Top Anime of 1998 · mirumiru

Top Anime of 1998 · mirumiru

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop

Spike Spiegel, a lanky ex-hitman of the Red Dragon crime syndicate, drifts through the solar system as a bounty hunter aboard the Bebop with his partner Jet Black, a former ISSP cop who lost his arm to a setup. They pick up strays along the way: Faye Valentine, an amnesiac gambler thawed from cryogenic sleep with a mountain of debt; the hacker kid Edward; and Ein, a genetically engineered Welsh Corgi. Spike's past with the syndicate and a woman named Julia keeps pulling him back toward the life he tried to leave behind.

TV|3|Spring 1998

Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue

Mima Kirigoe quits J-pop idol group CHAM! to pursue acting, starting with a role on the TV drama Double Bind. An obsessive fan known as Me-Mania begins stalking her, while a website called 'Mima's Room' publishes eerily accurate diary entries about her private life. As the role pushes Mima into darker territory and people around the production start turning up dead, the line between her onscreen character and her waking life dissolves.

Trigun

Trigun

Trigun

Vash the Stampede carries a $$60 billion bounty and the nickname "the Humanoid Typhoon" after an incident leveled a city on the desert planet Gunsmoke. Bounty hunters chase him relentlessly, yet every encounter reveals a goofy pacifist who refuses to kill and has an obsession with donuts. Insurance agents Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson tail Vash to contain collateral damage, and the traveling priest Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who hauls a cross-shaped arsenal called the Punisher, becomes his most unlikely ally.

Rurouni Kenshin: End of Wanderings

Rurouni Kenshin: End of Wanderings

流浪の最果て・緋と瑠璃の絆は潮騒の中に

In a bonus episode from the original Rurouni Kenshin TV series, Kenshin Himura and Kaoru Kamiya set out to visit the grave of a fallen friend, and a sudden storm strands the pair overnight on the road home. Away from the dojo, quiet tension builds between them as Kaoru wonders where their relationship is headed, while Sanosuke and the rest of the household wait for their return. Never broadcast in Japan, this fight-free episode reached viewers only on home video.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Gaiden

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Gaiden

銀河英雄伝説外伝

Fresh out of the military academy, Reinhard von Lohengramm and his devoted friend Siegfried Kircheis are posted to a brutal frontier world, then reassigned into the military police, where they uncover corruption inside their own ranks. A later assignment pulls them into a criminal investigation, and the arc closes with their first major fleet engagement against the Free Planets Alliance, the battle that begins turning Reinhard into the commander seen in the main series.

His and Her Circumstances

His and Her Circumstances

彼氏彼女の事情

Yukino Miyazawa has cultivated the perfect first-year persona at Hokuei High: top grades, athletic, beloved by classmates, all of it engineered to soak up praise she drops the moment she gets home. Her one rival for class rank is Soichiro Arima, the seemingly flawless boy who steals her crown on day one and who, she discovers, is wearing a mask of his own to hide a childhood he barely survived. As the two corner each other into honesty, friends like Tsubasa Shibahime and Hideaki Asaba drift into the orbit of their unlikely romance.

Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back

Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back

劇場版ポケットモンスターミュウツーの逆襲

Mewtwo, a Pokémon cloned from the DNA of the mythical Mew, awakens in a laboratory and destroys it after learning he was created as an experiment. From a base on New Island, he lures Ash Ketchum, Misty, Brock, and other trainers with an invitation from the world's strongest Pokémon Master, then reveals his plan to clone their Pokémon and prove his creations superior to the originals. The clones and the originals square off, and the real Mew arrives to answer Mewtwo's challenge in person.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh!

遊☆戯☆王

Yugi Mutou, a small and bullied first-year student at Domino High, finally solves the Millennium Puzzle his grandfather entrusted to him and finds himself sharing his body with an ancient spirit who comes out whenever Yugi or his friends are wronged. The spirit drags tormentors into Yami no Game, wagered Shadow Games of cards, dice, and worse, and metes out cruel penalties to the losers. Joined by Jonouchi, Anzu, Honda, and the cheerful Miho Nosaka, Yugi navigates a Tokyo darker than later adaptations show. This 1998 Toei series predates the Duel Monsters version and adapts the manga's early chapters with original episodes.

