I can't exactly explain why beyond sheer laziness and having a stronger urge to rewatch previous favorites like Fairy Tail, Komi Can't Communicate and the first episodes of My Happy Marriage. I did try out HIDIVE, albeit only for just one show and only for a handful of episodes of said show. Why yes, I did stupidly continued to pay for the service every month for the rest of the year (and beyond!). I could at least make a valid enough excuse why I didn't watch anything new on Crunchyroll during the fall, which I'll get into more later, but there were plenty of backlog titles that I could have watched instead.
Though I didn't watch a lot of new anime series, I was able to support anime more by seeing many anime films in theaters. And oh boy, what a great year for that, what with the plethora of films that were released. The biggest one, of course, was Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, which was #7 on the worldwide box office of 2025. But the best news came in the United States: it went to #1 in its opening weekend with a $70 million total, ended up as #18 highest grossing film for 2025, and made Marlon Wayans whine and cry and scream "Fuck Anime!" when the film easily beat his forgettable football horror movie. Then came Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, which also debuted at #1 and brought in a good chunk of money (it also beat Wayans' movie as well). Most of the other movies (Attack On Titan, Dan Da Dan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Witch Watch, Gundam GQuuuuuuX) were more along the lines of television special events, often consists of previews of new series/seasons and/or reedits of past season arcs. But you could still find some hidden gems, most notably the critically acclaimed 100 Meters. Then there were the so-called one-night-only events, like the 4K restoration of Angel's Egg (breathtaking animation and sound design but pretentious as all hell, causing me to fall asleep at one point) and Clockwork Girl, the first short film of Yasuomi Umetsu's Virgin Punk series (amazing animation and gunplay but did we really need more of his lolita complex?). This is all fine and good for me as a cinephile but I still felt bad for neglecting the rest of anime in 2025.
So, to quote Thomas Jefferson, what did I miss?
It was the year of second seasons, with Solo Leveling, Dan Da Dan, My Dress-Up Darling, My Happy Marriage, Call Of The Night, Grand Blue Dreaming, and, shock of all shocks, New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt all earning raves. However, it was The Apothecary Diaries and its highly anticipated and hugely popular second season that stood above all.
Netflix handed out more Blue Box and Ranma 1/2, premiered Sakamoto Days and a revival of YAIBA, and stunned critics and animephiles alike with The Summer Hikaru Died.
Honey Lemon Soda brought teen romance and plenty of tears, Kowloon Generic Romance brought adult romance and plenty of sex, Dealing With Mikadono Sisters Is A Breeze brought goofy romance and plenty of laughs, Okitsura also brought goofy romance but instead brought plenty of Okinawan humor, and May I Ask For One Final Thing? brought no romance because it's female lead was too busy beating the shit out of her so-called Prince Charming.
Super Sentai fans got to enjoy The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World, at least until Toei and TV Asahi announced the cancellation of the 50+ year franchise at the end of the year, while Kamen Rider fans got to enjoy the offbeat Tojima Wants To Be A Kamen Rider. And if you wanted more superhero stuff, there was the surprise success of To Be Hero X.
You want dark stuff instead? Okay, you glutton for punishment. You had the action fantasies Gachiakuta and Tougen Anki, "The Thing meets Groundhog Day" with the space horror GNOSIA, the yokai and yuri-fest This Monster Wants To Eat Me, and the ultra dark, holy-shit-what-did-I-watch, near universally acclaimed but you'll never watch it again Takopi’s Original Sin.
Kyoto Animation made it glorious return with the long anticipated adaptation of CITY.
Sunrise and Hideki Anno teamed up for a unique take on Gundam with the very uniquely titled Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX.
Anime critics and plenty a YouTuber express their appreciation for little seen and talked about series like Zenshu, Anne Shirley, and Medalist.
The long and tortured fight to bring the full Macross franchise to America finally ended, with many of the shows, including fan favorites Macross Plus and Macross 7, available via Hulu.
Meanwhile on Disney+, Twisted Wonderland wowed both anime and Disney fans.
Shonen series were still popular with the third season of Spy x Family, the first half of the final season of Fire Force, and the premiere of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.
