Top Anime of 2009

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

Brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric pay a terrible price for attempting to resurrect their dead mother through alchemy: Edward loses a leg and then sacrifices his right arm to bind Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Edward becomes the youngest State Alchemist in history, and the two set out across Amestris in search of the Philosopher's Stone, the one artifact that might restore their bodies. This 2009 adaptation follows the original manga to its conclusion.

Peak

TV|3|Spring 2009

FINISHED

Afro Samurai: Resurrection

アフロサムライレザレクション

Action

Sci-Fi

Adventure

Years after claiming the Number One headband, Afro has hung up his blade and spends his days carving wooden figures with no one left to fight. That quiet ends when Lady Sio and the cyborg Jinno ambush him, take the headband, and steal the remains of his father Rokutaro for a scheme of their own. To win it back, Afro must first take the Number Two headband from whoever holds it and pick up the sword he set aside. This animated film is a direct sequel to the original Afro Samurai.

FINISHED

Spice and Wolf II

狼と香辛料 II

Fantasy

Drama

Romance

Kraft Lawrence and the wolf deity Holo continue their journey north toward Holo's homeland of Yoitsu, trading goods and navigating merchant politics along the way. In the town of Kumersun, a young fish merchant named Amarty becomes smitten with Holo and challenges Lawrence through a futures contract, turning what started as a business rivalry into a wager with Holo herself as the stakes. This second season picks up directly after the first.

Great

FINISHED

Gurren Lagann The Movie: The Lights in the Sky are Stars

劇場版天元突破グレンラガン螺巌篇

Action

Sci-Fi

Drama

Simon and the Dai-Gurren brigade have toppled the Spiral King Lordgenome, and years later a far greater enemy, the Anti-Spiral, turns on a thriving humanity. Simon, Nia, and the team return to their giant mecha to meet it. This second of two compilation films retells the latter half of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with heavily revised and newly animated footage, building to an expanded version of the series' climactic battle.

FINISHED

A Certain Scientific Railgun

とある科学の超電磁砲

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Mikoto Misaka, Academy City's third-ranked Level 5 esper, can launch metal projectiles at three times the speed of sound with her electromagnetic abilities. Alongside her teleporting roommate Kuroko Shirai, the earnest Judgment officer Kazari Uiharu, and the powerless but resourceful Ruiko Saten, Misaka patrols a city of 2.3 million people, most of them students enrolled in esper-development programs. When rumors of a Level Upper sound file that can artificially boost esper abilities begin spreading through the city's underworld, the four are pulled into an investigation that reaches deeper than a simple black-market tool.

FINISHED

Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor

DARKER THAN BLACK -流星の双子-

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Two years after the Tokyo Explosion, Hei has lost his Contractor powers and turned into a dishevelled drunk hiding in Vladivostok under CIA surveillance. His world collides with Suou Pavlichenko, a thirteen-year-old Russian girl whose twin brother Shion was made into a Contractor by a meteor fragment. When the FSB and a shadowy organization come hunting Suou for the meteor core inside her, Hei reluctantly becomes her protector. Their run south toward Tokyo, joined by the amnesiac Doll July, keeps circling back to the origins of Hell's Gate and Heaven's Gate.

FINISHED

Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：破

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Shinji Ikari continues piloting Evangelion Unit-01 for NERV as increasingly powerful Angels attack Tokyo-3. Two new pilots enter the fight: Asuka Langley Shikinami in Unit-02 and the mysterious Mari Makinami Illustrious in Unit-05. Rei Ayanami, meanwhile, organizes a dinner party to mend the rift between Shinji and his father Gendo, but a catastrophic Angel attack forces Gendo into a decision that drives Shinji to abandon NERV entirely. This second Rebuild of Evangelion film diverges significantly from the original television series.

FINISHED

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (2009)

Sci-Fi

Supernatural

Slice of Life

Kyon and the rest of the SOS Brigade return as Haruhi Suzumiya, the girl who unknowingly reshapes reality to suit her whims, drags the club through a summer that refuses to end. In the Endless Eight arc, the last two weeks of August repeat over fifteen thousand times while only Yuki Nagato, the silent alien observer, retains memory of every loop. The season's second half follows the Brigade's chaotic production of a student film directed by Haruhi. This second season aired its fourteen new episodes interleaved with the original 2006 run in chronological order.

FINISHED

Bakemonogatari

化物語

Experimental

Ecchi

Romance

Koyomi Araragi, a third-year high school student who barely survived a vampire attack over spring break, catches his classmate Hitagi Senjogahara when she falls down a staircase and discovers she weighs almost nothing. Her weightlessness traces to an encounter with a crab deity, one of many supernatural oddities tied to personal burdens. With help from Meme Oshino, a drifter who cured most of Araragi's vampirism, he starts tracking down the apparitions haunting the girls around him.

#10

FINISHED

Fairy Tail

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Lucy Heartfilia, a celestial spirit mage searching for adventure, stumbles into Natsu Dragneel, a fire-wielding Dragon Slayer, and his flying cat Happy in the port town of Hargeon. Natsu brings her to the Fairy Tail wizard guild in Magnolia, where she joins a roster of eccentric mages including the ice wizard Gray Fullbuster and the armored Erza Scarlet on increasingly dangerous jobs across the kingdom of Fiore.

Good

#11

FINISHED

K-ON!

けいおん!

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

When the Light Music Club at Sakuragaoka Girls' High School is about to be disbanded for lack of members, Ritsu Tainaka drags her shy bassist friend Mio Akiyama into joining, and they recruit the gentle keyboardist Tsumugi Kotobuki. They still need a fourth member, and carefree first-year Yui Hirasawa wanders in without knowing how to play any instrument. The group convinces Yui to stay by plying her with tea and cake, and she picks up a guitar, forming the band Houkago Tea Time. Their days revolve more around afternoon snacks and club room hangouts than actual practice.

#12

FINISHED

Asura Cryin' 2

アスラクライン2

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Romance

Tomoharu Natsume made a contract with a demon to save his friend Kanade Takatsuki, but that bargain risks transforming him into an Asura Cryin', a being humanity considers its greatest threat. This second season pushes Tomoharu and the ghost of his childhood friend Misao Minakami to recover fragments of memory from another world while the fallout of his contract closes in. Picking up directly where the first season stopped, it takes on the mysteries left hanging there.

#13

FINISHED

Detective Conan Magic File 3: Shinichi and Ran, Memories of Mahjong Tiles and Tanabata

名探偵コナン Magic File 3 新一と蘭麻雀牌と七夕の思い出

Shounen

Romance

Slice of Life

A grade-school flashback finds Shinichi Kudo and Ran Mouri puzzling over a message spelled out entirely in mahjong tiles during the Tanabata festival, years before either of them had heard of the Black Organization. The mystery plays out as a quiet coming-of-age memory rather than a case with real stakes, built around the two working out what the scattered tiles were meant to say. This Magic File OVA serves as a direct lead-in to the thirteenth film, Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser.

#14

FINISHED

The Garden of Sinners Remix: Gate of Seventh Heaven

空の境界 Remix -Gate of seventh heaven-

Thriller

Action

Supernatural

Shiki Ryougi, her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and the Garan no Dou office that Touko Aozaki runs are cut back together for roughly an hour here. This Remix re-edits key scenes from the first six Kara no Kyoukai films into chronological order, adds a little new footage, and opened in March 2009 to set up the seventh. Mikiya Kokutou's place in Shiki's life is rebuilt along the way. It works as a catch-up screening before the finale, not as a way into the series.

#15

FINISHED

Birdy the Mighty: Decode - The Cipher

鉄腕バーディー DECODE:THE CIPHER

Action

Sci-Fi

Comedy

Birdy Cephon Altera, the alien investigator sharing a body with Tsutomu Senkawa, uses her civilian alter ego to set him up with his classmate Sayaka Nakasugi. The scheme collapses once a Federation-built marionette gets thrown into the mix, dragging Birdy back into her investigator role mid-date. Released between the two TV runs of Birdy the Mighty: Decode, this one-episode OVA bridges them as a connective side story rather than a season of its own.

#16

FINISHED

Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan

ルパン三世 vs 名探偵コナン

Thriller

Action

Shounen

In the fictional kingdom of Vespania, Princess Mira Vespaland is forced onto the throne after her mother's suspicious death and her brother Gill's suicide, two deaths she suspects were no accident. A goodwill visit to Japan puts her in contact with her lookalike, Ran Mouri, and the two swap places just as master thief Lupin III arrives chasing a mineral with stealth properties tied to the crown. Conan Edogawa, dragged into Vespania alongside Ran, Kogoro Mouri, and Lupin's crew, has to untangle a royal murder plot before Mira's coronation. This TV special crosses over Detective Conan with the Lupin III franchise.

#17

FINISHED

Redline

レッドライン

Action

Sci-Fi

Sports

Sweet JP, a pompadoured racer who relies on raw horsepower over weapons, qualifies for the Redline, the galaxy's most dangerous no-rules race, held this cycle on militarized Roboworld. Fellow racer Sonoshee McLaren, a hover-jet pilot chasing her own shot at the title, crosses his path as Roboworld's government deploys its army to shut the race down before anyone crosses the finish line.

—

#18

FINISHED

La Corda d'Oro: Secondo Passo

金色のコルダセコンド・パッソ

Drama

Romance

Violinist Hino Kahoko returns to Seiso Academy's concours circuit, where Kiriya Etou, a blunt younger violinist from outside the academy, and mysterious transfer student Aoi Kaji complicate her circle of musician friends. Guided again by the tiny fairy Lili, Kahoko juggles new rivalries and performances as the competition's next round approaches. This two-episode special continues the story of La Corda d'Oro: Primo Passo.

Pandora Hearts

Shounen

Fantasy

Drama

Oz Vessalius, heir to one of the four great duke houses, is cast into the Abyss during his fifteenth birthday ceremony, when the Baskerville clan condemns his very existence as a sin. In that nightmarish prison dimension he meets Alice, a powerful Chain known as the B-Rabbit who has lost her memories, and forges a contract with her to escape. They surface ten years later into a world that has moved on without him, now under the watch of the Pandora organization.

#20

FINISHED

Dragon Ball Z Kai

ドラゴンボール改

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Goku's fight for Earth is retold at speed: this recut of Dragon Ball Z trims the original 291 episodes down to 97 by cutting filler. Raditz's arrival now runs straight through the Saiyan invasion, Frieza's war on Namek and the Cell Games. Vegeta, Piccolo and Gohan all keep their places in the story, carried by a remastered HD picture and dialogue re-recorded with most of the original Japanese cast. A later continuation, Dragon Ball Kai: The Final Chapters, covers the Majin Buu saga.

