The 10 Best 90s Anime, Ranked
Hand-painted cels, VHS tapes passed between friends, and ten shows that still hit harder than most of what came after them.
The 90s were the decade anime left Japan. Tapes got copied, fansubs got passed around, and a whole generation found out cartoons could be about grief, loneliness and the end of the world. Almost everything people love about the medium today was built in these ten years, by hand, one painted cel at a time.
This ranking leans on the shows fans keep returning to across the big community lists, and on how well each one plays for someone pressing play for the first time today. Here are the ten that still hit.
1. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995)
1995 · TV series · 26 episodes · Gainax
A robot show about three frightened kids who just want someone to tell them they did well.
Shinji is fourteen, his father only calls when he needs a pilot, and the giant machine he is pushed into is the least frightening thing in his life. Evangelion starts as the best monster-of-the-week mecha show of the decade and slowly turns its camera inward, until the fights matter less than whether anyone in that city can stand to be loved.
That is why it still lands. Everyone has been Shinji in the elevator with nothing to say, or Asuka pretending she does not need anyone. Thirty years later it is still the show other anime get measured against.
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2. Cowboy Bebop (1998)
1998 · TV series · 26 episodes · Sunrise
Four broke strangers, one ship, and a past that keeps catching up with every one of them.
Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed and a very smart corgi hunt bounties across a solar system that feels lived in: noodle stands on Mars, casinos on Venus, jazz everywhere. Most episodes are complete little films, a heist one week and a horror story the next, and the soundtrack carries every one of them.
Under the cool, Bebop is about people who cannot stop living in yesterday. It is the easiest classic to recommend to someone who has never watched anime, and the one most likely to stay with them.
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3. Princess Mononoke (1997)
1997 · Film · Studio Ghibli
Miyazaki's angriest film, and his most generous.
Ashitaka is cursed protecting his village and rides west to find out why. He walks into a war between a mining town that is genuinely trying to do good and a forest of gods that is genuinely fighting for its life, and the film refuses to tell you who to hate.
The wolf girl San leaping onto Lady Eboshi's rooftops, the Forest Spirit walking on water, the kodama clicking in the trees: it is the most physical, thunderous film Ghibli ever made, and it trusts its audience completely.
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4. Berserk (1997)
1997 · TV series · 25 episodes · OLM
The Golden Age arc, told once and told right.
A mercenary with a sword too big to be practical joins the Band of the Hawk, and for the first time in his life he belongs somewhere. Its leader, Griffith, wants a kingdom of his own. The whole series is the story of that friendship, and of what ambition costs the people standing next to it.
The 1997 adaptation is cheap in places and it does not matter. The writing, the score by Susumu Hirasawa and the slow tightening of dread toward the final episodes make it one of the most devastating things the decade produced.
5. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
1995 · Film · Production I.G
A cyborg asks what is left of her once everything has been replaced.
Major Motoko Kusanagi hunts a hacker who can rewrite people's memories, in a rain-soaked port city where almost nobody is entirely human any more. The plot is a thriller. The film is something quieter: long silent passages of canals, mannequins and reflections while she wonders if her own memories are real.
Its influence is everywhere, from The Matrix down. Watch it for the opening assembly sequence and Kenji Kawai's choir, then stay for the questions it leaves you with.
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6. Perfect Blue (1997)
1997 · Film · Madhouse
Satoshi Kon's first film, and still the most frightening anime ever made about being watched.
Mima leaves her pop group to become an actress, and someone online starts writing a diary in her voice, about a life she does not remember living. Kon cuts between the shoot, her apartment and her fears until neither she nor you can find the seams.
It is a thriller about fame and the people who feel they own a celebrity, made long before social media made that ordinary. It has aged into a warning.
7. Sailor Moon (1992)
1992 · TV series · 46 episodes · Toei Animation
Five girls, one cat, and the friendship that taught a generation what anime could be.
Usagi is clumsy, lazy and cries about everything, and she is also the one who has to save the world. Sailor Moon made the magical girl genre what it is, but what people actually remember is the group: the arguments over homework, the late-night study sessions, the way each girl finds her courage.
For millions of kids it was the first anime they ever saw, and the first time a show told them that being soft and being strong were not opposites.
8. Yu Yu Hakusho (1992)
1992 · TV series · 112 episodes · Studio Pierrot
A delinquent dies saving a kid and finds out the afterlife has a job for him.
Yusuke Urameshi gets hit by a car in the first episode and becomes a Spirit Detective, solving supernatural cases for the underworld. What starts as a ghost story turns into one of the great tournament shonen, with a crew of rivals turned friends in Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei.
Before Hunter x Hunter, Togashi built this, and the Dark Tournament still sets the template every battle anime follows.
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9. Pokémon (1997)
1997 · TV series · 276 episodes · OLM
Ash, Pikachu, and the friendship every 90s kid wanted.
A ten-year-old leaves home with a Pikachu who refuses to get in its ball. That is the whole premise, and it was enough to change childhoods all over the world.
The early episodes are funnier and stranger than people remember, but what holds is that first bond: Ash shielding Pikachu from a flock of Spearow in the rain, and Pikachu choosing him back. If you grew up in the 90s, you remember exactly where you were when you saw it.
10. Slam Dunk (1993)
1993 · TV series · 101 episodes · Toei Animation
A hothead joins the basketball team to impress a girl and finds something he loves more.
Hanamichi Sakuragi has been rejected fifty times and has never touched a basketball. He joins Shohoku's team for all the wrong reasons, and the show slowly, hilariously, turns him into an athlete who would bleed for his teammates.
It is the sports anime every other sports anime is chasing. Rival Rukawa, captain Akagi and coach Anzai are the reason people say the name with a smile.
If you only have one weekend, take Cowboy Bebop. If you want the decade at its most raw, take Evangelion and do not watch it alone at night. Either way, you are about to understand why people who grew up with these shows still talk about them like old friends.
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.