And finally, My Hero Academia went out with a huge bang with its final season, which was practically the Stranger Things of anime last year due to how many people watched it, talked about it, and raved about it (yeah, maybe the Stranger Things comparison doesn't work with that last one).
Wow, all of this make it seem like anime was very good in 2025. Well, it was. That's what makes my sheer laziness even more frustrating! Especially since I passed up on the second seasons of past beloved shows like My Dress-Up Darling and Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, not to mention forgoing the anime adaptation of I'm The Evil Lord Of An Intergalactic Empire!, which is one of my current favorite light novel series to read. At least with the latter, however, I heard fans were disappointed that it was only a full adaptation of the first volume and nothing more.
Now, usually this is the part where I talk more about the bad side of the anime in the previous year. Unfortunately, I didn't really venture much into the muck or heard a lot of ire beside there being too many mediocre to fine yet forgettable shows. The only disasters and disappointments that I consistently heard and saw online were: director Shinichirō Watanabe returning with Lazarus to mixed reviews; infamous studio GoHands unleashing another visual monstrosity with Momentary Lily; the long gestated only to flop hard adaptation of Übel Blatt, which was often compared to Berserk, particularly the infamous 2016 series with its inaccessibility and bad production values; the second season of Go! Go! Loser Ranger! collapsing due to it cramming too much plot and faulty animation; and certainly the biggest point of discussion, One-Punch Man refusing to die and giving us a third season that is apparently even worse the infamous second season.
But there were far worse things that happened to anime. Far, far worse than any bad show or season. And what a surprise, they came from major American companies! First, there was Crunchyroll. The company/streaming service continued to lose their goodwill with anime fans when it was discovered that they were allegedly using generative AI for their subtitling of shows in the summer and fall seasons. This is incredibly awful because, as someone who can attest to and witnessed the anime distribution of the past, we live in an era now where Japanese-to-English scripts can be properly executed by talented translators. But because that costs money and you have all of the annoying tech bros talking up how great AI is, despite it being practically universally loathed, Sony and Crunchyroll would rather pinch their pennies and really hope that anime audiences will forgive and forget that they are actively ruining their own business with this terrible strategy. That's really bad, hence why I didn't really watch stuff in the fall, but then came early December, when it was discovered that Amazon was also testing out generative AI but for far more devious reasons. Announced in early March but slyly integrated at the end of the year, Amazon created "AI beta" auto-dubs for shows like Banana Fish and No Game, No Life, despite the latter actually having an official English dub. Everybody, from fans to professional voice actors to creators, were utterly aghast, that is when they weren't laughing their ass off at the viral clips that were being shown across the web, most notably a scene from Banana Fish when the main character is "distraught" when a kid is shot and dying in his arms. This generated nuclear heat online, causing Amazon to quickly remove the auto-dubs from their site and they have since become lost media. However, the fact that someone tried this has woken a sleeping giant and could lead to a potential reckoning down the line.
Shit, that last paragraph was really depressing, even though I already lived through both debacles. Let's end on a positive note: you know was also great about 2025? The return of the $4.99 anime sale on iTunes! They came back in April and since then have continued biweekly, with many previous Funimation titles such as Ai Yori Aoshi, Haibane Renmei, and Level E, all of which are still unavailable on Crunchyroll, being up for grabs. And why yes again, I spent more time and money on buying up these shows than actually watching any of them.
Now, let's just get on to the main event, shall we? Here are the list of anime series that I watched last year. As always, the list goes from what I decided was the best and continues all the way down to the least liked or worst.
The rules are the same: The overall quality of the show and my response to it are the major factors toward their rank. However, other additional factors such as replayability, voice talent, and lasting impact can help sway the show's placing. Only new shows/new viewings count; rewatches are immediately disqualified and if I watch a show that I already started, only the continuing unwatched episodes will be reviewed. I treat and grade all series fairly, even ones that I haven't actually finished or may not choose to finish. If you see a * next to the title, that means I had a limited sampling of the show or didn't complete the series/franchise fully.
