Lucky Star and K-on for CGDCT
Evangelion for meta-commentary and deconstruction, to the point that future works that qualify often get called the “Evangelion of <genre>”
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Attack on Titan for battle shounen
Bocchi the Rock for girls band anime, specifically
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro for pretty much all of Ghibli
Akira for 90s anime
I don’t think Digimon quite occupies the same sphere – it’s like comparing Chronicles of Narnia to Ready Player One.
I’m not even sure how to rate the multiple .hack// series here because they were really experimental (one branch leaving half of its story in PS2 games) and AFAIK nobody was directly copying them. Meanwhile, after SAO…