2025 is winding down, and today is a great time to look back at all the amazing anime fans got this year. Let’s take a look at the various anime series we all watched together and pick the best anime of 2025!
Great news! J-List is having a $40-off-$200-or-more holiday coupon you can use for all in-stock items shipping from Japan! (Except calendars and Lucky Boxes.) This means you can make a big order of ecchi products for men, manga and doujinshi, JAV DVDs and Blu-rays, or hentai products and save big. Start browsing here!
What Kind of Year Was 2025 For Anime Fans?
What a fast year 2025 was! Was it really just a year ago that we were all thrilling to the tanned girls of Okitsura: Fell In Love with an Okinawan Girl or watching Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf with wonder? Really!?
Let’s roll up our sleeves and get into some numbers that sum up the past year of anime.
- We got an average of 64 new anime series pitched at us each season in 2025, for a total of 256 shows. This number counts all newly airing anime series, including second seasons, but continuing cours are not counted.
- Overall, the anime industry is booming worldwide, growing to an incredible $30 billion (USD). Streaming, merchandising, and licensing fees are driving profits at important companies like Sony. Every anime that gets made can be licensed to streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ in various markets around the world, although it’s harder for sexy anime with lots of fan service to get licensed.
- That said, the usual complaints I’ve made about the Anime Production Committee system are still valid. Companies like Sony that invest in anime projects continue to reap massive profits, while the actual animation studios like A-1 or CloverWorks bring in far less income. (Will this article get me in trouble with Sony?)
- Licensors love anime because it’s “cool” and makes them look hip with younger customers. And anime is way, way cheaper to make than headline live-action shows. A single episode of Strange Things season $50-60 million, while a whole season of anime is only $2-4 million.
The Best Anime of 2025: What Shows Made us Laugh, Cry, or Feel Ecchi?
My main criteria for adding series to this list were whether they generate “buzz” among anime fans in general, especially among fans of culture who buy from J-List. As usual, a lot of shows have very high MAL scores, but weren’t widely watched by a lot of mainstream fans. Shows that were sexy and generated a lot of excitement in the J-List X account generally have low MAL scores, in the 6.0 range.
Kurakon: Would You Marry a Girl You Hate?
The first anime of 2025 that fans got excited about was Kurakon: I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in my Class. The setup was actually clever. The grandfather and grandmother of the two characters couldn’t marry when they were younger. Now they’re determined to see their grandkids do what they could not. Can Saito and Akane find a way to be happy together?
Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Fan Service
Another fun show was Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms, about a sexy “Madonna of the school” named Mona Kawai who’s gunning for a boy in her class. But Medaka is training to become a Buddhist priest and keep his heart pure, and is trying like hell to resist Mona’s charms. It was a pretty good “turn off your brain” rom-com.
The Best Second Season? Let’s Go with ‘100 Girlfriends’
We got a lot of second seasons of anime in 2025. But as I’ve written before, it’s quite common for fans to skip new seasons of anime for various reasons. The one that got the most buzz among J-List’s followers was the continuation of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Which girl is your favorite?
Top Anime of 2025? How About a New Anne of Green Gables Anime!
While most of us got into anime because it had transforming robots, space battles, and ridiculously cute moe waifus for us to obsess over, Japanese fans of a certain era had a different experience. To people like Mrs. J-List, the anime that stuck with them most were classics based on Western literature like Heidi, Girl of the Alps, A Dog of Flanders, and Anne of Green Gables. I was super happy to see Anne Shirley, a big-budget remake of the Canadian classic. And fans around the world really seemed to love it!
More Best Anime of 2025: Summer Pockets
I was super hyped to see Summer Pockets. The show felt like a return to the glorious days of anime based on Jun Maeda’s Key visual novels. And the show was great, reminding me how I felt watching Kanon, Air the Animation, and Clannad for the first time. Read my thoughts on the show here!
Kowloon Generic Romance was Anything But Generic
Talk about a crazy idea for an anime: a simple romance story involving Reiko Kujirai and her coworker, set in a retro-futuristic version of Kowloon, the bizarre “walled city” that existed in the lawless space between China and the former British colony of Hong Kong until 1994. It was so refreshing to see a story like this get animated. Many fans fell in love with it.
Why Were Fans Excited About Shiunji-ke no Kodomo-tachi?
