
Best Anime of All Time: 15 Essential Series, Ranked
The best anime of all time, by our editorial ranking, is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009) — a complete 64-episode story with a huge, well-used cast.
This is the opinion section, and we label it that way on purpose. Ranked lists and reviews here reflect our editorial judgment about writing, animation, pacing, and emotional payoff — not a claim of objective truth. We explain our reasoning so you can tell whether our taste maps to yours, which is the only way a review is actually useful. We keep spoilers out of verdicts and flag them clearly when discussion requires plot detail. Where production facts matter — a studio, a release year, an episode count — we state them only when we're confident, and generalize when we're not. A review you can trust starts with facts you can trust.

The best anime of all time, by our editorial ranking, is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009) — a complete 64-episode story with a huge, well-used cast.