The 20 Best Action Anime of All Time

Identifying the best “action” in anime is a tricky endeavor. Sometimes, anime’s purest bursts of kinetic excitement pop off in otherwise downbeat films, or at random in shows seemingly uninterested in action. And just as often, animators will stage the best action in other popular anime genres, like science fiction, fantasy, mecha, romance, magical girls, and even sports. This particular release season is also airing new fighting-forward titles like Lazarus (from the director of Cowboy Bebop) and Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX (from the gang behind Evangelion). So we thought it a great opportunity to round up the best action anime across film and television. We set a rule for ourselves going in: no repeats of franchises or directors in the entries. The titles below are some of the form’s finest opening strikes you can watch.

Akira (1988)

Nearly 40 years later, the moments when Akira hits the accelerator remain some of the most iconic animated sequences of all time. Katsuhiro Otomo’s feature adaptation of his own manga series compresses a lot of story into its two-hour run time, and while it still finds room for existentialism and reflections on wayward youth, its visceral thrills provide an equally thoughtful window into its characters’ psyches. The action also feels closely tied to the sociopolitical anxieties of the time, including the movie’s famous bike chases and slides strewn across the cityscapes of Neo-Tokyo. The cyberpunk chaos spirals into shoot-outs with telekinesis and giant mutant babies, all of it spectacular and ingrained in reverent filmmakers’ memories.

Also check out: Ghost in the Shell and its sequel film for more existentialism and cyberpunk sci-fi classics. I’m also partial to the blunt-force metaphor of the recent Akudama Drive.

Birdy the Mighty (1996)

There are perhaps more obvious picks by legendary genre director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, such as the oft-cited Ninja Scroll, but this is ours. Somewhere between Ultraman and Ranma 1/2 lies Birdy the Mighty, which sees the intergalactic agent Birdy Altera fusing her body with the high school boy Tsutomu Senkawa to save his life (after accidentally killing him). Senkawa is dragged into a fight to uncover a secret invasion of monsters. Even with Birdy’s brute strength the fights are inventively staged, and Kawajiri directs each one with a lot of charm, as well as trademark oozing monstrosities.

Also check out: Kawajiri’s cool and atmospheric Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and the OVA Cyber City Oedo 808. Birdy the Mighty also got a second anime series with Decode, one fight in which inspired Zack Snyder’s battle between Superman and Zod in Man of Steel.

Bubblegum Crisis (1987–91)

So charmingly ’80s that it feels like a hand-drawn time capsule, Bubblegum Crisis might show its age (big hair, a lot of slap bass), but the fun is still infectious. Set in 2032 in “Mega Tokyo,” a Blade Runner–esque cityscape (one character is even named Priss, after Daryl Hannah in Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece), the eight-episode OVA, released between 1987 and 1991, is about a group of vigilante mercenaries called the Knight Sabers. Together, they battle the megacorporation Genom and its now amusingly named sentient robots the Boomers, which often disguise themselves as humans. There are transforming motorbikes, personal armor suits, and lots of nostalgia in the show: If you didn’t know you were wondering, this series is why Will Forte’s character in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off sings “Konya wa Hurricane.”

Also check out: A 1991 film sequel, Bubblegum Crash, concludes the story (though there are spin-offs, too).

Cowboy Bebop (1998)

This landmark blend of kung fu, westerns, yakuza drama, and sci-fi is alternately meditative and exciting. Whether it’s a gunfight, a fistfight, or an aerial dogfight, Bebop maneuvers characters and machines with style to spare and a hell of a soundtrack thanks to Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts. It’s hard not to fall in love with it the moment we first see the ever-laid-back, ever-hungry Spike burst into action, his fluid and unpredictable movements (animated by action-choreography legend Yutaka Nakamura in the series’ first big fight), which themselves feel like the exciting improv of jazz.

Also check out: Director Shinichirō Watanabe’s follow-up, Samurai Champloo, is an easy recommendation. It takes a similar hybrid approach, this time with hip-hop and samurai. His new show, Lazarus, also borrows much from Bebop.

