The Best Anime of 2025 (So Far)

"What is the best anime of 2025?" doesn't have one answer — it has one answer per mood. Here's what actually earned its spot on the shelf this year, broken out by what you're in the mood for instead of jammed into a single ranked list.

Best anime series of 2025

Solo Leveling S2: Arise from the Shadow picks up the power-fantasy climb with bigger dungeons and higher stakes. Sakamoto Days keeps proving that "world's deadliest hitman now runs a convenience store" is a genuinely great premise, not just a pitch.Kaiju No. 8 Season 2 raises the danger on its desk-job-with-monster-hunting-benefits hook, and Dr. Stone: Science Future is still the rare shonen that treats "rebuilding civilization" as an actual science lesson instead of a hand-wave.

Best anime movies of 2025

Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc turns a first date into the bloodiest stretch of the series so far, and it's a serious answer if you're after the best anime movies this year specifically, not just of all time. If you want the year's biggest theatrical event, keep an eye onDemon Slayer: Infinity Castle — the trilogy opener for one of the genre's largest ongoing sagas.

Best BL and romance anime of 2025

Heaven Official's Blessing S3 pushes its Chinese-mythology danmei epic toward the endgame, and Sasaki and Miyano: Graduation closes out one of the most consistently recommended school BL stories with real weight. On the lighter side,The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity is 2025's best answer for anyone who wants a romance anime recommendation that isn't a love triangle.

Best historical Chinese anime of 2025

Scissor Seven S5 is still the funniest, scruffiest thing coming out of Chinese donghua, and Soul Land: Retry brings genuine CGI ambition to its xianxia do-over premise. Both are proof that historical Chinese anime recommendations shouldn't be an afterthought on a "best anime 2025" list — they were some of the strongest genre work of the year.

How this compares to "best anime of all time"

None of this year's list is trying to replace Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Steins;Gate, or Vinland Saga at the top of an all-time ranking — those earned their reputations over years, not months. What 2025 offers instead is momentum: sequels finally paying off setup from two or three seasons ago, and newer shows still building toward whatever they'll be remembered for. Filter the shelf to Classic if you want the settled, all-time picks; filter to 2025 if you want to watch the next ones get made.