This article is regularly updated as more titles join or leave Netflix. Newly added titles are marked with an asterisk.*
Netflix is heavily invested in the anime space, to the point where it’s gotten difficult to keep track of just how many anime titles it’s producing or licensing — especially when juggling between the long-running franchise hits like Pokémon and the single-season gems like Cowboy Bebop. It’s become a major anime player, and whether you’re into action, romance, trippy fantasy, or cyberpunky sci-fi, its anime as a category isn’t diminishing in importance, even as individual titles shuffle on or off of the service.
That’s where we come in. The library’s simply grown too large to navigate for anyone who values their time — or hasn’t spent all their time watching anime. In our updated list below, we’ve evaluated and recommended the 30 best anime series on Netflix. We’ve done our best to peregrinate through anime’s genre and age brackets in an attempt to create as broad a picture of collection as possible, while highlighting the merits of each title. Read on for our recommendations, and the live-action titles that pair nicely with them, if you’re unfamiliar with the cartoons themselves, and find yourself something worth watching.
Attack on Titan
The squeamish should avoid Attack on Titan like they would avoid any other depictions of brutal naked giants ripping bodies apart with their teeth. The show, while an excitingly action-packed, utterly engrossing narrative, can be a tough pill to swallow. Its eponymous Titans are gruesome, zombies and its protagonists are traumatized children who slowly come to understand the totalitarian regime they live in. (Attack on Titan’s fascist subtext is still controversial.) What the show does well is depict the flawed and messy ways those children respond to the violence around them.
Watch it if you love: Any Tokusatsu film; Rogue One
Beastars
Part high-school melodrama, part slow-burn horror, and part unabashed furry fantasy, Beastars is terrific. It’s all about the tensions that inevitably come up when you throw herbivores and carnivores together and add hormones, but you don’t have to squint to see its commentary on social diversity. The show’s soul, however, is the central relationship between Legoshi, a male gray wolf, and Haru, a female white dwarf rabbit.
Watch it if you love: Zootopia; Cruel Intentions
*Blue Period
Some of the best teen anime are often about kids whose lives change as they discover a passion. Blue Period is an excellent example of the sub-subgenre, following a bright high-schooler, Yatora Yaguchi, as he commits himself to painting. It’s an often sensitive, intelligent series that puts art front and center as it navigates the parallel struggles of identity, sexuality, and social pressures that come with adolescence.
Watch it if you love: Loving Vincent; The Joy of Painting
Cardcaptor Sakura
In the ‘90s, Cardcaptor Sakura helped set the template for a certain type of “magical girl” anime. The show is more or less an elementary-school take on Sailor Moon, focused on the fourth-grader Sakura and her quest to retrieve a set of magical cards that she released into the world. Sakura is a lovable firecracker and one of the all-women manga artist group CLAMP’s most iconic creations.
Watch it if you love: Wynonna Earp; Lizzie McGuire
Children of the Whales
Children of the Whales plays with the idea of a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by ecological disaster, this time as a global desert instead of an ocean. A pocket of survivors now lives on a giant floating city called the Mud Whale, and a majority of them developed psychokinetic abilities. Its 12 episodes explore what happens when the Mud Whale encounters another island with very different beliefs, and the conflict that follows. And while that’s all interesting, its stylized animation, watercolorlike backgrounds, and slow pace put the show in a class of its own.
Watch it if you love: Dune, Mortal Engines
Cowboy Bebop
Fueled by style, swagger, and big, blasting horn sections, Cowboy Bebop is emphatically not its misbegotten live-action adaptation. The original anime locked four broken individuals (and a cute Welsh corgi) on a spaceship together and turned them into a kind of existentialist bounty-hunting family. The show barely has an overarching plot, and part of its appeal is in watching the leads’ hearts slowly melt for each other as they individually reckon with their past lives. Bebop is as classic as it gets among action anime, and fans like to say, “This is what you watch if you’ve never watched anime,” because so many of its influences defined an American zeitgeist at one point or another: Nods to film noir, cyberpunk, Westerns, rock n’ roll, jazz, Bruce Lee, and even Ridley Scott’s Alien permeate its episodes.
