Top Anime of 2000 · mirumiru

Top Anime of 2000 · mirumiru

FLCL

FLCL

フリクリ

In the dull industrial town of Mabase, twelve-year-old Naota Nandaba endures a listless routine, until Haruko Haruhara plows into him on a Vespa and cracks him over the head with a bass guitar. The blow opens a portal in Naota's skull that begins spawning giant robots, drawing the attention of Medical Mechanica, a sinister corporation whose factory looms over the town. As Haruko manipulates Naota to get what she wants (the power of the Pirate King Atomsk), Naota's suppressed emotions about his absent brother, his brother's ex-girlfriend Mamimi, and his own adolescence erupt alongside the mecha.

OVA|3|Spring 2000

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

吸血鬼ハンターD ブラッドラスト

In a far-future world where vampire nobles still rule the night, the dhampir bounty hunter known only as D is hired by a wealthy family to retrieve their daughter Charlotte, taken by the vampire lord Meier Link. Charlotte's brother also hires the Marcus Brothers, a band of rival hunters, sending two parties after the same quarry across a ruined frontier. Half-human and half-vampire, D tracks Meier's carriage while the woman he is paid to bring back may not want rescuing.

Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman

Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman

AMON デビルマン黙示録

Demons are public knowledge in Tokyo now, and the city turns on itself: neighbors accuse neighbors, and crowds go looking for anyone who might be hiding a demon under human skin. Akira Fudo loses the person he was holding on to, and his mind gives out. The demon Amon, sealed inside him since the fusion that made him Devilman, takes the opening and comes out, sparing neither humans nor demons. This OVA adapts the late chapters of the Devilman manga.

Pokémon: Pikachu & Pichu

Pokémon: Pikachu & Pichu

ピチューとピカチュウ

Pikachu gets separated from Ash's group while exploring a city and meets Pichu Little and Pichu Big, two energetic Pichu brothers, on a rooftop. When Pikachu tumbles off the building chasing after them, the three roll through traffic, fall off a bus, and end up riding inside a tire to make it back to the meeting point before time runs out. This short played ahead of Pokémon 3: The Movie in Japanese theaters.

Love Hina

Love Hina

ラブひな

Keitaro Urashima has failed the Tokyo University entrance exam twice and is running out of family patience, so he takes refuge at his grandmother's old inn in the town of Hinata. The building, it turns out, has been converted into a women-only dorm. Made its reluctant manager, he keeps studying for his next attempt at the exam while sharing the house with the short-tempered Naru Narusegawa, the kendo-fixated Motoko Aoyama, and a handful of equally unimpressed residents.

Ghost Stories

Ghost Stories

学校の怪談

Satsuki Miyanoshita moves with her father and younger brother Keiichirou to her late mother Kayako's hometown and starts at the same school her mother once attended. On the first day she, Keiichirou, neighbor Hajime Aoyama, older student Momoko Koigakubo, and paranormal-obsessed classmate Leo Kakinoki wander into the abandoned Old School Building next door and discover it is haunted. Satsuki soon learns her mother had sealed the spirits there years ago and that recent urbanization has set them loose, leaving her mother's diary and a stray cat as the children's only tools for putting them back.

Love Hina Christmas Special: Silent Eve

Love Hina Christmas Special: Silent Eve

ラブひなクリスマス・スペシャル～サイレント・イヴ～

A rumor at Hinata Inn says confessing your love on Christmas Eve makes any wish come true, and Keitaro Urashima decides this is finally his chance to tell Naru Narusegawa how he feels. He isn't the only one with a confession planned for the night: Motoko Aoyama, Shinobu Maehara, Kaolla Su, and the inn's other residents each have their own stake in how the evening turns out. It all unfolds over the first Christmas of the new millennium.

Digimon Adventure 02

Digimon Adventure 02

デジモンアドベンチャー02

Three years after the first Digidestined returned from the Digital World, a masked human calling himself the Digimon Emperor enslaves Digimon with Dark Rings and raises Control Spires that block ordinary Digivolution. To fight back, newcomers Davis Motomiya, Yolei Inoue, and Cody Hida pair with Veemon, Hawkmon, and Armadillomon and use DigiEggs to trigger Armor Digivolution. This sequel to Digimon Adventure brings back older members Kari and T.K. alongside the new team.

Pokémon 3: The Movie - Spell of the Unown

Pokémon 3: The Movie - Spell of the Unown

劇場版ポケットモンスター結晶塔の帝王 ENTEI

Molly Hale is left alone in Greenfield after her father, the researcher Spencer Hale, vanishes into the dimension of the Unown. The Unown read the lonely girl's wishes and crystallize her home into a sprawling tower, conjuring an illusory Entei to stand in for the father she lost. When Entei carries off Ash Ketchum's mother so Molly will have a parent again, Ash, Pikachu, and their friends climb the crystal tower to bring her back and free the town. Third feature film in the Pokémon series.

