qb 2025 anime numbered list
In contrast to the state of the world, 2025 was an excellent year for anime with several entries that have become my favorites of all time. I appreciate that anime can sometimes still surprise me.
Old anime: Mobile Suit Gundam 0079
I group-watched original gundam at a steady pace of exactly one episode a week during 2025 and had a grand old time with it. Whatever you think of the franchise, the first gundam is that good and it holds up as a unique experience that continues to inform anime history nearly half a century later.
1. BanG Dream: Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast -
BanG Dream is one of the several established anime-music-mobile gacha games, but the main differentiable aspect of this franchise is a stated commitment to prioritizing live concerts, and the purpose of all the other media is effectively to layer on fictional kayfabe to promote the real band. The easiest way to think about it might be those Beatles movies like HELP or Yellow Submarine where they played up their actual personas. Other music/idol anime franchises like Bocchi the Rock will also sell tickets to a real concert, and there isn’t much difference between them and this, but BanG Dream seems more serious about putting on authentic concerts with authentic musicians rather than parading voice actors in cosplay, although at the end of the day that's basically what’s happening because they’re in character. Wikipedia claims that 70-80% of Bandori’s musicians actually play their instruments, but reportedly the vibe of the whole franchise is a positive feedback loop that inspires the minority of the actresses in their recent bands to become musicians in their own right to better fit the characters they play.
My take on this thin distinction is that even at BanG Dream’s most generic (read as seasons 1-3 of the anime), the musical aspect can at least be more sincere than something like Love Live or PriPara, because it all comes back to the real bands rather than promotion of the anime or games, and this mentality also extends to the anime team who more or less never changed through the 3 mediocre seasons, but were also given the time to develop their ideas that might not be sure-fire hits. As a result, they might be a less broadly marketable anime/game franchise, but BanG Dream had positioned itself as more easily able to do something out of left field in one of those areas and set the trends instead of chasing them. BanG Dream MyGo did come out of nowhere to the general public, but the conditions to produce it were already there.
I posted my thoughts on 2023’s BanG Dream: It’s MyGo!!!!! in 2024 and they mostly haven’t changed. MyGo comes off as unpolished at times, but those flaws only serve to make it stronger, it represents a huge swing in a worn-out genre, fighting the trends at the time (although not for the writer, Yuniko Ayana). MyGo weaponizes precise, needling negative emotion instead of broad and easily digestible feelings in a way that other contemporary music anime like Girls Band Cry also tried to variable success, but MyGo proved to be the rare underdog that claimed total control the zeitgeist over its well produced competitors through instead being creatively brave enough to drop nearly all pretense of elements that had become obligatory to these anime, and instead put out something unfamiliar within the genre, but resonant on a less superficial level. The only plate I thought MyGo didn’t catch was the introduction to their dedicated hater band Ave Mujica in the final episode, which just sort of confused me at the time as an inconclusive note to end the season on. Rather than making me excited for further entries, I was unsure what I was supposed to take away from it, since I had grown attached over time to the ramshackle cast of MyGo, and a nepo baby’s theater troupe seemed like a huge departure that wouldn’t include my favorites I had spent the last 13 episodes with. The key knowledge I was missing at the time was that MyGo and Ave Mujica were sister seasons, stories born at the same time from the same team, and I had only watched the prologue.
This extended preamble was to set the stage for more of a recommendation than a review, since Ave Mujica -The Die is Cast- is best experienced diving into the deep end. This season stomped my predictions to dust within the first week, and I spent the rest of that quarter-year holding on for dear life until I was allowed to exit the ride. The director has stated plainly in interviews (spoilers in that interview) that MyGo and Ave Mujica are complementary stories where they wanted to explore specific themes that they were discouraged from bringing up at all in the more traditional seasons. MyGo was already abnormal by the standards of girls rock band anime, but nobody anticipated just how deranged a team forged in the fires of mediocrity could get when MyGo & Ave Mujica turned out to be their blank check. I agonized over where to rank MyGo on that year’s list, but I did not struggle at all with slotting Ave Mujica at number 1 for 2025. MyGo's animation was strong when it mattered, but could occasionally seem inconsistent or wonky when trying to use CG for realism, in contrast Ave Mujica feels stylistically cohesive, deliberate, and polished. Similar to how MyGo’s rough parts made its message stronger as a whole, Ave Mujica has shed this previous weakness of CG, sharpened its visuals to an edge that uses that same uncanny valley to its advantage and has turned this blade against you, the viewer. It’s a unique, hypnotic experience that anticipates and crushes the next escalation from overwrought sad rock band, all while similar contemporary idol-focused franchises are left fiddling with a dial labeled "Soap Opera" and looking back at their audiences for approval when they're already far too late to the punch, because they've invented a natural predator, Insane Metal Band Anime. Where MyGo tells a relatable story with a complicated but ultimately happy ending, Ave Mujica seems fully detached from traditional notions like character growth has to be positive or endings have to be satisfying. Ave Mujica -The Die is Cast- gives the impression that it is beyond caring about what its audience thinks. You're here for a good time? No, those were the last guys. All the exits are locked, the stage is on fire, somebody nearby is screaming. You either watch the performance, or die.
2. Apocalypse Hotel
Unique take on a post-apocalypse that pointedly excludes the human race from the story, finding a new sense of humanity in their absence. It tackles a wide variety of topics from week-to-week and imparts the feeling that literally anything could come next, or any amount of years could pass between each episode. The tone shifts often but invariably returns to the bittersweet-yet-demented comedy that is also uniquely Apocalypse Hotel. The OP theme is arresting and I never skipped it. This is one of the handful of anime I consider perfect and I could only rank fairly against non-anime media. Easily recommend this to anyone and everyone for any reason. It would be number 1 with a bullet in any normal year, but Ave Mujica happened.
