Updated March 30, 2022 5.3k votes 1.8k voters 53k views
Whether it's to the past or to the future, time travel can create a whole host of interesting problems. That's why there is so much good time travel anime out there. Most recently, there's the wildly popular 2021 time travel anime Tokyo Revengers, which is about a twenty-something who goes backwards in time to save his ex-girlfriend from gang warfare.
But that's not the only exciting time travel anime where lives are at stake. There's also ERASED, Steins;Gate, Zipang,Re:Zero and more. Looking for something less action-oriented? The time travel niche also focuses heavily on human emotions and everyday life. The recent Remake our Life! follows an adult getting a chance to redo his college years to get his career on the right track. There's also Mirai, an anime movie that's all about family.
Before an accident, Satoru Fujinuma is usually able to go backwards in time by a few minutes in order to prevent it. One day, his power goes into overdrive, sending him hurtling back to 1988 when he was an elementary school student. This time, the disaster he must prevent is a major one - he has to stop his classmate Kayo from losing her life. This story is absolutely heartbreaking, but it's beautiful and smart, too.
Mitsuha Miyamizu and Taki Tachibana are leading two very different lives - Mitsuha lives out in the country, while Taki is managing a busy city life. The two of them get a taste for each other's lives when they suddenly start waking up in each other's bodies. At first, they're simply baffled by the body-swapping, but they soon realize that they're also travelling through time - with Taki going two years back and Mitsuha going two years forward.
What's more, in Taki's time, Mitsuha and her small down no longer exist, as they were wiped out by a comet. The two of them must work together to change Mitsuha's timeline and save her life.
Rintarou Okabe is a college kid who calls himself a mad scientist because he has a knack for inventing things with his friends. His latest invention is the Phone Microwave, which seems to do nothing but transform bananas into green gel. But Okabe soon discovers that it can send emails into the past - a function that has profound effects on the present and future. Can he handle the terrifying consequences of messing with time? Or will he inadvertantly destroy everything he cares about?
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a film that follows a high school girl named Makoto Konno who is about to graduate but has no real direction in life. When she discovers that she can leap backwards in time, she uses it to do mundane things like get good grades and extend her karaoke sessions. But she soon discovers that her time travel has a negative effect on others - and she has a limited number of leaps left.
After Subaru Natsuki is suddenly transported to a fantasy world, he discovers that he has one ability - the power to go backwards in time to a 'reset' point whenever he passes away. While this makes him functionally immortal and allows him to redo situations that end terribly, it also means that he has to repeatedly suffer the pain of losing his life. Meanwhile, his new world has plenty of confusing challenges to deal with, whether it's Elsa trying to disembowl him, witches and their acolytes causing chaos, or his new friend Emilia's politcial woes.
At the start of her sophomore year in high school, Naho Takamiya recieves a letter form herself, ten years in the future. The letter warns her that her new friend Kakaru Naruse is going to take his own life unless she alters the course of history to prevent it. Thus begins her attempts to understand and assuage Kakeru's sadness, and to prevent the terrible future ahead. It turns out that her other friends have recieved similar letters from their own past selves - but is that enough to save the day?
