Aren’t you tired of finding youtube videos about “the top 10 fights on anime” where 9 of the 10 fights are complete shit battles from badly animated mainstream shonens like naruto or bleach? Cause I am. Every time I check one of those, it’s clear it has been done by some edgy teenager whose experience in anime has never gone further from what is popular in tv or what his equally edgy teenager friends watch. People who has never in their lives watched any series that requires the most minimal of thinking, much less any seinen, and have no real knowledge of what animes with good fights are out there, because they’ve only watched the most mainstream of mainstream. In truth, hearing someone say that X fight from Naruto, Bleach, One piece, etc, is one of the best, is a sign that that person has no knowledge of anime at all.

It would seem that the people who have actually been watching anime non-stop for decades are not prone of doing that kind of videos (and in truth most anime youtubers I’ve seen seem pricks with no knowledge), and myself had never considered doing anything similar nor will do it on a regular basis. But I have some free time today and have recently been disappointed by yet another Top 10 full of naruto fights, so I’ve make a compilation of the really, REALLY good battles that I know. I considered doing t as a video, but some of them are so long that it would make for a huge video and it would be too much work for a channel that I only use for drawing videos. They’re in no particular order of greatness, but I’ll give explanations on all of them. Of course, some of the videos contain spoilers, cause people usually die in fights, but if an anime has several fights that are good I’ve picked the less spoily one.

-Karas: Karas is a series from 2007 that today, 10 years later, still has one of the best, if not THE best animated fighting scenes in anime. The plot is kind of complicated to get, and probably the reason why it didn’t go popular, but it’s a visual masterpiece. All around the fights in the series are great, but I will always point people towards the introductory fight scene.

-Black Rock Shooter: This anime has a very weird plot that’s not really well constructed, but if we ignore its plot holes and focus on the battles, it has some of the best ones you’ll find. All of the fights in the anime are great so it’s hard to pick up one. Here’s a video compiling all of them without subs so you won’t be spoiled of the plot, I’ve time stamped one of my favorites.

 

-Seirei no Moribito: This series doesn’t really have a lot of fights, but the ones it has are some of the best spear fight scenes out there.

 

 

Majestic prince: This is kind of your typical shonen battle gundam, but with characters a little less archetyped and some meta jokes that put it above mainstream shonens on plot, and also with amazingly good mech fights. It’s hard to pick one fight cause all of them are amazing, so let’s just go with one from the movie.

 

 

Flip Flappers: This was a surprising find, because it’s actually a happy magical girls anime, but when they fight they go full Dragon ball and the animation is very good.

 

-Macross Plus: Macross is my favorite saga of all times, so expect a few videos of it. M-plus is a movie from 1994 that still today has one of the best dogfights ever seen. Watching it without context makes it less epic than it should, but here it is anyways.

 

-Macross Zero:  This series has less fights than usual for a Macross anime, but one of them has become a classic; a 4 plane chase at match 2.

 

-Macross frontier: This is the Macross saga with consistently more impressive fights. It’s hard to pick one battle because all of them are great, so I’ll go with the one I usually call “the best concert scene in anime”.

 

-Macross delta:  This is one of the most disappointing series in the Macross saga, with a very shonen and weak plot, characters and fights, but still the first fight scene is very remarkable.

 

-Kill la Kill: This is probably the only mainstream shonen you’re gonna find here, since KlK was really a popular shonen in its day. But it’s a weird one, because it’s done in the same way as the shonens in the 80s, so it’s actually a shonen for people like me who are around their 30s. In any case, the fights are high quality.

 

-Arpeggio of Blue steel: This is actually a naval anime about futuristic battleships with the shape of WW2 ships and advanced female AIs. The battles are long and full of strategy so it’s kinda different from the usual battle anime, but they’re really very well done. It’s hard to pick a segment for it so I’ll just put one chapter with some of the good fights.

or if you don’t want to watch a full fight, a couple of cool segments.