3. mono
A personally-targeted combination attack of Yuru Camp sitcom gags with Yama no Susume animation, I love how it looks, and it doesn’t really get deeper than that. Even considering the bias I really like this anime beyond what makes sense or would extend to a recommendation for anyone else.
Some One said mono makes the author look worse and the anime team look better by managing to spin an actual narrative out of the scraps of listless meandering ideas that make up Afro’s cutting room floor gag manga mono and, well he’s right, but that's exactly what I want.
4. CITY THE ANIMATION
Breathtakingly animated adaptation of the manga CITY from the creator of Nichijou, might be Kyoto Animation’s most ambitious project to date, entire show revels in looking hand-drawn and digesting that fact is what makes the magic trick work when it looks far beyond what you thought animators were capable of, at all times. Vivid and expressive beyond the manga it’s adapting and enhanced directly by the creator himself, more than worthy spiritual and sometimes literal follow-up to Nichijou, no other anime has earned a “the animation” subtitle this thoroughly
5. GNOSIA
Out of left field adaptation of a seemingly-unadaptable videogame where you must play a massive number of rounds of a social deduction game against computers. Shuffling a non-linear narrative into a convincing episodic structure and birthing a main character where there were only player choice boxes and a stat system before is pulled off with so little friction that you don’t even notice it. Unambiguously sets the new gold standard for game-to-anime adaptation.
6. Turkey! Time to Strike
Surprise seasonal obsession that masqueraded as a normal-seeming bowling club anime, revealed its hand as a time-traveling historical epic family drama, then made clear that actually all of the science fiction and feudal territory wars were converging into the ultimate point of the story: bowling. The blend of genres and suspicious level of polish was just too odd for me to ignore at first, then gradually developed into something that was uniquely entertaining on its own merits. Turkey also gets props for managing to hide a deeper mystery in its back pocket until the final episode that caught nearly everyone watching it weekly off guard. I’ll always remember this show for making me spittake on frame 1 of the OP, on both OP’s.
7. Wonderful Precure!
Remarkably solid season of Magical Girls that stands among the great Precure seasons, particularly notable for accelerating in the last third where nearly every other Precure season from the last decade slows down. I challenged Wonderful Precure’s questionable premise of talking dog doesn’t fight anything, demanding that main pink magical girl dog Komugi had better be the coolest dog ever portrayed across all media for this conceit to hold my attention for close to fifty episodes, and honestly they got me, because Komugi is a very cool dog.
Particular kudos for delivering on the logical and necessary conclusion of the pet owner season by portraying how that relationship ends in gut-wrenchingly clear and specific terms (not Komugi she's fine), emphasizing that this is an important responsibility that it is imperative you understand before adopting any pet. That episode is completely unfair and devastating to watch at any age and it’s maybe the bravest Precure has ever been tackling difficult subject matter. It hurts to watch, but they knew it would be irresponsible to not to include this in a season about pets and pet owners and pushed for its inclusion, leaving Wonderful with a powerful message that no other Precure has.
8. Okitsura
I was initially dismissive of this sitcom about “what if I liked a girl who had an accent” until I heard it was my favorite shitty director Shin Itagaki known for the infamous Berserk (2016) and even then it took a few seasons for me to watch it for real. The keyword for Okitsura is joyous, it’s simply nice to watch, the jokes are funny, and it sincerely wants you to learn about Okinawan culture with so much enthusiasm that it’s hard not to like it.
9. Maebashi Witches
Maebashi Witches initially pretends to be a travel promotion magical idol anime, and it is that a lot of the time, but this anime really buries the lead on what makes it worth watching. Apparently the whole reason it's set in Maebashi was because they wanted the setting to be the most ditchwater, unremarkable town imaginable, so nobody could blame you for dropping this show by the end of episode 1. I was only watching this show to clown on it, but it eventually won me over by doing the same thing it was already doing, because the cast feel distinctly like real people, having real experiences, and it doesn't shy away from shockingly real issues that you never see in anime, much less this kind of shallow advertisement - which this isn't, the show is lying when it does this because this town is from nowhere and they are selling nothing, please keep up. Over time it becomes clear that the series this resembles the most is a condensed version of the long-running Ojamajo Doremi, in that the serious problems of these characters' lives won't get wrapped up neatly in 25 minutes, and not every changing moment of their lives necessarily even happens on screen to be mined for easy drama points. Maebashi Witches has a bizarrely high level of care put into the writing and overall look for how unassuming and awkwardly off-putting the CG makes it seem at times, which might be on purpose given the ironic setting. This project feels like someone was given a blank check and ran away with it and no producers paid attention before it aired since it seemed so dull, which let them get away with airing dangerous topics and deploying some of the most intensely caustic cliffhangers I've ever seen, it's a hit of spice in the middle of this shell of an unwatchably boring travel ad. I'm really not sure this show was for anyone except the people making it, but I'm ultimately landing on the side of being glad I watched it. Really would be a problematic recommendation though, you'd need to be a true sicko believer to stick with it long enough.
10. New Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt
I don't really have anything substantial to say about new PS&G, it's more of what made the first season good and it theoretically did everything right, the same team but with more episodes lead, directed, and written by women, increased variety of humor and styles lampooned and rolled into the chaos of PS&G, going beyond in the finale, the best single segment across either season with the Jack Kirby tribute, but it just doesn't hit the same as it did 15 years ago. I have no specific complaints, only compliments, but I still enjoyed other things this year more. I can only assume my tastes either improved or degraded to make me overall not as impressed with what is essentially the perfect follow-up to Panty and Stocking. It's possible that in a post-Pop Team Epic world a weaker drug just doesn't hit the same as the hard stuff.