One Piece: The Movie

One Piece: The Movie

ワンピース

Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, broke and hungry aboard the Going Merry, are robbed of their treasure and end up tangled with a captured boy named Tabio. Chasing the lost gold of the legendary pirate Woonan, they collide with El Drago, a rival captain who has found Woonan's map and means to claim the hoard for himself. This first One Piece feature film tells a self-contained early adventure and is the only entry in the film series animated on cels.

Boogiepop Phantom

Boogiepop Phantom

ブギーポップは笑わない Boogiepop Phantom

A month after a strange pillar of light appears over an unnamed Japanese city, an ensemble of high schoolers each brush against the urban legend of Boogiepop, a caped figure said to surface when the world is in danger. Five years after a string of serial killings, students begin to vanish and unexplained deaths mount, and the perspective shifts from one witness to the next. Each fragment circles the same events from a different angle, slowly tying the killings, the light, and Boogiepop together.

Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card

Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card

劇場版カードキャプターさくら封印されたカード

Sakura Kinomoto has captured every Clow Card and become the cards' new master, and she is rehearsing the lead role in her school's play for Tomoeda's annual festival. Then her cards begin vanishing one by one, and parts of the town disappear with them, traced to a mysterious card hidden in the clock tower of a new amusement park built where Eriol's house once stood. With Syaoran Li back from Hong Kong, Sakura sets out to find the cause before Tomoeda is erased. This is the second Cardcaptor Sakura feature film.

Blood: The Last Vampire

Blood: The Last Vampire

BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE

In 1966, on the eve of the Vietnam War buildup, a sword-wielding girl named Saya hunts bat-like creatures called Chiropterans for a shadowy group of handlers. Sent to the American Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo, she poses as a student at the adjacent high school to track Chiropterans hiding among the people there. As a Halloween party approaches, Saya draws the school nurse, Makiho Amano, into the danger when two classmates reveal what they really are. This standalone theatrical short runs about 45 minutes.

Vandread

Vandread

ヴァンドレッド

On the all-male planet Tarak, parts-factory worker Hibiki Tokai sneaks aboard a new warship to steal a mecha, only for the ship to be raided by women pirates from the rival planet Mejere. A freak accident fuses the vessels into the Nirvana, stranding Hibiki and two other men among an all-female crew led by the elderly Captain Magno. Forced to cooperate against the Harvester motherships hunting them, Hibiki pilots a Vanguard that can merge with Dita and Meia's Dread fighters.

Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!

Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!

デジモンアドベンチャーぼくらのウォーゲーム！

A summer after their first adventure, Koushiro Izumi spots a strange Digimon hatching from a corrupted egg loose on the internet. It evolves into Diaboromon and begins devouring the world's networks, multiplying faster than anyone can track. Taichi Kamiya rallies the DigiDestined and their partners Agumon and Gabumon to fight it across the digital backbone of the real world before its meddling triggers a launched missile. This short feature follows the original Digimon Adventure series.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (OVA)

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (OVA)

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 ADVENTURE

Jotaro Kujo discovers he wields a fighting spirit called a Stand, the same power that has stirred in his mother Holly and is slowly killing her. With his grandfather Joseph Joestar and allies including Kakyoin and Polnareff, Jotaro sets out for Egypt to confront the resurrected vampire Dio Brando, whose revival triggered Holly's curse. Produced after the 1993 OVA that covered the end of the journey, this seven-episode set goes back to how that journey began.

Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns

Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns

ポケットモンスターミュウツー！我ハココニ在リ

Mewtwo, the cloned Pokémon spared by Ash Ketchum, has hidden its band of cloned Pokémon atop Mount Quena, a cliff-walled peak with a forest and lake far from human reach. When Ash, Pikachu and friends are stranded near its base, Giovanni of Team Rocket tracks Mewtwo down and moves in to capture it. This hour-long TV special is a direct follow-up to the first Pokémon film, picking up Mewtwo's search for a place its clones can live free.

Crayon Shin-chan: Jungle That Invites Storm

Crayon Shin-chan: Jungle That Invites Storm

クレヨンしんちゃん嵐を呼ぶジャングル

The Nohara family boards a cruise ship for what's supposed to be a relaxing preview screening of the next Action Kamen film, but a troop of monkeys working for a warlord called Paradise King storms the boat and hauls off every adult aboard to a remote island. Left behind with the other kids, Shinnosuke teams up with Gotaro Go, the actor who plays Action Kamen, to fight through Paradise King's jungle stronghold and get the grown-ups back.

Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea

Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea

エスカフローネ

Hitomi Kanzaki, a withdrawn schoolgirl who wishes she could disappear, is pulled into the world of Gaea, where rebels believe she is the prophesied figure who can wake the dormant war machine Escaflowne. As she grows close to the rebel leader Van Fanel, Gaea reels under the conquest of the Black Dragon Clan and its commander Folken. This feature film retells The Vision of Escaflowne TV series as a standalone story.

Detective Conan: Captured in Her Eyes

Detective Conan: Captured in Her Eyes

名探偵コナン瞳の中の暗殺者

A string of police officers tied to a hushed-up case are gunned down one by one. When Ran Mouri witnesses Detective Miwako Sato shot before her, the shock wipes her memory clean, leaving her unable to recognize anyone around her, including Conan. As the only person to have glimpsed the killer's face, Ran becomes both the case's key witness and the shooter's next target. Conan races to protect her while piecing together who is silencing the investigators. This is the fourth Detective Conan feature film.

Pokémon: Slowking's Day

Pokémon: Slowking's Day

ポケモンヤドキングの一日

Slowking wakes at dawn in his cliffside cave on Shamouti Island and uses his psychic power to fetch a coconut for breakfast, cracking it open on the shell atop his head. The rest of the day keeps the same unhurried pace: a walk around the shrine from the second Pokémon film, a nap in the cliffside flowers, a swim with an old friend, a Seel, and a meal of seafood eaten while the sun goes down. This three-minute special returns to the Slowking of that earlier movie and follows nothing but his quiet daily routine.

Heian Sento

Heian Sento

平安遷都

Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix serves as storyteller in this four-minute short about the moving of Japan's capital to Heian-kyo, which the Phoenix presents as a great national project meant to give a single city eternal life. It was made by Tezuka Productions for the 300-inch theater at Kyoto Tezuka Osamu World in the Kyoto Station building. There it screened as the second half of a double bill after a Black Jack episode, Grandma, both segments linked by the Phoenix's narration.

The☆Doraemons: Dokidoki Kikansha Daibakusou!

The☆Doraemons: Dokidoki Kikansha Daibakusou!

ザ☆ドラえもんズドキドキ機関車大爆走！

Dr. Achimov walks out of prison, lifts an energy capsule from the 22nd century's Power Center and leaves the whole city dark. One capsule is left, it has to reach the plant within two hours, and it shatters if anyone uses a time machine or a teleport gadget. So The Doraemons take the slow route, on a steam locomotive driven by Robin, a girl with no patience for Dora the Kid's mouth and none at all for jokes about her grandfather's engine. This is the fifth film built around the Doraemons rather than Nobita.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

人狼 JIN-ROH

In an authoritarian alternate postwar Japan, an elite armored police unit known as the Capital Police crushes anti-government unrest in the streets. Officer Kazuki Fuse freezes during a raid when ordered to shoot a young courier, who detonates her explosives in front of him. Reprimanded and shaken, Fuse later meets Kei Amemiya, a girl who claims to be the dead courier's sister, and the two grow close as a power struggle between rival security agencies closes around them.

Seihou Tenshi Angel Links: Meifon no Special Kaisetsu Corner

Seihou Tenshi Angel Links: Meifon no Special Kaisetsu Corner

美鳳のすぺしゃる解説コーナー

Meifon Li steps out of the job for one short segment and explains her own equipment instead: the ships Angel Links flies, the gear its crew carries and how the anti-piracy operation is put together. Taffei sits in with her for the commentary. Nothing here advances the story the television series tells, since the piece exists to lay out the hardware behind it.

Black Jack: Grandma

Black Jack: Grandma

ブラック・ジャックおばあちゃん

An elderly woman keeps asking her daughter-in-law for pocket money, and the constant demands wear a household already thin on patience down into open quarrelling. Then Black Jack uncovers the reason behind them: decades of quiet sacrifice to keep her son alive when he was a child. What the family read as greed turns out to be the last visible trace of a love they had stopped noticing. The short was made for the 300-Inch Theater at Kyoto's Tezuka Osamu World rather than for broadcast.

Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown! Supreme Evolution! The Golden Digimentals

Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown! Supreme Evolution! The Golden Digimentals

デジモンアドベンチャー02 前篇デジモンハリケーン上陸！！後篇超絶進化！！黄金のデジメンタル

In New York, Takeru Takaishi and Hikari Yagami cross paths with Willis, an American boy still searching for the Digimon partner he lost years earlier, and the other Chosen Children are drawn in behind them. As new threats emerge from the void that took Willis's partner, Daisuke Motomiya, Miyako Inoue, and Iori Hida join the search across America, from New York to Colorado, with their own Digimon at their side. Released as a double feature of two linked films, it belongs to the Digimon Adventure 02 continuity.

