About

In late June 2025, I finished a show called Lazarus. It was okay, nothing special, but it came from the director of what I would argue is the Citizen Kane of anime: Cowboy Bebop. And it was funded by the two programming blocks that shaped anime fans in the English-speaking world: Toonami and Adult Swim. But Toonami is gradually losing its place as the gateway drug for anime fans. Which put a frightening thought in my head.

"How will the anime fans of tomorrow know what the anime classics of yesterday were?"

If you type "anime for beginners" into Google, you'll get a wide variety of answers. Google's automated choices are pretty good, most of them are on this site, but it's the equivalent of asking Siri for anime recommendations. A human touch is necessary, otherwise it's purely a numbers game. Well then what about the sites listing "55 Best Anime for Beginners"? Well, they seem too concerned with chasing trends and getting clicks than providing useful advice. Timeless classics in random orders alongside shows that are frankly only included for being new and popular. Maybe they help people but I think the medium deserves something more...concrete.

So I decided to make it myself.

I spent an evening looking through every anime released from 1995 to 2020 on MyAnimeList (which BTW Anilist is better in every way and you should use that instead) with the goal of finding 200 anime to divide into two lists: 100 Essential Anime and 100 More Anime. I ended up with 184 anime but that was good because I needed the extra slots for when people go "WHERE'S THIS SHOW".

Once I came up with where I thought each show should go, I showed it to several people to make sure there was as much uniform consensus as possible before publishing. I then asked if any of them wanted to help contribute columns for any of the shows to explain to people why they should either watch it or just know about it. This website is the result of this collaboration.

One of the inspirations for this site is an IGN blog from 2012 called "Top 100 Anime You Should Watch Before You Die". That blog was also made in an attempt to be as objective as possible, involving several collaborators while still keeping a personal touch. In my early years of getting into anime, I discovered the list and it introduced me to a lot of solid shows. My goal is to have this site impact someone the way that list impacted me.

An explanation for the tables can be found here.