5 Bucket List Anime Every Fan Needs To Watch At Least Once

It’s no secret that anime has come to be an absolute global phenomenon, but what comes along with that is a tenured history of excellent series. From simple “guilty pleasure” comfort watches to deeply provocative shows that really push the boundaries of animation as an art form, anime has proven to have something for everyone.

While a good anime isn’t necessarily defined by its ability to change someone’s life, there are some that really get under one’s skin and leave an indelible impression. Many of the most renowned anime ever are so beloved for precisely that reason. But once one makes it past the more obvious choices for life-changing anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Fullmetal Alchemist, the question is inevitably raised: what’s left?

The good news is that there are plenty more anime everyone should watch at least once, for one reason or another. Whether for their messages or their central themes, there’s still a bounty of great anime to watch whose messages and themes will linger long after watching.

Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou No Shichinin

As one of anime’s most prestigious studios, Madhouse hasn’t ever lost steam: in fact, recent giants like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End mean they’re perhaps more popular than ever. But older fans will remember Madhouse’s unprecedented run in the 2000s and 2010s that could even be called their “Golden Age”, handling such fondly remembered works as Death Note, Monster, Claymore, Paranoia Agent, and so many more. With such massive works under their belt, it might come as little surprise that one hidden gem slipped through the cracks: their 2010 adaptation of Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin.

There is no anime like Rainbow. The story is technically a historical fiction set in post-war Japan early during the American occupation, when many Japanese youths are left bereft and without opportunity. Seven boys meet within a cell where, generally, they’ve been put away for petty offenses. Chronicling their lives before, within, and beyond the walls of their deeply abusive correctional facility, Rainbow blossoms into a gorgeous story of overcoming one’s circumstances and choosing life even when it’s most difficult.

Rainbow is one of the most brutal watches one will ever experience in an indescribable way. It’s also, easily, one of the most beautiful. It goes places few other anime could or would in a remarkable exploration of resilience and found family. For all viewers, it will be one of the hardest anime they’ll ever watch; it will also be one of the most rewarding.

Code Geass

Code Geass occupies a strange place within anime’s canon. It’s often regarded highly as a cult classic and a strong mecha anime in its own right. The ending to the original series is celebrated as one of anime’s best finales, and its colorful cast of characters has been etched into fans’ memories. However, the weird thing about Code Geass is that it’s not often taken seriously and considered on its own terms.

Maybe it’s for the melodrama or some of its seemingly absurd twists, but it’s easy to believe from the outside that Code Geass is both a story worth celebrating and a story not worth the time it would take to actually watch it.

That couldn’t be further from the truth, though. Code Geass isn’t just a mecha anime, and it’s not just a tableau where its cast is given the spotlight. For its time, Code Geass was a definitive experience of political world-building in mainstream anime. It embeds questions of identity and colonization into its surprisingly broad world in a way that feels wholly digestible. Characters like Lelouch, Suzaku, and Euphemia elegantly reflect the contradictions of the world that made them, and the perceived melodrama is often a real—if exaggerated—reaction to the tension that’s always nearly bubbling over.

When watched on its own terms, Code Geass makes it perfectly clear why its fanbase is so devoted; it rarely gets credit for the fact that it’s not about Lelouch, but about the world that makes Lelouch possible. It might not always be the most gingerly executed story, but it’s one of a kind in its scope, charm, and its ability to toy with complicated ideas in a way that never feels forced or condescending.

Blue Lock

Blue Lock is certain to be a controversial pick, since the series isn’t even finished yet. Nonetheless, it’s done something so few shōnen series up to now have managed: it’s perfectly executed the shōnen sports story archetype while turning both sports and shōnen anime on their heads, aspiring to something much greater.

If Blue Lock does anything, it shows precisely where shōnen anime writ large can go in the future, and time will certainly see it as a legendary landmark in approachably philosophical shōnen storytelling, not to mention a watershed for sports series in general.