Outlaw Star

星方武侠アウトロースター

Gene Starwind and his eleven-year-old partner Jim Hawking scrape by with an odd-jobs business on the backwater planet Sentinel III. A bodyguard job for the outlaw Hilda lands them the stolen prototype ship XGP15A-II and Melfina, a bio-android who alone can pilot it. Renaming the ship the Outlaw Star and dodging the Kei Pirates, Gene sets a course for the legendary treasure cache known as the Galactic Leyline.

Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain

シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン

After a classmate's suicide, fourteen-year-old Lain Iwakura receives an email from the dead girl claiming she has merely abandoned her body to live inside the Wired, a global communications network resembling a more immersive internet. Lain, until now barely computer-literate, becomes obsessed with the Wired and upgrades her hardware into a room-filling rig. The deeper she goes, the more she finds of herself already active online, and the boundary between the Wired and the physical world starts to dissolve.

Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight

Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight

ロードス島戦記-英雄騎士伝-

Five years after the War of Heroes, Parn now carries the title of Free Knight of Lodoss, his old company of companions scattered across the island on their own paths. When the dark knight Ashram moves to seize the Scepter of Domination and reunite Lodoss's kingdoms under a single banner, Parn is drawn back into a conflict that reaches beyond politics; something far older is stirring, and it works through Ashram toward ends of its own.

Slayers Excellent

Slayers Excellent

スレイヤーズえくせれんと

Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent work three separate jobs across this OVA's three episodes. The first has them meeting for the first time, on a rescue that runs into a vampire. In the second, Lina is hired to guard a wealthy man's daughter, Sirene, who burns through the advance so fast that Lina stages a fake kidnapping to teach her a lesson, and a real abduction happens instead. The third puts the two of them on opposite sides of a fashion dispute.

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

新機動戦記ガンダムW Endless Waltz 特別篇

Released in theaters as Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz - Special Edition, this cut recombines the three-episode Endless Waltz OVA into a single feature, adding roughly ten minutes of new footage. The story is unchanged: Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Winner, and Wufei Chang retrieve their Gundams to stop Mariemaia Khushrenada's Operation Meteor a year after the war's end. This theatrical version is a recompilation, not new content beyond the added scenes.

Oh! My Goddess: The Adventures of Mini-Goddess

Oh! My Goddess: The Adventures of Mini-Goddess

ああっ女神さまっちっちゃいって事は便利だね

Shrunk down to chibi size, Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld headline a run of short comedic sketches alongside their rat companion Gan. Each seven-minute episode spoofs other anime and pop culture rather than continuing the main goddess-and-Keiichi storyline, playing the trio's antics for gag-a-day laughs across a full season. Their established personalities carry over intact, but the romance plot of the main story is dropped entirely.

Welcome to Lodoss Island!

Welcome to Lodoss Island!

ようこそロードス島へ！

Twenty-seven chibi parody shorts that ran after each episode of Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight are strung together here. Parn, Deedlit, Ghim and the rest of the Lodoss cast appear in shrunken form and play their own heroic roles for laughs. Assembled as a short feature, it is a comedy compilation of trailer-length gags rather than any part of the war story the main series tells.

Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas

Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas

ドラえもんのび太の南海大冒険

Nobita is set on hunting pirate treasure, and once the news reports a real treasure find, Doraemon agrees to take him, Shizuka, Gian and Suneo sailing across the Pacific. A time distortion pulls their voyage back to the 16th century, a whirlpool wrecks their ship, and Nobita is swept away, washing up on an island with Jack, a boy separated from his family. The others are hauled aboard the pirate ship of Captain Kidd, where Jack's sister Betty is searching for her missing brother and father.

Touch: Miss Lonely Yesterday - Are kara Kimi wa...