#21

FINISHED

Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE: Spring Thunder Chronicle

ツバサ春雷記

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Following the group's escape from Celes, Kurogane reunites with Princess Tomoyo as the party arrives in Nihon in search of a way to restore Sakura's soul. Syaoran clashes with the assassin Seishirou over one of Sakura's scattered feathers and is pulled into a dream world where he crosses paths with Sakura, Watanuki, and a mysterious double of himself. This OVA picks up directly after the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle TV series and its Tokyo Revelations OVA.

#22

FINISHED

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~

Thriller

Action

Drama

A young Japanese man witnesses an assassination in America and is captured by the criminal syndicate Inferno, which erases his memory and renames him Zwei. He is trained as a killer by Ein, Inferno's top assassin, known as Phantom, under the cold guidance of the organization's strategist Scythe Master. As Zwei's skills sharpen, fragments of his erased past begin to surface, pulling him between obedience to Inferno and the instinct to reclaim who he was.

#23

FINISHED

Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger

はじめの一歩 New Challenger

Action

Shounen

Sports

Japanese Featherweight Champion Ippo Makunouchi defends his belt while his long-awaited match against rival Ichiro Miyata remains frustratingly out of reach. At the Kamogawa gym, senior Mamoru Takamura chases the WBC Jr. Middleweight world title in a bout against Bryan Hawk, and veteran Eiji Date steps back into the ring for a rematch with WBA Featherweight champion Ricardo Martínez. This second season picks up directly after Ippo's title defense arc.

#24

FINISHED

InuYasha: The Final Act

犬夜叉完結編

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

InuYasha, Kagome Higurashi, Miroku, Sango, and Shippo resume their hunt for the remaining Sacred Jewel shards as Naraku's power continues to grow. Sesshomaru follows his own path alongside the sword Tenseiga, while Kikyo's fate remains intertwined with the group's mission. This 26-episode season adapts the final volumes of Rumiko Takahashi's manga, concluding the story that the original 2000 anime left unfinished.

—

#25

FINISHED

The Sacred Blacksmith

聖剣の刀鍛冶

Action

Ecchi

Fantasy

Cecily Campbell, a third-generation knight in the Independent Trade Cities, is outmatched in a market brawl until a wandering blacksmith named Luke Ainsworth steps in with a weapon she has never seen: a katana. Determined to defend her city like her father and grandfather, Cecily asks Luke to forge one for her and is drawn into his work, including Aria, a demon sword that takes the shape of a girl. Together they face others who carry demon swords.

#26

FINISHED

Amazing Bowel Familiars

けんぷファーピクチャードラマ

Comedy

The Entrails Animals, the plush-like messenger creatures tied to each Kämpfer fighter, take over this one-episode bonus disc extra, stepping outside the TV anime's main plot for a comedic aside. Akane Mishima leads them through a mock debate on existence, purpose, and the shoddy quality of the merchandise made in their likeness.

One Piece Film: Strong World

ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Shiki the Golden Lion, an old rival of Gol D. Roger who broke out of Impel Down decades ago, has used his Float-Float Fruit to lift an archipelago called Merveille into the sky and breed an army of mutated beasts there. When he intercepts the Straw Hats and learns of Nami's talent for reading the weather, he abducts her to navigate his floating fortress toward the East Blue. Monkey D. Luffy and the rest of the crew, scattered across Merveille's islands, race to reach her before Shiki launches his beasts on their home seas. This tenth One Piece theatrical film was developed with direct involvement from Eiichiro Oda.

#28

FINISHED

Clannad: After Story - Another World, Kyou Chapter

CLANNAD ~After Story~ もうひとつの世界杏編

Drama

Romance

Slice of Life

Bundled with the eighth After Story DVD, this OVA branches off into an alternate timeline that tracks the Fujibayashi-twins route from the original Key visual novel. Here, the quiet Ryou Fujibayashi works up the nerve to confess to Tomoya Okazaki and the two start dating, while her louder twin Kyou pushes them together from the sidelines. As classes go on, Tomoya begins to notice Kyou behaving strangely around him, and the calm of his new relationship with Ryou starts to slip. The episode runs as a standalone alternate ending to the Kyou route.

#29

FINISHED

Natsume's Book of Friends Season 2

続夏目友人帳

Shoujo

Drama

Supernatural

Takashi Natsume continues to return the names sealed in the Book of Friends to the youkai his late grandmother Reiko once bound, accompanied by his guardian spirit Madara, better known by the lucky-cat shape he wears, Nyanko-sensei. New requests and new threats arrive: youkai who simply want their names back share the road with spirits that want the Book itself, while Natsume grows steadier among human friends like Tanuma and Taki. This second season picks up directly after the first.

#30

FINISHED

Canaan

CANAAN

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Canaan, a young mercenary whose synesthesia reads enemies as flashes of color on the battlefield, works the streets of Shanghai. A press team arrives to cover an international summit: photographer Maria Oosawa and reporter Minoru Minorikawa. Maria survived a viral terror attack in Shibuya two years earlier, tied to a shadowy organization called the Snakes. Her reunion with Canaan pulls both women back toward that unfinished business as a new outbreak of the Ua virus spreads through the city.

#31

FINISHED

Princess Lover!

プリンセスラバー！

Ecchi

Romance

Comedy

Teppei Arima loses his parents in a traffic accident and is summoned by his estranged grandfather Isshin to become heir to the Arima Group. Preparing for the role means enrolling at the elite Shuuhou Academy. On the way there he rescues a stranded foreign girl who introduces herself as Princess Charlotte Hazelrink. At school he is presented to Sylvia van Hossen, his sharp-tongued fencing-prodigy fiancée, while his new personal maid Yuu Fujikura attends to him at the Arima estate.

#32

FINISHED

Shakugan no Shana-tan S

灼眼のシャナたん S

Comedy

A pocket-sized Shana headlines these four shorts, which play the whole Flame Haze business for laughs. Crimson Denizens, Torches, the sword Nietono no Shana and Alastor's pronouncements from the pendant all get the treatment, while Yuji Sakai and the real Shana keep taking the same things as life and death. The episodes carry the titles G, 2dos, 3tri and FRONTIER, and came bundled with the Shakugan no Shana S releases rather than broadcast.

Umineko WHEN THEY CRY

うみねこのなく頃に

Thriller

Fantasy

Drama

The wealthy Ushiromiya family gathers on the private island of Rokkenjima for its annual conference, eighteen people in all, beneath the local legend of the Golden Witch Beatrice. A typhoon seals the island off, and the relatives begin dying one by one in deaths staged around the witch's epitaph and her promised gold. Battler Ushiromiya refuses to accept magic as the cause and squares off against Beatrice, who insists the murders prove witches are real.

#34

FINISHED

The Garden of Sinners Chapter 7: A Study in Murder - Part 2

劇場版空の境界殺人考察 (後)

Thriller

Action

Drama

Set in 1999, this seventh film in The Garden of Sinners finds a fresh wave of brutal killings echoing the murder spree Shiki Ryougi was tied to years earlier. As Shiki prowls the city's back streets searching for the culprit, her companion Mikiya Kokutou grows uneasy and begins his own investigation through the district's underworld of dealers and the desperate. The film closes out the two-part A Study in Murder storyline with a noir-tinged case.

#35

FINISHED

Higurashi When They Cry Rei

ひぐらしのなく頃に礼

Thriller

Drama

Supernatural

This five-episode Higurashi OVA returns to Hinamizawa after the main television series, mixing lighthearted side stories with one serious arc. The opener and a later chapter are pure comedy: a trip to the pool, then a string of cursed beads that makes whoever finds it fall in love. The central Saikoroshi-hen arc strands Rika Furude in a peaceful alternate Hinamizawa where none of the village's tragedies ever happened, forcing her to choose between that calm world and the one she knows. It is a supplementary OVA, not a starting point for the franchise.

#36

FINISHED

Kanokon: The Great Midsummer Carnival

かのこん～真夏の大謝肉祭～

Ecchi

Romance

Supernatural

Summer break finally arrives for Kouta Oyamada, and he spends it easing into life as the boyfriend of Chizuru Minamoto, the fox spirit who spent the TV series chasing him down. This OVA picks up about a month after the series ends and follows the newly official couple, along with their classmate Nozomu Ezomori, a wolf spirit who competes with Chizuru for Kouta, and class representative Akane Asahina, through a lazy, romance-focused summer with little of the earlier chaos. Two DVD episodes continue directly from the Kanokon TV series.

#37

FINISHED

Spice and Wolf II: The Wolf and the Amber Melancholy

狼と香辛料II 狼と琥珀色の憂鬱

Fantasy

Drama

Romance

This standalone OVA bridges the two television seasons of Spice and Wolf, following the traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence and his companion Holo, the centuries-old wolf deity who takes the form of a young woman. Sharing the road with the shepherdess Nora puts Holo in a sour mood, and a bout of fatigue leaves her bedridden for several days. While Lawrence nurses her back to health, Holo dwells on the journey behind them and the feelings that have grown along the way.

#38

FINISHED

Eden of the East the Movie I: The King of Eden

東のエデン劇場版I The King of Eden

Thriller

Sci-Fi

Drama

Six months after Akira Takizawa fired the Selecao missiles away from Japan and then vanished with his memory wiped, Saki Morimi still holds his Noblesse phone and chases a message he left behind. The trail leads her to New York, where the remaining Selecao press their own moves in Mr. Outside's game, some of them hunting Takizawa and some of them chasing their own idea of a better Japan. This first of two films continues the Eden of the East TV series.

#39

FINISHED

Kanokon: The Great Midsummer Carnival Specials

かのこん～真夏の大謝肉祭～

Ecchi

Romance

Supernatural

Kouta Oyamada moved from the countryside to a city high school and immediately drew the attention of Chizuru Minamoto, a fox spirit in the year above him, and Nozomu Ezomori, a wolf spirit who refuses to let Chizuru have him to herself. These two short episodes came bundled with the discs of the Manatsu no Dai Shanikusai OVA and push the fan-service further than the OVA itself, with the three of them still circling the same argument.

#40

FINISHED

Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin

クイーンズブレイド流浪の戦士

Action

Ecchi

Fantasy

Leina Vance, heiress to the noble Vance family, walks away from her inheritance to live as a wandering warrior like her late mother. On the road she crosses paths with the bandit-hunter Risty and the traveling fighter Tomoe, and learns of the Queen's Blade, a combat tournament held every four years to crown the realm's next queen. Bound for the capital Gainos to enter the contest, Leina sets out to prove herself with a blade rather than a title. This first TV season opens the series.

#41

FINISHED

Ningen Shikkaku: Director's Cut-ban

人間失格ディレクターズカット版

Drama

Ooba Youzou hides behind a clown's face from childhood, certain that ordinary human feeling is a language nobody taught him, and his friendship with Horiki in Tokyo carries him toward drink and worse. This theatrical cut re-edits into one film the four Aoi Bungaku Series episodes that adapted Osamu Dazai's novel, and adds new linking footage narrated by Masato Sakai. Takeshi Obata's character designs carry over from the television version.

