The 10 Best 80s Anime, Ranked
Neon cities, space operas and the first anime that made grown adults cry in the cinema.
The 80s were when anime got ambitious. Studios had money, the home video market wanted more, and directors who had grown up on 70s robot shows started making the things they had always wanted to see. The result was a decade of enormous films, sprawling space wars and heroes whose catchphrases are still shouted in school playgrounds.
These are the ten that still feel alive, the ones fans keep returning to and the ones that land just as hard on a first watch today.
1. Akira (1988)
1988 · Film · TMS Entertainment
Two boys from the same orphanage, one red motorbike, and a city about to tear itself apart.
Neo-Tokyo, 2019. Kaneda leads a biker gang, Tetsuo has always been the little one riding behind him, and when the government gets its hands on Tetsuo something inside him wakes up. Everything that follows, the riots, the cults, the city cracking open, is really about a kid who is sick of being protected.
Every frame was drawn by hand, the lights trail behind the bikes, and the slide is still copied in films and music videos every year. Nothing animated before it looked this way, and very little since has.
2. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
1988 · Film · Studio Ghibli
The film people recommend and then warn you never to watch twice.
Kobe, 1945. After an air raid, a teenage boy, Seita, and his little sister Setsuko are left to look after each other. Isao Takahata tells you in the first minute how it ends, and somehow that makes every small kindness that follows, a tin of fruit drops, a jar of fireflies, harder to bear.
It is not a war film about battles. It is about pride, hunger and how quietly children can be failed. Watch it once, properly, with nothing else on your screen.
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3. Legend of the Galactic Heroes (1988)
1988 · OVA · 110 episodes
Two brilliant commanders on opposite sides of a galactic war, and the respect that grows between them.
Reinhard von Lohengramm wants to tear down the Empire from inside and rule it himself. Yang Wen-li is a historian who never wanted to be a soldier and happens to be the best tactician alive. Across 110 episodes the story follows both, through battles, politics and funerals, without ever making one of them the villain.
It is long, it is talky, and it is the closest anime has come to a great historical novel. People who finish it tend to call it the best thing they have ever watched.
4. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
1988 · Film · Studio Ghibli
Two sisters, a new house in the countryside, and a forest spirit waiting at the bus stop in the rain.
Satsuki and Mei move to the country with their father while their mother recovers in hospital. There is no villain and almost no plot, just a summer: exploring the house, chasing soot sprites, and meeting the huge, sleepy creature who lives in the camphor tree.
What makes it hit as an adult is what the girls are not saying about their mother. Totoro became Ghibli's logo for a reason. It is the purest thing the studio ever made.
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5. Dragon Ball Z (1989)
1989 · TV series · 291 episodes · Toei Animation
The show that taught the world what a power-up looks like.
Goku has grown up, has a son, and finds out he is an alien from a warrior race. From there Dragon Ball Z is a long climb through stronger and stranger enemies, Vegeta, Frieza, Cell, Buu, each one pushing Goku and his friends past what should be possible.
Yes, some fights take a few episodes too long. But the first time Goku turns Super Saiyan on Namek, after everything Frieza has taken from him, is one of the great moments in all of animation, and every battle anime since has been chasing that scream.
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6. Fist of the North Star (1984)
1984 · TV series · 109 episodes · Toei Animation
A wandering martial artist in a world after the bombs, protecting the people no one else will.
Kenshiro walks a desert of raiders and warlords, and he can end a man by striking the secret points on his body. The fights are brutal and almost funny in their excess, but the show is really a sad western about loss, with a hero who carries his grief in seven scars on his chest.
The rivals are as loved as the hero, Raoh above all. And yes, this is where the line about already being dead comes from.
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7. Saint Seiya (1986)
1986 · TV series · 114 episodes · Toei Animation
Five young warriors in armour based on the constellations, fighting for a goddess.
Seiya and his fellow Bronze Saints protect Athena, reborn as a girl named Saori, against gods and warriors far stronger than them. They win by refusing to stay down, which is the whole spirit of the show.
The Sanctuary arc, twelve houses and twelve Gold Saints against the clock, is one of the great runs of the decade. In large parts of Europe and Latin America, this was the anime an entire generation grew up on.
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8. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982)
1982 · TV series · 36 episodes
An alien war that can only be won by a pop song.
A giant alien warship crashes on Earth, humanity rebuilds it, and on its first flight it is dragged across the solar system with a whole city inside. Pilot Hikaru Ichijo is caught between the singer Lynn Minmay and his commanding officer Misa Hayase, while the aliens find out something they have never had: music.
Fighter jets that transform into robots, a love triangle that actually goes somewhere, and an idea about culture winning wars that the whole franchise still runs on.
9. Ranma ½ (1989)
1989 · TV series · Studio Deen
Splash him with cold water and he becomes a girl. Hot water turns him back. Chaos does the rest.
Ranma Saotome fell into a cursed spring while training in China, and now he is engaged to Akane, a girl who wants nothing to do with him, while a parade of rivals, suitors and martial artists keep turning up at the door.
It is a slapstick romantic comedy at heart, sharp and warm, and Rumiko Takahashi's characters are so specific that the jokes still land almost forty years later.
10. City Hunter (1987)
1987 · TV series · 51 episodes · Sunrise
The best gunman in Tokyo, the worst flirt in Tokyo, and a partner with a very large hammer.
Ryo Saeba takes the cases nobody else will, from a message board at Shinjuku station. He is a goofball until the moment he is not, and his partner Kaori keeps him honest with a hammer that weighs more than she does.
Each case is a self-contained night in a city that never sleeps, and almost every episode ends on TM Network's Get Wild, still one of the best ending songs ever written.
Start with Akira if you want to feel what made the West fall for anime. Start with Totoro if you want to remember being a kid. And if you have a few months and a lot of patience, Legend of the Galactic Heroes 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.