Parasyte

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)

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.

Berserk

Berserk is the towering dark-fantasy epic that half of modern manga is quietly built on. It follows Guts, a lone mercenary raised by the sword, and his fraught bond with the charismatic, ambitious Griffith, leader of the mercenary band Guts calls home. What begins as a story of brotherhood and battlefield glory curdles, across one of the most devastating turns in the medium, into a lifelong hunt for revenge against forces far larger than any human army. Kentaro Miura's artwork is the stuff of legend — pages so dense with detail they can stop you cold — and the story pairs that beauty with genuine horror and hard-won tenderness. It's a meditation on ambition, trauma, and the sheer stubbornness it takes to keep walking when the world has given you every reason to lie down. A word for newcomers: Berserk is long, unflinching, and firmly for adult readers. Following Miura's passing, the manga continues under his studio and closest friend. Start from the beginning and give the early arcs room to breathe — few stories reward patience like this one, and none quite feel the same afterward.

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.

Alice in Borderland

Eighteen-year-old Ryohei Arisu is sick of his life. School sucks, his love life is a joke, and his future feels like impending doom. As he struggles to exist in a world that can’t be bothered with him, Ryohei feels like everything would be better if he were anywhere else. When a strange fireworks show transports him and his friends to a parallel world, Ryohei thinks all his wishes have come true. But this new world isn’t an empty paradise, it’s a vicious game. And the only way to survive is to play. (Source: VIZ Media) Note: Chapter count includes 22 side story chapters.

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.

Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man is what happens when a shonen battle series stops pretending it has any manners. Denji is a broke teenager drowning in debt, kept alive by his chainsaw-devil pet Pochita — until a betrayal fuses them into a creature who can pull a cord in his chest and turn into the Chainsaw Devil. Recruited by a government devil-hunting agency, he discovers his dreams are almost insultingly small: food, sleep, and maybe someone to touch him. The horror around him has other plans. Tatsuki Fujimoto writes it with a manic, unpredictable energy that swings from grotesque body-horror to deadpan comedy to sudden, genuine heartbreak, often in the same chapter. Nothing is safe and no one is protected by plot armor, which is exactly why it hooks so hard. The manga's first arc is complete and its second is ongoing; the anime adaptation covers the early story and is the gentlest way in. Read or watch — just know that Chainsaw Man is at its best when you have no idea what it's about to do next. It rarely does.

Tokyo Ghoul

Tokyo Ghoul lives in the gap between human and monster, and refuses to let you look away. In a Tokyo secretly stalked by ghouls — beings who look human but survive only by eating human flesh — bookish college student Ken Kaneki goes on the wrong date and wakes up after emergency surgery as something in between: a half-ghoul, cursed with the hunger of a predator and the conscience of the prey he used to be. Sui Ishida's series is body-horror with a philosophical streak, obsessed with identity, belonging, and what a person becomes when survival demands cruelty. Kaneki's slow, agonizing transformation — physical and moral — is one of the genre's great tragic arcs, and the masked, coffee-shop underworld of Tokyo's ghouls gives it a haunting texture all its own. A note for newcomers: the manga is the definitive version — it's dark, complex, and best read in full. The anime adapts the opening stretch and diverges later, so if a scene grabs you, the pages will always take you deeper. Come ready for horror with real weight behind it.

The Promised Neverland

The Promised Neverland turns an idyllic orphanage into a trap and never lets the pressure drop. Emma, Norman, and Ray are the brightest children at Grace Field House, a home that feels like paradise — loving "Mama," warm meals, endless play — until the night they discover the truth about what happens to the kids who get "adopted," and who's really being fed. Escape means outsmarting the one adult who raised them and knows exactly how their minds work. The first arc is a masterclass in tension: a battle of wits between gifted children and their caretaker, every plan countered, every glance a move on the board. Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu build a horror-thriller that rewards paying attention, where survival hinges on nerve and intelligence rather than strength. A tip for newcomers: the manga tells the complete story, and its opening arc in particular is one of the most gripping stretches in modern shonen. The anime's first season adapts that arc superbly — an outstanding entry point. Go in cold and let the orphanage's secret land the way it's meant to.