Valkyria Chronicles

戦場のヴァルキュリア

Action

Fantasy

Drama

When the East Europan Imperial Alliance invades the small neutral nation of Gallia to seize its Ragnite mineral reserves, baker's daughter Alicia Melchiott and college student Welkin Gunther are thrown into the fighting. Welkin takes command of the volunteer militia's Squad 7, with his Darcsen foster sister Isara serving as their tank engineer, and Alicia joins the unit's front line. Together they defend Gallia against the Imperial advance while uncovering the real reason behind the invasion. The series adapts the strategy game of the same name.

#43

FINISHED

Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas

聖闘士星矢 THE LOST CANVAS 冥王神話

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

In 18th-century Italy, orphan Tenma trains to become one of Athena's eighty-eight Saints, warriors who draw on cosmic power to protect the goddess. His closest childhood friend Alone is revealed as the reincarnation of Hades, lord of the Underworld, setting the two boys on opposite sides of a Holy War. As Hades begins painting the world-ending Lost Canvas, Tenma must face the friend he grew up beside. This OVA series adapts Shiori Teshirogi's prequel manga.

#44

FINISHED

Cross Game

クロスゲーム

Shounen

Sports

Drama

Ko Kitamura grows up next door to the four Tsukishima sisters. He is closest to Wakaba, born the same day as him, and at constant odds with her younger sister Aoba, a gifted pitcher who resents how much of Wakaba's time Ko takes up. When tragedy strikes the family early on, Ko and Aoba are pulled toward a shared goal: carrying Wakaba's dream of reaching Koshien, Japan's national high school baseball championship, onto the mound and into the batter's box.

—

#45

FINISHED

White Album

ホワイトアルバム

Drama

Romance

College student Touya Fujii is dating Yuki Morikawa, a rising idol singer whose growing fame steadily pulls her away from him. As Yuki lands television interviews and chases the success of established star Rina Ogata, the time the couple can spend together shrinks, and Touya's attention begins to drift toward the other women around him. Set in Japan's 1980s music industry, the story traces how Yuki's career and the people orbiting it strain a relationship that once seemed settled.

Akikan!

アキカン！

Sci-Fi

Ecchi

Romance

Kakeru Daichi buys a can of melon soda and his first sip turns into his first kiss when the can transforms into a girl he names Melon. She is an Akikan, one of several empty cans brought to life under a secret government program that pits aluminum cans against steel cans to settle which material is superior. Kakeru refuses to let Melon fight, but rival Akikan like the grape-juice Budoko and the sports-drink Yell keep forcing the issue.

—

#47

FINISHED

Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee

テガミバチ

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

In Amberground, a land lit only by an artificial sun, Letter Bees risk the dark wilds to carry mail between towns past the armored insects called Gaichuu. Lag Seeing reached his aunt's house as cargo himself, delivered by the Letter Bee Gauche Suede after his mother was taken from him. Years later he sets out for the capital to sit the Bee entrance exam, hoping to find the man he idolizes. Along the way he meets Niche, a strange girl who becomes his dingo, the companion every Bee travels with.

#48

FINISHED

Aki-Sora

あきそら

Ecchi

Drama

Romance

Sora Aoi and his older sister Aki have been close since childhood, and that closeness has turned into a relationship the two keep hidden. They shield Sora's twin, their younger sister Nami, from the truth even as she tries to pair Sora off with her best friend Kana Sumiya. This short adult OVA adapts the manga and stays inside the household and the siblings' secret.

—

#49

FINISHED

Black Butler: His Butler, On Stage

黒執事その執事、興行

Shounen

Fantasy

Supernatural

With the troupe hired to stage Hamlet for the Funtom Company's anniversary stranded days before the performance, the young earl Ciel Phantomhive and his butler Sebastian Michaelis press the Phantomhive household and their guests into the cast. Servants and visitors alike scramble through rehearsal and a chaotic opening night where almost no one stays in character. This bonus special is a comedic side-story, not part of the main Black Butler storyline.

#50

FINISHED

Hayate the Combat Butler!!

ハヤテのごとく!!

Action

Shounen

Romance

Hayate Ayasaki is back at work as butler and bodyguard to the eccentric teenage heiress Nagi Sanzenin, whose mansion keeps his days chaotic. This second season leans harder on the original manga than the first did, following the household through new escapades around the Sanzenin estate. Nagi still reads their first meeting as something more than it was, while classmate Hinagiku Katsura grows more central as her feelings for Hayate come into play. It picks up about a month into Hayate's service.

#51

FINISHED

Toradora!: SOS! Hurray for Gourmands

とらドラ! SOS! 食いしん坊万々歳

Romance

Slice of Life

Comedy

Ryuji Takasu, Taiga Aisaka and Ami Kawashima turn up in chibi form for a run of five-minute shorts built entirely around food. Each one picks a dish, Ryuji walks Ami through it, and the tasting slides into a cook-off with Minori Kushieda over whose version wins. Released with the Toradora! home-video volumes rather than broadcast, the shorts sit beside the main series as pure comedy.

—

#52

FINISHED

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

懺・さよなら絶望先生

Experimental

Shounen

Comedy

Nozomu Itoshiki, a high-school teacher who reads every aspect of life in its bleakest possible light, returns to lecture his class on whatever despair the day brings. Each episode seizes a Japanese phrase, custom, or social habit and follows it to a literal or absurd extreme, with relentlessly upbeat Kafuka Fuura and the rest of his students drawn into the running gag. This third season continues the format with no change in Itoshiki's outlook.

#53

FINISHED

Hatsukoi Limited.

初恋限定。

Shounen

Drama

Romance

Ayumi Arihara, a middle schooler who daydreams about being confessed to, gets a love letter from Misao Zaitsu, a hulking high school delinquent the girls nickname Beast-kun, and panics over how to answer him. Her friend Kei Enomoto, tired of the attention her mature looks draw, falls into a prickly back-and-forth with Etsu Kusuda. Around them, the rest of the group's first crushes tangle through the same small town.

—

#54

FINISHED

Sweet Blue Flowers

青い花

Drama

Romance

Slice of Life

Akira Okudaira starts high school at Fujigaya Girls' Academy and reunites with Fumi Manjoume, her childhood best friend, after ten years apart. At nearby Matsuoka Girls' High School, the shy, tearful Fumi grows close to a tall third-year, Yasuko Sugimoto, and begins working out her own feelings while leaning on Akira's steady company. The two friends pick up their bond again across the two schools' literature and theater circles.

—

#55

FINISHED

Princess Lover!: Magical Knight Maria-chan

プリンセスラバー!マジカルナイトマリアちゃん

Comedy

These six 30-second shorts spin off Princess Lover! as a parody, casting Maria van Hossen, Sylvia's younger half-sister, as a magical-girl knight in exaggerated homage to the genre's transformation sequences and catchphrases. Framed like the preview segments that usually close an episode, the shorts poke fun at the main series' cast rather than adding new story, playing the "magical knight" concept purely for laughs.

Asura Cryin'

アスラクライン

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

High schooler Tomoharu Natsume is followed everywhere by Misao, the childhood friend who died in a plane crash he barely survived and who now stands beside him as a ghost. His ordinary life comes apart when a locked trunk is left in his care and Kanade Takatsuki, a girl dressed as a shrine maiden, turns up asking for it, dragging him into a hidden war over giant machines called Asura Machina. A contract binds him as an Asura Cryin', with Misao serving as the Burial Doll his machine runs on, while rival factions close in on what the trunk holds.

#57

FINISHED

Beyblade: Metal Fusion

メタルファイトベイブレード

Kids & Family

Action

Shounen

Gingka Hagane travels Japan with the attack-type Storm Pegasus, a Beyblade he spins in street challenges and tournament brackets alike. His hunt for stronger opponents brings him up against bladers working for Dark Nebula, an organization gathering powerful beys for its own ends. Kenta, Madoka and Benkei fall in around him as the matches climb from neighborhood bouts to national tournaments. This series opens the Metal Saga, a reboot with a new cast.

#58

FINISHED

Saki

咲-Saki-

Sports

Seinen

Comedy

Saki Miyanaga grew up dreading mahjong, drilled by a family that punished her win or lose, so she learned to play to a perfect plus-minus-zero score that keeps her invisible. At Kiyosumi High School her friend Kyoutarou Suga drags her to the mahjong club to fill a fourth seat, and her uncanny control surfaces in front of former junior champion Nodoka Haramura. Club president Hisa Takei sees what that zero score really means, and the Kiyosumi girls set their sights on the Nagano prefectural tournament and a place at nationals.

#59

FINISHED

Hetalia: Axis Powers

ヘタリア Axis Powers

Slice of Life

Comedy

The nations of Europe and beyond walk around as bickering young men with national stereotypes for personalities. The pasta-obsessed and easily flustered Italy clings to the disciplined, exasperated Germany, and the courteous Japan rounds out their Axis trio, while the loud America, tea-fixated England, romantic France, and stoic Russia headline the Allies. Episodes run about five minutes each, retelling moments from World War I, World War II, and broader history as short comedic vignettes built on cultural in-jokes.

Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life

劇場版ポケットモンスターダイヤモンド&パールアルセウス超克の時空へ

Kids & Family

Action

Fantasy

The twelfth Pokémon film closes the trilogy that began with Darkrai and Giratina. Long ago the people of Michina Town turned on Arceus after it lent them the life-giving Jewel of Life, and the god now wakes to collect on that betrayal. Sheena, a girl from Michina who can hear the hearts of Pokémon, sends Ash, Dawn and Brock back through time with Dialga's help to undo what the ancestors did before Arceus levels the world.

#61

FINISHED

Yumeiro Patissiere

夢色パティシエール

Shoujo

Fantasy

Romance

Fourteen-year-old Ichigo Amano can do little except taste sweets, but her gift for flavor earns her an invitation to transfer to St. Marie Academy and train as a pâtissière. Paired with a Sweets Spirit named Vanilla, she is grouped with the three talented "Sweets Princes" (Makoto Kashino, Satsuki Hanabusa and Sennosuke Andou) and struggles to keep up while chasing a spot in the academy's Grand Prix. A shoujo series built around baking competitions and the spirits who guide each student.

#62

FINISHED

Umineko WHEN THEY CRY Specials

うみねこのなく頃にスペシャル

Comedy

These DVD and Blu-ray bonus shorts pull Battler Ushiromiya, the witch Beatrice, and the rest of the Rokkenjima cast out of the murder-mystery plot for comedic skits, redubbed by their original voice cast in exaggerated parody versions of themselves. Nothing here continues or spoils the main story; the specials exist purely as lighthearted extras packaged alongside the TV series and film releases. Content and tone are entirely different from the source mystery.

