Basic Guide to Anime

welcome to the amazing world of japanese animation

Anime can be a little intimidating for newcomers. There are a lot of shows out there, and there are a lot of preconceptions that can make it harder to get into this medium, including the misconception that all anime is the same or that it’s for children. I have compiled a list of shows to help you get into anime, because I want to make it more accessible to others. I’m only including shows with 1 season to keep things manageable, and I also tried to include different genres and styles, to illustrate how diverse anime can be and to make sure everyone can find something they will enjoy.

Let’s begin…

Slice-of-Life.

The slice-of-life genre often lacks a clear overarching plot because it focuses more on the daily lives of the characters, which allows us to look more closely into their psyche and their relationships with one another. My recommendations for this genre are:

• Barakamon: Handa is a professional calligrapher whose career takes a bad turn after he punches a critic in the face for calling his calligraphy “unoriginal”. His father decides to send Handa away from the city, and he has to stay at a small island to relax and think about his life and his art. Despite his initial dislike for rural life, he ends up befriending the locals, in particular a young child named Naru.

• Skip and Loafer: Mitsumi is an ambitious and determined girl who has moved to Tokyo from the countryside to attend a prestigious high school. She ends up getting lost on her way to school on the first day, but then she meets Sousuke, a cute boy that helps her find her way to the school. Mitsumi’s earnest personality wins over the usually aloof Sousuke as well as their classmates. 

I recommend Barakamon to people who self-describe as creatives of any kind. Even though calligraphy is not an usual artistic medium, Handa’s struggles with his craft is something that every artist can relate to. Skip and Loafer is particularly adept at showcasing the emotional turmoil of high school life without being overtly dramatic, I recommend it to anyone looking for a sweet coming of age story. It also has a bit of romance.

Comedy.

While several of the shows on this list have a fair amount of comedy, I wanted to highlight two shows that are primarily comedy-oriented:

• Bocchi the Rock!: Hitori has a severe case of social anxiety and has never had a friend, but she’s determined to change this situation. She sets her mind to learning the guitar with the goal of someday starting a band and becoming a popular rock star, but even after learning how to play, she’s still not able to speak to others. All seems lost until she meets a girl who just happens to need a guitarist for her band, which is just the push Hitori needed.

• Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun: One fateful day, Sakura decides to confess to her crush, the mysterious Nozaki. However, when she tells him she admires him, he thinks that she’s a fan of his work: it turns out that the aloof and serious-looking Nozaki is secretly the author of a romantic manga for girls. Even though he misunderstood Sakura’s feelings, she decides to become his assistant and help him work on his manga series, which leads her to meet his very quirky friends. Hijinks ensue.

Bocchi the Rock! Is one of the funniest shows I have ever watched, and certainly one of the most creative. Not only is the writing hilarious, the show uses different animation styles to make the delivery of their jokes even more effective. It’s also a great story about overcoming your fears and making friends. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is a more traditional sitcom that makes fun of romance tropes and can also help you learn a little about how manga is made.

Romance.

• A Sign of Affection: Yuki is a college student who happens to be deaf. One day on the train, she’s approached by a foreigner asking for directions, and a guy from her university comes to her aid. He’s Itsuomi, a multilingual student who goes to the same club as one of Yuki’s friends and often travels abroad. After the train incident, they both become interested in the other.

• Toradora: Taiga and Ryuji have bad reputations; her, because of her aggressive personality, and him because he looks intimidating even if he’s really not violent at all. One day, they cross paths and realize that they both have a crush on the other’s best friend, meaning they can help each other in their romantic pursuits. This series starts as more of a romcom but devolves into a genuinely intense romance drama with lots of complicated relationships and tears.

These two are complete opposites. A Sign of Affection is a short, sweet and chill romance that focuses on healthy communication and mature adult relationships. I recommend it to anyone looking for something cute and relaxing. On the other hand, Toradora is all about the drama, the love triangles, the misunderstandings, and being a messy teenager. It’s an older show that represents a specific kind of romcom anime style where the characters take forever to get together and the situations they get in are bizarre and a little over the top, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great love story.