Watch it if you love: Enter the Dragon; The Long Goodbye
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
This series by Studio Trigger and anime directing vet Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, and Promare) makes a much more striking impression than its source material Cyberpunk 2077 did upon its laughably botched launch. The show finds its groove by following a protagonist named David Martinez who chooses to graft cybernetic tech onto his body after his mother is violently gunned down. His sci-fi world is being slowly crushed under the boot of capitalism — a place where class differences plays out on the tech that children use at school and cost of healthcare. It works because it’s not far off from our own world.
Watch it if you love: Blade Runner; Sorry to Bother You
Death Note
Death Note’s Light Yagami may be one of the most sinister Macbethian villains of the last 20 years. Over the course of 37 episodes, he murders countless individuals by writing their names in the show’s titular magic book, lies incessantly to practically everyone in his family or social circle, and seeks to establish his own utopia as a god of death. He meets his match when a genius investigator named L starts to close in on him with his own mind games, propelling the show into a dark, suspense-heavy cat-and-mouse chase for the ages.
Watch it if you love: The Silence of the Lambs; any Sherlock Holmes story
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
Anyone looking for a solid action anime should check out Demon Slayer, one of the biggest anime properties of the last few years. It ticks many of the same boxes: crisply defined fight scenes from anime studio Ufotable, a secret war against demons, and a family tragedy that immediately makes that conflict personal for the young hero. To give American newbies an idea of how popular this title is, Demon Slayer’s sequel film, Mugen Train, became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan, breaking several records in the process (including those previously held by Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away).
Watch it if you love: Frankenstein, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Devilman Crybaby
No purer commentary on male adolescence exists than having a demon possess you, but that setup is tame compared to where Devilman Crybaby’s ultraviolence eventually goes. In its ten-episode run, you can expect depravity and horror from humans and demons alike, all realized in a muted color palette and gorgeously grotesque character designs. The Devilman himself, a cool teen named Akira Fudo, wants to use his diabolical powers to keep his family, friends, and humanity at large safe. But he may not be able to; sometimes all you can do is cry.
Watch it if you love: The Walking Dead; Lucifer
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K
Given that it’s about a pink-haired teenage boy with psychic powers, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K gets a lot of mileage out of the purely mundane aspects of his life: going to school, or interacting with his parents, or even, uh, watching anime. Like any moody kid, all the eponymous Saiki wants is to be left alone and mind his own business, but the need to keep his secret from most of the people around him gets in his way. His deadpan delivery and ever-present internal monologue drive the show, and each episode delivers a new, delightfully meta comedy of errors.
Watch it if you love: Sabrina the Teenage Witch; the character Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Great Pretender
“I’m Japan’s top scam artist,” boasts Makoto Edamura in Great Pretender’s first episode, which — for creative reasons — is partly delivered in Japanese, even in the English dub. It’s all part of the con of Great Pretender, a show that will absolutely zig exactly where you would expect it to zag. Edamura himself, for example, rarely has the upper hand, despite being the series’ leading con man. Meanwhile, his closest associate, Laurent, is the true expert con artist but uses his swindling prowess for good, screwing over only the rich assholes who deserve it. An especially nice touch: Using Freddie Mercury’s “The Great Pretender” as the closing theme song.
Watch it if you love: Mad Men; The Sting
High-Rise Invasion
Adapted from Tsuina Miura and Takahiro Oba’s manga of the same name, High-Rise Invasion is a deliriously deadly good time. Blood and gore galore await those who sit through its episodes, in which schoolgirl heroine Yuri Honjō finds herself on the run from mysterious masked killers across a labyrinthine world of skyscrapers. Her terrors are the audience’s as we watch her navigate and deduce her situation, dispatching her enemies and finding allies along the way.
Watch it if you love: Ready or Not; the video game Mirror’s Edge
High-Rise Invasion
Hunter x Hunter
When in doubt, let your characters duke it out. That was the approach manga artist Yoshihiro Togashi took with his other series, Yu Yu Hakusho, and it’s the tack he took with Hunter x Hunter — to dazzling effect. The titular “hunters” are an elite class of warriors who track down rare animal species, treasures, and human heads for bounty, and Hunter x Hunter is the story of one boy who wants to follow in his dad’s footsteps to become a hunter, even after his dad abandons him. Note that there are two adaptations of this series, and Netflix has the later, 2011 one — largely considered the superior run.
