10 best anime of the 21st century

Anime has seen a surge in popularity globally in the 21st century, thanks to streaming services and the internet making these Japanese animated shows more accessible than ever.

The past two decades have blessed anime fans with some groundbreaking works that have wowed audiences with their imaginative stories, captivating visuals, and multidimensional characters.

Let's explore some of the most acclaimed anime of the 21st century that have won critical adoration and captured the collective imaginations of global audiences thanks to their perceptive writing and resonance with the human condition.

Note: The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

10 must-watch anime of the 21st century

1. Violet Evergarden

Violet Evergarden (Image via Kyoto Animation)

After a brutal war, ex-child soldier Violet Evergarden is discharged with prosthetic arms and one question: “What did ‘I love you’ mean when her major said it?”. She becomes an Auto Memory Doll, a ghostwriter who translates her clients’ feelings into physical letters, slowly piecing together the concept of human emotion.

In this Kyoto Animation’s work, every pastel sky and shimmering lens flare becomes an emotional magnifying glass, turning silences into miniature symphonies. Violet’s mechanical precision as a letter-writer strikingly contrasts with her fumbling internal life, creating an empathy engine unlike anything else in anime.

The episodic structure of Violet Evergarden opens like a scrapbook of grief and hope, solidifying this anime of the 21st century as a high-water mark for modern character drama.

2. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Tanjiro Kamado’s peaceful mountain life shatters when a demon slaughters his family and turns his sister, Nezuko, into one of their own. Setting out with his black Nichirin Blade and a bamboo-muzzled companion, Tanjiro’s quest to cure Nezuko evolves into a sprawling battle against Muzan Kibutsuji and the Twelve Kizuki.

Ufotable’s dazzling visuals helped launch Demon Slayer to box-office success, but the real strength lies in the emotional clarity beneath all the vibrant swordplay. Tanjiro’s deep compassion isn’t blind optimism, it’s defiance against a world built on suffering.

Each Hashira backstory pulls the viewer into deeply emotional tales, while episode 19’s “Hinokami” remains a benchmark for how cinema-grade animation can still throb with heart.

3. Mob Psycho 100

Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama is an eighth-grade esper whose emotions silently tick up like a sealed pressure cooker. Working for a con-artist exorcist, Mob juggles adolescent awkwardness, psychic turf wars, and the terrifying truth that hitting 100% emotional output could annihilate an entire city block.

Studio Bones elevates ONE’s rough webcomic sketches into a kinetic display of elastic limbs, graffiti-like textures, and dizzying visuals. Beneath the vibrant battles, however, lies a deeply human message: superpowers are no replacement for emotional healing, and compassion is more powerful than pyrokinesis.

Mob Psycho 100 Season 2’s climax, where Mob defends his master, remains the single sharpest piece of character assassination-turned-vindication in recent memory.

4. March Comes in Like a Lion

March Comes in Like a Lion (Image via Shaft)

Rei Kiriyama is a seventeen-year-old shogi prodigy who lives alone in a spartan Tokyo flat, suffocated by depression and the weight of foster-family expectations. The Kawamoto sisters—Akari, Hinata, and Momo—barge into his life with kotatsu warmth, matcha parfaits, and an invitation to begin healing.

March Comes in Like a Lion’s oblique angles and watercolor pastels transform into visual poetry, turning shogi matches into mental dragon battles and grocery store aisles into potential arenas for panic attacks.

The narrative parses depression not as melodrama but as an atmospheric pressure system, giving viewers vocabulary for inarticulable feelings. Few anime of the 21st century have blended the strategic tension of sports anime with such honest insight into mental health.

5. Steins;Gate

Self-proclaimed mad scientist Rintaro Okabe discovers that a jerry-rigged microwave can send text messages to the past. Mucking about with the timeline seems harmless—until it isn’t—and every tweak triggers a cascading butterfly effect that threatens the lives of the Future Gadget Lab’s tight-knit circle.

What begins as lighthearted comedy pivots sharply into a gripping, high-caliber meditation on inevitability, consequence, and the soul-gouging price of trying to fix everything.