Tears to Tiara

Action

Fantasy

Drama

In a Dark Ages world drawn from Celtic, British and Roman myth, the Divine Empire's priest Drwc resurrects the demon lord Arawn after a thousand years. The plan is to sacrifice Riannon, priestess of the Gael tribe, and bend Arawn's power toward conquest. Arawn refuses the offering and strikes Drwc down instead. Freed, Riannon takes him as her husband and chief, and Arawn leads the Gael warriors, alongside her brother Arthur and the mage Ogam, against the Empire.

#64

FINISHED

Legend of Regios

レジェンド・オブ・レギオス

Action

Sci-Fi

Adventure

The travelling detective Airen Garfield and Saya, the mercenary who works alongside him, carry a self-contained side story set apart from the main Chrome Shelled Regios cast. This three-part special recuts and extends scenes that had originally played in English inside the TV series, redubbed here entirely in Japanese, filling out Saya and Airen's part of the larger Regios setting. It functions as a companion piece to the TV series rather than a continuation of it.

#65

FINISHED

Whispered Words

ささめきこと

Drama

Romance

Slice of Life

Sumika Murasame is tall, athletic, and quietly in love with her best friend Ushio Kazama, who openly adores cute, petite girls and never seems to count Sumika among them. At their co-ed high school, Sumika stays close as Ushio's confidante, hiding her feelings rather than risk the friendship. When classmates Tomoe Hachikusa and Miyako Taema try to start a club for girls who like girls, the two are pulled into a wider circle that keeps nudging Sumika toward the confession she keeps swallowing.

#66

FINISHED

The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk

ドルアーガの塔～the Sword of URUK～

Action

Fantasy

Adventure

Six months after the events of the first season, Jil and Fatina have left the climbing life behind and settled in the city of Meskia. When a mysterious young girl appears, Jil is pulled back toward the Tower of Druaga and the unfinished questions left by Kaaya and Neeba. This second season continues the story begun in The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk.

—

#67

FINISHED

Shugo Chara! Party!

しゅごキャラ！パーティー！

Shoujo

Fantasy

Slice of Life

Amu Hinamori, the Seiyo Academy student whose wish to find her would-be self hatched the Guardian Characters Ran, Miki, Su, and Dia, is back for a third season. As a Guardian and the Joker tasked with cleansing corrupted Heart's Eggs, Amu now meets Rikka, a lively transfer student who can also see the tiny companions. The season carries the established cast into new everyday troubles around Seiyo.

—

#68

FINISHED

Major Season 5

メジャー第5シリーズ

Shounen

Sports

Drama

Goro Shigeno returns to Japan and finds himself in the running for the national team being assembled to face the United States at the baseball World Cup. The roster fight pulls him back among Japan's best players, and on the American side waits Joe Gibson, the rival pitcher Goro has measured himself against since childhood. This fifth TV season builds toward Goro's first shot at the international stage and his long-awaited mound duel with Gibson.

—

#69

FINISHED

Haruka Nogizaka's Secret: Purezza

乃木坂春香の秘密ぴゅあれっつぁ♪

Ecchi

Romance

Slice of Life

Haruka Nogizaka, the wealthy, beautiful and top-ranked student at Hakujou Academy, is secretly a devoted otaku, and ordinary classmate Yuuto Ayase is the one person who knows. This second season finds the two growing closer while Yuuto keeps her hobby hidden, fending off her overbearing sister Touka's schemes, a chaotic hot-springs trip, and a deadline to help Haruka finish her first doujinshi. It continues directly from the first season.

#70

FINISHED

Tayutama: Kiss on My Deity

タユタマ -Kiss on my Deity-

Fantasy

Romance

Supernatural

Yuuri Mito, a high schooler whose family tends the local Shinto shrine, performs a ritual to move an old relic and accidentally breaks a seal binding a supernatural race called the Tayutai. The act summons the goddess Kikuramikami no Hime, who takes the form of a small girl named Mashiro. Mashiro asks Yuuri to help her recapture the Tayutai now loose in the human world while she tries to keep peace between the two sides.

#71

FINISHED

Hanasakeru Seishonen

花咲ける青少年

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Kajika Burnsworth grew up on a Caribbean island with a snow leopard named Mustafa before her industrialist father, Harry, summons her to New York and presents her with a marriage game. She must choose a husband from three men he has secretly picked and make him fall for her, all without the suitors knowing they are being tested. Her search soon tangles with the political turmoil of the small kingdom of Raginei and a prince named Rumati.

—

#72

FINISHED

Student Council's Discretion

生徒会の一存碧陽学園生徒会議事録

Slice of Life

Comedy

At Hekiyo Academy the student council is filled almost entirely through a popularity vote, so Ken Sugisaki is the lone member who earned his seat by exam scores. Surrounded by the four girls who topped the ballot, he spends his time openly angling to build a harem while the council meetings drift into video-game talk, anime references, and rambling banter. Most episodes unfold in the single council room as Ken trades jabs with Kurimu, Mafuyu, Minatsu, and Chizuru and very little official business gets done.

Minami-ke: Okaeri

みなみけおかえり

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Eldest sister Haruka Minami keeps the household running while middle sister Kana drifts through her days and youngest sister Chiaki sharpens her sly tongue, the three living together in their apartment without their parents around. Their friends and their hapless uncle keep dropping by, turning ordinary things into daily comedy: New Year's shrine fortunes, cup-yakisoba fads, small classroom squabbles. This third season of Minami-ke follows the same drop-in rhythm with the sisters a little older.

#74

FINISHED

Zettai Karen Children: Oobanburumai! Natsuko to Hotaru no B.A.B.E.L. Tsuushin

絶対可憐チルドレン

Action

Shounen

Supernatural

Natsuko Tokiwa and Hotaru Nowaki, the pair B.A.B.E.L. calls the Double Face, narrate this special as a tour of the agency itself: who works there, what each esper can do, and which rooms the cases keep coming back to. Kaoru Akashi, Aoi Nogami and Shiho Sannomiya are introduced along with the rest of the roster, as is their supervisor Kouichi Minamoto. It is a recap put together as a briefing rather than a new episode of the story.

#75

FINISHED

The Beast Player Erin

獣の奏者エリン

Fantasy

Drama

Adventure

Ten-year-old Erin lives in the village of Ake with her mother Soyon, a beast doctor who tends the Touda, dragon-like war-lizards bred for the army of the Grand Duke Taikou. Soyon belongs to the Mist People, an outcast clan, and raises Erin to respect the creatures rather than fear them. When tragedy strikes the herd Soyon cares for, Erin is swept away from the only home she knows and into a wider land of warring provinces, where her curiosity about animals draws her toward the Royal Beasts.

#76

FINISHED

To LOVE-Ru OVA

To LOVEる -とらぶる- OVA

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Ecchi

These bundled OVA episodes return to high schooler Rito Yuuki, accidentally betrothed to Lala Satalin Deviluke, the runaway alien princess who teleported into his life. Each short plays as standalone comedy built around Lala's inventions: one gadget turns Rito into a girl, another traps him in a dog's body for a trip to a southern resort. An RPG her sisters build then pulls the cast inside to test what Rito feels for her. These shorts shipped with the manga volumes rather than as a TV season.

#77

FINISHED

Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens Special

かんなぎもしも『かんなぎ』があったら…

Supernatural

Slice of Life

Comedy

Jin Mikuriya and the household around the goddess Nagi get one more standalone outing in this DVD-exclusive special, bundled with the final volume of Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens instead of airing on TV. When the group stumbles onto some money, Nagi's sister Zange talks everyone into spending it on a movie of their own, dragging Tsugumi Aoba and the rest of the cast into the production. The episode is a self-contained comedy that sits outside the main story rather than continuing it.

#78

FINISHED

Toriko: Jump Super Anime Tour 2009 Special

トリコ

Action

Shounen

Adventure

Toriko hunts ingredients for a living in a world that prices food by how hard it is to take, and a nervous chef named Komatsu hires him to bring back a Garara Gator for a festival menu. This 27-minute special screened on the Jump Super Anime Tour before the television series existed, and it is the first animated version of that partnership and of the course menu Toriko is trying to assemble.

—

#79

FINISHED

Strawberry Marshmallow Encore

苺ましまろencore

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Nobue Itoh is perpetually out of cigarette money and perpetually borrowing it off her younger sister Chika. Next door, Miu Matsuoka turns up with another bad idea, Matsuri Sakuragi hides behind whoever is nearest, and Ana Coppola keeps up the pretence that the girl from Cornwall still speaks English. These two episodes continue the earlier Ichigo Mashimaro OVA set rather than the television series, and hold to the same seasonal round of small errands and jokes at each other's expense in Hamamatsu.

#80

FINISHED

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky - Beyond Time and Darkness

ポケモン不思議のダンジョン空の探検隊時と闇を巡る最後の冒険

Kids & Family

Action

Fantasy

Team Poképals, the fire-type Chimchar and the once-human, water-type Piplup, is pulled into a crisis bigger than any earlier mission: Temporal Tower is deteriorating, and the legendary Pokémon Dialga guarding it has lost control of its power and become Primal Dialga. If the collapse isn't stopped, time itself will freeze the world in place forever. Grovyle, the Pokémon blamed for stealing the region's Time Gears, joins the team once his real reason for taking them comes out, and the three set off to carry the gears to the tower.

#81

FINISHED

Queen's Blade 2: The Evil Eye Specials

クイーンズブレイド玉座を継ぐ者

Action

Ecchi

Fantasy

Six short episodes rode along on the discs of Queen's Blade's second season, the one named for the fight over who inherits the throne in Gainos. They are disc extras rather than story: a few minutes each, spent with the competitors between rounds of a contest the Continent holds every four years to name its queen. Anyone arriving here without the television seasons will not find the premise explained.

—

#82

FINISHED

Birdy the Mighty: Decode 02

鉄腕バーディー DECODE:02

Action

Sci-Fi

Seinen

Birdy Cephon Altera and Tsutomu Senkawa still share one body, so the Federation investigator's caseload and the high schooler's classes run on the same clock. When a criminal group tied to the Ryunka affair escapes custody and hides its alien identities on Earth, the two of them are back on the job, and other hands are working the same city. This second television season pushes Birdy through what the first left open about the people who shaped her.

#83

FINISHED

Saki Picture Drama

咲-Saki- ピクチャードラマ

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Saki Miyanaga, Nodoka Haramura and the rest of the Kiyosumi High School mahjong club turn up in seven short picture dramas, bundled one at a time with the television series' home-video volumes. Each runs about eight minutes as voiced still images rather than full animation, and each sits loosely around the first season: a club errand, a training afternoon, a scene from before the girls met. They are side pieces, watchable in any order.

#84

FINISHED

Hidamari Sketch x 365 Tokubetsu-hen

ひだまりスケッチ×365 特別編

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Yuno, Miyako, Hiro and Sae get three extra half-hours off Hidamari Sketch x 365, each pairing two dated vignettes: a Polaroid, a bicycle that goes anywhere, the tortoise and the hare, a red thread. Yamabuki High School's art course and the Hidamari Apartments stay the whole map. The three shipped outside the regular broadcast order, so they assume the television run has already been watched.

