- Haikyu
- Demon Slayer
- Dragon Ball Z
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
- One Piece
- Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
- Attack on Titan
- Cowboy Bebop
- Death Note
- Evangelion
agree with all except AOT, but prolly just my tastes
Calling some of these masterpieces is more than a stretch. Maybe cultural phenomenons is more apt.
Agreed. Evangelion was a goddamn mess
On the one hand, the setup and animation were amazing. In the other hand… damnit Shinji.

Disgusting
Oh, look. Another slopticle with a list of titles everyone knows. How novel…
Over half of these are Shonen…
I sometimes think I ought to start One Piece, but every time I think about starting, I’m reminded that:
- I’ve kindof got a completionism problem and…
- IT’S GOT LIKE 1,150 EPISODES HOLY FUCK
1,150 episodes at about 20 minutes of storytelling nets you about 380 hours. If you put in at least 10 hours a week, you could easily catch up in well under a year.
That tracks, actually. When I first started watching it took me about six months at that pace to catch up to the (at the time) current arc, which was Fishman Island.
Nowadays there’s the One Pace project that makes it considerably easier
At this point I would consider just waiting for when the series gets reanimated in The One Piece.
Or read the manga. I watched the first 150 or so episodes before the pacing issues really started showing up, then made the switch to print media.
“One Pace” if that’s too many episodes for you. It’s good though. But it’s also still airing…
Too much lengthy shounen action stuff, some of which isn’t particularly good or original. A couple of those series aren’t even finished, and shouldn’t be evaluated until they are. Some stuff that maybe should be there and isn’t: Utena TV (or any other Ikuhara), Escaflowne TV, any classic Miyazaki movie, Trigun (original 1990s version), any of the better Gundam or Gundam-adjacent series, any of Leiji Matsumoto’s better works, a decent mahou shoujo series, and Grave of the Fireflies (which, whatever else you might say about it, does qualify as a rite of passage and an impressive demonstration of just how much emotion a bunch of drawings can evoke in a human being). And that’s just the older material.
I’d agree with this. It feels like Shounen + the first anime a lot of millennials watched or really cut their teeth on.
Of specifically TV shows I think Evangelion, Dragon Ball Z, Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note, Attack on Titan, and Cowboy Bebop should be on this list.
Everything else could be purged. There is just a lot of overlap.
We should add some rom/com. I’d be partial to add Love is War.
I honestly don’t think anything with the pacing issues of Dragon Ball Z should be on this list. I can’t imagine actually suggesting to someone that they sit through all that when they could be watching Gurren Lagann or something instead.
Also, Love is War is great. Was actually just reading through volume 11 a minute ago.
I couldn’t watch Dragon Balls b/c of their “last time on Dragonball”… then 30s new content, then preview of the next episode style. Maybe the network just had a bad cut. But it seemed that the fights always lasted at least two episodes…
And how is it that Girls and Panzer is not on the list? 😁👍
Despite it’s flaws, I actually really like DBZ Kai as an alternative to the original run.
Love and Peace!





