Top 10 Anime of 2025 — Ranked, Roasted & Reviewed

🏆 Top 10 Anime of 2025 — Ranked, Roasted & Reviewed
2025 was an absolutely unhinged year for anime. Close to 200 series dropped, Demon Slayer made $800 million at the box office like it was pocket change, and somehow we still had time to watch all of it. Here are the best of the best.

10. Dandadan Season 2 | 👻 Supernatural / Action
Okarun is still chasing golden balls and Momo is still the most powerful girl in the room. Season 2 picks up right where it left off, fighting the Evil Eye in an arc that was thrilling from start to finish, jam-packed with amazing animation, stunning fight scenes, drama, and emotion. Collider It ranked lower purely because 2025 was just built different — not because Dandadan slipped. The bar went up, not the show down.

9. Sakamoto Days | 💥 Action / Comedy
Retired hitman dad at a convenience store. A billion-yen bounty on his head. Totally normal family life. This action-comedy follows Taro Sakamoto, who was once feared as the greatest hitman of all time before he fell in love, quit the underworld, gotten out of shape, and settled down running a small store — until his past comes back to haunt him. Comicbook It's John Wick if John Wick had a dad bod and sold onigiri. Massive fan favourite of the year.

8. My Hero Academia Final Season | 🦸 Superhero / Shonen Action
It had to end sometime. Studio Bones was fully focused on this last hurrah, allowing many of their best freelance animators to turn in incredible work — and it matched its animation fireworks with an impressive amount of heart. The A.V. Club A reminder that shonen action anime doesn't always have to be empty spectacle. Deku's journey deserved this send-off.

7. Gachiakuta | 🗑️ Action / Dark Fantasy
Literally set in a world of trash. Figuratively anything but. Hero Rudo Surebrec is framed for murder, cast off a floating city into an abyss of garbage below, and discovers the power of "Vital Instruments" — the idea that any possession can be a treasure if treated with care. /Film It's got graffiti-inspired art, a scrappy underdog lead, and enough hype to fill a dumpster. Studio Bones cooked again.

6. Lazarus | 🕵️ Spy Thriller / Sci-Fi
Shinichirō Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) returned, and he did not come to play. In 2052, after a miracle drug called Hopna is revealed to be secretly poisonous and about to kill nearly everyone alive, a government agency assembles five highly-skilled criminals into an espionage team to hunt down the scientist responsible before time runs out. /Film Produced with Adult Swim, it's the kind of stylish, jazz-soaked thriller that reminds you anime can do literally anything.

5. The Summer Hikaru Died | 😱 Horror / Mystery
Perhaps rarest of all, 2025 gave us a true unicorn: a horror anime that didn't stink. The A.V. Club Set in a small village, things go wrong when Hikaru returns after disappearing for a week — and his childhood friend Yoshiki can tell immediately that the person standing before him is not Hikaru, but something else wearing his face. Comicbook Creepy, emotional, and genuinely unsettling. Not one for watching alone at 2am. (Do it anyway.)

4. The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity | 🌸 Romance
2025 brought no shortage of great romance stories, and this one stood among the best thanks to its thoughtfully written characters and confident direction. The A.V. Club An elite all-girls school next to a school full of delinquents. Two students who should not be falling for each other. Wholesome, funny, and genuinely sweet — the kind of romance anime that makes you feel things you didn't ask to feel.

3. Solo Leveling Season 2 | ⚔️ Action / Fantasy
Numbers don't lie. In terms of pure visual spectacle, Solo Leveling has no competition — and if fans decided what the best anime of 2025 was, it would probably be this. Collider Sung Jin-woo fighting the Ant King is the kind of sequence that breaks timelines. Does it have the deepest story? No. Does it need one when it looks like that? Absolutely not. Peak brain-off entertainment.

2. Orb: On the Movements of the Earth | 📜 Historical Drama / Sci-Fi
The dark horse of the year. The Apothecary Diaries may have topped Japan's streaming charts, but Orb quietly won the hearts of critics everywhere. CBR Set in a world where believing the Earth revolves around the Sun could get you killed, a child prodigy hides forbidden knowledge from the Inquisition. Stunning, thought-provoking, and criminally underwatched. The anime of the year for people with taste and patience.

1. City the Animation | 😂 Absurdist Slice-of-Life / Comedy
Nobody saw this coming. Kyoto Animation's absurdist masterpiece oversells every gag until they boil over with such slapstick fervor it would make the Stooges blush — and beneath the hilarious chaos is an unexpectedly profound emphasis on interconnection between people. The A.V. Club Three chaotic college roommates in a city called City. It sounds simple. It is anything but. In a year of bangers, this was the most purely joyful anime of 2025. KyoAni remains undefeated. 🏅

Verdict: 2025 proved anime is in its best era — scary shows that actually scare you, romances that actually make you feel things, action that actually looks jaw-dropping, and comedies that actually make you laugh out loud. 2026 has enormous shoes to fill.