Watch it if you love: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2; How I Met Your Mother
Inuyasha
The historic and the supernatural collide in this epic anime about a high-school girl, Kagome, who is flung hundreds of years into the past only to meet a half-demon, Inuyasha. Their misadventures take them across Japan, collecting shards of a magic jewel as the nascent country’s chaotic Sengoku period rages. Along the way, they accrue a merry band of friends who join them in their quest to find the shards and slay the demons that get in their way. At 193 episodes, Inuyasha is a lengthy saga but one driven by slow-burning character plotting and the slaying of grim beasts.
Watch it if you love: Outlander; Xena: Warrior Princess
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
“Bizarre” doesn’t really capture how over the top JoJo’s can be, given its transparent references to classic rock and pop culture (characters named Dio Brando and Robert E.O. Speedwagon) and the herculean musculature of its character designs. But the trappings of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure are very much the main event. You don’t watch it for deep insights into the human condition, you watch it to relish the fights between bros with biceps the size of truck tires.
Watch it if you love: Bloodsport; Mortal Kombat
Kotaro Lives Alone
True to its title, Kotaro does in fact live by himself, go to school by himself, and hit the grocery store by himself, despite being a 4-year-old. Watching this tiny little boy spunkily support himself — while wearing a plastic sword and a T-shirt that says “God” on it — is both inspiring and hysterical, before it gets heavy and you realize just how neglected he is. As Vulture’s E. Alex Jung put it, Kotaro Lives Alone “lives somewhere between the sweetness of a reality show like Old Enough, which sends toddlers out on errands, and the devastation of the World War II drama Grave of the Fireflies.” It’s powerful, but not harsh.
Watch it if you love: Old Enough; Bill’s TV scene in Freaks and Geeks
Kuroko’s Basketball
Much like its Production I.G. sibling show Haikyu!!, Kuroko’s Basketball is a sports anime that will make you care about sports. It really sings when it focuses on the interiority of its characters’ interior lives and team dynamics, as well as the tactics they deploy to win at high school hoops. Kuroko’s Basketball is directed by Shunsuke Tada, an alumnus of several classic anime like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, The Prince of Tennis, and Samurai 7.
Watch it if you love: Friday Night Lights; The Last Dance
Little Witch Academia
One day, this show will join the great pantheon of witch media, and it’ll be thanks to its protagonist Akko, the endearing “little witch” herself who works her butt off at a witch school for girls. As someone with a non-magical background, Akko isn’t naturally gifted and has to practice really, really hard to get her spells right, often getting them wrong and giving her friends furry tails or animal ears in the process. But she never gives up, which is a big part of why fans keep clamoring for a new season.
Watch it if you love: the Harry Potter series; Hocus Pocus
*Monster
This 74-episode slow-burn neo-noir mystery series is about a successful young surgeon enmeshed in the underbelly of international crime and politics. Without spoiling too much, it’s about this surgeon’s quest to find and kill the titular “monster,” whose life he once saved on the operating table. Monster was hard to find legally in the States for many years, so it’s nice to have the show available in full. It’s often considered one of the best anime ever made.
Watch it if you love: Luther; The Fall.
*Neo Yokio
Cocktails, existential dread, sartorial excellence, and squid-ink fettuccine take center stage in this anime starring Jaden Smith, created by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, and storyboarded by Rurouni Kenshin and Mobile Suit Gundam UC’s Kazuhiro Furuhashi. Its production pedigree and glib roasting of materialism through the magic-using preppy Kaz set it apart from the majority of animated and live-action series alike. And while it’s not exactly revolutionary, the writing is fresh, it doesn’t outstay its welcome, and the voice cast is stacked with the likes of Jude Law, Rashida Jones, Steve Buscemi, and Desus and Mero.
Watch it if you love: The Boondocks; The Royal Tenenbaums
Neon Genesis Evangelion
If eerily humanoid robots beating the hell out of one another won’t pull you into Evangelion, its psychologically rich character studies of child soldiers and broken adults confronting the end of humanity probably will. Creator and director Hideaki Anno poured himself into this massively popular series, and what he got was a kaleidoscope of animation illustrating a postapocalyptic war between the titanic “Angels,” who are hell-bent on destroying mankind, and the ragtag organization that opposes them with experimental weaponry piloted by 14-year-olds. Look out for daddy issues and formal experimentation galore in this classic, which Netflix made available in the U.S. for the first time in years (and not without some controversy).
