The Best Anime Of The Winter 2024 Season (And Where You Can Stream It)
(Welcome to I Didn't Know What Seasonal Anime to Watch, So I Asked /Film for Help and They Gave Me a List, a regular column dedicated to helping our readers choose what anime shows to watch each season.)
Another winter, another busy season of anime. The start of the year is always exciting, as it sets the tone for the following three seasons with blockbuster adaptations, leftover favorites from the previous season, new original gems, and all kinds of weird shows.
While the anime awards continue to deliver boring and unsurprising winners that could make someone think all anime series are shonen shows, this list shows the incredible variety of genres and tones the medium has to offer. There are legendary ongoing shows, an original sci-fi story that is also the gayest anime in years, a "John Wick"-esque action anime about ninjas, and more. If anyone ever tells you all anime is the same, you show them this list.
Before we welcome the spring season and dozens of new and returning shows, let's look back at the best the winter 2024 anime season had to offer.
One Piece: Egghead Island Arc
First of all, yes, I am only now including "One Piece" before I am fully caught up with this legendary anime. Luckily for me, this is the best time to be watching the show, because the Egghead arc is the best the "One Piece" anime has ever been. Granted, Wano had some incredible moments and visual flourishes, but it's only with Egghead that "One Piece" has finally reached the consistent heights that manga readers have always known this story to be capable of.
A big part of this is that "One Piece" now has good pacing free of filler, which lets the character work, metric tons of reveals, and stunning visuals shine even brighter. The arc takes place on a futuristic island that is home to the renowned Dr. Vegapunk, whom we've heard about for over a decade. It is still early in the arc, but Egghead feels like a concentrated "One Piece," with everything that makes the show so beloved and special distilled into each new episode.
We're seeing the arc delivering huge lore reveal after huge lore reveal, changing the anime's world every 15 minutes without making it feel forced. There are even callbacks to the first story arc of the anime, an anticipated fight between hugely popular (and hated) characters, fantastic work reminiscent of early "One Piece" when the characters could just hang out, and much more. The arc also shows why Eiichiro Oda is so great at worldbuilding, with Egghead feeling completely different and unique from any other location. As an adaptation, the anime is even adding to and reworking the manga to improve certain aspects. So far, this is shaping out to be one of the best arcs in "One Piece."
"One Piece" is streaming on Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Delicious in Dungeon
"Dungeons & Dragons" fans are eating good in animation. "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" delivers a "Lord of the Rings" style epic that is also extremely emotional, while "Delicious in Dungeon" is finally giving us an aspect of the tabletop RPG we don't really see in shows and movies inspired by the game — actual dungeoning.
The premise of the anime is simple: a party of adventurers heads down into a dangerous dungeon to try and revive one of their own — who was devoured by a dragon — before she is digested and killed forever. Low on money and supplies, the party is forced to survive by, well, eating every single monster they encounter.
Much like how Frank Herbert's original "Dune" novel delivers an incredibly intricate ecosystem, detailing every aspect of its world and how it works, "Delicious in Dungeon" does a great job of making the audience understand how every aspect of the titular dungeon affects the rest, how the food chain is affected by adventurers killing a monster, and how the biology of each monster allows it to exist. The anime also portrays how dangerous it is to explore a dungeon, paying attention to trap disarming, lockpicking, and more, which are essential to "Dungeons & Dragons" even though we don't tend to see that in onscreen adaptations.
"Delicious in Dungeon" is streaming on Netflix.
Brave Bang Bravern
"Brave Bang Bravern" starts out as a dark, gritty, and violent war show that has more in common with "Attack on Titan" than what it eventually becomes. Humanity is on the brink of annihilation after an alien invasion. We see people dying everywhere and characters act super serious. Sure, there are mechas, but they are more like anthropomorphic tanks than a proper Gundam mobile suit ... at least until a giant robot shows up and tells a Japanese soldier to get inside of him — really.
This giant robot, the titular Bravern, is sentient, can fly, has an energy sword, and is unabashedly aware of the tropes of a super robot show. He yells out his own name and forces his reluctant pilot, partner, and (according to Bravern) soulmate Isami to scream all his special attacks alongside him. He even plays his own theme song diegetically during combat and displays his logo as a hologram every time he shows up.
What makes "Brave Bang Bravern" hilarious is that it plays everything completely straight, only increasing the comedy of it all. It is ridiculous, but also as earnest as "Gurren Lagann," another super robot show that is both ludicrous yet ingenious and funny. Plus, this is the most homoerotic show this side of "Gundam: The Witch From Mercury." Every time Bravern talks about his pilot Isami, it is laden with homoeroticism — like the robot telling Isami his cockpit will always be open for him, or how good he felt when Isami moved his joystick up and down during a fight. And that's without the very "Top Gun" inspired rivalry between Isami and American soldier Lewis Smith, their homoeroticism climaxing in the end credits sequence (which is an extended duet where both men dance as they remove their shirts).
"Brave Bang Bravern" is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Solo Leveling
Gaming has been impacting most anime genres for years now, both in stories, tropes, mechanics, and even aesthetics. Now comes "Solo Leveling," an adaptation of the webcomic of the same name, arguably the first breakout Korean manhwa. The story takes place in a world where human warriors with supernatural abilities (referred to as hunters) fight deadly monsters spawning from magical portals around the world. We follow Sung Jinwoo, the weakest living hunter who one day gets chosen by a mysterious program and becomes the only hunter who can level up his skills through training and combat.
What makes the show so entertaining is how it embraces RPG mechanics. It's not just that the show is essentially an MMORPG — with raids, guilds, and loot all being essential to the anime's world — but also in how Jinwoo's entire life becomes game-like after his "awakening." He gets daily quests, which lead to rewards, which he can use to literally improve his skills. It is a power fantasy, sure, but it is well told, has fascinating world-building, and stunning animation from A-1 Pictures.
"Solo Leveling" is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Ninja Kamui
"Ninja Kamui" has the best premiere of a show this year, and it is all thanks to Sunghoo Park. The director of the first season of "Jujutsu Kaisen" is back with an original Adult Swim anime written by Shigeru Murakoshi and produced by Park's E&H Production animation studio. The anime is essentially a '90s OVA-style pulp action story that asks, "What if 'John Wick' but with futuristic ninjas?" The answer is a simple "Hell yes!"
The story follows Joe Higan, a former ninja who left his clan and went into hiding in the U.S. under the name Joe Logan (he is not very clever when it comes to names). When assassins from his old clan attack him and his family, Joe is forced to come back to his old life and go on a quest for blood and revenge, all while two FBI agents investigate a series of murders tied to Joe and a vast underworld of ninjas. Much like "John Wick," the anime slowly crafts an intricate web and unveils a much larger world than first meets the eye, with fascinating rules and lore. Also, much like "John Wick," it is the action that is the star of "Ninja Kamui." Sunghoo Park shows why he is one of the best action directors working in anime today, with brutal hand combat that is exquisitely choreographed and animated, and impressive camerawork that evokes live-action techniques. From there, the show only becomes more ambitious, introducing more and more sci-fi elements (including mecha!), ensuring that "Ninja Kamui" never gets boring or predictable.
"Ninja Kamui" is streaming on Max.