InuYasha

InuYasha

犬夜叉

Kagome Higurashi, a fifteen-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl, falls through an old well at her family's shrine and lands in Japan's Sengoku period, where she shatters the powerful Shikon Jewel into dozens of shards scattered across the countryside. She reluctantly teams up with Inuyasha, a brash half-dog-demon who was sealed to a sacred tree for fifty years, to recover the fragments before they fall into the hands of demons and warlords. Along the way, the fox child Shippo, the monk Miroku, and the demon slayer Sango join their quest.

Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting!

Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting!

はじめの一歩

Ippo Makunouchi, a shy high schooler who spends his free time helping at his mother's fishing boat charter, is rescued from bullies by middleweight boxer Mamoru Takamura. Inspired by Takamura's strength, Ippo joins the Kamogawa Boxing Gym and discovers a natural talent for in-fighting, channeling years of hauling work into devastating punches. His first rival, the counter-specialist Ichiro Miyata, sets the standard Ippo chases as he begins climbing the featherweight ranks.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

遊☆戯☆王デュエルモンスターズ

Yugi Mutou, a quiet high-schooler, assembles the ancient Millennium Puzzle and awakens a nameless Pharaoh who shares his body. When Duel Monsters creator Maximillion Pegasus uses the Millennium Eye to steal Yugi's grandfather's soul, Yugi and the Pharaoh enter the Duelist Kingdom tournament alongside friends Jounouchi, Anzu, and Honda to win it back. Victory leads to the Battle City tournament organized by rival Seto Kaiba, where three Egyptian God Cards hold the key to the Pharaoh's forgotten past.

Gravitation

Gravitation

グラビテーション

Shuichi Shindou fronts the rookie pop band Bad Luck and dreams of matching his idol Ryuichi Sakuma of Nittle Grasper. The night the wind carries off his lyrics, they land with Eiri Yuki, a blunt blond stranger who calls the writing talentless and turns out to be a famous romance novelist. Stung and intrigued, Shuichi pursues Yuki while pushing Bad Luck toward its first real break, caught between the recording studio and an unguarded man's cold front.

One Piece: Adventure in the Ocean's Navel

One Piece: Adventure in the Ocean's Navel

ワンピース海のヘソの大冒険編

Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates sail into a massive whirlpool and find a hidden city, the Ocean's Navel, guarded by giant sea monsters and ruled by the tyrannical Captain Joke. Luffy, Roronoa Zoro, Sanji, Nami, and Usopp get pulled into a standoff over a treasure said to grant any wish, alongside islanders Meroie and Hamu, who know what is really guarding it. This one-episode TV special aired between regular episodes and stands apart from the main story.

Pokémon: Pikachu's Winter Vacation

Pokémon: Pikachu's Winter Vacation

ピカチュウのふゆやすみ

Pikachu and friends spend the holidays in three linked winter segments: a stray snowball knocks Delibird out of the sky and scatters the presents it was delivering, a snow Snorlax the Pokémon build on a hillside comes to life that night, and the Pichu Brothers get separated when one of them slides away on a skateboard. Told largely without human dialogue, this three-part video special leans on physical comedy among the assembled Pokémon, Totodile and Chikorita among them, as they help each other through each mishap.

Azumanga Web Daioh

Azumanga Web Daioh

あずまんがWEB大王

Chiyo Mihama brings a video camera to school for a class project, and the footage quickly spirals out of her hands once classmate Tomo Takino gets hold of it. Sakaki, Osaka, Kagura, and Koyomi Mizuhara all get swept into the chaos Tomo causes around campus. This three-minute web short was Azumanga Daioh's original pilot, released online in 2000 to test interest before the TV series followed.

Detective Conan OVA 01: Conan vs. Kid vs. Yaiba

Detective Conan OVA 01: Conan vs. Kid vs. Yaiba

名探偵コナンコナンvsキッドvsヤイバ宝刀争奪大決戦!!