—

#85

FINISHED

Keroro Gunso the Super Movie 4: Gekishin Dragon Warriors

超劇場版ケロロ軍曹撃侵ドラゴンウォリアーズであります！

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Fantasy

Sergeant Keroro sends his platoon around the world when giant arches called Dragon Tails appear over Japan, New York, Paris, Sydney and Tanzania. Tamama vanishes in Paris after a voice draws him away at night, and Giroro, Kururu and Dororo drop out of contact when dragon-shaped energy attacks them. Keroro, Fuyuki and Natsumi fly out to look for Tamama and meet Sion, a friend of Momoka's who holds the Dragon Book. This fourth Keroro feature runs 78 minutes.

#86

FINISHED

Maria Watches Over Us Season 4

マリア様がみてる 4thシーズン

Drama

Slice of Life

Yumi Fukuzawa has settled in as Sachiko Ogasawara's petite soeur at Lillian Girls' Academy, and this fourth season hands her the harder half of the arrangement: choosing a petite soeur of her own. Around that decision the Yamayuri Council is staging a joint theater production with the neighboring boys' school, Hanadera Academy, while the school festival closes in. The Rose Mansion stays the center of it all, where the Roses and their sisters sort out casting, rehearsals and who ends up paired with whom.

Akaneiro ni Somaru Saka: Hardcore

あかね色に染まる坂 Hardcore

Ecchi

Romance

Comedy

Junichi Nagase, Yuuhi Katagiri, and the rest of the TV anime's cast head to a private island owned by the wealthy Karen Ayanokouji for a vacation. This standalone bonus episode drops the engagement drama that drives the TV series in favor of a beach outing, released as an extra rather than as a continuation of the main story.

—

#88

FINISHED

Mahoromatic: I'm Home!

まほろまてぃっくただいま◇おかえり

Sci-Fi

Ecchi

Romance

Suguru Misato and his classmates are putting together a maid café for the town's anniversary when robots come after Minawa, and Mahoro Andou ends up owing her time to both problems at once. The two episodes fall between the second and third episodes of the second season, so the household is the one from midway through that run rather than the one it ends with. It aired as a television special six years after the series finished.

—

#89

FINISHED

The Prince of Tennis: Another Story - Messages From Past and Future

テニスの王子様　OVA ANOTHER STORY ～過去と未来のメッセージ

Shounen

Sports

Ryoma Echizen and the rest of Seigaku's National Tournament regulars travel to Osaka for a practice match against Shitenhouji across two of these four side episodes. The other two step back years: Keigo Atobe's first days at Hyotei and Akaya Kirihara's at Rikkai, before either had a reputation. Released on two DVDs once the National Tournament OVA line had closed, the set is supplementary material for viewers who already know the tournament, not a way into the series.

Kero 0: Shuppatsu da yo! Zenin Shuugou!

ケロ０　出発だよ！全員集合！！

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

On the day the Keroro Platoon is due to leave Keron for its mission to conquer Pekopon (Earth), the squad gathers at the space terminal without its sergeant, who has overslept. Enemy forces attack while they wait, leaving Giroro and Zeroro, later known across the main series as Dororo, holding the line until unexpected help arrives. This fifteen-minute short played in theaters alongside the fourth Keroro Gunsou film and fills in the platoon's send-off, before any of them had met the Earthlings they would end up living with.

#91

FINISHED

Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

劇場版マクロスＦ虚空歌姫～イツワリノウタヒメ～

Action

Sci-Fi

Romance

Fighter pilot Alto Saotome and aspiring singer Ranka Lee are chasing separate dreams aboard the Macross Frontier fleet when pop idol Sheryl Nome arrives for a concert and is accused of spying for a rival colony, just as the insectoid Vajra begin closing in. This film reworks the opening act of the Macross Frontier TV series, keeping the same setup but replacing roughly ninety percent of the animation with new footage and steering the story to a different ending.

#92

FINISHED

Valkyria Chronicles: Theater

戦場のヴァルキュリア SenVal劇場

Slice of Life

Comedy

Bundled across the Valkyria Chronicles anime's DVD volumes, these nine three-minute shorts pull Squad 7 out of the war for quick comic sketches: barracks downtime, running gags between Edy Nelson and Susie Evans, and glimpses of life between battles that the main series skips past. Welkin Gunther, Alicia Melchiott, and Isara Gunther head a cast taken entirely from the TV series, with no new characters introduced.

Nodame Cantabile OVA

のだめカンタービレ OVA

Romance

Comedy

Conductor Yukihisa Matsuda drags his rival Shinichi Chiaki out for drinks in Paris, unable to hide his jealousy now that Chiaki's career has overtaken his own. Under the guise of dispensing career advice, Matsuda pries into Chiaki's love life, and the two conductors' one-upmanship turns into an evening of comic sparring. This side story follows a supporting cast member from Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen rather than series leads Megumi Noda and Chiaki.

Akikan! OVA

アキカン! カン一発!?温泉パニック

Ecchi

Fantasy

Seinen

Kakeru Daichi and Melon, the sentient soda can who takes the form of a girl, head to a hot spring resort with the rest of the Akikan cast for a fan-service-heavy side trip. The premise carries over from the TV series: cans turn into girls and need carbon dioxide from a kiss to hold human form. This standalone OVA is a comedic bonus episode rather than a continuation of the plot.

—

#95

FINISHED

Minami-ke: Betsubara

みなみけ別腹

Slice of Life

Comedy

Valentine's Day arrives at the Minami household, and volleyball captain Hosaka spends the whole episode plotting increasingly outlandish ways to hand Haruka his homemade chocolate. Makoto, the family friend who attends school dressed as a girl, worries about being found out, while self-appointed "sensei" Kana coaches her sisters on how to work the occasion. Fujioka's attempts to help Kana with schoolwork only convince her that he is worn out, so she hands him an energy chocolate. This OVA gathers several short Minami-ke vignettes around the same seasonal joke.

11eyes

11eyes -罪と罰と贖いの少女-

Action

Fantasy

Romance

Kakeru Satsuki has lived a hollow life since his sister's death, leaning on childhood friend Yuka Minase to get through the days at Kouryoukan Academy. One afternoon the sky turns blood-red, a black moon hangs overhead, and everyone around them vanishes while monsters prowl the streets: the world of the Red Night. Kakeru and Yuka find four other students dragged into the phenomenon, among them the sword-wielding onmyouji Misuzu Kusakabe and the mute Kukuri Tachibana, and learn that escaping means defeating six Black Knights who rule the alternate world.

#97

FINISHED

Book Girl Today's Snack: First Love

「文学少女」今日のおやつ〜はつ恋〜

Romance

Supernatural

Slice of Life

Touko Amano catches Konoha Inoue eating paper at school and drags the reluctant boy into the literature club, where she assigns him a fifty-minute writing prompt she can turn into an after-school "snack." This time she wants a love story built out of unrelated objects, and while Konoha writes, Touko rambles about Ivan Turgenev's "First Love." When she finally eats his finished draft, she is unimpressed with the ending, but the two settle back into their usual after-school routine anyway.

#98

FINISHED

Paniponi Dash!: Danjite Okonaeba Kishin mo Kore wo Saku

ぱにぽにだっしゅ！断じて行えば鬼神もこれを避く

Comedy

Rei and six classmates at Momotsuki Academy fail their end-of-year exams, and the only way out of a retake is to win one last game of Kick the Can: reach the can before five o'clock without being caught. The rest of the school, students and staff alike, hunts them across the grounds, egged on by genius child teacher Rebecca Miyamoto, who is determined that they lose. What follows is a scramble packed with sight gags, character cameos, anime references, and a steadily escalating amount of artillery.

Naruto Shippuden the Movie: The Will of Fire

劇場版 NARUTO -ナルト- 疾風伝火の意志を継ぐ者

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

When ninja with rare kekkei genkai bloodline abilities start vanishing from four of the great villages, suspicion falls on an untouched Konoha, and the Land of Fire's daimyo orders Tsunade to find the culprits or see the village destroyed. Kakashi Hatake then deserts Konoha under a curse tied to the man behind the disappearances, Hiruko, and is branded a missing-nin. Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno set out to bring their teacher back before war breaks across the borders.

#100

FINISHED

Eden of the East

東のエデン

Thriller

Sci-Fi

Drama

Akira Takizawa wakes up naked outside the White House with no memory, holding only a handgun and a phone loaded with 8.2 billion yen in digital credit. Saki Morimi, a Japanese college student on a graduation trip, stumbles into him and gets pulled into a lethal game. Twelve strangers called Seleção have each been given ten billion yen and a concierge named Juiz, with orders to save Japan or face elimination.

—

#101

FINISHED

Kurokami The Animation

黒神 The Animation

Action

Fantasy

Drama

In a world where every person secretly shares one face with two identical Doppeliners, the three split a finite store of luck, and meeting one another can prove fatal. Keita Ibuki lives unaware of this until he meets Kuro, a Tera Guardian who maintains the world's life energy. When Keita is mortally wounded, Kuro saves him by forming a Tera contract that binds their lives together, drawing him into the hidden conflict around the Doppeliner system.

#102

FINISHED

Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You

君に届け

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Sawako Kuronuma, nicknamed Sadako by classmates who find her long black hair and quiet manner unsettling, wants nothing more than to make friends and be useful. When the most popular boy in class, Shota Kazehaya, starts talking to her without hesitation, Sawako's world begins to open. She gains her first real friendships with Ayane and Chizuru, and a slow, uncertain romance with Kazehaya starts to take shape.

—

#103

FINISHED

Summer Wars

サマーウォーズ

Kids & Family

Sci-Fi

Drama

Kenji Koiso, a shy math prodigy and part-time moderator in the billion-user virtual world OZ, accepts an invitation from upperclassman Natsuki Shinohara to pose as her boyfriend at her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi's 90th birthday. That night, Kenji solves a cryptographic puzzle sent to his phone, unknowingly handing control of his OZ avatar to Love Machine, a rogue AI that begins hijacking accounts and crippling the real-world infrastructure OZ controls.

—

#104

FINISHED

Heaven's Lost Property

そらのおとしもの

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Tomoki Sakurai wants nothing more than a quiet life in his small town, but that ends when a winged girl named Ikaros crashes from the sky and declares herself an Angeloid, a combat-grade android bound to obey her new master. With Ikaros granting his every wish through a device on her chain, Tomoki's daily routine with childhood friend Sohara Mitsuki spirals into chaos as the Angeloid's immense power collides with his trivial desires.