Touch: Miss Lonely Yesterday - Are kara Kimi wa...

タッチ Miss Lonely Yesterday あれから君は…

Three years after the original story, Tatsuya Uesugi has given up baseball, and after he failed his university entrance exams, he and Minami Asakura attend different colleges. The confession of their last high school summer never quite made them a couple, and Minami is kept busy by rhythmic gymnastics. Then Kaori Mizuno, a fellow university student, steps in between them, while Tatsuya's old rival Nitta, now thriving in college baseball, turns it into a four-way tangle. This TV special is an anime-original sequel to Touch.

Doraemon Comes Back

Doraemon Comes Back

帰ってきたドラえもん

When Doraemon tells Nobita Nobi he must return to the 22nd century for good, the usually helpless boy has to prove he can handle school bully Gian, rival Suneo, and daily life without his robotic cat's gadgets. As the parting draws closer, Shizuka, Doraemon's younger sister Dorami, and Nobita's own grandmother all get pulled into the goodbye, turning what starts as a slapstick send-off into the franchise's most emotional short. It expands the manga chapters 'Goodbye, Doraemon' and 'Doraemon Comes Back' with new material written for the screen.

Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura

カードキャプターさくら

Ten-year-old Sakura Kinomoto accidentally opens a magical book in her father's basement and scatters the Clow Cards across Tomoeda. Cerberus, the book's guardian, emerges and appoints Sakura as Cardcaptor, tasked with recapturing each card before its magic causes harm. Her best friend Tomoyo Daidouji films every capture and designs battle costumes, while rival Syaoran Li, a descendant of the cards' creator Clow Reed, arrives from Hong Kong to claim the cards for himself.

Initial D: First Stage

Initial D: First Stage

頭文字D First Stage

High-schooler Takumi Fujiwara has spent years delivering tofu for his father's shop every dawn, threading the hairpin turns of Mount Akina's downhill in a battered Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno. When the Akagi RedSuns' number-two driver Keisuke Takahashi loses to the mysterious 'Ghost of Akina,' local street-racing teams scramble to identify a driver who turns out to be a teenager with no interest in racing at all. As challenges pile up from the Myogi NightKids' Takeshi Nakazato and the RedSuns' leader Ryosuke Takahashi, Takumi begins to discover that his father Bunta's gruelling delivery runs were a deliberate training regimen all along.

One Piece: Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!

One Piece: Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!

ONE PIECE 倒せ!海賊ギャンザック

Starving on their small boat, Luffy and his crewmates Zoro and Nami are attacked by a sea monster: it drags Nami off and leaves Luffy and Zoro washed up on an island under pirate control. There they meet a girl named Medaka, whose father and the other villagers have been enslaved by the pirate Ganzack. Luffy and Zoro infiltrate Ganzack's base to free the villagers and get Nami back. This 1998 OVA was the first One Piece animation, predating the TV series.

Pokémon: Pikachu's Winter Vacation

Pokémon: Pikachu's Winter Vacation

ポケットモンスターピカチュウのふゆやすみ

Ash's Pikachu and other Pokémon from the anime spend two short, dialogue-light segments on lighthearted winter activities with no trainers steering the action: a holiday-themed "Christmas Night" and a set of games hosted by Kangaskhan in "Kanga's Games." Made for home video rather than theaters, both shorts keep the wordless, slapstick format established by the earlier Pikachu's Summer Vacation short. It released direct to VHS in Japan in December 1998, ahead of a second Winter Vacation volume.

Hunter x Hunter Pilot

Hunter x Hunter Pilot

Hunter x Hunter Pilot

Before the 1999 TV series, this pilot introduces Gon Freecss on Whale Island, where catching the legendary Master of the Swamp convinces his aunt Mito to let him sit the Hunter Exam. Aboard the ship to the exam site, Gon meets fellow applicants Kurapika and Leorio, and the three fight off sea creatures attacking the vessel together. Made a year ahead of the TV series, the pilot previews Gon's journey with its own voice cast and art style.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Tomoyo's Video Diary

Cardcaptor Sakura: Tomoyo's Video Diary

素敵ですわ、さくらちゃん! 知世のカードキャプターさくら活躍ビデオ日記!

