Wooper: Nearly six years after hashing out our favorite anime of the 2010s, we’ve gotten the band back together for a look at the best of what the previous decade had to offer, and what we found was that it offered quite a lot. Several of us are seasoned enough to have experienced the era firsthand, while others have begun working back through its classic offerings (as with Lenlo’s Throwback Thursday column), but no matter when you got your start, the 2000s remain an essential period for anime as a whole. It was a time of experimentation, with production methods making the transition from analog to digital and more original works being greenlit than ever before. Meanwhile, some of the biggest manga of all time received modest adaptations that nevertheless captured audiences with their stories and characters. The anime movie canon received several key additions, and even the much-maligned moe boom resulted in a handful of great series. Taking all of this into consideration, the six of us cast our votes and landed on a list of 50 shows and films that we feel best represents this pivotal era. But before we get to that, let’s reveal some of the candidates that barely missed the cut.
Honorable Mentions
Aidan: The Garden of Sinners
If I were to mention Ufotable then the first anime to come to mind would be Demon Slayer or perhaps Fate/Zero. But in reality the first anime to show Ufotable as an animation powerhouse would be Kara no Kyoukai, or The Garden of Sinners. If you were to take a scene from these films made in 2007 and show it to someone claiming it was made in 2025 then they might actually believe you. I would also say this was the series that put Yuki Kajiura on the map, as despite having the likes of the Hack/Sign OST under her belt this series was where I began to see her name being remembered. Adding to these two we can also mark this as a first work for Kinoko Nasu, the author famous (or infamous) for the Fate franchise. You can actually see characters who are like prototypes for his later work, but this was also a time where Nasu rather excelled at creating dark urban fantasies. Mentioning all of these creators makes this series of movies notable in itself, but it certainly helps that they are a unique beast all of their own. I say few other films could capture the ethereal, fantastic nature that makes a city feel like an ancient ruin with monsters lurking in the shadows. Their stories can border on pretentious at times, but can nonetheless be fairly introspective with immaculate vibes. It can be a bit of a slow burn, but by movie three it can get its hooks into you and leave you with a melancholic haze by series’ end. If you are a fan of Type Moon works this is a must watch, but it’s also a worthwhile watch for any casual fan as well.
