LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyDespite its ferocious popularity, people still tend to swear off anime entirely. These are usually the people whose reference of the medium pertains to a certain stereotype or to the few seconds of anime they once saw on a computer somewhere in the early 2000s.
But Japan has been producing some of the most emotionally resonant and visually audacious storytelling in contemporary media for half a century, and a great deal of it looks nothing at all like the stereotype it holds.
So here’s a case for the uninitiated. Start with self-contained films you can knock out in a single evening before graduating to series worth committing wholly to. The common thread, if you’re keeping score, is that not one of these requires you to know anything about anime, or Japan for that matter, going in.
Note that many of these picks are available in both the original Japanese audio with subtitles or as “dubs” with dialog dubbed by English voice actors. Dive in however you’d like.
If you want something fast, slick and unapologetically addictive, start here. Adapted from a South Korean web novel and webtoon by the Japanese animation studio A-1 Pictures, Solo Leveling follows Sung Jinwoo, an E-rank hunter regarded as the weakest of his profession. After being slaughtered during a dungeon expedition, he awakens with access to a mysterious system that only he can see–and which allows him to become stronger in a world where everyone else’s abilities are effectively fixed. Watching him transform from expendable underdog into an overwhelmingly powerful fighter is pure wish fulfillment, driven by propulsive pacing and enormous battles.
This 2006 film is one of the softest possible landings into anime, with a concept that is simple to follow. Makoto is an ordinary teenager who unexpectedly discovers that she can leap backward through time. She initially uses the ability to redo poor test results, avoid awkward confessions, and correct everyday embarrassments. But manipulating time has consequences for the people around her, forcing Makoto to confront a future she may not be able to reverse.
Most fantasy stories end when the heroes defeat the great evil. Frieren begins there. After completing a decade-long quest, the elven mage takes off on a solitary journey, returning after 50 years to find that her human companions have aged while she has remained unchanged. Regret at missing out on reconnecting earlier and the pain of witnessing the death of one of her friends sets her on a journey of self-discovery. The result is a quiet, beautifully animated meditation on memory, mortality, and the meaning we find in seemingly fleeting relationships.
Take a trip back to the anime of the ’80s, when writer-director Hayao Miyazaki was helping redefine what Japanese animation could accomplish—even before he cofounded Studio Ghibli. Set in a world poisoned by ecological catastrophe, the film follows Princess Nausicaä as she tries to prevent a war between human kingdoms while understanding the enormous toxic forest spreading across the planet. It is a postapocalyptic adventure but also a remarkably prescient story about environmental destruction and humanity’s impulse to conquer what it fears.
For viewers who think anime means sprawling fights and exaggerated superpowers, Death Note offers a psychological thriller instead. High school student Light Yagami discovers a supernatural notebook that allows him to kill anyone whose name he writes inside it, provided he knows their face. With this discovery, he launches a crusade to eliminate criminals. What follows is a compulsive, morally murky battle of wits about justice, power, and how quickly idealism can become tyranny.
Totsuko is a Catholic girls’ school student with an ability to see people’s emotions as colors. She joins a band with two people whose auras she’s drawn to, and so unfolds a musical odyssey of emotion and connection, tuned to classic anime characteristics. This 2024 Japanese drama film is a great watch if you’re after something with a bit more depth.
For anyone who wants supernatural horror with spectacular action, Jujutsu Kaisen is an easy gateway. High school student Yuji Itadori swallows a cursed finger to save a classmate and becomes the vessel of Ryomen Sukuna, a reincarnated sorcerer known as the King of Curses. Yuji is brought into the secretive world of jujutsu sorcerers, who fight supernatural beings created from humanity’s negative emotions. The series becomes considerably darker as it progresses, but its humor, memorable characters, and inventive battles make the commitment worthwhile.
Japan’s most famous folklore reimagined in a hand-drawn masterpiece by Isao Takahata took eight years to make. As if sketched in real time, the story unfolds with a bamboo cutter who discovers a tiny girl inside a stalk. He raises her and watches her transform into a woman of impossible beauty. But the girl is slowly suffocated by everyone else’s plans for her, including five noble suitors competing for her hand.
Even if you have never explored anime, you have probably encountered this one. Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 fantasy follows Kiki, a 13-year-old witch who leaves home as part of her training and settles in a seaside city with her talking cat, Jiji. She begins supporting herself by running an airborne delivery service, only to find her confidence—and her ability to fly—beginning to disappear. Ostensibly a children’s film, it is also an unusually perceptive story about independence, loneliness, and creative burnout.
Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 masterpiece remains one of the strongest arguments for animation as serious cinema. Ten-year-old Chihiro unknowingly enters a mysterious spirit world where her parents eat food at an abandoned amusement park and are transformed into pigs. She then finds work in a magical bathhouse as she searches for a way to save them.
Strange, frightening, and intensely imaginative, the film refuses to explain every corner of its world. Instead, it trusts viewers to follow Chihiro through a story about courage, greed and growing up. In 2003, it became the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Developed from its Japanese manga origin to a full animated series in 2019, Fruits Basket is a wild story of a generational curse spanning three seasons. The Soma family has a strange secret. If any of them embrace, they transform into animals of the Chinese zodiac. By its final season, it earns catharsis as much as it does a fanbase of emotionally invested devotees. Hulu has the English dubbed version, and Crunchyroll has both the dubbed and subtitled versions.
If you find yourself somewhat tempted by anime that’s got swords and demons, this is an adventure series for you. It is also one of the biggest animation phenomenons of the decade, with movie spinoffs that have broken box office records. Main character Tanjiro embarks on a wild journey to avenge a demon attack on his family, unfolding over four seasons of thrilling plot lines and impressive hand-drawn fight sequences.
This story was originally published by WIRED Middle East.