Tomoyo Daidouji never goes anywhere without her camcorder, and these shorts are framed as her own home videos of Sakura Kinomoto and their friends. One episode plays back how the anime's opening sequence supposedly came together behind the scenes, another follows a baking mishap, and a third turns a rumor about a lucky blue mailbox into a full-blown scheme among classmates. Li Syaoran and Kero round out the mock-documentary cast.

Slayers Gorgeous

Slayers Gorgeous

スレイヤーズごぅじゃす

Wandering sorceresses Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent arrive in a small village caught between two armies: Lord Calvert's soldiers and a dragon-riding force led by his teenage daughter Marlene. What looks like an ancient curse unleashed on the town turns out to be a father-daughter fight over Marlene's allowance. Lina signs on with Calvert while Naga throws in with Marlene, and the two sorceresses end up on opposite sides of a family squabble dressed up as a full-scale war.

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen

魔術士オーフェン

Six years before the story begins, an accident with the cursed Sword of Baldanders transforms the sorceress Azalie into a dragon called Bloody August, and the Tower of Fang covers it up rather than help her. Orphen, once one of the Tower's top students under the name Krylancelo, walks away from it to hunt down a way to restore her, taking on apprentice mage Majic Lin and the headstrong noble Cleao Everlasting as traveling companions along the way.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

ヨコハマ買い出し紀行

Alpha Hatsuseno runs a nearly empty café at the edge of Yokohama, waiting for the human owner who left years ago to come back, in a world where the sea has risen and civilization has quietly wound down. When a courier android named Kokone Takatsu delivers a camera sent by that absent owner, Alpha starts photographing the small, ordinary things around her: a passing cloud, an old customer, the light on the water. She is holding onto moments she is afraid of forgetting. Adapted from the manga of the same name, these two episodes follow Alpha's unhurried days rather than any single event.

Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target

Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target

名探偵コナン 14番目の標的

A serial killer begins striking people connected to detective Kogoro Mouri, each victim chosen because a number hides in their name and each attack tagged with a spade playing card counting down from the king. Inspector Megure, lawyer Eri Kisaki and Professor Agasa are among the first hit, so Conan Edogawa works to read the pattern before the killer reaches the final target. The trail leads to the seaside AquaCrystal complex, where the rest of Kogoro's circle has gathered. This is the second Detective Conan feature film.

Legend of Basara

Legend of Basara

LEGEND OF BASARA

Twins Tatara and Sarasa are born in a village ruled by the tyrannical Red King, one of the four kings among whom the Golden Emperor has carved up Japan, and a prophecy names Tatara as the child destined to free the country. When the Red King kills Tatara before he can fulfill it, Sarasa takes her brother's name and picks up his mission disguised as a boy, crossing a divided Japan to gather a rebellion behind the leader everyone believes Tatara to be.

The Devil Lady

The Devil Lady

デビルマンレディー

Jun Fudo models for a living, unaware that the genes for humanity's next mutation are already in her. The beast-like superhumans tearing through the city carry the same blood, and Jun is the one who can change into one and come back as herself. Asuka Ran, an agent of a secret government body created to contain those creatures, recruits her. As the Devil Lady, Jun is sent to exterminate her own kind, in a situation she never chose and cannot refuse.

Pokémon: Pikachu's Summer Vacation

Pokémon: Pikachu's Summer Vacation

ピカチュウのなつやすみ

Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle head to Pokémon Plaza for a break while their trainers stay out of the picture entirely. The three take turns trying to calm a fussy Togepi, only for a rowdier crowd of Raichu, Marill, Cubone, and friends to show up and wake it right back up. Told almost entirely without human dialogue, the short leans on physical comedy and games between the Pokémon themselves. It played in Japanese theaters as the opening short before Pokémon: The First Movie.