Top 5 Short Anime You Can Finish in a Weekend, Ranked
Thirteen episodes or fewer, a complete story, and not one of them feels small.
Not every great anime asks for a hundred episodes. These five tell a whole story in thirteen episodes or fewer, about five or six hours each, and every one of them hits harder because it does not waste a minute.
Clear a Saturday, pick one, and see how far you get.
1. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
2022 · ONA · 10 episodes · TRIGGER
Ten episodes in Night City, where a street kid trades his body for a shot at the top.
David Martinez is a broke student in a city run by corporations. When his life falls apart in a single week, he has a military implant put in his spine and joins a crew of edgerunners, mercenaries who live fast and die young.
Studio Trigger made it in 2022 from CD PROJEKT RED's world. It is ten episodes of colour, speed and a love story with Lucy, a netrunner who dreams of the moon.
Shop the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners collection
2. Devilman Crybaby (2018)
2018 · ONA · 10 episodes · Science SARU
A gentle boy takes on a demon's power to fight demons, and the world around him turns on itself.
Akira Fudo cries for other people more easily than for himself. His friend Ryo shows him that demons are real and hiding among humans, and Akira becomes Devilman, a demon's body with a human heart.
Masaaki Yuasa directed these ten episodes from Go Nagai's manga. It is graphic and raw, for older viewers only, and impossible to stop watching.
3. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
2011 · TV series · 12 episodes · Shaft
One wish, granted in exchange for becoming a magical girl. Think carefully before you say yes.
Madoka Kaname is an ordinary middle schooler until a small white creature called Kyubey offers her any wish she wants, if she will become a magical girl and fight witches.
Shaft made it in 2011, written by Gen Urobuchi. The art is soft and pastel, the witches' worlds look like strange paper collages, and twelve episodes are all it needs.
Shop the Madoka Magica collection
4. Violet Evergarden (2018)
2018 · TV series · 13 episodes · Kyoto Animation
A former soldier writes other people's letters, and learns what three words meant.
Violet grew up as a weapon in a war that has just ended. She takes a job as an Auto Memory Doll, writing letters for clients who cannot find the words, while trying to understand the last thing her commanding officer said to her.
Kyoto Animation made thirteen episodes in 2018, each one a small, complete story. Keep tissues close.
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5. Chainsaw Man (2022)
2022 · TV series · 12 episodes · MAPPA
A broke teenager with a chainsaw dog becomes a devil hunter, and wants a normal life more than anything.
Denji works off his late father's debt by hunting devils with Pochita, a small devil with a chainsaw on its head. When the two merge, Denji becomes Chainsaw Man and is recruited by Public Safety.
MAPPA's twelve episodes from 2022 have a different ending song for every episode, and every fight looks like a film.
Shop the Chainsaw Man collection
If you want speed and neon, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. If you want something that will stay with you for weeks, Devilman Crybaby or Madoka Magica. If you want a gentle one that still makes you cry, Violet Evergarden.
How we ranked: Anime Crush picked series of thirteen episodes or fewer that tell a complete story, then ordered them by how hard they land in a single weekend.