Action.

Some of the other shows in this list also have action, but I picked these two because I believe they have a much bigger focus on the fights than the others:

• Kaiju no. 8: Kafka has always wanted to join the anti-Kaiju defense force, but he’s now in his early 30s, and it seems like he’s lost his chance. He has resigned himself to work as part of the cleaning crew that takes care of Kaiju remains after a battle, but his life changes when a new kid joins the crew and tells him he can still try to join the defense force.

• Chainsaw Man: This is a world besieged by devils, the embodiment of humanity’s fears. In this grim world where people die every day at the hands of devils, a teenager boy named Denji is forced to exterminate these monsters in order to pay off his dead father’s debts. Despite his miserable situation, Denji at least has the company of his beloved pet-devil Pochita, and he dreams of someday having a normal life.

I recommend both these shows because of their beautiful animation and great fight scenes. Kaiju no. 8 is unique due to having an older main character, but it has many of the tropes that have come to be associated with this genre in anime. Chainsaw Man has a more grimdark tone that makes it stand out from other action series, it often dabbles into horror and more mature themes, and the use of photorealistic backgrounds give this show a more “cinematic” aesthetic. Both are likely to get new seasons in the future, but for now they have only 12 episodes, perfect for binge-watching.

Sci-Fi.

• Pluto: In the distant future, robots have become practically indistinguishable from humans, and they live side-by-side. One day, a famous robot is found brutally murdered, and Gesicht, the world’s most advanced robot detective, is tasked with hunting down the culprit. He quickly realizes that whoever is behind the murder is not just targeting famous robots: they are after the seven most beloved robots in the world, all of which took part in the last Central Asia War. And Gesicht happens to be one of them.

• Cowboy Bebop: This series follows a crew of space bounty hunters which initially consisted only of Spike Spiegel (a carefree, former hitman) and Jet Black (a serious ex-cop), but they end up gathering more members as they travel from planet to planet looking for money to sustain themselves. 

Pluto is a short sci-fi action/mystery that deals with the classic question of how we define Artificial Intelligence in relation to humanity. But more importantly, Pluto is a story about hatred and prejudice, and the consequences of our actions. I recommend it to people looking for something complex and nuanced, where the sci-fi setting serves to enhance the themes of the story.

Cowboy Bebop is also a show with lots of deep philosophical discussions, which are balanced out with great action and comedy. It’s an anime classic, often regarded as one of the best of all time, and anyone looking for an “adult” anime show should watch it.

Fantasy.

This genre is often found as a side-piece in action and adventure shows, so I wanted to pick two shows that are first and foremost fantasy stories:

• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: After defeating the Demon King, the Hero and his party return home. However, this long journey was only a small fraction of Frieren’s life as an elf, so after their adventure is over she says goodbye to her friends and goes back to traveling alone. 50 years later, they all reunite one final time, and seeing her friends grow old and die makes Frieren realize that she wants to spend more time with the people she cares about.

• Yona of the Dawn: Princess Yona has a peaceful idyllic life, but this all ends when her cousin kills her father and seizes power for himself. Now Yona is on the run, with only the help of Hak, her bodyguard and childhood friend. They embark on a journey to find allies that can help her regain the throne and save the kingdom, and they soon learn about a group of mysterious dragons that seem to be somehow related to Yona and her fate.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has become a modern classic in the span of a year. The classic Tolkien setting, mixed with RPG vibes, great animation and great character development, have all made this show insanely popular. Meanwhile, Yona of the Dawn is less well-known and a decade older, but I recommend it to anyone looking for a fantasy setting that isn’t another vaguely European world. Yona takes place in a fantasy version of Korea with some Chinese elements, and it takes inspiration from these cultures and their mythology. It has some romance undertones, but it’s mostly a fantasy adventure.

There’s a specific sub-genre of fantasy which has become extremely popular in anime lately, the Isekai (also known as Portal Fantasy in literary discussions), but that’s a topic for another time.

Drama.

