Crunchyroll Reveals the Top 10 Best Anime to Watch With OP Main Characters

September 19, 2025

Anime fans who love a no-holds-barred story about a hero who can do absolutely anything should direct their attention to Crunchyroll’s list of great anime with OP heroes.

While most great anime on platforms like Crunchyroll have balanced underdog heroes, such as Attack on Titan and Bocchi the Rock!, Crunchyroll’s staff know that a glamorous, OP hero is the ultimate escapism, and there’s a huge market for it. Crunchyroll’s new list of anime starring OP protagonists is also an enlightening one, showing how there’s more than one kind of power trip, even in the realm of isekai and similar genres.

10 Perfect Anime for Fans of OP Main Characters, According to Crunchyroll

Image by CBR.

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince, So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (Lloyd)
Solo Leveling (Sung Jinwoo)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Rimuru Tempest)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Haruhi)
Overlord (Ainz Ooal Gown)
Mashle: Magic and Muscles (Mash Burnedead)
Mob Psycho 100 (Shigeo ‘Mob’ Kageyama)
Inuyashiki Last Hero (Inuyashiki Ichiro)
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. (Saiki Kusuo)
Sailor Moon/Sailor Moon Crystal (Usagi Tsukino)

Crunchyroll’s list of great anime for fans of overpowered heroes includes some obvious picks, such as Solo Leveling and Tensura, but there’s more to read into the list than that. The lineup of OP hero anime that being overpowered comes in different forms, creating a remarkable amount of diversity among these anime and their lead characters. To start with, several of these titles are isekai anime, including Tensura and Overlord. Overpowered isekai leads are extremely common as an expression of pure escapism and a sandbox approach to life, as shown with Rimuru Tempest and Ainz Ooal Gown. The trick is that these two anime and their respective leads are more than just audience gratification, as both show what a burden and responsibility their powers and leadership are. Both anime also treat fans to expansive worldbuilding in fantasy realms.

Another trend in Crunchyroll’s lineup is how some anime clearly feature self-insert heroes, while others feature OP leads with their own well-defined arcs. Solo Leveling and Overlord both take the self-insert route, showing that even if self-inserts may sometimes be cheap by nature, they can still be compelling if the rest of the anime still delivers. Notably, Jinwoo Sung and Ainz Ooal Gown are both total aura farmers, making them superficially cooler than self-inserts like Kirito (Sword Art Online) tend to be. Conversely, OP heroes like Haruhi Suzumiya, Usagi Tsukino and Mash Burnedead all have well-defined character arcs and personalities (as well as involve plenty of comedy), rather than hollow self-inserts.

A few more of the anime in Crunchyroll’s list feature characters who can’t entirely make up for how overpowered they are, even if they can beat anyone in a fight. The likes of Shigeo Kageyama, Mash Burnedead and Haruhi Suzumiya have serious personal woes and/or are reluctant to actually fight anyone, giving these characters more depth than their overwhelming stats might suggest. Fans can compare these characters to the likes of Saitama (One-Punch Man) and Frieren (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End), who have similar arcs where being OP can’t conveniently fix all their problems.