Top 10 Underrated Anime You Probably Skipped
Every season, a handful of great shows get buried under the big names. These ten are the ones we keep recommending to people who think they have seen everything. Ranked by how far their quality outstrips their fame.
The rankings
- Odd Taxi. A walrus taxi driver, a missing girl and the tightest mystery plotting in modern anime. The twist recontextualizes the entire show.
- Ping Pong the Animation. Masaaki Yuasa’s sports masterpiece. Ugly on purpose, beautiful in effect.
- Planetes. Hard science fiction about space garbage collectors that becomes a story about what a life is for.
- Katanagatari. Twelve feature length episodes, one sword per episode, and an ending that hurts.
- Space Brothers. Ninety nine episodes about becoming an astronaut, and every one is warm.
- The Tatami Galaxy. Yuasa again, this time with a time loop about wasted college years.
- Mononoke. A medicine seller, a psychedelic art style and horror that gets under the skin.
- Dorohedoro. MAPPA’s strangest show and its most underappreciated.
- Kaiba. Bodies for sale, memories on chips, drawn like a children’s book.
- Girls’ Last Tour. Two girls, one motorbike, the end of the world, and somehow it is comforting.
Why they got missed
Most of these aired without a big streaming push, or looked too odd in a thumbnail. Art style is the number one reason great anime gets ignored, and it is the worst reason.
My take: Odd Taxi is the show I recommend most and the one people thank me for most. If you only try one from this list, make it that.