Watch it if you love: 2001: A Space Odyssey; Twin Peaks
One Piece
Netflix is currently developing a live-action series of this long-running anime classic, so it’s no surprise that several seasons of One Piece’s mammoth run (981 episodes and counting!) are now available to watch. One Piece follows the journey of Monkey D. Luffy, a boy in a straw hat and magic, rubber-limbed powers who dreams of becoming the world’s most notorious pirate. And the show’s massive cast of pirate players, who are designed with flair in the early seasons by Noboru Koizumi, make it a reliably fun, goofy watch.
Watch it if you love: Pirates of the Caribbean; Black Sails
One Punch Man
The secret to One Punch Man’s hysterical, action-packed sauce: the quarter-life crisis of its protagonist, Saitama, a hero who can easily trounce every opponent that comes at him but who nonetheless feels unfulfilled and wayward. When you can beat any enemy with one punch (a brilliantly simple conceit), where do you go from there? One Punch Man shows us Saitama trying to answer that question through the eyes of his cyborg mentee, Genos, along with earth-shattering fight scenes and the machinations of an organization of ranked heroes that Saitama and Genos try to break into.
Watch it if you love: Ip Man; Thor: Ragnarok
Pokémon (multiple series)
Maybe you’ve heard of it? This long-running anime adaptation of the massively popular video-game series isn’t intended for adults, or even adolescents, but it does teach kids a very important lesson: You will lose — often when it counts the most. Ash Ketchum, the show’s hero and the boy who wants nothing more than “to be the very best,” has never won big at the Pokémon League Championship after well over 1,000 episodes now, but he’s never quit and rarely been a sore loser about it for very long. The series will endure as long as Pokémon games stay popular, but that lesson carries weight, whether you (or your kids) grow out of the show or not.
Watch it if you love: Scooby-Doo; Sesame Street
*Romantic Killer
Unlike many rom-com protagonists before her, teen girl Anzu Hoshino has no time for love — but love is forced upon her. In Romantic Killer, a wizard removes chocolate, video games, and her beloved cat from her life in order to instead fill it with courtship and boyfriends. Hysterical otherworldly shenanigans ensue as Anzu squares off in a 12-episode battle of wits against this “love cupid” magical being and his ilk, who are determined to muck up her happy single life.
Watch it if you love: (500) Days of Summer; Bedazzled
Sword Art Online
Within the first few episodes of Sword Art Online, its characters are trapped in a virtual prison, face the mounting mental-health crises of their peers, and are forced to team up to survive. Any show about playing a video game could risk getting old fast, but Sword Art Online ratchets its stakes up immediately, giving leads Kirito and Asuna plenty to fight against and to glean from their compatriots within the titular game as they learn its rules and solve the mysteries of the players who exploit them.
Watch it if you love: The vibes of Pleasantville; Mr. Anderson’s new job in The Matrix Resurrections
*Vinland Saga
Since its 2018 debut, this has become the definitive Viking action anime, a story about the acute consequences of extreme violence and inflicted trauma. Its first and second seasons, which are both on Netflix, are very different beasts: The former tells the story of protagonist Thorfinn’s savage upbringing and molding into a callous warrior, and the latter focuses on the events of his life a few years later that force him to heal the scars he accumulated and unlearn his own brutal ways. Vinland Saga is for many reasons a modern anime masterpiece.
Watch it if you love: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai; Vikings
Violet Evergarden
War may be hell, but sometimes what comes after is worse. After a bloody career as a child soldier that stole her arms and her emotional development, a girl named Violet has to adjust to a world at peace. It doesn’t help that her new job involves ghostwriting letters for people with her prosthetic hands. This slow-paced show is obsessed with feelings: what they are, how we voice them, and why they affect us in ways we don’t anticipate. Violet’s trauma cut so deep that she shut herself off from her feelings, and her struggle to find them again illustrates the power of writing, therapy, support systems, and patience. Both the show and film are on Netflix.
Watch it if you love: The Best Years of Our Lives; Léon: The Professional
The Way of the Househusband
Based on a manga by Kousuke Oono, The Way of the Househusband pits a former yakuza boss, Tatsu, nicknamed the Immortal Dragon, against his most fearsome opponent yet: household chores. He ditches his gangster lifestyle in favor of making a home for his wife, who pursues career goals of her own. At home or running shopping errands, Tatsu is the ultimate fish out of water, and he often needs to make use of what he learned in his past life to stay afloat.
Watch it if you love: Analyze This; Married to the Mob
