Ashley Suvarna (Instagram | Twitter)
If you’ve been tempted to click on this write-up, chances are, you’ve already seen popular anime series like Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer and the likes. But if you’re open to exploring some underrated anime shows, you might want to add the following shows to your “to watch” list.
- Aldnoah Zero
I started Aldnoah Zero particularly because I love a good mecha anime, and early reviews were pretty positive. Besides, the score was by none other than Hiroyuki Sawano. And let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint at all.
The plot is pretty straightforward – in an alternate version of the present, humans have split into two groups – the people on Earth, and the Vers Empire of Mars. When the Versian princess is seemingly assassinated during her diplomatic visit to Earth, Vers declares war. Both sides have giant, single-pilot fighting machines called Kataphrakts, but they are not evenly matched. The Kataphrakts from Vers have unique abilities, are almost unstoppable, and are powered by a strange Martian technology called an Aldnoah drive. The story revolves mainly around Inaho Kaizuka, a trainee pilot in the Earth military who relies on his tactical genius to even the odds, and Slaine Troyard, a rookie from Vers with a fierce sense of loyalty to the princess.
Aldnoah Zero is a fast-paced show with a 24-episode run split into two seasons. The visuals are brilliant, the soundtrack is a banger, and despite a drop in writing quality towards the end, it remains one of the best original mecha shows I’ve watched so far.
- Ajin
Kei Nagai, a high schooler, lives in a world where certain immortal demi-humans exist. With the ability to fully heal and spring back to life immediately after dying, these Ajin are often captured and subjected to brutal experiments by the government, who use them as organ farms and test subjects. And then one day Kei gets accidentally run over by a truck and killed, only to revive moments later and realize his true nature. The show follows his subsequent attempts to escape being hunted by officials, facing government agents who are Ajin themselves, and getting tangled with a terrorist group comprising of rogue Ajin who claim to fight for the freedom of their kind. Not to mention Black Ghosts, paranormal entities that can be manifested and controlled by each Ajin as weapons.
This is one of the few shows that use a 3D-like, cel-shaded animation style, much like Knights Of Sidonia or the 2016 Berserk. However, unlike Berserk, which was an abomination, Ajin’s cel-shading is quite polished. With dark themes, well-written characters, and a hard-hitting background score, this anime is what you might call a hidden gem, particularly if you love supernatural thrillers.
- Dororo
A beautiful anime based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka, the show follows the exploits of two young boys during the Sengoku era of feudal Japan. The powerful Lord Daigo, in exchange for bringing prosperity to his dying lands, forges a pact with 12 demons. As payment for their services, the demons take one part each of Daigo’s unborn child. When the baby boy is born, he has no eyes, ears, nose, limbs, or even skin. Set adrift on a river and left to die, he is instead found by a man who heals him and fits him with prosthetics. When he grows up, the boy Hyakkimaru sets out on a journey to reclaim the missing pieces of his body, and together with an abandoned kid named Dororo, seeks to kill the demons so he can be whole again.
Full of mystique and a decent amount of gore, Dororo feels like a mix between a piece of folklore and a Ghibli flick. A must-watch that lingers in your mind long after.
- Yuri On Ice
The only sports anime on this list, Yuri On Ice is the story of Yuri Katsuki who abandons skating after a crushing defeat and goes back to his hometown. There, at a local ice rink, he ends up perfectly copying an entire skating routine belonging to the famous Russian figure skater Victor Nikiforov. When videos of Yuri’s performance reach Victor, he decides to travel to Japan and become Yuri’s coach. What follows is a beautiful mentor-muse relationship that eventually transforms into love.
But this is not a romance anime. It’s about competitive sporting with a queer romantic subplot included. There’s some light comedy, dramatic moments that don’t feel overpowering, and of course a dose of healthy rivalry. And perhaps if you’re too concerned, it has no sexual displays or yaoi (male-male love) stereotypes that are often found in Japanese media. Think of it as an endearing slice of life anime about a young sportsman’s rise to the top that you can probably finish on a lazy afternoon.