Dragon Ball Z (1989–96)

The most far-reaching work of the late, great Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z gave a little more edge to the already iconic Dragon Ball as well as a shape to the genre of battle shonen: The characters got older, the muscles got bigger, the stakes got higher, and the battles got far more explosive. Goku had already aged up significantly by the first series’ end, but Z sees him balancing fighting for the fate of the world with raising a family. (The former, much to Goku’s shame, usually comes first.) Though it stretches well past its natural (and intended) end point, at its best Z is an operatic epic communicated with knees, elbows, fists, and a lot of yelling. Any animator across the world picking up a pencil likely has some element of this work in the back of their mind — take something as recent as Castlevania Nocturne, which ends with an homage to Trunks cutting Frieza in half.

Also check out: There are too many Dragon Ball sequel series and spinoffs to count, but the recent Dragon Ball Super: Broly is a supremely satisfying cinematic brawl with a surprisingly humanist core.

Flip Flappers (2016)

You probably wouldn’t guess that the sci-fi magical-girl series Flip Flappers and the tragic animated 2024 hit Look Back were directed by the same person. Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s energetic directorial debut feels boundless: One episode might feature a Dragon Ball–esque brawl in a desert, featuring raiders styled after those in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior — another, a haunted house. Its heroines, Papika and Cocona, are powerful agents of the organization Flip Flap, tasked with exploring parallel worlds and collecting MacGuffins from each while battling a rival organization, Asclepius. The plot is more sprawling and strange than this implies, but regardless, each fight is incredibly impressive, building to an explosive and poignant finale.

Also check out: Kill la Kill. Imaishi has already been mentioned, but his own spin on magical girls has some stylistic tics in common with Flip Flappers.

Go Princess! Pretty Cure (2015)

The first Pretty Cure (a.k.a. PreCure), directed in 2004 by Daisuke Nishio (who also directed Dragon Ball Z), iterated on magical-girl genre tropes but earned a reputation for staging larger-than-life and very physical fight sequences. One of its best follow-ups, the Yuta Tanaka–directed Go Princess! Pretty Cure picked up the torch but with a new story, a new cast, and sometimes even more elaborately choreographed displays of strength — whether it’s a heroine pulling off a Kamen Rider–style flying kick or the entire PreCure group beating the tar out of a dragon. As a franchise, Precure both trusts its younger audience’s emotional intelligence and serves as a reminder that earthshaking combat often fits right in with flowery aesthetics.

Also check out: The heavily stylized fan favorite HeartCatch PreCure! is less available outside of Japan but worth hunting down. The original, template-setting Pretty Cure remains a very impactful entry. Cardcaptor Sakura almost made this list too.

Golgo 13: The Professional (1983)

Still comfortably among the most stylish animated films ever made, Osamu Dezaki’s lurid and violent tale of a hit man is told with compelling visual abstraction. This appears in some unexpected places, such as a car chase in San Francisco around the film’s halfway point: Police sirens melt into a haze of red lights, and the neon of the city reflects cleanly off Golgo 13’s sunglasses as well as the car he drives, before myriad swirling colors overtake the entire frame. The action is slick but drawn with a sense of grit punctuated by the director’s signature “postcard memory” shots — freeze-frames with added painterly detail. So many inventive angles can be found throughout the film — the POV shot of a bullet traveling through multiple skyscrapers, for one. It’s also notably one of the first animated features to use CG, beginning with its opening credits.

Also check out: Pretty much any other Osamu Dezaki you can get your hands on. For a sci-fi adventure flavor, try Space Adventure Cobra. For sports, the tennis series Aim for the Ace. 

Gunsmith Cats (1995–96)

This sadly short-lived OVA from Takeshi Mori (Ranma 1/2, You’re Under Arrest) is a playful, action-packed jaunt across an animated Chicago. Adapting from a comic by Kenichi Sonoda (who used a failed anime pilot as material), Mori and screenwriter run with an original story for the gun-shop owner, bounty hunter, and petrolhead Rally Vincent. With her partner, Minnie, she stumbles into a conspiracy that has them shooting and driving through some incredibly detailed action sequences anchored by one hell of an opening-credits sequence. Though the show feels like a case of “what could have been,” what we got was fantastic.

