Top Anime 2025: Best Shows of the Year!

Another year, another fantastic output of anime! 2025 was a phenomenal year for fans of anime, as both new series and established heavy hitters alike topped the charts and even broke a few records. Narrowing down an entire year’s worth of anime can be a supremely daunting challenge, but luckily for you, we did all the work! So sit back and take a gander at the best-performing, top anime of 2025!

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

If there was a single, clear winner of the year’s best anime, it would easily go to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle. To say the film performed extraordinarily well would be a massive understatement. Here is a list of the records Demon Slayer’s theatrical offering earned:

• It earned the highest opening-day gross in Japanese box office history, with 1.64 billion yen.
• It earned the highest single-day box office revenue in Japan on its third day in theatres with 2.03 billion yen.
• It earned the biggest opening weekend of all time in Japanese cinema with 5.52 billion yen.
• It became the fastest film in Japan to sell 7.5 million tickets.
• It became the biggest opening weekend for an international film in the U.S. with $70 million.

So, yes, it is very easy to say that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle can be considered the number one anime of the year. It blew the doors completely off the wall when it launched in theatres and broke records domestically and internationally. When compared to other pillars of anime, such as Dragon Ball, Detective Conan, and One Piece, it’s wild to consider how utterly amazing Demon Slayer’s performance at the box office was. Congratulations!

Sakamoto Days

What happens to a legendary hitman when his days of contract killings are behind him? He becomes a family man and works an ordinary job, that’s what! Well, that is, until various thugs, rival killers, and criminals attempt to seek revenge against him. And so, the main character Taro must walk a treacherous path of fending off his would-be assassins while still maintaining the façade of being an average, everyday guy.

Sakamoto Days began as a manga series by Yuto Suzuki and earned an anime adaptation this past year. A surprise hit across the board, Sakamoto Days was very well-received by critics. The show earned praise for its thrilling action scenes and sharp comedy. It balanced silly humor with explosive fights. Its popularity soared, becoming Netflix’s most-watched anime worldwide in the first half of the year, with about 24.4 million viewers.

Solo Leveling Season 2

Sung Jin-woo is a hunter, a human possessing powerful abilities to hunt monsters. One day, after narrowly escaping death, Sung Jin-woo gains extraordinary powers. He becomes the only person in the world who can grow stronger. As he fights countless enemies to uncover the truth about his world, he learns his destiny—to become the Shadow Monarch, a being of immense and destructive power. With this knowledge forever altering the course of his life, Sung-Jin-woo’s life will never be the same.

Solo Leveling shares some ideas with isekai stories, but is mainly a dark fantasy action series. The first season, based on Chugong’s South Korean web comic, was widely praised by fans and critics. The second season, which aired this year, also earned rave reviews and several “Best Of” awards for 2025.

These include Best Action, Best New Series, Best Main Character, Best Score, various best Voice Acting awards, and Anime of the Year at the 9^th Annual Crunchyroll Anime Awards. For those who have been on the fence about Solo Leveling, this is your sign to dive into one of the best shows of the year.

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Dandadan

So, what’s scarier? Aliens or ghosts? Well, when you’re high schoolers Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, both are pretty scary when they actually exist. Two friends set out to discover if aliens and ghosts are real. But things take a wild turn when aliens abduct Momo and a ghost possesses Ken. It sounds bad, but after Momo gains incredible powers, the two launch an action-packed mission to fight back against the aliens.

Dandadan became a huge hit, both as a manga and an anime. Its second season is just as strong, earning major praise. It even won Best Character Design, Best Opening Sequence, and Best Anime Song at the 9th Annual Crunchyroll Anime Awards. If that doesn’t tell you that the show is worth checking out, well, maybe nothing can. And really, who doesn’t want to watch a sci-fi, supernatural, action comedy?

Should you check out the top anime of 2025?

Even for top anime 2025 fans who keep up with all the newest and biggest shows of each season, it can be a frightfully difficult task not to fall behind with anime every year. There is simply SO MUCH anime to watch, manga to read, and adaptations to check out, it can be easy to get lost behind and never catch up. And that isn’t even taking into consideration all the series from previous years that need to be seen, too! 

Having the best of the year narrowed down into a list can be a significant help to both those new to watching anime and those with experience. This is not a slight against all the other shows and movies that came out this year, not in the least, but just simply a means of highlighting those that got extra special attention. Have you seen any of these shows? Please let us know! We’d love to hear what you think about them!