When I heard that The Shiunji Family Children was based on a manga by Rent-a-Girlfriend creator Reiji Miyajima, I groaned. We were going to get another story about a sniveling MC who can’t make up his mind and a story doomed to never move forward? Happily, this anime was a lot more enjoyable. Arata Shiunji and his five sisters are shocked when their father announces that they’re all adopted, creating lots of drama about which sister Arata will choose as his lover, as one does in anime. Read five reasons why I don’t hate the show here!
Trigger Warning: GQuuuuuuX is the Best Gundam in Years
If you’ve ever wondered what Gundam would be like reimagined by the founders of Gainax and Trigger, this is it. In this version, Amuro Ray doesn’t exist, which allows Zeon to win the One Year War. Read my detailed post on “Gundam Zeke-Axe” here!
Even More of the Best Anime of 2025!
Haite Kudasai, Takamine-san Made Us Smile
You can almost tell whether an anime will have sexy fan service in it by looking at its MAL score. Please Put Them On, Takamine-san had the most ridiculous setup ever: Takamine-san can time-travel, restarting from any moment in the past by removing her panties. Because the main character Shirota has seen her bare breasts, he’s immune to her time rewinding effect, and becomes her “closet,” carrying spare underwear for her to put on after every time loop. It’s actually quite a cute show: we learn that Takamine loves Shirota and is actively trying to get him to look at her romantically. Read my deep dive into this ridiculous show here!
My Dress-Up Darling Season 2 was Great
Another candidate for best anime of 2025 was the long-awaited season 2 of My Dress-Up Darling. Once again, we get sexy moments with Marin Kitagawa, clumsy moments from Gojo-kun, and lots of detailed cosplay scenes. But not enough romance, damn it! Browse our stock of sexy Marin Kitagawa and related products on the site here!
Did You Enjoy Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai?
It was great getting a whole new season in the Seishun Buta Yarou universe, and catching up with Sakuta, Mai, sister Kaede, and so on. Did you watch the new series?
City the Animation, the First New Project from Kyoto Animation in Years
This is an extremely important anime to me. It’s the first totally new project from Kyoto Animation since, you know, and I want the company to be successful. Also, it’s by Keiichi Arawi, who is from J-List’s home city of Isesaki, and attended the same high school as Mrs. J-List, Isesaki Commercial High School. Read my post about City the Animation here!
Ruri no Houseki? More Like Yuri no Houseki!
Can an anime use sexy yuri visuals to make us care about topics like geology? Sure it can, if it’s Ruri no Houseki. It’s the story of a spoiled girl named Ruri whose mother won’t give her money to buy crystal jewelry, so she takes a bus out to the mountains to dig for crystals herself. There she encounters Nagi Arato, a burly lesbian university student and gemology expert who teaches Ruri all about lesbian sex how to dig for gems and even gold.
There’s No Freaking Way ‘Watanare’ is the Best Yuri Anime in Years! Unless…
Speaking of ‘yuri,’ we had the best yuri romance show in years with Watanare: There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… It was a kind of yuri harem in which three different girls aggressively pursue sex with Renako, who just wants to make friends in high school. The story was intense enough to activate some fans’ anti-NTR switch, which was surprising for a lesbian series. Read my thoughts on the show here!
Toujima Tanzaburou wa Kamen Rider ni Naritai
A really amazing anime for tokusatsu fans, this show is a real gem. Tanzaburou Toujima has been a lifelong fan of the Kamen Rider series, but learns the hard way that even the purest childhood dreams can be taken too far.
Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka
One of the hits of the Winter 2025 anime season has been Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka. It’s about a confident and popular student in class who has to solve issues for his classmates and navigate the complexities of high school social life. Read my blog post about this anime here!
Hands Off: Sawaranaide Kotesashi-kun
Finally, another ecchi series doomed to having a low MAL score of just 6.19. But the show, about a man with amazing massage skills, is pure, ridiculous fun. Read J-List’s coverage of this ridiculous show here!
Let’s Chat
You made it to the end of this post! Thank you! As a token of our appreciation, enjoy an extra 5% off your next order when you use the code BLOG at checkout. Also, don’t forget to follow J-List on all our platforms!
- Twitter / X, where Peter posts anime booba for you
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Great news! J-List is having a $40-off-$200-or-more holiday coupon you can use for all in-stock items shipping from Japan! (Except calendars and Lucky Boxes.) This means you can make a big order of ecchi products for men, manga and doujinshi, JAV DVDs and Blu-rays, or hentai products and save big. Start browsing here!
