of this strange phenomenon and put a stop to it? Or will the city burn to ashes first? (Source: Kodansha USA) Note: Includes three extra chapters.

Assassination Classroom

Meet the would-be assassins of class 3-E: Sugino, who let his grades slip and got kicked off the baseball team. Karma, who’s doing well in his classes but keeps getting suspended for fighting. And Okuda, who lacks both academic and social skills, yet excels at one subject: chemistry. Who has the best chance of winning that reward? Will the deed be accomplished through pity, brute force or poison...? And what chance does their teacher have of repairing his students’ tattered self-esteem? (Source: VIZ Media) Note: Includes seven extra chapters and the one-shot "Tokyo Department Store War Journal".