• Ping Pong the Animation: Smile and Peco are childhood friends, and they share a love for table tennis, even though they love playing for different reasons — Peco wants to win, while Smile only wants to have fun. They are both extremely talented, but their different outlooks in life start to cause a rift between them.

• Violet Evergarden: 14-year-old Violet was raised to be a ruthless soldier, seen as a weapon and not a real person by everyone around here except for her captain, Gilbert. Now that the war is over and Gilbert is mysteriously absent, Violet has to find a new purpose in life, and she decides to become an “automemory doll”, a girl paid to write letters for others, hoping that this will help her understand people’s feelings.

Both Ping Pong and Violet Evergarden are perfect if you want something beautiful and life-changing, for different reasons. Ping Pong explores the conflict between talent and hard work, and it centers around the idea of what motivates you in life. Is it success, having fun, making other people proud, or something else? It also has a completely unique animation style. On the other hand, Violet Evergarden focuses on trauma and how we deal with it, and it has an episodic format that allows us to explore different kinds of people and build empathy and emotional intelligence. It’s also the go-to anime for people who want to have a good cry.

Mystery.

• The Apothecary Diaries: Maomao is a young apothecary that used to work on the red-light district before getting kidnapped and sold as a servant to the Imperial Palace. Specifically, she works on the area of the palace dedicated to the Emperor’s concubines. She tries to keep a low profile, but her curious nature leads her to get involved with a series of mysteries that makes her stand out to Jinshi, the man in charge. He then recruits her help to solve mysteries that often require the use of her extensive medical knowledge.

• Odd Taxi: Odokawa is a regular taxi driver that likes talking to his passengers. Somehow, he ends up getting involved with the disappearance of a young girl, which makes him a target for the police and the yakuza. The lives of Odokawa and his colorful cast of passengers get mixed up, revealing a complex web of secrets and crimes that connects people as different from each other as a virtual influencer, an idol, two washed-up comedians, an indebted nurse, and a pair of rival gangsters, amongst many others. Also, they all happen to be anthropomorphic animals.

I recommend The Apothecary Diaries to anyone that enjoys a good detective story. Think of it as Sherlock Holmes set in ancient China, with lots of political intrigue in the middle. It’s an episodic show that focus on different mysteries while slowly building up a serial narrative in the background. Odd Taxi is the opposite, in that the entire show has one single central mystery, and each episode gives you new pieces to solve the puzzle. Everything is tightly connected and important to the resolution of the story. The twists are always surprising, but they feel earned, and the ending is very satisfying.

Psychological Drama.

This genre stands as a substitute for horror because there aren’t that many good horror anime (Another is a somewhat trashy classic, but other than that I couldn’t think of anything). What I’m using to separate the general drama genre from the psychological drama is that these shows have a bigger focus on existencialism and the characters’ psychological issues.

• Death Parade: A woman wakes up in a bar with no memories of who she is and how she got there. The bartender, a quiet man named Decim, makes the guests play games against each other, and at the end of the game he decides whether these people go to the void, or if they get reincarnated.

• Sonny Boy: During the middle of an endless summer, an entire class of middle-schoolers gets transported to an empty dark void, along with their school building. To make things more complicated, some of the students gain superpowers, which they use however they want. Nagara is one of the students that didn’t a power, and he mostly just wants to be left alone, but it won’t be that easy.

Death Parade is a psychological drama with a supernatural setting, I recommend it for people looking for explorations of human interactions and the nature of good and evil (and whether it’s even possible to classify someone as one or the other). Sonny Boy leans into surrealism and sci-fi while also being a coming-of-age story. It’s weird and unlike most of the things on this list. It’s also my favorite show from all these, so I recommend it to anyone in general, but specially if you want to go on a self-exploration journey across time and space.

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Thanks for reading! I really love anime, so I wanted to make it easier for people to get into it. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to plug some of my own favorite shows. This list is obviously limited to things I have personally watched and can vouch for. If you have any recommendations that you think I should have mentioned, or if this post motivates you to check out any of these shows, please let me know!