 

-Girls und panzer: This is a series that you go into expecting moe and fanservice, and you stay because it has amazing tank battles that actually care about realism and follow the real specs of the tanks. The “realistic” part is thrown out the window in the movie, but the epic of it increases tenfold. It’s hard to choose one fight cause all of them are great, and it’s very hard to find unedited clips on youtube (everyone seems to either parody it or add a different music to the scene) so I guess the best I can do is put the trailer, which doesn’t make the series justice.

you can also watch this video which has an actual good battle scene, but have in mind this is heavily edited both with false subs and music (and pizzas)

 

-One punch man: OPM is a really misunderstood series. Edgy teenager Naruto fans believe this is a totally serious shonen with a Naruto protagonist, when in truth is a deconstruction of the shonen genre poking fun at shonen tropes and invincible main characters. Anyways the fights are top, specially the one with Boros.

 

Re:Creators: This has been one my favorite animes of modern times. It has a weird pace that changes from fast to slow a few times but the plot and setting are so well made, and also the fights are very good. It’s hard to pick one cause it has a lot of good ones, so let’s just go with one of the first ones.

 

-Fate Zero: People who follow me probably already know that I think Ufotable is highly overrated. They’re regarded as some kind of gods of animation when there are a lot of better companies, and even Deen did a better work with UBW than them. UT designs are very weird, sometimes they look like bad fanarts, and they use a lot of tricks to not animate. If you look at most of their fights, they usually do like 5 secs of fighting, then switch to static images of characters speaking for half or a full minute, then 5 secs of fight and repeat. If you look for videos compiling the fight scenes without the dialogue, they shrink to like 30 secs scenes. But even so, they have some cool fights, and this is probably the only seinen that Naruto fans know and sometimes put in their “top 10” lists. One of the fights I like is the chase of Iskandar.

 

-Houseki no kuni: This is a new anime, but it has already impressed me with its animation, specially the fight against the giant snail. Unfortunately I cannot find the scene on youtube, I’ve only found the diamond running scene, which is also cool, and you can have an idea, but go watch the series for that snail fight.

 

-Thunderbolt fantasy: If you don’t know this series, you’ll be surprised, because it’s an anime done with real dolls and stop motion, mixed with anime special effects, with a typical battle anime plot. Story wise is not the most surprising of things, although it has some trope breaking moments, but the fights are just so good you can’t believe is stop motion.

 

-Vividred operation: This is a magical girl series that could have been far better than it was. The setting was actually dark and could’ve been used to do some dark story like Mai Hime, but instead they just went happy magical route. A pity, but still, the fights are very good, and I still like the final battle a lot.

 

-Expelled from paradise: This is one of those movies that won awards but then no one knows them. It was my favorite movie of its year, with a decent plot, a very good ending, and astounding battles. I haven’t been able to find the best fight in the movie in youtube, which is the last battle in the city, but I’ve been able to find the second best one.

 

-Summer wars: This is THE movie I would recommend to initiate anyone from any age into anime. It’s a movie that mixes the old generations with the new ones, the people who only know analog and the people who live on the internet. I think it’s a movie that could be understood and liked by anyone. It only has a couple of fights, but they’re very good. I’ve only found a small clip of the second one, but it’s actually far longer.

 

-Ghost in the shell movie: Say what you want, the tank scene form the Gits movie is still legendary.

 

Blame! Movie: I liked the movie very much; even if they make up a couple of things, it fits very well and makes sense, and the fight of Kily vs Sanakan is pretty brutal

 

-Blassreiter: The series is full of remarkable fights, but the entire last episode is a big fight to remember. I’ve time stamped when the fights begin to get really good.

 

-Diebuster: This anime is over the top like anything Trigger does, and have very cool fight scenes

 

-The end of Evangelion: The final fight of the Eva02 is still on par with today’s animation quality, truly a scene every fan remembers

 

-Kemono friends: No, im joking.

There are a lot more, but those are the ones I can remember now that I would put in a top. Maybe I’ll update with more entries if I remember other super cool fights in anime. You can also suggest me series with cool fights, but I won’t be interested in anything on the line of Naruto (which is what people usually recommend me when I say this).