I Found Every Anime You Need to Watch in 2026! (Best Anime of 2026 So Far)

[00:00] Half the years gone, the other half has a lot to live up to, because 2026 has already handed us comeback seasons at Long Buried, adaptations I assumed were cursed and a couple of originals

[00:14] that hit harder than anything had any business hitting in a six month window. Before the back half starts reshuffling everything, here's where my list stands, the 10 best anime of 2026 so far.

[00:45] Chinese Issa guy, the usual CGI stiffness, a lead who already looked too sure of himself. Three episodes in, career I was watching the closest thing to Doctor Stone, the fantasy genre has produced, and nobody even warned me about it. Rollins, a prince, banished to a board of town, and instead of swinging a sword or stacking

[01:00] a haram, he sets about industrialising the place using witches as his R&D team, medieval engineering basically. The animation has its rougher stretches, but the art stays pretty consistent throughout the show. The world building lights up my brain in a way I forgot anime could even do, it's nerdy

[01:15] in the most affectionate sense.

[01:31] Speaking of Doctor Stone, I never thought I'd show about a science obsessed teenager teaching

[01:55] cavemen how to build vacuum tubes, would still be this electric four parts in, and yet science YouTube part 3 doubles down on every reason Doctor Stone worked in the first place. The lunatic invention pace, Senku's 10 billion percent grin, the unironic love letter to

[02:09] human ingenuity. This arc finally pushes us into the mission moon territory, and I'm glad the show isn't shying away from the bigger sci-fi questions it's been quietly seeding. The anime handles itself better than I expected, especially given how exposition heavy the source

[02:22] can get. Some episodes drag when the science piles up, no point pretending otherwise, but the highs, watching humanity claw his way back toward the stars, these are still some of the purest joy anime gives me, few shows leave me grinning like an idiot the way this one does.

[02:51] So in this world, being a hero isn't an honor, it's a sentence, convicts get conscripted into a penal hero unit dying and getting revived until the war's done with them. Sentence to be a hero opens on that premise and somehow makes you root for a guy you'd cross

[03:05] the street to avoid. Xiloh 4 bots, convicted of killing a goddess, allegedly isn't your typical chosen villain, he's calculated, paranoid, frequently despicable, and that's exactly why I can't pull my eyes off him.

[03:17] The animation isn't flashy, but the fights have a grimy dark fantasy weight that gives me early berserk flashbacks. I'm surprised by how committed it is to moral grainess, I mean nobody gets a clean pass, not even the lead, the pacing wobbles around a little bit and the goddess can get annoying

[03:30] sometimes sure, but when it lands, it lands hard. Honestly, it's probably the most underrated thing I've watched all year and I love more people to find it.

[03:45] The moment I watched episode 1 of season 2, I knew Muffa hadn't fumbled this one. Season 2 picks up exactly where the first left us, knee deep in flower-faced abominations,

[04:16] June victims and Tencent, who frankly shouldn't be allowed to exist in any moral universe. I actually admire how this time round has a shift in focus. Let me explain, okay? This season, it strips Garbimaru's killer mask down to something raw as he learns survival

[04:30] means trust, while Sargeri hardens self down into quiet steel. Chobay's loyalty to Thoma fractures under godly temptation, Yuzuri has lone wolf instincts buckling to reluctant attachment and she owns blindness sharpens into something terrifyingly

[04:43] perceptive. I'll tell you Muffa's been stretched thin this year, but you wouldn't know it watching this one. If you bounced off season 1, give it another shot, okay? The show's matured into something genuinely vicious in the best way. A retelling of romance of the Three Kings would already be a tough pitch.

[05:13] Tip on Sun Goku does something stranger. It drops the three kingdom structure into a post-apocalyptic Japan where nuclear fallout, plague and a catastrophic earthquake have gutted the country down to a tenth of its population

[05:25] and dragged technology back to the Meiji era. What's left splits into three rival nations, and a former agricultural officer named Aotearo Misumi sets out to reunify them with nothing but knowledge and a sharp tongue.

[05:37] I was skeptical going into this one, high concept settles like this tend to drown in their own exposition. Now, the writing is patient, and the character motivations actually carry weight in a way I haven't felt since Vinland's circus early rum. Visually, it's restrained.