—

#105

FINISHED

Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar

異世界の聖機師物語

Action

Sci-Fi

Ecchi

Kenshi Masaki, a teenage boy and half-brother of Tenchi Masaki, is pulled from Earth into the world of Geminar, where nations fight using Sacred Mechanoids, humanoid war machines unearthed from ancient ruins. Coerced into an attempt on the life of young Princess Lashara Earth XXVIII, he refuses to strike her down and is taken captive. Lashara, intrigued by his skill, keeps him as her disguised attendant and brings him to the academy fortress where Sacred Mechanoid pilots train. This OVA series is a spinoff of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki.

#106

FINISHED

Maria†Holic

まりあ†ほりっく

Ecchi

Seinen

Slice of Life

Kanako Miyamae transfers to the all-girls Catholic academy Ame no Kisaki hoping to find a girlfriend, since boys make her break out in hives. The angelic upperclassman who greets her, Mariya Shidou, turns out to be a sharp-tongued boy crossdressing to secure a family inheritance. Mariya blackmails Kanako into silence and rooms with her to keep watch, tormenting her at every turn while Kanako's nosebleeds and crushes pile up.

—

#107

FINISHED

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

東京マグニチュード8.0

Thriller

Drama

Mirai Onozawa, a disaffected middle-schooler, takes her younger brother Yuuki to a robot exhibition in Odaiba during summer break. While they are there, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake strikes the Kanto region, shattering the Tokyo skyline and cutting them off from their parents in Setagaya. Mari Kusakabe, a motorcycle courier and single mother, finds the siblings in the chaos and joins them on a grueling trek home through the shattered city.

Kämpfer

けんぷファー

Action

Ecchi

Fantasy

Natsuru Seno, an ordinary high-school boy, wakes up one morning transformed into a girl. A stuffed animal named Harakiri Tora informs him he has been chosen as a Kämpfer, a fighter who can only use powers in female form. Armed with fire-based Zauber magic, Natsuru is thrown into battles against other Kämpfer, including the shy librarian Akane Mishima and student council president Shizuku Sango. Between fights, he still tries to win over his crush Kaede Sakura, who only seems interested in his female side.

#109

FINISHED

Nyan Koi!

にゃんこい！

Shounen

Romance

Supernatural

Junpei Kousaka is severely allergic to cats, and his longtime crush Kaede Mizuno is obsessed with them. That is bad enough until he accidentally kicks the neighbourhood's Neko-Jizo statue and shatters its head. The cat god curses him to grant a hundred feline wishes or be turned into a cat himself, which his allergy would make fatal, and gives him the ability to understand cat speech so he can do the job. Stuck between demands from the family cat Nyamsus and every stray on the block, Junpei tries to keep all of it hidden from Kaede.

#110

FINISHED

Aoi Bungaku Series

青い文学シリーズ

Thriller

Experimental

Drama

Yozo Oba cannot feel what other people feel, so he plays the clown to hide it and lets drink, women and other people's money carry him along. His story, Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, opens this twelve-episode anthology of modern Japanese literature across four episodes. Five more adaptations follow: Ango Sakaguchi's In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom, Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, Dazai's Run, Melos!, and Ryunosuke Akutagawa's The Spider's Thread and Hell Screen. Each segment stands on its own.

#111

FINISHED

Chrome Shelled Regios

鋼殻のレギオス

Action

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

On a ruined Earth roamed by mutated Filth Monsters, humanity survives inside enormous mobile cities called Regios, defended by warriors who wield weapons named DITE through the power of Kei. Layfon Alseif transfers to the academic city of Zuellni hoping to bury a violent past and live quietly, but military student Nina Antalk spots his skill and pulls him into her 17th Platoon. As Layfon's history follows him and outside forces take an interest in Zuellni, his attempt at a fresh start unravels.

#112

FINISHED

07-Ghost

07-GHOST

Action

Fantasy

Drama

Teito Klein, an amnesiac former slave gifted with the rare power Zaiphon, trains at the Barsburg Empire's military academy alongside his only friend, Mikage. When a stray memory reveals that Chief of Staff Ayanami killed the king of the destroyed Raggs Kingdom, Teito is imprisoned and flees to the Barsburg Church, where bishops including Frau take him in. There he learns he carries the Eye of Mikhail, the relic for which his homeland was razed, and becomes a target of the empire and the soul-hunting Kor alike.

#113

FINISHED

Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi

明日のよいち！

Action

Shounen

Ecchi

Raised in the mountains as a traditional swordsman, Yoichi Karasuma is sent by his father to keep training at the Ikaruga dojo in the city, where his old-fashioned manners clash with modern life. The dojo is run by the four Ikaruga sisters, and Yoichi moves in among them, enduring the stern Ibuki's harsh discipline while fumbling through school and unfamiliar customs. Misunderstandings pile up as the country-bred samurai tries to fit into a household full of girls.

#114

FINISHED

Kobato.

こばと。

Shounen

Fantasy

Drama

Kobato Hanato arrives in town on a single mission: to heal wounded hearts and collect the konpeito candy that each mended heart leaves behind. She must fill her small bottle to have her own wish granted, all under a one-year deadline set by Ioryogi, a grumpy talking plush dog who scores her progress. Searching for people to help, Kobato finds her way to a struggling kindergarten run by Sayaka and the curt Kiyokazu Fujimoto.

—

#115

FINISHED

Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings

戦国BASARA

Action

Fantasy

Drama

In a heightened version of Japan's Warring States era, the dark lord Oda Nobunaga drives to crush every rival under his rule. Date Masamune, the one-eyed dragon, and Sanada Yukimura, the fiery tiger cub of Kai, clash as bitter rivals before circumstances push them and the other warring generals toward an uneasy alliance against him. Their battles play out with flamboyant weapons and superhuman martial-arts feats across the divided provinces.

#116

FINISHED

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood OVA Collection

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST 映像特典

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

This set gathers four short OVAs tied to the Brotherhood series, each filling in side history around its cast. In The Blind Alchemist, Edward and Alphonse Elric visit the Humbergang household chasing a rumor that an alchemist there once succeeded at human transmutation; Simple People traces how Winry Rockbell came by her ear piercings. Two more shorts, The Tale of Teacher and Yet Another Man's Battlefield, round out the collection as supplementary viewing alongside the main series.

#117

FINISHED

Electromagnetic Girlfriend

電波的な彼女

Thriller

Drama

Romance

Delinquent high schooler Juu Juuzawa wants only to be left alone, until classmate Ame Ochibana approaches him insisting she knew him in a past life and will serve as his "knight." Juu brushes her off, but when a fellow student is murdered he accepts Ame's help and the two begin tracking the killer. This two-episode OVA adapts cases from Katayama Kentarou's mystery light-novel series.

—

#118

FINISHED

Needless

NEEDLESS

Action

Sci-Fi

Ecchi

Decades after a war scorched a stretch of Japan into a ruin called the Black Spot, people born there develop superhuman abilities known as Fragments and are branded Needless. Young Cruz Schild, hunted after his sister vanishes in an attack by the organization Simeon, falls in with Adam Blade, a priest-like Needless whose own Fragment lets him copy the powers of others. Together they push back against Simeon and its leader Adam Arclight, who harvests Fragments from the Needless he kills.

#119

FINISHED

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete

ファイナルファンタジーVII アドベントチルドレンコンプリート

Action

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Two years after the events of the Final Fantasy VII game, a disease called Geostigma spreads across the ruined city of Midgar while three silver-haired young men abduct infected children. Cloud Strife, infected himself and living apart from his friends, is forced back into the fight when their leader Kadaj sets out to revive Sephiroth. This Complete edition is an extended re-release of the original film with added and reworked footage.

#120

FINISHED

Cencoroll

センコロール

Action

Sci-Fi

Strange white shapeshifting creatures have begun appearing in a Japanese town when high schooler Tetsu keeps one of them, a creature he calls Cenco, controlling it by telepathy and trying to keep it hidden. His classmate Yuki grows far more curious about Cenco than about Tetsu and tags along, until a boy named Shu, who commands two creatures of his own, confronts Tetsu to take Cenco for himself. This short animated film was written, designed, directed, and animated almost entirely by Atsuya Uki.

The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya

涼宮ハルヒちゃんの憂鬱

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Slice of Life

This short-form parody recasts Haruhi Suzumiya and the SOS Brigade as squat, chibi versions of themselves for a string of gag episodes. Haruhi is louder and more overbearing, Yuki Nagato spends her downtime on eroge, and Itsuki Koizumi nurses an exaggerated crush on Kyon. Each roughly five-minute installment spoofs scenarios from the original Haruhi series rather than telling a continuous story.

—

#122

FINISHED

Welcome to Irabu's Office

空中ブランコ

Experimental

Drama

Comedy

Dr. Ichiro Irabu runs the psychiatry wing of his family's hospital, where he greets each patient with an unsettling enthusiasm for injections and the help of Mayumi, his deadpan nurse. Patients arrive with afflictions other doctors have given up on: a trapeze artist who keeps missing his catches, a ward-office clerk stuck with a permanent erection, a novelist ruled by his compulsions. Episodes mix traditional animation with rotoscoped live action as Irabu shifts between a child, a young man, and a man in a bear suit.

#123

FINISHED

Shakugan no Shana S: OVA Series

灼眼のシャナS

Action

Fantasy

Romance

Yuji Sakai shares his days with Shana, the sword-wielding Flame Haze who fights to keep the balance of existence and who is bound to the Crimson Lord Alastor through the pendant she wears. Four side stories sit apart from the main timeline. A Treasure Tool called Reshuffle swaps Yuji and Shana into each other's bodies, Yuji and Wilhelmina trail Shana when she turns secretive, and a two-part entry sends Shana into the memories of a Torch named Junko Ogami.

#124

FINISHED

King of Thorn

いばらの王 -King of Thorn-

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

When the petrifying Medusa virus spreads across the world, the organization Venus Gate freezes 160 chosen carriers in cold sleep until a cure can be found. Kasumi enters cryostasis without her twin sister Shizuku, but wakes far earlier than promised inside a facility overrun by monstrous thorned vines and prowling creatures. With a handful of other survivors, she has to escape the ruined complex and piece together what happened during the years she was supposed to be asleep.

#125

FINISHED

Corpse Princess: Kuro

屍姫玄

Action

Shounen

Drama

Makina Hoshimura is a Shikabane Hime, a murdered girl returned as a gun-wielding undead who must destroy 108 other vengeful corpses to earn passage into heaven. This second season picks up after the monk Keisei Tagami, her former contracted partner, is gone, leaving the young Ouri Kagami training to become the monk who can sustain her. Bound to Makina by a contract that regenerates her wounds at the cost of his own lifespan, Ouri stands with her as she takes the fight directly to the Seven Stars, the Shikabane faction behind her death.

