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Curated playlist

Action anime and manga

  • Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XVThe anime Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV tells the friends' backstories the game had no room for.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone ComplexGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set in the year 2030, in a Japan where many people have replaced their bodies with prosthetics and become cyborgs. It is an anime television series about an elite law enforcement unit that…
  • Cowboy BebopCowboy Bebop lost its toy company sponsor after early footage showed it would never sell spaceship toys.
  • Last Order: Final Fantasy VIIJapanese fans disliked how Last Order: Final Fantasy VII showed Nibelheim, so a later game redrew the scene.
  • Durarara!!A headless rider on a black motorcycle searches Ikebukuro for her stolen head. She is a dullahan from Irish folklore.
  • Battle Angel AlitaA doctor digging through a garbage dump finds a living cyborg head and torso. He names her Alita, after his dead cat.
  • Attack on Titan (TV series)Attack on Titan was the first non-English show to become the world's most in-demand TV program.
  • Tower of GodIn Tower of God, a boy who has never seen the sky opens a door himself. Almost no one in his world can do that.
  • Attack on TitanAttack on Titan's giants began with a drunk customer at an internet cafe.
  • DororoA daimyo in the manga Dororo trades his newborn son's body to 48 demons. The boy's mother sets him adrift on a river.
  • Spy × FamilySpy × Family, a Japanese web manga written and illustrated by Tatsuya Endo, had more than 42 million copies in circulation by April 2026. That puts it among the best-selling manga series of all time. Its hero is an agent known as Twilight,…
  • FLCLFLCL begins with a Vespa, a twelve-year-old boy, and a blue vintage Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar. The boy is Naota Nandaba. The woman swinging a left-handed bass at his head is Haruko Haruhara, an alien who has just run him over. She…
  • Mob Psycho 100Mob Psycho 100 follows a middle school boy named Shigeo Kageyama, nicknamed Mob, who carries immense psychic power and works constantly to keep his feelings down. The two facts are linked. His power threatens to break past its limits as…
  • Initial DInitial D is a Japanese street racing manga written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno, and its hero starts each day delivering tofu. Takumi Fujiwara is a high school student. For years he has made those early morning runs in his father…
  • HellsingHellsing is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kouta Hirano. Its central vampire is Alucard, the original and most powerful of his kind. He serves the family of the man who defeated him one hundred years before the story…
  • Soul EaterAtsushi Ohkubo's manga Soul Eater runs on a strict counting rule. A living weapon must absorb the souls of 99 evil humans, followed by one witch, in exactly that order. Break the sequence and the tally starts over from zero. A rule like…
  • Tetsujin 28-goIn the manga Tetsujin 28-go, a ten-year-old boy inherits his dead father's giant war robot.
  • Tokyo RevengersIn Tokyo Revengers, a part-timer shoved from a subway platform lands twelve years in the past.
  • Final Fantasy: UnlimitedFinal Fantasy: Unlimited was planned for 52 episodes but ran only 25. Low ratings and a film flop cut the anime short.
  • Hajime no IppoHajime no Ippo opens its hero's boxing life with a test involving falling leaves. A professional boxer named Mamoru Takamura sets a bruised high school boy a task. Catch ten leaves from a tree at the same moment, with a single week to…
  • Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (film)Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a 2021 Japanese animated dark fantasy film, and its first audience came at midnight. About 15,000 people watched it at the earliest public screenings on opening day, spread across 58 screens. Theaters had planned to…
  • Lupin the ThirdLupin the Third, a Japanese media franchise created by Monkey Punch, once left a calling card where a statue should have been. In 2009, a campaign called Lupin Steal Japan asked fans to suggest real objects for the fictional thief to take.…
  • Panty & Stocking with GarterbeltPanty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a Japanese anime series that began with a director's blunt promise. Hiroyuki Imaishi said the theme of the show would be vulgar and indecent jokes. He added, "If we are going to do this, we will try it…
  • DorohedoroDorohedoro, a Japanese manga series by Q Hayashida, begins with a man whose head is that of a reptile and who cannot remember who he used to be. His name is Caiman. His only clue to the sorcerer who cursed him is a full-size man living…
  • Hell's Paradise: JigokurakuHell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, a web manga by Yuji Kaku, begins with an execution that does not work. Gabimaru the Hollow, a ninja from Iwagakure, has been sentenced to die. Nothing the executioners try is able to kill him, because his body…
  • One-Punch ManOne-Punch Man is a Japanese manga series about a hero who can end any fight with a single punch. Saitama has trained so thoroughly that no opponent can test him, and the reward is boredom rather than glory. His creator, who goes by the…
  • Chainsaw ManChainsaw Man is a Japanese manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and its world contains a creature that can erase an idea from human memory. When the Chainsaw Devil devours another devil, the thing that devil stood for vanishes from existence and…
  • Lazarus (Japanese TV series)Lazarus is an anime series that begins with a video posted online in October 2052 by a man the world believed it had lost. He is Dr. Skinner, a celebrated neuroscientist who vanished three years earlier. His message is short and chilling.…

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