Sometimes you don’t want to dig into over 1000 episodes of One Piece or try and make heads-or-tails of which order to watch the Fate series in to get your anime fix. Sometimes, you want a straightforward binge where you only have to worry about chewing through a single season. Most anime run over a single season as a result of adapting manga. But even original animes get pressured into releasing more seasons when they become popular.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Thankfully, these 10 anime didn’t succumb to that pressure and told a complete story within a single season. The genres may range from bonkers comedies, surreal dramas about animals driving cabs, and historical action epics. But they all have one thing in common: they told an amazing story in just a single season.
Important Note: To qualify, a franchise must only have a single season. Shows like Cowboy Bebop don’t count because they also spin off into feature films.
Samurai Champloo
Having one Shinichiro Watanabe anime on this list was almost a guarantee. The beloved director is renowned for his single-season original anime (which are all technically set in the same interconnected universe — not that you’d know it). With Cowboy Bebop out of the running, Samurai Champloo equally deserves your time and attention.
Set in an alternate version of Edo-period Japan, the show follows Fuu, a teenage girl who employs two distinctly different samurai, Jin and Mugen (both of whom want to kill each other), to help her find the “samurai who smells of sunflowers.” What follows is a hip-hop infused historical action adventure, as the trio travels across Japan while also running from their own troubled pasts.
Deca-Dence
Deca-Dence isn’t just a single-season anime, it’s one you can binge in a single night. This original series was directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa (Sword Art Online & Mob Psycho) and written by Hiroshi Seko (Chainsaw Man), and blends intense action, beautiful animation, and a wild post-apocalyptic setting into an incredible original story.
Set after most of humanity has been destroyed by lifeforms known as Gadoll, the survivors reside in a giant moving fortress known as Tank. Deca-Dence follows Natsume, a young girl with dreams of becoming a fighter and saving humanity from Gadoll, who befriends a mechanic with the know-how to make her dream come true.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners wouldn’t even take you a whole night to binge; you could easily complete it in an evening. The anime is adapted from and set in the same world as CDProjektRed’s divisive Cyberpunk 2077 video game. While the game’s launch was disastrous, the anime premiered to immense acclaim and even won Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year award.
Set in Night City, Edgerunners follows David, a rebellious teenager enrolled in the prestigious Asaka Academy. After the unexpected death of his mother, David gets himself expelled and survives by becoming an Edgerunner, a mercenary for hire who uses expensive body modifications.
Pluto
Astro Boy is one of the most iconic anime of all time and has been reimagined countless times. But, Naoki Urasawa’s dark take on the humanoid robot is one of the darkest, and the best. The author of 20th Century Boys and Monster lends his signature flair for dark mysteries to Pluto, and the recent anime delivered a banger of an adaptation.
Released in 2023 on Netflix, Pluto follows android detective Geischt, who investigates the murder of a robotic war hero. While no human evidence was at the scene, robots are programmed not to harm humans, leading Geischt down a twisting rabbit hole to find the killer.
Ghost Stories
Is Ghost Stories a good horror series? No. Is it one of the best animes ever made? Couldn’t be further from it. Does it have the greatest English dub of all time? 100%. The story of Ghost Stories‘ dub is, itself, an epic saga. TLDR; the series failed in Japan, so when it was licensed for an English dub, the director, Steven Foster, was given free reign to write whatever he wanted.
The series is set in a small town filled with supernatural entities. But the plot doesn’t matter. The reason you need to check out Ghost Stories is for the politically incorrect, absurdly funny, and frequently unpredictable dialogue.
[RELATED – 7 Anime Memes More Iconic Than Their Original Series, Ranked]
Nichijou – My Ordinary Life
Trying to describe Nichijou is as mind-melting as actually watching the series. The show is based on the popular manga by Keiichi Arawi, and it blends the cute characters of a slice-of-life show with the animation worthy of the next big Shonen hit and the wacky comedy of a Japanese Monty Python into one strange series.
Nichijou is set in a small town and follows an eclectic group of characters in various interconnected sketches. Nothing is as it seems; jokes hide around every corner, and the background is filled with additional gags. Nichijou is a show that you can switch off to whilst simultaneously demanding your fullest attention.
Ping Pong: The Animation
Ping Pong The Animation is often considered to be one of the best anime with a unique animation style. Like most shows with a unique visual style, Science SARU was in charge of bringing Taiyo Matsumoto’s manga to life in a short, single-season anime, and they definitely delivered.
Ping Pong follows childhood best friends “Smile” and “Peco,” two aspiring ping pong players with very different work ethics. After being bested by a former international player, Peco questions why he started playing in the first place, while a coach notices Smile’s innate talent, despite his reluctance to be competitive.
Summertime Rendering
Summertime Rendering is often regarded as a hidden gem by those who have had the pleasure of watching it. The dark mystery series is based on the manga by Yasuki Tanaka, which was published in Shueisha’s Shonen Jump+ between 2017 and 2021. Summertime Rendering is a classic murder mystery with a dark supernatural twist.
Set in the small town of Hitogashima, the series follows Sinpei Ajiro, who returns home for the funeral of his childhood friend, Ushio. But, when he learns of details that throw the nature of her death into question, including her mysterious doppelganger known by the locals as a “Shadow,” Shinpei tries to get to the bottom of the increasingly dark mystery.
Heavenly Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyou)
There’s mystery sci-fi anime, and then there’s Heavenly Delusion. Based on the manga by Masakazu Ishiguro, Heavenly Delusion seemingly came out of nowhere in 2023 on Hulu to deliver a mind-bending sci-fi mystery that doesn’t hold the audience’s hand.
The show is set fifteen years after dangerous creatures have infested the Earth and hunt humans, while a lucky few live within an isolated shelter. The children of the shelter are nurtured and raised with good educations. But, their curiosity about the outside world continues to grow.
Dororo
Dororo is a series that doesn’t get talked about enough by anime fans. Based on Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga of the same name, the series already received an anime back in 1969, as well as a live-action movie in 2007. But, when Studio MAPPA got hold of the franchise in 2019, the classic story received the high budget anime it deserves.
The series follows Hyakkimaru, a blind, deaf, and disfigured ronin who travels across Japan with a young child, the titular Dororo, hunting demons. For every demon he kills, a part of his body grows back, leading Hyakkimaru to search for answers about his mysterious parents.
