Hozuna Lists
Curated Guides
Page 7 of 7
Best 2010s Anime
During the 2010s, anime became something viewers could follow without having to hunt it down. Legal simulcasts turned Japanese broadcasts into global events within the same week. The growing audience brought larger budgets with it, while a new generation of directors received the resources to make the projects they genuinely wanted to make. This selection is not a popularity chart. Several of the decade's enormous hits are absent by design. Instead, these are the series and films that still hold up after the surrounding arguments and hype have cooled, including work you could recommend years from now without adding an apology or disclaimer. The order moves roughly from loud spectacle toward quieter chamber drama, so placement should not be read as a verdict on quality. Two rules guided the choices. Franchises that began before the decade were excluded because this list is concerned with what the 2010s built for itself. Works whose true peak came after the decade ended were saved for another list. A complete remake still qualifies when it starts the story over as a new production and makes its own choices.
Best Anime Villains
A great villain cannot be measured by a power level or a body count. What matters is the argument they bring into the story and how hard that argument is to dismiss. Their desires should make an uncomfortable kind of sense when viewed from their side, even when their actions do not. Every pick below features an antagonist who makes the surrounding show sharper. They decide the terms of the conflict, push the hero toward choices they never expected to face, and alter the sort of ending the story can reach. This list stays deliberately light on spoilers. It names almost nobody and avoids details that would steal the force of a discovery. You will not find villains chosen only because they serve as an imposing final obstacle, no matter how beautifully their fights are animated. Menace becomes dull when there is no idea behind it. The order follows a loose progression. It begins with stories led by their villains, moves through series shaped by a defining antagonist, and ends with shows in which the true source of harm may be a whole system. That progression is a spectrum rather than a ranking of importance. The final entry could easily be the one you think about for the longest time.
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.
Best Anime with Genius Main Characters
These anime give their protagonists a weapon more useful than brute force: a mind that can take control of the story. The best moments arrive when a bluff holds or a contingency pays off. Sometimes a plan that has been hiding in plain sight finally becomes visible. I ranked the shows by how much the plot depends on that intelligence and how satisfying it is to watch in action. That puts Death Note first, while the warmer and gentler thinkers appear further down. A character does not qualify just because the script calls them smart. Their decisions have to shape events, and their cleverness has to keep the story moving. The selections cover cold schemers as well as romantic tacticians who turn courtship into psychological combat. There are also constructive minds whose first instinct is to build rather than manipulate. The mood ranges from grim to ridiculous, and Dr. Stone even follows a genius rebuilding civilisation from scratch. Each pick offers the same particular pleasure: seeing a formidable idea come together just before, or sometimes just after, you understand what its architect was doing.