Original Anime

2021 · 1 Season · TV Tokyo · Mystery / Thriller / Comedy

Odd Taxi is a mystery thriller disguised as a show about talking animals, featuring one of the tightest scripts in anime history. A walrus taxi driver's conversations with his passengers gradually reveal an interconnected web of secrets, crimes, and a missing girl case that draws in everyone from idol fans to yakuza enforcers. The writing is razor-sharp, the characters are instantly memorable, and every seemingly throwaway detail pays off in ways that reward close attention. It's one of the best anime of the 2020s and one of the most criminally underwatched.

2006 · 2 Seasons · MBS · Mecha / Political Thriller / Action

Code Geass is a political thriller wrapped in a mecha anime that delivers one of the medium's most iconic protagonists and most debated endings. Lelouch's chess game against an empire crumbles and rebuilds across fifty episodes of escalating stakes, strategic confrontations, and moral compromises that keep viewers questioning whether the ends justify the means. The second season's tonal swings and plot conveniences undercut the precision of the first, but the series as a whole remains one of the most ambitious and rewarding anime of the 2000s.

2018 · 1 Season · AT-X · Adventure / Drama / Comedy

A Place Further Than the Universe is a coming-of-age adventure about four high school girls who travel to Antarctica, and it uses that improbable premise to tell one of anime's most emotionally resonant stories about friendship, grief, and finding the courage to take the first step. Madhouse's production is polished throughout, the four leads are distinct and genuinely likable, and the show builds toward emotional payoffs that hit with surprising force. It was recognized by The New York Times as one of the best TV shows of 2018, and it earned that distinction.

2004 · 1 Season · Fuji TV · Action / Comedy / Adventure

Samurai Champloo fuses Edo-period Japan with hip-hop culture in a show that's as stylish as it is entertaining. Shinichiro Watanabe's follow-up to Cowboy Bebop delivers gorgeous fight choreography, one of anime's best soundtracks, and a trio of characters whose chemistry carries the show through its episodic adventures. The overarching narrative takes a back seat to the vibes, and not every episode hits with the same force, but when Samurai Champloo is cooking, nothing else in anime looks, sounds, or feels quite like it.

2012 · 3 Seasons · Fuji TV · Sci-Fi / Thriller / Crime

Psycho-Pass delivers one of anime's most compelling dystopian worlds and one of its best cat-and-mouse dynamics in a first season that stands among the finest sci-fi thrillers in the medium. Gen Urobuchi's writing creates a society where thoughts themselves are policed, then methodically exposes the cracks in that system through a villain whose intellect matches his menace. Later seasons can't sustain the same quality, but the first season alone justifies the show's reputation as essential cyberpunk anime.