I haven’t watched much animation since I was a kid outside of occasionally South Park, Family Guy, or the Simpsons, but I haven’t really watched even those in the last few years. Then a year or two ago I watched ATLA and LoK after. I just finished a re-watch and am now on a bit of an animation kick. After those I tried Blue Eye Samurai and Arcane, and both where great. Now I’m watching Legend of Vox Machina and Mighty Nein. So far so good. Oh and of course I’ve been keeping up with Invincible. I guess im looking for more suggestions similar to those, but I can be a bit picky. I thought AoT was good during the first several seasons, but I got lost with the plot and haven’t watched the last few.
Anything by Studio Ghibli
Death Note and Code Geass are some of the best psychological thrillers.
Cowboy Bebop is an all time great.
Seven Deadly Sins is fun and Four Knights of the Apocalypse is a good sequel.
Bojack Horseman and F is for Family are good western adult animation.
Violet Evergarden is a good romantic/emotional show.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon are good shows in somewhat the same genre as vox Machina.
RWBY is worth watching at least through season 3, the creator died during the third seasons and the later stuff isn’t quite as good.
Scavenger’s Reign is an incredible science fiction series.
The original Trigun series is great. It does start off a bit comical but then it gets more serious towards the end.
Watch the main character for what he is doing not for how he’s acting.
Castlevania is also a great animation series. Haven’t seen the new series, but the original one without any additional naming parts was great!
Some older stuff:
Cowboy Bepop is a great anime that doesn’t have a lot of the stereotypical anime stuff.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a great Anime with a nice & long story as well as action scenes.
Gargoyles is a wonderful American cartoon that doesn’t feel like its for kids, similar to ATLA. It tells a continuous story with its characters and has great characters.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is my top recommendation for folks new to anime, it’s one of the best out there.
Pantheon. It only has 2 seasons, has a definitive ending, and is currently on Netflix.
EDIT: Also, have you already watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners?
If you mean animation with actual effort put into the writing, Psycho-Pass was good enough to stand out among shows in general, not just as animation.
If you haven’t already, you should check out the works of Studio Ghibli. They have sticking power for a reason.
Robot Chicken
Rick and Morty
Was going to say Arcane based on title but see you already saw that, which is good. Have you seen Common Side Effects?
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End - I tell people that if you only watch one anime, make it this one. An absolute masterpiece in every way, with a story and characters that I think can hook anyone. Season 2 is about to begin soon.
- Bocchi the Rock! - If you want to see animators really having fun with their medium, the visual humor is what elevates this show above and beyond. Cutaway gags involve 3D models, claymation, paper cutouts, puppets, and even live action.
- CITY: The Animation - Like Bocchi, this is animation for animation’s sake, just go look at the trailer for this one. The only thing I like more than Keiichi Arawi’s artwork is the production values putting it into motion.
- Apocalypse Hotel - My anime of the year for 2025. This is one of those shows where if I can convince you to look nothing up and go in blind, you’ll have a blast with its twists and turns. One season, 12 episodes, short and sweet and delightful.
- Takopi’s Original Sin - I can’t recommend this one to just anyone, it is a horrifically dark gut punch covered in content warnings. But if you can handle its subject matter, it is the best kind of gut punch, and it’s short. What really sells it is that it never crosses the line into just edginess for edge’s sake, which allows it to hit harder because of how real and human the suffering feels.
- Spy x Family - If you don’t want to watch something as dark as Takopi, or if you did watch Takopi and you need a palate cleanser afterwards, here’s a cute happy comedy about two bozos trying to be good parents to their adopted daughter. It is impossible to watch this show without grinning from ear to ear the whole time.
Batman: The Animated Series is top tier animation. The whole DCAU is superb. I think it starts with Batman, then Superman, then Batman: The New Adventures (though it’s often lobbed in with BTAS), Batman Beyond, Justice League and finally Justice League Unlimited.
It’s when kids aren’t treated like idiots that great shows are made.
Much more comedic but also awesome are Phineas and Ferb and Milo Murphy.
One Piece, its only one season! (/s)
For something wildly violent/sexual and hilarious, but still good storytelling, Helluva Boss on youtube is good. Kinda disappointed they’re rebooting it for amazon tbh
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a goddamn masterpiece, and it will hurt you.
Edit: can’t believe i forgot it but seconding Castlevania, its amazing
Its been my favorite lately.
Its lax but smart.
One Punch Man
It’s a shame they never continued the show after the first season. Maybe one day we’ll see some new episodes and hopefully Matrix sequels since the original movie was amazing.
Hopefully I didn’t miss any context, but, um, there’s a season 2, and seasons 3 is currently being released weekly
(They’re bad. Like, really bad. I watched season two and don’t remember any of it, and i stopped watching 3 a few episodes in.)
Sometimes, when a series starts out with something impactful, it greatly increases audience’s expectations.
But it is not particularly easy to keep that up continuously, making the rest seem worse than it is.“Oshi no Ko” had that kind of effect, with the first double episode having that kind of impact, making the few subsequent episodes feel lacklustre before again having some great ones. But the “lacklustre” ones were still normally interesting episodes.
Similarly for “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei”, which with its well placed BGM (although now that I get back to it, I kinda don’t like the tracks they selected) matching the scenes and great OP/ED complementing the story and the imagery making me feel a depth to the world, drove me to read the novel. And even though the subsequent seasons were extremely fun and even better in some ways, I didn’t end up getting the same feeling.
“One Punch Man” seems to be having a similar problem.
