The 10 Best 2010s Anime, Ranked
Simulcasts, cliffhangers every Sunday and the decade anime stopped being niche for good.
The 2010s were when the whole world started watching anime at the same time. Episodes landed on streaming hours after Japan, memes spread overnight, and shows like Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer became events that people who had never touched anime knew about.
These ten are the best of that decade: the ones that defined their season, broke records or simply wrecked everybody who watched them.
1. Attack on Titan (2013)
2013 · TV series · 25 episodes · WIT STUDIO
Humanity lives behind walls, and one boy swears to kill every giant on the other side.
Eren Yeager watches a Titan eat his mother on the day the wall falls. He joins the Survey Corps with Mikasa and Armin, and the story keeps pulling the floor out from under you until the question is no longer how to kill Titans but who the real enemy is.
Few shows have ever had a first episode this strong or a story this willing to change genre halfway through. The ending still splits fans. The ride does not.
Shop the Attack on Titan collection
2. Steins;Gate (2011)
2011 · TV series · 24 episodes · WHITE FOX
A self-declared mad scientist accidentally invents time travel with a microwave.
Rintaro Okabe and his friends in Akihabara discover they can send text messages to the past. It starts as a goofy otaku comedy about bananas and conspiracy theories. Around the halfway point it becomes one of the most tense, heartbreaking stories in anime.
Stick with the slow start. The payoff is a time loop that makes every early joke hurt, and Okabe's journey from clown to hero is earned in every episode.
Shop the Steins;Gate collection
3. Hunter x Hunter (2011)
2011 · TV series · 148 episodes · MADHOUSE
A boy goes looking for his father and finds the darkest, cleverest shonen ever made.
Gon wants to become a Hunter like the father who left him. He makes friends with Killua, a runaway from a family of assassins, and the two of them go from an exam to an underground auction to a game world to a war with a race of ant monsters.
Every arc is a different genre and every fight is a puzzle. The Chimera Ant arc, and what it does to Gon, is as good as storytelling gets in any medium.
Shop the Hunter x Hunter collection
4. Your Name (2016)
2016 · Film · CoMix Wave Films
A boy in Tokyo and a girl in the mountains wake up in each other's bodies, then the swaps stop.
Taki and Mitsuha have never met, but some mornings they wake up living each other's lives, leaving notes for each other on their phones. It is a comedy until it is not, and the reason the swaps end turns it into a race against time.
Makoto Shinkai's skies, the comet over Itomori and RADWIMPS' songs made it a global hit. The final scene on the staircase still makes cinemas hold their breath.
5. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019)
2019 · TV series · 26 episodes · ufotable
A kind boy, his demon sister, and the best-animated fights of the decade.
Tanjiro comes home to find his family killed by a demon and his sister Nezuko turned into one. He becomes a demon slayer to make her human again, and Nezuko, who never hurts a human, travels with him in a wooden box on his back.
Ufotable's animation made it a phenomenon, and episode 19 is the reason. But the heart is Tanjiro, who cries for the demons he has to kill.
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6. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
2011 · TV series · 12 episodes · Shaft
A cute magical girl show. It is not a cute magical girl show.
Madoka is a sweet middle schooler offered one wish by a cat-like creature, in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting witches. The art is pastel, the witches look like collages, and by episode three you realise this genre has been hiding something.
Twelve episodes, no wasted scenes, and a final act about sacrifice and hope that is among the most moving in the medium.
Shop the Madoka Magica collection
7. Violet Evergarden (2018)
2018 · TV series · 13 episodes · Kyoto Animation
A former child soldier learns to write letters for others, and slowly learns what I love you means.
Violet was raised as a weapon and lost her arms in the war. Now she works as an Auto Memory Doll, ghostwriting letters for clients, and each of their stories teaches her something about the feelings she was never allowed to have.
Kyoto Animation's craft is in every frame. Episode 10, about a mother writing to her daughter, is one of the most devastating single episodes ever animated.
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8. Mob Psycho 100 (2016)
2016 · TV series · 12 episodes · bones
The most powerful psychic in the world just wants to be a normal, kind kid.
Shigeo Kageyama, called Mob, could level a city but keeps his emotions bottled up. He works for Reigen, a con man pretending to be a psychic, who turns out to give the best life advice in anime.
From the creator of One-Punch Man, with jaw-dropping hand-drawn animation from Bones, it is a show about growing up that happens to have explosions.
Shop the Mob Psycho 100 collection
9. Haikyu!! (2014)
2014 · TV series · 25 episodes · Production I.G
A short kid who can jump like he has wings, and a genius setter nobody wants to play with.
Hinata is too small for volleyball and does not care. Kageyama is brilliant and arrogant. Forced onto the same team at Karasuno High, they invent an attack nobody can block and drag a team of misfits toward nationals.
Every rival team gets its own story, every match feels like a final, and you will find yourself screaming at the screen over a sport you never watched.
10. Made in Abyss (2017)
2017 · TV series · 13 episodes · Kinema Citrus
A girl and a robot boy climb down into a giant hole to find her mother. It does not stay cute.
Riko lives in a town built around the Abyss, a pit full of relics and monsters where coming back up gets more dangerous the deeper you go. With Reg, a robot boy with no memories, she starts the descent.
The art looks like a children's book and the world is one of the most imaginative in anime. Be warned: it gets very dark, and that is why it stays with you.
Shop the Made in Abyss collection
Short on time, take Madoka Magica: twelve episodes that change how you see a whole genre. Got a free month, start Hunter x Hunter and do not skip the Chimera Ant arc. And if you want to feel something tonight, Violet Evergarden episode 10 is waiting.
How we ranked: titles are drawn from the anime fans name most often across the major community rankings of the decade, then ordered by Anime Crush on how well each one plays today. Year and studio are from the original Japanese release.