Curated Guides

Best Anti-Hero Anime

An anti-hero is neither a villain nor an ordinary hero wearing a darker coat. This kind of protagonist has goals you can understand completely, paired with methods that would have you testifying against them in court. The pleasure comes from staying close enough to want their plan to work while seeing exactly what that success will cost. This list is not interested in the modern habit of calling a perfectly decent lead morally grey because he happens to scowl at people. Each series commits to the idea through conquest, war crimes, assassination, or revenge pursued as a full-time occupation. What changes from show to show is the judgment. Two put their protagonists on trial and turn the reckoning into the heart of the story. Two others never suggest that he is wrong, leaving you to keep score without their help. That can be much harder to sit with. The ranking begins with the coldest, most detached examples and works down toward the stories that eventually break your heart over what their characters have done.