Items22The creator’s order
  1. 1ERASED (2016)ERASED (2016) 8.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 8, 201612 episodes. A struggling manga artist with a habit of slipping back a few minutes in time is suddenly sent back 18 years to 1988, with a chance to prevent a classmate's disappearance before it happens. The best gateway on this list for anyone who wants a gripping mystery first and anime second.…0
  2. 2Ping Pong the Animation (2014)Ping Pong the Animation (2014) 8.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 11, 201411 episodes. Two childhood friends, the expressionless Smile and the cocky Peco, grow apart as high school table tennis turns from a game into a question of who they want to be. Masaaki Yuasa's scratchy, split-panel animation looks rough in screenshots and electric in motion, and the matches play…0
  3. 3Paranoia Agent (2004)Paranoia Agent (2004) 7.9/10 on IMDbFirst aired Feb 3, 200413 episodes. A boy on golden inline skates is attacking people around Musashino with a golden baseball bat, and nobody can describe his face. This is the only TV series Satoshi Kon directed, and it plays like his films stretched across a satirical crime story. Each episode hands the camera to a…0
  4. 4FLCL (2000)FLCL (2000) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 26, 20006 episodes. A sixth grader in a town where nothing happens meets a bass-wielding woman on a Vespa, and their first encounter leaves him with tire tracks on his back and a horn growing out of his head. The shortest commitment here, and the one to pick if you have a single evening rather than a…0
  5. 5Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) 8.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 7, 201112 episodes. Two ordinary middle school girls are offered a wish in exchange for becoming magical girls, and the bargain turns out to be far worse than it sounds. Do not let the pastel character designs put you off. The witches' worlds, designed by the animation duo Gekidan Inu Curry in a…0
  6. 6Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) 8.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 13, 202210 episodes. A street kid in Night City, a futuristic Californian city where dreams go to die, falls in with a crew of mercenaries who live fast and rarely live long. Studio Trigger takes the world of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game and burns through it in neon, with action that hits like a music…0
  7. 7ODDTAXI (2021)ODDTAXI (2021) 8.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 6, 202113 episodes. Hiroshi Odokawa, an eccentric and blunt walrus, drives a taxi around Tokyo and gets pulled into the case of a missing teenage girl through the passengers he picks up. The cute animal designs are a disguise for one of the tightest crime scripts in recent anime. Conversations in the cab…0
  8. 8PLUTO (2023)PLUTO (2023) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 26, 20238 episodes, each about an hour. Gesicht, an android detective with Europol, is investigating the murder of a retired war hero robot when it becomes clear someone is hunting the world's most advanced robots. The episode count flatters it: this is closer to eight hours, so plan a full weekend. In…0
  9. 9Death Parade (2015)Death Parade (2015) 7.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 10, 201512 episodes. In a bar that is neither heaven nor hell, pairs of the recently dead are made to play a game, and they cannot leave until it is over and their fate is decided. The setup works almost like an anthology for the first few episodes, which makes it easy to watch in short bursts, then the…0
  10. 10Kids on the Slope (2012)Kids on the Slope (2012) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 13, 201212 episodes. A lonely classical pianist arriving at a new high school in Kyushu is dragged into jazz by the school's best-known troublemaker, who turns out to have a big heart. Director Shinichiro Watanabe reunited with Cowboy Bebop composer Yoko Kanno here, and the jam sessions are the heart of…0