📺 Best Anime Series of 2025
🔒 Archived ranking: voting and adding items is closed.
Full ranking
1
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow-
Action, Fantasy - A-1 Pictures - 01/05/2025 - 16+ Sung Jin-Woo secretly hones his new powers and battles humanity's deadliest threats to save his mother, in the second season of the adaptation of the acclaimed Korean webtoon.
Solo Leveling returns for its second season, Arise from the Shadow, continuing Sung Jin-Woo's transformation from the world's weakest hunter into an entity capable of challenging the planet's deadliest threats, after gaining the powers of the mysterious System that lets him level up like in a video game. Still produced by A-1 Pictures, the season maintains the animation standard that made the first a global phenomenon topping Crunchyroll charts worldwide, with fluid combat sequences and skillful use of digital effects to render the protagonist's increasingly spectacular abilities. At the story's core remains Jin-Woo's personal mission to save his gravely ill mother using his newfound powers, an intimate motive that balances the power-fantasy genre's typical escalation with an emotional core that keeps the protagonist human despite his growing omnipotence. Based on Chugong's celebrated Korean webtoon, the series continues to stand as one of the most-followed action franchises in the international simulcast landscape, drawing both longtime readers of the digital comic and audiences entirely new to Japanese animation.
see full review
10votes
2
Dandadan Season 2
Supernatural Horror Comedy - Fuga Yamashiro - Science SARU - 03/07/2025 - 18+ Season two, based on Yukinobu Tatsu's manga, follows Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, aka Turbo Granny, as they keep investigating aliens, spirits and a tangled mystery tied to their past, while their bond is tested by a sudden case of amnesia.
Dandadan returns for a second season still produced by Science SARU, the studio whose 2024 debut season turned Yukinobu Tatsu's manga into one of the most talked-about phenomena in contemporary anime. Direction is shared between Fuga Yamashiro and Abel Gongora, who deliver a season that keeps the series' signature balance of unhinged comedy, supernatural horror and genuine emotional pathos, following Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, aka Turbo Granny, as they contend with aliens, spirits and a tangled web of mysteries tied to their pasts. The season also deepens the more intimate thread around the two leads' relationship, complicated by a storyline centered on Momo's amnesia, who upon awakening her powers forgets the feelings and memories she shared with Okarun, a turn that divided readers when it appeared in the manga, read by some as an artificial stalling of an already well-built relationship, and by others as a necessary step toward the series' final reckoning. Debates over the writing aside, the show's technical quality remains beyond question, with Science SARU continuing to push bold visual choices, from caricatured deformation in comedic beats to high-impact horror sequences that capture the deliberately excessive, hybrid tone of the source material on screen. The distinctive character designs and the near-psychedelic cinematography in some action sequences confirm the studio as one of the most original forces in recent Japanese animation. Premiering on July 3, 2025 after a theatrical preview of the first three episodes, the season confirmed Dandadan as one of the sturdiest franchises of the new anime generation, drawing in longtime fans and casual viewers alike, a success crowned by numerous nominations and wins at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, including Best Comedy Anime and Best Opening Sequence.
see full review
8votes
3
Gachiakuta
Action, Dark Fantasy - Bones Film - 07/06/2025 - 16+ Falsely accused of murder, a boy from a poor district is cast into the Abyss along with society's discarded waste, where he must become a warrior to survive and seek revenge.
Gachiakuta, an adaptation of Kei Urana's manga serialized in Shonen Magazine, imagines a society sharply divided between a city suspended in the sky, home to the wealthy, and a world below where the poor survive by scavenging waste dumped from above. Protagonist Rudo, raised in one of these poor districts, is falsely accused of murdering his adoptive father and sentenced to exile in the Abyss, the chasm where society literally dumps its garbage, humans included. There, among monsters spawned from the trash itself, Rudo must learn to fight to survive and find a way to get revenge on those who condemned him. Produced by the newly formed studio Bones Film, an offshoot of the historic studio Bones, the series stands out for a grimy, industrial aesthetic that faithfully mirrors the original manga's setting, with strong visual impact in its battles against the Abyss's creatures. Critics have praised the series' ability to build a dark, layered world without sacrificing tight action pacing, qualities that made it one of the most talked-about revelations of the summer 2025 season, carving out a loyal audience alongside the more established major shonen franchises.
see full review
6votes