- The Devil Is A Part-Timer
The fearsome Demon Lord Satan has almost conquered the kingdom of Ente Isla when he is defeated in battle by the hero Emilia. Before being fully vanquished, he makes his escape through a dimensional gateway and lands in modern-day Japan along with his loyal general Alsiel. Except, having lost almost all their magic, the demonic duo are reduced to lowly human forms and forced to live as normal people. Satan, after a couple of amusing scenarios trying to figure out the basics of this new world, takes on the name Maou Sadou, moves into a tiny rented apartment with Alsiel (now Ashiya), and gets a part-time job flipping burgers at MgRonalds. While also secretly working on ways to slowly collect whatever little magical energy exists around. One day, Maou believes, he will have enough magic to regain his powers and return to his realm, but for now, the conquest of Ente Isla will have to wait. Right now he has another pressing mission – to become Employee Of The Month.
This is peak Japanese sitcom, and while it doesn’t go into ‘batshit crazy’ territory like Gintama, it’s hilarious in its own right. Watch it not for the plot (solid, but nothing too great) but for the assortment of idiots who are either trying to make the most out of their situation or plotting to ruin each other’s lives.
- Baccano
Well, this one’s a bit difficult to describe. Where do I even start? Alright, so it’s an urban fantasy spanning multiple centuries. It begins in a New York office in 1932, where a news tycoon and his subordinate are trying to investigate a whole bunch of strange events that happened in the last decade or so. The narration shifts between multiple different stories set in different parts of the early 1900s that don’t seem to be connected to each other, but there’s something strange going on – some of the people in them can’t seem to die. There’s a whole list of macabre stuff going on – alchemists from the 18th century who can devour each other, a demon with secrets of eternal life, and an immortality elixir that keeps moving from one set of people to another. And then, like fragments of a puzzle slowly inching closer to each other, the narrative brings them closer and closer until it all culminates in a fateful journey aboard a train called The Flying Pussyfoot. Part mystery, part pulp fiction, Baccano is a complicated tale scattered across 16 equally complicated episodes, with a heady mix of comedy, gore, tommyguns, steam engines, and whiskey bottles, all of it punctuated by fast-paced jazz music.
- Psycho Pass
Set in a futuristic Japan, this cyberpunk anime features an interesting premise that touches upon one of science fiction’s most explored tropes – the downside of technology dependency. In this era, all crime and law enforcement are managed by a computer network called the Sybil System. Each citizen’s mental state and physical metrics are constantly measured to assess if they have the potential to become criminals, and based on those readings they are given a Crime Coefficient. This measurement is called a Psycho Pass. If their Coefficient exceeds a certain level, cops are sent to apprehend them. Now each of these cops carries a gun-like device called a Dominator, used to scan the target for their current threat level. If the gun decides the target is not going to be a real problem, they are arrested, but if it decides their Coefficient is dangerously high, the Sybil System lets the cops fire a shot that can instantly turn someone into a steaming goop. Mind you, this is regardless of whether the target has committed an actual crime or not.
That’s pretty oppressive, you may think. But this is where the real fun begins. Our main characters – a group of cops called Unit One – come across a criminal mastermind named Shogo Makishima. Now Makishima is an anomaly. Despite having committed multiple crimes, the System detects him as someone with an extremely low Coefficient. Even when they scan him with their guns. And so when our team encounters him, they cannot fire their Dominators because auntie Sybil thinks the guy is practically a saint.
Psycho Pass is a slow-burn anime that reminds you of films like Blade Runner and Minority Report, full of moral dilemmas and philosophy. Fair warning though. It also contains some very dark themes and visually disturbing imagery.
- Gurren Lagann
Do you know why Dragon Ball Z is still widely loved by male anime fans? Because of the pure adrenaline rush it provides. However, when it comes to anime that make you want to march to battle or punch your problems straight into next week, even DBZ pales in comparison to the glorious Gurren Lagann, the second mecha anime on this list. It all starts with Simon the Digger, a little kid living in an underground colony like most of humanity, while the surface world is ruled by the powerful King Lordgenome and his army of Ganmen (weird looking mecha robots with pilots). The only thing that makes his meager existence bearable is Kamina, a crazy delinquent whose motivational speeches and hyper-optimism would make Sandeep Maheshwari blush, and someone who fills Simon’s head with dreams. One day while digging, Simon finds a key for a strange little Ganmen robot that has the weird ability to combine with other automatons. And so Simon and Kamina become rebel leaders with the goal to achieve freedom – both for themselves and the rest of the humans.