Blue Lock covers the story of Isagi, who enters into a program entitled “Blue Lock” which intends to create a legendary striker that can carry Japanese soccer to the world stage. A simple enough premise, sure—but then comes the twist: where most sports anime emphatically prioritize ideas like teamwork and reciprocity, Blue Lock instead unlocks something incredible by taking a distinctly different direction: selfishness without self-centeredness, asking every player to inquire into their unique strengths in a cutthroat tournament to be the best.

The messages alone, of strength and resilience and self-overcoming, are enough to recommend the series. But what makes it a life-changing series is how effectively these are delivered. As of the time of writing, Blue Lock has delivered two of what are easily the hypest seasons of any shōnen anime to date, and its philosophical musings on greatness—something the series positions as coming from oneself just as much as it comes from one’s relationship to others—are worthy of being considered life-changing in their own right.

NANA

For one reason or another, anime aimed at female demographics are often considered optional viewing compared to their shōnen and seinen counterparts. It’s an easy enough sell to convince someone to pick up Monster or Berserk, but NANA is a much harder case to make for many people who feel they won’t gel with its female perspective.

The irony is that, much like Berserk and Monster are respectively anime masterworks of grimdark existentialism and psychological suspense, NANA is likewise an anime masterwork of grounded human interaction—and it’s equally deserving of viewers’ attention.

To be clear, neutralizing NANA‘s unique appeal to women by implying it’s a series everyone can encounter on the same terms would almost feel disrespectful to its deeply feminist perspective—for example, showing the complexities of life as a woman without psychologizing or moralizing its female cast. It’s not a series everyone can identify with equally; one’s experience of NANA always depends on one’s perspective.

That’s precisely why everyone should watch NANA. It’s in those chasms of understanding and experience where NANA finds its singular voice, deftly exploring a wide gamut of deeply human behavior that evokes the reality of how personal histories (including gender and sexuality) impact it in the first place.

In NANA, love, empathy, and understanding all come hard; they also come easily—as easily as exploitation and the thing at the edge of one’s mind one feels one shouldn’t do, but feels compelled to do anyway. It handles every moment with a delicacy and distance that lets viewers also both distance themselves from and relate to the deeply complicated situations on screen.

NANA is a must-watch for everyone simply because, at the end of the day, it’s anime’s most earnestly human exploration of what it means to be a person—and therefore to be a flawed person—living amidst other flawed people.

Orb: On The Movements Of The Earth

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is a deeply unique series that takes something unconventional as its subject. While science, or the notion of scientific progress, isn’t exactly new ground for the medium—see Shōnen Jump’s fantastically popular Dr. Stone, for example—Orb does something particularly interesting: it lays out knowledge itself as a battlefield.

It’s very easy to see history and understanding as linear progress where, over time, some people are simply more correct than others, and they win out in the end. Orb reveals why that idea is worthy of suspicion. Based in medieval Poland during the days when the doctrine of geocentrism reigned supreme, diffused and enforced by the authority of the Catholic Church, a surface-level view might see Orb as the story of brave intellectual warriors championing heliocentrism against all odds to create modern day understanding.

Orb actually exists precisely to complicate that kind of reading. Through a chance encounter with and the subsequent transmission of one boy’s secret ambitions, the series blurs the lines between heretics and devotees over literal generations. Motivations cross and unlikely alliances form; devout members of the Church question doctrine and atheists docked in the shadows work in its favor. Commitments like family, stability, and interpersonal relationships often take precedence over one’s belief in what’s true or false.

In other words, Orb shows how it’s easy to say that one should always fight for their beliefs, but in an epic tale worthy of comparison with the likes of Vinland Saga, it ventures a step further than that cliché to reveal the costs and complications behind truth itself. Truth, in Orb‘s view, is hard-won, storied, and always subject to bigger things than just belief: it’s always entangled with punishments, promotions, personal obligations, and petty disputes. Heliocentrism is indisputable, but Orb‘s account of how it became indisputable is what makes it one of the best anime ever made.