1. The Eminence In Shadow* [episodes 1-5]
I know a lot of people dunk on this series or simply call it trash entertainment but come on, everyone, this show is so much fun. Granted, the first episode is a bit of a throwaway outside of the ending moments. But then you get into the main drive of the show, where a chunibyo get isekaied and reincarnated into a new world, proceeds to become a darker version of Batman and create his own cult/band of superheroes, only to not realize that it shares the same name as an actual group of villainy and scum. Again, come on, people, how can you hate on a show where the protagonist buys a bunch of expensive crap, places it all around his student dorm room, and waits until nightfall just so he can look cool to an underling? And I'm not even getting into the whole "he created McDonald's" subplot or the famous "I Am Atomic!" scene. So why did I stop at episode 5? Can't really give you an answer, quite frankly. Maybe all of the torture scenes? I don't really know anymore, as I watched this last January, but I do want to get back on the crazy train and see what happens next.
2. I Left My A-Rank Party To Help My Former Students Reach The Dungeon Depths!* [eps. 1-7]
A little sad that I stopped watching this, as it was the most entertaining 2025 anime for me (which isn't saying much when I only watched two series). I liked how it went beyond the usual "banished and betrayed" tales by having the protagonist finding his groove again as a new party leader/instructor on how to adventure in dungeons. The whole live-streaming aspect is really weird at first but it gets further developed and help make the show stand out more, especially with a subplot where the main character's former party get caught spouting racist insults at a dark elf, creating a public relations nightmare. Props also to Drew Breedlove's steadily righteous voice performance and the pretty cool opening theme "Enter" by L.E.I. Definitely will pick it up again and complete it.
3. A Playthrough Of A Certain Dude's VRMMO Life
The only series that I finished entirely. Was it worth it? Eh, sorta of. I mean the show lives up to its title; it really is just some guy's misadventures while playing a VRMMO. Sometimes he ends up being a hero, other times he's spending an entire episode crafting and cooking. While I liked this laissez-faire approach to the story, it also serves as the show's biggest issue. New characters keep getting introduced, making you think that they will be important, especially since they all appear in both the opening and ending credit sequences, but they only stop by for an episode or two, save for the delightful wolf-eared fairy queen. Events and other troubles get resolved in the background without the protagonist's help. Worse, you never get any answers as to what's up with the secret boardroom of game developers that the show keeps cutting to. Then at the last episode, the showrunners are like ah screw it, bring in some random dragon guy so we can end the show with one last battle. Not great but an okay watch.
4. The Strongest Magician In The Demon Lord's Army Was A Human* [eps. 1-3]
Tries to be super serious on all fronts but it works better if you treat it as dumb but fun fantasy fluff. The scene where the hero is "assassinated" in the flattest manner ever yet his underling screams to the heavens was the most unintentionally funniest moment of the year for me. I'll probably give it a second try.
5. Possibly The Greatest Alchemist Of All Time* [eps. 1-3]
This was on the fine line of okay until it got into the whole slavery aspect. Seriously, why have that? It tries to play it off as a softer, more humane take on it but it didn't really need to be here in the first place. For God's sake, this is a show where the main guy makes a fortune after he creates a magic toilet that eliminates odors and shit! I might give it another chance but I really believe it will not stick with me at all beyond that magic toilet.
6. Bogus Skill <<Fruitmaster>>: About That Time I Became Able To Eat Unlimited Numbers Of Skill Fruits (That Kill You)* [eps. 1-6]
This show was featured on many worst anime of 2025 lists, so of course it had to be really bad, right? The thing is the show is watchable but it just so pedestrian and not awful enough for bad anime watchers. Most of my hatred of it, however, was targeted towards the show's main antagonist. Not only is the character blatantly evil in public, she runs the whole skill fruit enterprise, possesses immense control over the adventuring and merchant guilds, plus openly shepherds the so-called best team of adventurers despite them all being assholes who create public destruction everywhere they go. And nobody baits an eye to all this because everyone else is underwritten and just plain stupid. Probably will just call it and leave the rest of the show to rot.
Yeah, I know, not exactly a great crop of shows. Plus, I once again failed all of my anime-based new year's resolutions. So, what do I have planned for 2026? Well, there is a major personal project that I'm currently finalizing. It will be revealed in a couple of months from now (here's a hint: when does a certain "big number" impacts your own life and leads many people to cheer/jeer you?). I will say at least that I will, not try, finally watch Classroom Of The Elite and High School DxD for the first time and catch up/finish up Iruma-kun, Fire Force, and My Next Life As A Villainess.
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