#126

FINISHED

xxxHOLiC Shunmuki

×××HOLiC 春夢記

Fantasy

Drama

Supernatural

Watanuki Kimihiro and the archer Doumeki Shizuka are sent searching for a set of hidden objects, a task that draws Watanuki into a dream world and back to the shop run by the witch Yuuko Ichihara. Guided by visions of the late Doumeki Haruka, the pair pass through rooms that open into the worlds inside old books. This two-part OVA follows the xxxHOLiC TV series and ties into the wider CLAMP works around it.

—

#127

FINISHED

Shangri-La

シャングリ・ラ

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Carbon taxes and runaway warming have left Tokyo a sweltering jungle, with the privileged sealed inside the tower-city Atlas while everyone else scrapes by below. Kuniko Hojo, freshly released from a reformatory, is pushed to lead the guerrilla group Metal Age in the settlement of Duomo, a role she never asked for. As she takes up the boomerang and the fight, she learns that the rulers of Atlas mean to keep the masses locked outside the tower by force.

—

#128

FINISHED

Black Lagoon Omake

ブラック・ラグーンオマケ

Seinen

Comedy

This set of comedic omake shorts takes the Lagoon Company out of Roanapur's gunfights and drops them into absurd what-if skits. Across the episodes, Rock and Revy turn up in scenarios like a gender-swapped world, a redone high-school past, and a round of ghost stories told among the crew. The shorts trade the parent series' violence for parody, played entirely for laughs with the familiar cast.

Toradora! Recap

とらドラ・ポータブル！

Drama

Romance

Slice of Life

Ryuuji Takasu, a soft-hearted boy with a glare everyone reads as menacing, is paired with Taiga Aisaka, the tiny, short-tempered classmate nicknamed the Palmtop Tiger. This recap runs back through the Toradora! TV series, restringing footage from the pact in which the two agree to help each other win over their respective crushes. It revisits the series' main beats rather than presenting new story.

—

#130

FINISHED

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - 4-Koma Theater

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST 4コマ劇場

Action

Shounen

Comedy

Sixteen two-minute shorts recast the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood cast in slapstick versions of the story's biggest scenes, running each key beat from Edward and Alphonse Elric's search for the Philosopher's Stone through a deliberately crude, chibi-style filter. Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Ling Yao, and Alex Louis Armstrong all get parody turns alongside the brothers, playing the same landmark moments from the main series for laughs rather than drama. Released alongside the home video volumes, the shorts follow the story roughly in order but treat none of it as canon.

#131

FINISHED

Naruto: The Cross Roads

NARUTO―ナルト― ザ・クロス・ロード

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Kakashi Hatake shows up late again for a routine mission, and while Team 7 waits, missing-nin working for Orochimaru ambush them and drag Sakura Haruno away. Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha give chase into enemy territory, facing down the group's leader, Kajika, who has orders to gauge Sasuke's fighting strength before anything else. This one-episode special drops the trio back into their Team 7 dynamic between the Land of Waves and Chunin Exam arcs.

#132

FINISHED

Gurren Lagann: Viral's Sweet Dream

天元突破グレンラガン劇場版前夜祭ヴィラルの甘い夢

Sci-Fi

Comedy

Viral cannot get to sleep, and every attempt slides him from one nightmare into the next. Team Dai-Gurren's fiercest beastman spends the whole five minutes at the mercy of his own dream logic, chased and harassed by whatever his subconscious throws at him. Released as a bonus short ahead of the second Gurren Lagann movie, it is a standalone slapstick gag disconnected from the film's story.

Nyoron! Churuya-san

にょろーん☆ちゅるやさん

Shounen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Churuya, the super-deformed alter ego of Tsuruya from the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise, spends each two-minute short chasing the one thing she cannot resist: smoked cheese. Classmate Asakura Ryouko uses that craving to talk Churuya into odd tasks, while Haruhi, Kyon, Nagato, Asahina, and Koizumi turn up in cameos. Adapted from a four-panel gag manga, the shorts originally streamed online rather than airing on TV.

—

#134

FINISHED

Baka & Test: Christmas Special

バカとテストと召喚獣: 問題・クリスマスについて答えなさい

Slice of Life

Comedy

In this four-minute Christmas short, Akihisa Yoshii and his Class F classmates, among them Mizuki Himeji, Minami Shimada, and Hideyoshi Kinoshita, take turns explaining what the holiday means to them. The joke is that each answer comes out almost identical, and the special leans entirely on how differently each listener reacts to hearing the same line repeated. Distributed online rather than broadcast, it stands as a standalone bonus tied to the TV series' cast and running gags.

Spice and Wolf II Specials

狼と香辛料II -ホロの短編アニメ-

Fantasy

Slice of Life

These two blink-and-you'll-miss-them shorts pull Holo, the wolf deity of the harvest, away from her usual travels with the merchant Lawrence for a pair of solo bits. In one she breaks down the food and wine she eats on the road, complete with her own commentary on price versus quality; in the other she simply shows off her stretches before a nap. Bundled with the Blu-ray release of Spice and Wolf II, neither short adds new story: they are pure character bonus material.

Eureka Seven: Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers

交響詩篇エウレカセブンポケットが虹でいっぱい

Action

Sci-Fi

Romance

Renton and Eureka grow up together after his scientist parents take her in as a child. She cannot survive under direct sunlight, and he becomes the one person she trusts. When Eureka is taken from him, Renton enlists and eventually joins Unit 303 of the First Mobile Forces, piloting the bio-mechanical Nirvash to get her back. Their reunion lands him in the middle of a decades-long war against an alien force called the Eizo. This standalone film retells Eureka Seven's core relationship in an alternate continuity from the TV series, set in the year 2054.

#137

FINISHED

Pandora Hearts Omake

パンドラハーツ　おまけ

Fantasy

Comedy

Oz Vessalius, cast into the prison-dimension called the Abyss and rescued by the rabbit-eared Chain Alice, headlines these nine comedy shorts drawn from the Pandora Hearts cast. Set aside from the main story's central mystery, Oz, Alice, and manservant Gilbert Nightray trade their usual gothic tension for slapstick alongside Xerxes Break, Elliot Nightray, and Vincent Nightray. The shorts were bundled as DVD extras and run as standalone gags rather than continuing the plot.

Redline Pilot

Action

Sci-Fi

Sports

Long before Redline reached theaters, Madhouse built this five-minute pilot to sell the film's world: an outlaw interstellar street race featuring the reckless driver JP alongside racers Sonoshee McLaren and Trava, with MachineHead Tetsujin's team gunning for the lead. Rather than reusing footage from the eventual movie, director Takeshi Koike built the pilot around its own original race, distinct from anything in the finished film. What survives is an earlier take on Redline's cast and racing style, made before the full production came together.

#139

FINISHED

Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser

名探偵コナン漆黒の追跡者(チェイサー)

Thriller

Shounen

Drama

A string of murders across Japan leaves behind an odd signature: mahjong tiles placed at every crime scene. Conan Edogawa notices the pattern first and realizes a member of the Black Organization has infiltrated a nationwide police conference under a false identity, using the killer's code name 'Irish.' With Ran Mouri, Heiji Hattori, and Ai Haibara pulled into the search, Conan has to expose Irish's cover before the Organization realizes how close he has come to the truth about Shinichi Kudo's survival.

#140

FINISHED

Detective Conan: The Stranger in 10 Years...

名探偵コナン～10年後の異邦人[ストレンジャー]～

Shounen

Drama

Slice of Life

Conan Edogawa and Ai Haibara never find an antidote to the poison that shrank them, and in this one-off OVA's alternate timeline they simply grow up over the following ten years. As adults they reunite with Ran Mouri, Heiji Hattori, Kazuha Toyama, and Sonoko Suzuki, together with the former Detective Boys, Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, and Genta, all grown as well. Working as their adult selves, the group takes up detective cases again in a standalone 'what if' set apart from the ongoing story.

#141

FINISHED

Hayate the Combat Butler!!: It's Getting Hot - Swimsuit Chapter!

ハヤテのごとく!! アツがナツいぜ水着編!

Shounen

Supernatural

Comedy

Butler Hayate Ayasaki joins his employer Nagi Sanzenin and her friends at the Sanzenin family's private beach, where maid Maria hopes a swimsuit trip will finally get the shy, self-conscious Nagi into the water. Katsura Hinagiku and the rest of the household tag along, but a vengeful spirit intent on ruining the outing complicates things. This OVA is a bonus beach episode tied to the second Hayate no Gotoku!! TV season.

#142

FINISHED

Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile - Episode: Denzel

ファイナルファンタジーVII オン・ザ・ウェイ・トゥ・ア・スマイル -エピソード:デンゼル-

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Drama

Denzel, an orphaned boy taken in by Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockhart, tells Reeve Tuesti the story of how he lost his parents and everyone he knew when the Shinra Electric Power Company dropped the Sector 7 plate on its own city to crush the rebel group Avalanche. Piecing his account together with Reeve, a former Shinra executive turned head of the World Regenesis Organization, Denzel works through his grief toward a reason to help rebuild the planet. Released alongside Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, this OVA adapts the Episode: Denzel side story.

#143

FINISHED

Utawarerumono OVA

うたわれるもの OVA

Fantasy

Drama

Hakuoro, Eruruu, Aruruu, Karura, Touka, and Urtori carry this three-episode OVA, a set of side stories placed inside the original Utawarerumono's timeline that fills in scenes the TV series skipped over. Rather than advancing the main plot, the episodes stay with the characters themselves, on their personalities and on how the cast relates to one another.

Needless: The Secret of Saint Lily Academy

Needless+ -聖リリィ学園の秘密-

Ecchi

Seinen

Comedy

Disguised as a girl named Yamada, Cruz Schild infiltrates the all-girls Saint Lily Academy to investigate a case, running into familiar female faces from the main Needless story along the way. These bite-sized episodes, each about two minutes long, were bundled with the Blu-ray release of the TV series rather than broadcast on their own. Played almost entirely for comedy, the shorts trade the main story's action for crossdressing gags and school-life detours.

#145

FINISHED

White Album Season 2

WHITE ALBUM 第2期

Drama

Romance

Touya Fuji's relationship with rising idol Yuki Morikawa strains as her growing fame pulls her away from the college life they shared. Touya finds himself drawn toward veteran idol Rina Ogata even as he tries to hold on to what he has with Yuki. This second season adapts the back half of the source visual novel, continuing directly from where the first season left off.

Corpse Princess: Kuro - Even So, As a Person

屍姫玄 -それでも、人として-

Action

Supernatural

Horror

Ruo Minai died and came back as a Shikabane Hime, a corpse princess bound to destroy other undead, and Shuuji Isaki became her Contracted Priest, the monk tied to her until her soul can finally be laid to rest. This one-episode special traces how that pact was made, in the same world of exorcism and restless dead as the TV series and set before the events of Shikabane Hime: Kuro. It gives the partnership an origin story of its own rather than continuing the main plot.