If you’re looking for deep, artistic storytelling or a meaningful plot or anything of that sort, I’m sorry, look somewhere else. Gurren Lagann is sort of an acid trip that requires you to do one thing and one thing alone – keep your brains aside and just let it take over. Do it, and you’ll be rewarded with something that plays hopscotch with all your senses. It will fascinate you, it will induce goosebumps on a fairly regular basis, it will tug on your emotions in all directions like a tarpaulin, it will leave you gasping for air one moment, then clenching your fist and silently going ‘hell yeah’ the next. But most of all, it will inspire you over and over again until you feel like nothing is beyond your reach. And when the end credits roll for the last time, you might find yourself falling to your knees, weeping, thanking the gods for blessing you with such a rollercoaster of an experience, before staring into the void and realizing your life has no meaning anymore.
- Paranoia Agent
One of the most unsettling shows I’ve seen, Paranoia Agent is a straight-out psycho thriller that deals with the subject of mass hysteria. But it wouldn’t be wrong to also call it borderline horror. Tsukiko Sagi is a cartoonist who creates a pink dog mascot named Maromi, which goes on to become a phenomenon. Maromi is pretty much a household name, selling a lot of merchandise and even turning into sort of an obsession. So Tsukiko’s bosses ask her to create something else that could become equally famous, something to eventually replace the Maromi craze. She tries hard to think of a character but fails, eventually starting to crumble under desperation and despair. One night as she’s returning home, someone hits her on the head and knocks her out. The next day, she provides cops with a description – a young boy wearing inline skates, a cap, and holding a gold-colored, dented baseball bat. News of her encounter quickly spreads, and then another woman in town gets assaulted. Same description – skates, cap, bent baseball bat. As the terror of this Golden Bat fella among the public grows, so do the number of his victims, causing the media and the police to launch a hunt for this elusive guy. But is he a real kid, or an entity birthed from collective imagination?
If you’re familiar with Satoshi Kon’s works like Perfect Blue and Paprika, you will find yourself in familiar waters, with prominent themes of mental instability, trauma, and dealing with one’s deepest fears. Satoshi can make even the most innocent-looking object seem like a thing of terror. For example, the cute little dog Maromi. One look at it and you can’t figure out if its face is the most adorable thing ever, or something that creeps the heck out of you. Even the anime’s opening song (which you should definitely check out on YouTube) feels like a mix of mirthful and macabre. A masterpiece of a show that makes you realize, even blood or violence or ghostly entities can never be as terrifying as the darkest corners of the human mind.
- Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans
We started this list with a mecha anime, and we will end with another. Gundam has been a decades-long franchise, the big daddy of the mecha genre, with dozens of sequels and standalone series. Not all of them were hits, obviously. Iron Blooded Orphans, however, is considered one of the better shows to have come out of the Gundam universe. And I can see why. Even though it features amazing mecha battles, both on land and in space, IBO is more about the humans involved, and their unflinching resolve.
The story is set in the post-Calamity War era. A group of child soldiers are used as workhorses on a Martian base, under the employment of a security firm named CGS. When the base is suddenly attacked, the higher-ups decide to escape by using the children as decoys. But the leader of this unit, the young Orga Itsuka, uses this opportunity to turn the tables by activating the base’s power source, an old Gundam suit called Barbatos. Orga and the orphan kids manage to repel the attack, kill the higher-ups, and establish a new group called Tekkadan (Iron Flower), with a single purpose – to gain enough power to forge their own destiny.
But how far can a small, practically powerless group made up of nobodies get when they’re up against mighty organizations and political systems? That’s what forms the crux of the story.
We’ve got two lead characters who pretty much carry the entire show on their shoulders – Orga Itsuka and Mikazuki Augus. While Orga is your typical leader figure, Mikazuki is the one who elevates this show to another level. The only one capable of piloting Barbatos, Mikazuki is Tekkadan’s backbone and the only reason the team gets as far as they do. He even reminds me a lot of Inaho Kaizuka from Aldnoah Zero. Both Inaho and Mikazuki share a calm, focused demeanor, but while Inaho depends more on careful tactics, Mika is more of a single-minded savage who isn’t bound down by morals or petty emotions, and will follow Orga’s commands without question, even if it means throwing away his own life or ruthlessly mowing people down in cold blood. Gundam IBO is spread across two seasons, chronicling the rise and fall of Tekkadan, the underdogs with nerves of steel, willing to pay for their audacity in both tears and blood.
Read Next: Three Must-Watch Hayao Miyazaki Movies on Netflix