The 6 best underrated anime series that you should watch right now

The world of anime is vast and plentiful, with a seemingly inexhaustible number of shows, films, and shorts to choose from, whether you’re a newbie or a die-hard otaku. Dozens of anime premieres each season and with major streaming services vying for exclusive premieres and funding the production of dozens of more original anime for their respective platforms, the sheer amount What to see and the decision behind it Where seeing it can be daunting.

But what do you see when you’ve already gone through everything this season has to offer? We went through our shelves and watch lists to bring you six primo anime that you should definitely see. Don’t worry – these aren’t huge shonen epics spanning hundreds of episodes (although we can recommend some of them, too). Instead, we’ve picked a few digestible anime series that you can polish up over either a weekend or a week. From cult favorites of the directors of Devilman crybaby and Mob pscyho 100 On cerebral sci-fi curiosities and flamboyant supernatural horror anthologies, here are six underrated anime to watch.

Kaiba

More than a decade ago Get your hands off Eizouken! and his 2018 Netflix series Devilman Crybaby Masaaki Yuasa already made him one of the outstanding authors of modern anime with his 2008 sci-fi anime Kaiba

. In a distant posthuman future, where consciousness and memory have been paged out in chips that can be exchanged between artificial bodies, a young man named Kaiba awakens in a strange underground chamber with a hole in the center of his chest. With no memory of his past apart from a pendant with a photo of a mysterious woman on it, he embarks on a journey to uncover his lost identity and the reason why he lost his memory in the first place. Over 12 episodes, Kaiba is a beautiful series about lasting love and mortality in a world of advanced technology expressed through psychedelic visuals, powerful music and lovable characters.

Kaiba is available for streaming Amazon Prime Video.

Cybersix

A Canadian-Japanese co-production of an adaptation of an Argentinian cult science fiction comic book. Cybersix The focus is on a leather-clad Android woman fighting against her mad scientist (and former Nazi creator) Dr. Von Reicht fights while leading a double life as a high school English teacher named Adrian Seidelman during the day. Courtesy of the renowned Japanese studio TMS Entertainment, Cybersix can be seen as a prime example of the aesthetic and narrative elasticity inherent in the globalized definition of anime as a culturally specified permutation of world animation. But that alone isn’t why you should watch the series. You should check it out because it’s short (13 episodes only), fantastic action sequences, beautiful backdrops, a cool sentient panther to serve, and an intriguing love triangle between Cybersix and a high school biology teacher who is next to her age Ego works.

Cybersix is available for streaming Amazon Prime Video.

Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

The Japanese horror anthology series Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories has been broadcast on television since 2013 and has collected over 91 episodes in its eight-year season. If that sounds like an intimidating commitment, don’t worry: each episode is less than five minutes long (the perfect length to cram a couple in on your lunch break), and each one focuses on its own story and characters. With an unmistakable animation style that is deliberately reminiscent of Kamishibai, the popular method of Japanese street theater and puppet shows from the early 20th century. Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

is the perfect anime for someone looking for a unique, low-engagement horror series.

Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories is available for streaming Crunchyroll.

Death parade

Before directing one of the best anime surprises of the past year in the form of decadence and the first two seasons of the smash hit adaptation of Mob Psycho 100Yuzuru Tachikawa cut his teeth for the first time with his series in 2015 Death parade. The anime follows Decim, a psychopomp who works as a bartender in a mysterious tower. Decim’s task is to weigh the worthiness of the souls who walk through its height of the tower, and subjects his often disoriented and unsuspecting guests to a series of seemingly innocuous tests, such as a game of pool or darts, to decide whether to ascend into heaven or into be immersed in the darkest depths of the afterlife. The series consists of only 12 episodes (plus a canonical pilot entitled “Death Billiards”) and offers an impressive amount of world-forming, dramatic and fascinating surprises in each episode. Death parade

is the perfect anime for someone looking for a cerebral, beautifully animated version of Saw meets The seventh seal.

Death parade is available for streaming Hulu.

Mononoke

The medicine seller competes against a violent malevolent ghost.

Based on an episode of the 2006 horror anthology series Ayakashi: Samurai horror stories, Mononoke follows the stories of a mysterious wanderer known only as “The Medicine Seller” as he travels through the Edo Meiji era of Japan to battle supernatural monsters and cast out wayward spirits known as “Yokai”. Animated in a lush Ukioy-e style with bright, bold colors set against parchment-like textured backgrounds, the series is similar to the one from 2005 Mushi-Shi Anime adaptation as if filtered through the extravagant maximalist art style of the 2004s Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. If you are looking for a beautiful crime drama anthology series with an emphasis on nuanced characters and Style, Mononoke is a must.

Mononoke is available for streaming Crunchyroll.

Den-noh coil

In a near future dominated by immersive augmented reality technology, Den-noh coil follows a group of children who live in and around the fictional city of Daikoku and who use special AR glasses to do odd jobs and disappearances around the city. As the series progresses, the mysterious technology that sustains this world shows visible signs of stress and degradation caused by viruses and disruptions, and it will soon be up to the intrepid members of Detective Agency Coil to find and fix the cause Corruption. Directed by Mitsuo Iso, known for his expressive animation work on anime such as The end of the Evangelion and Blood: the last vampire, Den-noh coil is a beguiling sci-fi mystery series that explores deep, thematic questions whose answers are buried in the limited technological gap between the real and the unreal.

Den-noh coil is available for purchase on Amazon.