#147

FINISHED

Candy Boy Episode: EX02 - Theory of Happiness Sharing

Candy Boy Episode: EX02 - 幸せ共有理論

Romance

Slice of Life

Twins Yukino and Kanade Sakurai spend a winter day at an indoor pool with Sakuya Kamiyama and Shizuku Sakurai in this special episode, the last entry released in the Candy☆Boy series. Between swimming and lounging poolside, the group looks back on shared memories that trace how Yukino and Kanade's relationship arrived where it now stands. Bundled as a DVD bonus with the series' second volume, the episode closes out the story without introducing new conflict.

Chi's New Address

チーズスイートホームあたらしいおうち

Kids & Family

Slice of Life

Comedy

The Yamada family and their kitten Chi move into a new apartment building where keeping a pet is finally allowed, in a season that picks up right after the first Chi's Sweet Home series. Chi explores unfamiliar rooms, meets the neighbors and their pets, and keeps getting into trouble around the house, while Yohei and his parents settle into a home where she no longer has to hide. Each short episode follows one more misadventure in Chi's new, more open daily life.

#149

FINISHED

Mahou Sensei Negima!: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai

魔法先生ネギま! もうひとつの世界

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Negi Springfield and his Ala Alba companions scatter across Mundus Magicus after their trip to find Negi's father takes an unexpected turn, and this fourth OVA set follows their attempts to reunite. Evangeline McDowell, Asuna Kagurazaka, Setsuna Sakurazaki, and Chachamaru Karakuri each pursue their own thread of the search while Negi works to master a dangerous technique called Magia Erebea and prepares to enter a fighting tournament. It adapts chapters 184 through 188 of the manga, material the TV series never covered.

#150

FINISHED

Dogs: Bullets & Carnage

DOGS/BULLETS & CARNAGE

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

In a European city with secret levels buried deep underground, four strangers cross paths while chasing pieces of their own erased pasts. Naoto, an amnesiac swordswoman, teams up with Heine Rammsteiner, a gunman shaped by childhood experiments below the city, while photographer and info broker Badou Nails and ex-assassin Mihai Mihaeroff circle the same buried secrets from other angles. This OVA adapts only select arcs of the Dogs manga rather than the full ongoing series.

#151

FINISHED

K-On!: Ura-On!

けいおん！うらおん！

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Bundled with the first-season home-video volumes of K-On!, these Ura-On! shorts pull Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Mugi, and the rest of the Sakuragaoka High Light Music Club out of their main storyline into quick comedic sketches. Drawn in a squashed, deformed style, each runs only a few minutes and strings together gag scenarios that do not touch the main plot. They are supplementary extras rather than a starting point for K-On! itself.

—

#152

FINISHED

Fresh Pretty Cure!

フレッシュプリキュア!

Kids & Family

Action

Fantasy

Love Momozono, a cheerful middle schooler who tends to care more about others than herself, gains the power to become Cure Peach when agents of the Labyrinth Kingdom attack a dance show, hunting for the despair the crowd carries. She's joined by classmates Miki Aono and Inori Yamabuki, who become Cure Berry and Cure Pine, in protecting Tart and the infant Chiffon, visitors from the Sweets Kingdom that Labyrinth wants for its own ends. The three Cures stand against Labyrinth's ongoing hunt for a mysterious power called Infinity.

#153

FINISHED

Armed Librarians: The Book of Bantorra

戦う司書 The Book of Bantorra

Action

Fantasy

Drama

In this world the dead become stone tablets called Books, each one a record of a life that anyone who touches it can read. Those relics are housed in the labyrinthine Bantorra Library and guarded by the Armed Librarians, superpowered agents led by acting director Hamyuts Meseta, herself a hardened killer. They stand against the Church of Drowning in God's Grace, an order that turns conditioned people into living weapons. The story unfolds in shifting arcs that follow different librarians rather than a single hero.

#154

FINISHED

Kodomo no Jikan: Ni Gakki

こどものじかん二学期

Ecchi

Slice of Life

Comedy

Now in the fourth grade, Rin Kokonoe still isn't shy about declaring her crush on her homeroom teacher, Daisuke Aoki, while her friends Kuro Kagami and Mimi Usa navigate feelings of their own. This OVA continues directly from the Kodomo no Jikan TV series, following the same classroom a year later as Aoki keeps trying, and failing, to keep a professional distance.

—

#155

FINISHED

A Certain Magical Index: Specials

とある魔術の禁書目録たん

Sci-Fi

Comedy

Index Librorum Prohibitorum gets a chibi makeover in this run of comedic shorts, perching on Kamijou Touma's head as the two spoof scenes lifted straight from the main Toaru Majutsu no Index anime. Each short twists a familiar moment into a gag: Kamijou's confrontations, Misaka Mikoto's rivalry with him, Accelerator's menace, often riffing on the cast's own voice actors. Bundled as a bonus with the Blu-ray and DVD releases of every Index season, they run as standalone parodies rather than new story.

Zan: Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei Extra

懺・さよなら絶望先生番外地

Shounen

Comedy

Perpetually suicidal teacher Nozomu Itoshiki returns for one last set of lessons in this two-episode OVA, still trying to steer a classroom of eccentrics that includes the relentlessly optimistic Kafuka Fuura and the obsessively meticulous Chiri Kitsu through his despair-tinted view of the world. Released on video rather than broadcast, it closes story threads the TV series left open and serves as Itoshiki's send-off in the franchise. Each segment plays out as a rapid string of satirical vignettes rather than a single continuous plot.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Picture Drama

幽☆遊☆白書

Shounen

Comedy

After winning the Demon World Tournament, the champion asks Yusuke Urameshi, Kazuma Kuwabara, and Kurama to record a set of morning and evening greetings for an audience. The catch in this bonus special is getting Hiei to agree to take part at all, and most of the runtime turns on the others talking him into it. It's a short, low-stakes epilogue skit rather than a continuation of the Yu Yu Hakusho story.

God Eater Prologue

ゴッドイーター PROLOGUE

Action

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Six years before the main God Eater story, three God Eaters from Fenrir's Far East Branch, Lindow Amamiya, his older sister Tsubaki Amamiya, and a young Soma Schicksal, join a military detachment on a mission to detonate a nuclear reactor and wipe out an Aragami colony threatening all of Eurasia. This short prologue, made to promote the God Eater video game, sets up Soma's first mission against the flesh-devouring Aragami before the series proper begins.

#159

FINISHED

Queen's Blade: Inheritor of the Throne

クイーンズブレイド玉座を継ぐ者

Action

Ecchi

Fantasy

Warrior Leina Vance returns to the capital city of Gainos to compete again in Queen's Blade, the tournament held every few years to crown the land's strongest woman as queen. Her older sister Claudette Vance is also in the running, alongside fighters like the nun Nanael and the mercenary Risty, all challenging reigning queen Aldra for the throne. This second season continues Leina's story directly from Queen's Blade: Wandering Warrior.

#160

FINISHED

Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin Specials

クイーンズブレイド流浪の戦士スペシャル

Ecchi

Slice of Life

Comedy

These bonus episodes reimagine the cast of Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin in an ordinary high school, trading swords and armor for uniforms and homeroom. Leina Vance, her sister Claudette, and classmates like Tomoe, Shizuka, Melona, and Nanael navigate school-life comedy instead of tournament combat, in six brief episodes bundled with the TV series' home video release. The setting is played for laughs and carries no continuity with the main Queen's Blade story.

#161

FINISHED

Hatsukoi Limited Shorts

初恋限定。限定少女

Shounen

Ecchi

Comedy

Andou Soako is sprinting to school for the ninth straight tardy day when she realizes, mid-run, that she left the house without her underwear. These four-minute shorts follow her frantic effort to hide the mishap from classmates like Kei Enomoto and Etsu Kusuda before anyone notices. Spun off from Hatsukoi Limited's ensemble of first loves, this side series swaps romance drama for pure slapstick embarrassment across six episodes.

—

#162

FINISHED

Sekirei: The First Errand

セキレイ～初めてのお使い～

Romance

Comedy

Feeling overlooked next to the other Sekirei vying for Minato Sahashi's affection, the youngest, Kusano, challenges Musubi and Tsukiumi to a neighborhood shopping race to prove she can pull her weight too. What starts as a simple errand spirals into chaos as the three Sekirei push, cheat, and outrun each other through the streets, all to win a moment of Minato's attention. Bundled with the sixth DVD volume of the first Sekirei season, the short plays purely for comedy alongside the main series' harem setup.

—

Special|

Top 250

Top 250

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Afro Samurai: Resurrection

Spice and Wolf II

Gurren Lagann The Movie: The Lights in the Sky are Stars

A Certain Scientific Railgun

Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor

Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

Bakemonogatari

Fairy Tail

K-ON!

Asura Cryin' 2

Detective Conan Magic File 3: Shinichi and Ran, Memories of Mahjong Tiles and Tanabata

The Garden of Sinners Remix: Gate of Seventh Heaven

Birdy the Mighty: Decode - The Cipher

Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan

Redline

La Corda d'Oro: Secondo Passo

Pandora Hearts

Dragon Ball Z Kai

Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE: Spring Thunder Chronicle

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger

InuYasha: The Final Act

The Sacred Blacksmith

Amazing Bowel Familiars

One Piece Film: Strong World

Clannad: After Story - Another World, Kyou Chapter

Natsume's Book of Friends Season 2

Canaan

Princess Lover!

Shakugan no Shana-tan S

Umineko WHEN THEY CRY

The Garden of Sinners Chapter 7: A Study in Murder - Part 2

Higurashi When They Cry Rei

Kanokon: The Great Midsummer Carnival

Spice and Wolf II: The Wolf and the Amber Melancholy

Eden of the East the Movie I: The King of Eden

Kanokon: The Great Midsummer Carnival Specials

Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin

Ningen Shikkaku: Director's Cut-ban

Valkyria Chronicles

Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas

Cross Game

White Album

Akikan!

Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee

Aki-Sora

Black Butler: His Butler, On Stage

Hayate the Combat Butler!!

Toradora!: SOS! Hurray for Gourmands

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Hatsukoi Limited.

Sweet Blue Flowers

Princess Lover!: Magical Knight Maria-chan

Asura Cryin'

Beyblade: Metal Fusion

Saki

Hetalia: Axis Powers

Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life

Yumeiro Patissiere

Umineko WHEN THEY CRY Specials

Tears to Tiara

Legend of Regios

Whispered Words

The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk

Shugo Chara! Party!

Major Season 5

Haruka Nogizaka's Secret: Purezza

Tayutama: Kiss on My Deity

Hanasakeru Seishonen

Student Council's Discretion

Minami-ke: Okaeri

Zettai Karen Children: Oobanburumai! Natsuko to Hotaru no B.A.B.E.L. Tsuushin

The Beast Player Erin

To LOVE-Ru OVA

Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens Special

Toriko: Jump Super Anime Tour 2009 Special