Okabe’s transformation from a delusional, self-styled genius to a broken idealist is one of modern anime’s great metamorphoses, while Mayuri’s cheerful “Tutturu—” still carries a lingering sense of emotional unease for discerning viewers.

6. Jujutsu Kaisen

Yuji Itadori, an unnaturally athletic high-schooler, swallows the withered finger of a demonic overlord to save his friends. Now host to the evil Sukuna, Yuji enters Tokyo Jujutsu High’s deadly training program, where cursed techniques, dangerous missions, and ethically compromised mentors await.

MAPPA’s sharp animation and explosive combat scenes set a new gold standard for TV-grade action. But JJK also uses shōnen tropes with precise self-awareness: the power system’s cursed energy is basically metaphorical burnout, and every domain expansion is a symbol for ideological conflict.

The anime of the 21st century proves that gore-filled horror and absurd comedy can coexist without feeling jarring.

7. Hunter x Hunter

Young Gon Freecss leaves his island home to obtain a coveted Hunter license and find the father who abandoned him.

Alongside revenge-driven Kurapika, ex-assassin Killua, and aspiring doctor Leorio, Gon confronts sky-piercing exam towers, mafia labyrinths, and an ever-darkening world where friendship can be weaponized. Yoshihiro Togashi’s storytelling engine turns shōnen optimism into something brutal and unflinching.

The Chimera Ant arc alone shifts the moral compass of a genre built on ambition, turning a shōnen hero into a vessel of unintended destruction. Madhouse’s smooth, system-level detail in Nen mechanics gives the series nonstop highlight-worthy moments, but its emotional impact is the most powerful force of all.

8. Attack on Titan

Attack on Titan (Image via Wit Studio / MAPPA)

Humanity cowers behind concentric walls built to fend off man-eating titans. When the Colossal Titan breaches Wall Maria, soldier-to-be Eren Yeager swears to exterminate every giant, unearthing conspiracies that spiral from Man vs. Monster into Man vs. Man vs. History itself.

Attack on Titan's jaw-dropping stunts, spinning camera shots, and acrobatic use of vertical maneuvering gear would make the list on spectacle alone. Yet Hajime Isayama’s geopolitical labyrinth interrogates nationalism, generational trauma, and the ethics of inherited guilt with a sophistication that stunned audiences.

9. Your Name

Rural shrine maiden Mitsuha and Tokyo boy Taki inexplicably swap bodies at random intervals through dreams. Past rural festivals and sky-brightening comets, the two grow emotionally entangled across timelines and eventually race to avert the cosmic catastrophe that will bisect their stories before they can meet in the same place and time.

Makoto Shinkai wraps spiritual themes in a swirl of lens-flared skylines, wispy cloud-covered ceilings, and touches of Shinto mythology. Beneath the sci-fi framework is a romance that sees memory as a layered story, written and rewritten by time, aging, and catastrophe.

The film anime of the 21st century shattered worldwide box-office assumptions about anime’s crossover potential, proving that hand-drawn heartbeats can still compete with Marvel CGI.

10. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Image via Bones)

Brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric commit the ultimate alchemical taboo—human transmutation and pay grotesque prices: Ed loses an arm and a leg, while Al’s soul is bonded to an empty suit of armor.

Their search for the Philosopher’s Stone leads through a militarized nation where wars, genocide, and godhood intersect. Studio Bones adapts Hiromu Arakawa’s manga from start to finish with clockwork pacing, earning accolades as a shōnen series that many critics consider “perfect.”

Every subplot circles back with careful precision, every arc raises the philosophical stakes until questions of belief, morality, and emergency politics move in perfect sync. Its subtitle, “Brotherhood,” isn’t a marketing add-on but a promise honored across sixty-four episodes of both asteroid-scale spectacle and intimate humanity.

Conclusion

These ten anime of the 21st century showcase a range: horror breaking hearts, swords cutting down titans, empaths learning to write love letters, and mad scientists changing reality one text message at a time. Together, they prove that animation can teach, comfort, shatter, and rebuild, often all in a single episode.

The list is still growing, but any talk about what makes anime essential starts with these standout titles.