Also check out: Riding Bean, a TV pilot from Sonoda that inspired his work on Gunsmith Cats. These days, Hideo Kojima fave Lycoris Recoil is the current holder of the “girls with guns” crown. 

Hajime no Ippo (2000–2)

There’s a reason professional wrestlers are styling themselves after the iconic rematch between Sendo and Ippo at the midpoint of Hajime no Ippo (in English, Ippo’s First Step — though the localized title is Fighting Spirit). It’s at once explosive and deliberate, with touches that feel charmingly early aughts (like its score which ping-pongs between rock and breakbeat). There’s an aspirational quality to Ippo’s accumulated training effort and the way he hones both his wit and his fighting ability, which all ends in the show’s downright thrilling final bout.

Also check out: Hajime no Ippo had a couple of sequel series: New Challenger and Rising. Osamu Dezaki’s earlier Ashita no Joe is also an essential boxing anime and has a stylish sci-fi remake in the more recent series Megalobox.

Haikyu!! (2014–20)

Yes, sports action counts. Other than its thoughtful team dynamics, one of the most consistently engaging things about Haikyu!!, based on the excellent manga series by Haruichi Furudate, is its constant consideration of the long game. Plenty of sports anime slow down segments of play to a crawl so we can see the decision-making in ways we can’t in real sports. Haikyu!! fine-tunes the balance between the psychology of its characters and their physical battle for points, using both modes to build suspense into its matches. Along the way, it turns volleyball into the most exciting sport in the world. Just as important, while it has arcs reserved for its prodigy, Shoyo Hinata, the show cares deeply for its supporting cast, and their rapport leads to its most triumphant moments — as when the team’s wing spiker finds the confidence to make one hell of a shot.

Also check out: The 2024 film The Dumpster Battle serves as a continuation of the series, with a feature-film series finale on the way. Attack No.1 is a golden oldie about women’s volleyball. The First Slam Dunk is a recent adaptation of Takehiko Inoue’s legendary manga, which shares some similarities with Haikyu!!

Macross Plus (1995)

There are a few Macross entities you could swap in here — I am particularly partial to the poptimistic romance of Do You Remember Love? — but in terms of action, Plus feels like a step up from director, mechanical designer, and franchise creator Shoji Kawamori’s previous work (it’s also a little more readily available to watch and more accessible to newcomers). Combined with its still timely sci-fi plot of an AI pop star gone rogue, these are simply some of the most detailed and explosive aerial dogfights around — and that’s before the jets transform into robots. Imagine Top Gun but with the macho pilot rivalries egged on by synth-pop bangers. (This is also true of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, another Kawamori credit.)

Also check out: Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its movie remake, Do You Remember Love?, take place before Plus and are both worth seeing. Kawamori’s influence extends far, but for robot knights and love triangles, also watch his Vision of Escaflowne, too.

Mob Psycho 100 (2016–22)

Where the main characters of many battle-focused shonen anime find themselves in a slow climb up a metaphorical mountain of power, Mob Psycho 100 starts in reverse. Based on the manga by ONE, it’s about Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama, a teenage boy who already has ultimate power. What Mob works toward is a functioning social life, the quotidian joys that he’s cut off from because of a tendency to suppress his emotion because he fears outbursts of his power. Those outbursts, animated by the studio Bones, are some of the most spectacular of any anime this past decade — such as an early confrontation with a terrorist in which Mob grabs a bully by the face and takes him high into the air before crashing back down to earth like a meteor. Some of the best fights feature the show’s continually growing cast — including Mob’s friend Teruki — fighting at a disadvantage against one of the show’s antagonists, the fearsome Shimazaki.

