Updated March 30, 2022 63.7k votes 22.7k voters 494.9k views
List Rules
Vote up the anime that makes the most out of a short space.
Life often gets busy, and there's not always time to watch super-long anime series. Even when there are hours to spare, sometimes you just want an anime that's more compressed. Luckily, there are plenty of amazing 13-episode series out there - and some shows that have even fewer episodes. The best short anime series deliver complete story arcs, complex characters, and beautiful animation in a small package. The greatest anime series don't have to be epics to feel epic.
InErased, Satoru Fujinuma travels back to his childhood in the 1980s to try to prevent a classmate's murder. Through his repeated attempts, viewers encounter a dark world of secrecy and misconduct. It's an emotionally devastating story that will stay with you long after it's over.
Grace Field House is a seemingly perfect orphanage where all the children live happily together with their "mama," Isabella. But when the three oldest children discover Grace Field's secrets and the terrifying fate that awaits them, they must figure out a way to outsmart the clever Isabella and help all the children escape. In just 12 episodes, The Promised Neverland is able to pack in great world-building, suspense, horror, and clever plot lines that will put you on the edge of your seats.
Violet Evergardenis a gorgeously animated Netflix original about a child raised to be a killing machine. After the Great War ends, Violet has a new goal - to find out what her Major meant when he told her he loved her.
To better understand the complexity of human emotion, she becomes an Auto Memory Doll, whose job it is to transcribe other people's feelings into letters.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!is about Satan working at McDonald's. Why is he doing such an absurd thing? Because he was defeated in his world and transformed into a human, and the Devil's gotta eat. The anime is a hilarious look at the hellish nature of low-wage employment, and it's well worth any viewer's time.
Nine and Twelve - members of Sphinx, the terrorist group at the center ofTerror in Resonance - are escapees from an experimental institute for gifted children called the Settlement. They have a message for the world, and they share it via terrorist attacks. This is one of the few anime to take on this societal issue in such a direct way.
In Angel Beats!,Yuzuru Otonashi wakes up to learn he is dead, and then he is quickly recruited into helping the Afterlife Battlefront fight a so-called "Evil Angel." Through a combination of moving backstories and action-packed battles, the true nature of the Angel, and the afterlife, comes to light.
