Top 5 Comedy Anime, Ranked
Five shows that have made people choke on their drinks, ranked by how hard they still land.
Comedy is the hardest genre to recommend, because a joke that kills one person does nothing for the next. These five are the exception: the shows fans quote at each other, rewatch when they are sad and push on friends who swear anime is not for them.
Each one is funny in a different way, so pick by the kind of laugh you want.
1. Gintama (2006)
2006 · TV series · 201 episodes · Sunrise
Parody, toilet humour and fourth-wall breaks, from a cast you will end up loving like family.
Aliens run Edo, samurai are out of work, and Gintoki Sakata would rather read Shonen Jump than do any of the odd jobs that pay his rent. Gintama mocks everything, including other anime, its own sponsors and its own viewers.
The best part is that it earns the right to turn serious, and when it does, you care because you laughed so hard first.
2. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. (2016)
2016 · TV series · 120 episodes · J.C.Staff, Egg Firm
A boy with every superpower imaginable just wants a quiet, boring life. He will never get one.
Kusuo Saiki can read minds, teleport and rewrite reality, and he hides all of it to avoid attention. Unfortunately he is surrounded by the loudest, dumbest, most sincere idiots in Japan, and every one of them thinks he is their best friend.
Jokes come at machine-gun speed in short segments, and Saiki's deadpan narration is the funniest voice in anime.
3. Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (2011)
2011 · TV series · 26 episodes · Kyoto Animation
Ordinary school days, animated as if they were the end of the world.
Three friends go to school. A robot girl wants to be normal. A tiny professor builds things she should not. A boy rides a goat to class. Kyoto Animation animates a dropped sausage or a lost eraser like a disaster film.
It is surreal and gentle, and the principal wrestling a deer is a scene the internet has never let go of.
4. Grand Blue Dreaming (2018)
2018 · TV series · 12 episodes · Zero-G
He signed up for a diving club. He got a frat house of naked, drunk upperclassmen.
Iori moves to a seaside town for university, expecting sunny campus life. Instead he wakes up every day in his underwear after another party at the Peek a Boo dive store, trying to explain himself to his cousin.
The faces alone are worth the watch, and between the chaos it is a sweet show about friends and the sea.
5. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War (2019)
2019 · TV series · 12 episodes · A-1 Pictures
Two geniuses are in love, and both would rather die than confess first.
Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane run the student council and spend every day scheming to make the other one admit their feelings. Each tiny decision, sharing an umbrella, eating lunch, becomes a battle of the minds with a narrator calling the score.
Chika Fujiwara steals every scene she is in, and over three seasons the jokes slowly turn into one of the most satisfying romances in anime.
Shop the Kaguya-sama collection
If you laugh at everything, start Gintama. If you like fast, dry jokes, Saiki K. If you just want to feel good on a bad day, Grand Blue will do it in one episode.
How we ranked: drawn from the comedies fans name most often across the major community rankings, then ordered by Anime Crush on how hard they still land on a first watch.