[05:50] The studio leans into stillness, lets the storyboards breathe between the violence, and when the bloodshed does arrive, it actually means something. Not a casual recommendation, but if political intrigue with a slow-burn dystopian edge is your house, you'll be eating well this year.

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[06:31] Face Strange Fake, finally got its full series treatment, and Aewon Pictures has delivered

[06:51] one of the cleanest entries in the franchise we've seen in years. The premise is delicious. A false, holy grail war held in the American Southwest, servants going wildly off-script and Gilgamesh wandering around being insufferable in the best possible way.

[07:04] I love our strange fake plays with the rules of the franchise, servants behave wrong on purpose, masters lie about who they are. The war itself feels stitched together with duct tape and prayer. The choreography in the Saber vs. Lancet episode is some of the best-fate animation, full stop.

[07:19] I'd hand this to anyone fresh to fate without any hesitation. I'm a big hero yuki, someone old fan, and that man cooked. If you drifted away from the franchise in recent years, this is the show that pulls you back in.

[07:36] There's a specific brand of dread you only get from Rezero, and season 4 reintroduced me to it inside the first ten minutes.

[07:50] Subaru has been through enough hell to populate three different protagonists, and this season piles more on without blinking. The Pleiades watch tower arc finally gets the adaptation it deserves, and the writing is as it's strongest since the mansion days.

[08:02] I think a big part of why I kept returning to it was how confident the show feels now. White folks know exactly what it's doing, the pacing is tightened, the emotional beats landed out yelling for attention, and the new players sitting at the heart of the watch

[08:15] tower are doing real damage. Shouna's manic energy plays beautifully against the dread bleeding of Reed Astria, and Tomokazu Sugita's casting in particular is the kind of choice that makes you sit up, comfortable viewing if this is not.

[08:28] But there's a strange catharsis in returning to a story, willing to take its protagonist suffering this seriously. I miss this show more than I realised.

[08:43] I've been waiting for a witch hair atelier anime since I first picked up the manga, and honestly relieved to say this adaptation didn't break my heart.

[09:01] The studio took on what might be one of the most visually demanding manga of the last decade. Shira Hamas' line work could intimidate Asainte and translated it with real reverence. Coco's journey into the world of magic, where spells are drawn rather than spoken, and

[09:14] rules around forbidden sorcery curdle into something darker than that early episode hints at plays beautifully on screen. The kind of palette feels like flipping through a fairy tale book that occasionally goes sinister. My one gripe though, is that the middle stretch slows a touch too much, but after all these

[09:28] years, Atelier finally exists in motion, its tender, strange, and very nearly everything I'd hoped for.

[09:41] Coming back to free rent feels like meeting an old friend you didn't realise you'd missed.

[09:57] Season 2 picks up after the first class mage exam with the northern plateau arc, sending the party deeper into the demon haunted north toward the golden land, and somehow the show keeps deepening what already felt complete. Madhouse hasn't lost a step either.

[10:10] The magic jewels are still strange and physical in ways most action anime don't bother attempting, and the quieter moments still got me. I have said this before, and I am going to say it again, the art style is beautiful in every way.

[10:22] It makes you want to sit and think, and I don't usually do that. I appreciate it how this season is willing to give returning characters real weight and free rent steps back occasionally, and you start to see how the world has reshaped itself around her absence. One of those rare shows that keeps earning every bit of praise thrown at it.

[10:57] And finally, the show I've been bracing for since Shibuya rolled credits.

[11:19] Jujutsu Kaisen returns with the Kalingame arc, and Mapa somehow, despite the studio's

[11:41] reputation and brutal schedule, has delivered. Part 1 covers the setup, the new sorcerer cast, and the early survival rounds, and for once, the pacing actually breathes. Uji's emotional state post Shibuya is handled with way more care than I expected.

[11:55] Megumi's introduction to the game is haunting in a way I'm still chewing on, and the new players, Parkari especially, deserve every ounce of the hype around them. The animation is still doing things that makes me question how human hands made it. The production conditions remain brutal, and the staff deserve far better, but what's on

[12:11] screen is genuinely some of the best action animation we've gotten this year. AJK is back, scarred, but back.

[12:25] And that's my 10. Anything I missed? Well, probably. Feel free to let me know in the comments, and I'll catch up with you for the mid-year deep dive once this season wraps up, until then.