Kogoro Mouri takes a job guarding a treasured sword at the Mine family dojo after the phantom thief Kaito Kid announces he intends to steal it. Conan Edogawa arrives to find Yaiba Kurogane, the young swordsman from Gosho Aoyama's other manga, already defending the blade, and the two team up as Kid's heist unfolds. Built as a crossover with Yaiba and Magic Kaito, this first Detective Conan OVA reworks a chapter from the Magic Kaito manga into an original three-way showdown.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Legend of the Sun King

Doraemon: Nobita and the Legend of the Sun King

ドラえもんのび太の太陽王伝説

A gadget mishap during play rehearsal sends Nobita Nobi and his friends into Mayana, a hidden Mesoamerican kingdom, where Nobita meets Prince Tio, who looks exactly like him. The two agree to trade places, sending Tio into modern Japan while Nobita takes up royal duties. The switch puts Nobita in the path of the witch Ledina, who put Mayana's queen into an eternal sleep and now wants to capture Tio to seize his throne. Doraemon, Shizuka Minamoto, Suneo Honekawa, and Takeshi Gouda help Nobita hold Ledina off before the truth of the swap comes out.

Angel Sanctuary

Angel Sanctuary

天使禁猟区

Setsuna Mudo is a troubled sixteen-year-old dealing with bullying and forbidden feelings for his younger sister Sara when celestial and infernal beings both come looking for him. Angels insist he is the reincarnated leader Alexiel; demons claim he once led their rebellion against God. Caught between two sides that claim him for different reasons, Setsuna has to decide which version of his own history to believe. This OVA adapts only the opening arc of the manga.

Black Jack: The Child Who Came from the Sky

Black Jack: The Child Who Came from the Sky

ブラック・ジャック空からきた子ども

A vertical-takeoff military aircraft flees the Republic of Berad, a northern dictatorship, and comes down in Black Jack's garden: Major Kaganov has defected with his wife and his son Andrei, whose heart defect has progressed past anything doctors will touch. Black Jack turns the case away at first, then relents when the boy collapses in front of him. His plan is the reverse of separating conjoined twins, joining mother and son so that Andrei shares her lung circulation and stays alive until a transplant becomes possible. This OVA adapts chapter 143 of the original manga.

Doraemon: A Grandmother's Recollections

Doraemon: A Grandmother's Recollections

おばあちゃんの思い出

Missing his late grandmother, Nobita Nobi finds an old teddy bear she once gave him and asks Doraemon to use his time machine to visit her again. Back in the days when he was three years old, they run into the younger versions of Nobita himself, his mother, and his friends, and Nobita ends up furious with the child he used to be. Built around a single chapter of the original manga, the short became one of the best-loved Doraemon films, winning the Animation Film Award at the 55th Mainichi Film Awards.

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

劇場版ああっ女神さまっ

Belldandy's mentor Celestine breaks free from imprisonment on the moon and comes looking for her on Earth, aiming to turn her into a weapon against the divine system she serves. He begins erasing her memories of her boyfriend Keiichi Morisato, straining the household she shares with fellow goddesses Urd and Skuld. As Belldandy's bond with Keiichi unravels, the threat Celestine poses widens from their apartment to the heavenly system of Yggdrasil itself.

Ceres, Celestial Legend

Ceres, Celestial Legend

妖しのセレス

On her sixteenth birthday, high-schooler Aya Mikage learns she is the reincarnation of Ceres, a tennyo whose stolen celestial robe once stranded her on Earth and bound her to the Mikage line. As Ceres begins to surface within her, the family marks Aya for death and turns on her twin brother Aki. She is taken in by Suzumi Aogiri and Suzumi's brother-in-law Yuhi, while the silent Toya, a Mikage servant with no memory of his past, is sent after her. Aya must master what Ceres is becoming before her own family destroys them both.

Saiyuki

Saiyuki

幻想魔伝最遊記

Demons and humans once lived in balance across Shangri-La, until a scheme to resurrect the imprisoned demon lord Gyumao put that peace at risk. The goddess Kanzeon Bosatsu sends the rogue priest Genjo Sanzo west toward India, accompanied by three demons who refuse to succumb to the Minus Wave corrupting their kind: Son Goku, Sha Gojyo, and Cho Hakkai. The four cross an increasingly hostile Shangri-La together as Sanzo's mission to stop Gyumao's revival unfolds.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Leave it to Kero! Theatrical Version

Cardcaptor Sakura: Leave it to Kero! Theatrical Version

カードキャプターさくらケロちゃんにおまかせ！

Bundled with the second Cardcaptor Sakura film, this ten-minute short pits Sakura's guardian Keroberos against Eriol's guardian creature Spinel Sun over the last piece of takoyaki. When the prized morsel accidentally flies out a window, the two magical creatures abandon all dignity and chase it, and each other, across the city, each determined to become the self-declared 'takoyaki captor.' Sakura, Shaoran, and Tomoyo appear only in passing while the short keeps its focus squarely on Kero and Spinel's rivalry.