Also check out: Series director Yuzuru Tachikawa eventually worked on the wild original Deca-Dence, a unique sci-fi action series with a surprising revolutionary twist.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1996–99)

As much as I love the politically charged space opera of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam, some of its finest moments have high entry requirements — Char’s Counterattack is a must-watch, all-time great, but you really need to watch two (maybe three) whole series first. That’s what makes the shorter 08th MS Team such a great jumping-on point. The show itself neatly summarizes its real-robot appeal with an episode titled “Gundams in the Jungle,” in which the mechs are shackled by gravity and forced into close proximity with people. The show pays particular attention to the weight of these giant heavy weapons in its action sequences — exemplified by a standout fight of the whole franchise, a gnarly slugfest against the demonic Gouf Custom in its final episodes.

Also check out: Char’s Counterattack is a classic with vast reach but demands homework, as does the new series, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX. The Witch From Mercury is newcomer friendly. Stardust Memory took cues from Top Gun; make of that what you will.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit (2007)

This fantasy series from director Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, “The Ninth Jedi” from Star Wars Visions) is adapted from a series of novels about the warrior woman Balsa who protects a young prince. It’s a quieter, more character-focused drama than one would expect, but when its elaborate action sequences arrive, such as the third episode’s showdown against a group of assassins on a road cutting through a rice paddy or a spear battle in its 13th, they’re some of the most exhilarating of the past couple of decades. Moribito pays close attention to how different weapons and tools — and their upkeep — affect the outcome of a given fight. A score from Ghost in the Shell’s Kenji Kawai doesn’t hurt either.

Also check out: Kamiyama’s most famous work is probably Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a similar mix of introspective drama and stylish action.

Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden (2002–17)

Though it eventually succumbed to the absurd power creep that haunts many battle-shonen series — by the end, the gutsy eponymous ninja is fighting demons from the moon — the kinesthetic detail of Naruto’s finest fights remain best-in-class for anime. Sasuke and Naruto’s battle in the Final Valley (and its sequel in Shippuden) is one of the most impassioned fistfights ever drawn. And who can forget Rock Lee dropping the leg weights? Though the series is sometimes simplistic in its generation-spanning conflict, the emotion at its heart and the technical finesse required to illustrate its best moments are hard to deny.

Also check out: Fans often joke about My Hero Academia’s protagonist being “Green Naruto.” Like his blond ninja older cousin, it sometimes swings and misses but is overall well crafted.

Promare (2019)

Studio Trigger co-founder Hiroyuki Imaishi doesn’t do quiet anime. His series are loud in every sense of the word, and all the better for it. Promare takes this audacity to feature film, spinning familiar hallmarks of his work (homoerotic machismo, guys with big blue hair) into a wild story of literal firefighters pitted against humans who spontaneously combust. The technobabble is (highly self-aware) nonsense, but there’s a meathead sincerity in its “burning soul,” which turns its strange science fiction into a story about battling persecution.

Also check out: Gurren Lagann, also created by Imaishi. Volcanos explode in the background of robots triumphantly posing, and humanity’s freedom is won on the power of brotherhood.

Redline (2009)

Made over a period of seven years, the high-octane mayhem of Takeshi Koike’s feature Redline — with its wild character and vehicle designs and absurdist world-building — is like a hand-drawn shot of adrenaline. At one point its images of a man hitting the nitrous button in his muscle car contorts as though his whole body is being pushed through a syringe. The film’s sustained manipulations of shape and form make Redline one of the most thrilling theatrical experiences out there.

Also check out: Koike’s series of Lupin III films, which has a new entry out in Japan this year.

Yu Yu Hakusho (1992–95)

Yusuke’s life truly begins after a collision with a bus kills him. A socially shunned delinquent, Yusuke is given a second chance after he saves a child from certain death and is equipped with special powers by the deity Koenma to become a “spirit detective.” Yu Yu Hakusho, adapted from the Yoshihiro Togashi manga, evolves far beyond this point and is perhaps the gold standard for battle-shonen anime, with an incredible cast of characters (we love you, Kuwabara) to back up its spectacle. Then there is, of course, its take on the hallowed anime tradition of the tournament arc, resulting in its most thrilling moments as Yusuke overcomes Younger Toguro. 

Also check out: Both versions of Hunter x Hunter are solid adaptations of another classic Togashi manga, and the author’s influence can also be felt in recent hit Jujutsu Kaisen, flawed but also worth a watch.

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