Where to Start With Anime: Pick a First Show You'll Finish

The standard advice for a first anime is “watch Cowboy Bebop”. It is a fine show. It is also a 1998 space western with a jazz soundtrack and a melancholy streak, and if what you actually like is a heist thriller or a workplace comedy, it will tell you nothing about whether anime is for you. Start from your own taste instead. Below are nine first shows, each matched to something you probably already watch, with the honest commitment and the one thing most likely to make you switch off.

None of them needs homework. Pick one, give it three episodes, and read the last section before you decide anything.

The safest first episode

If you have no idea what you like SPY x FAMILY

• Season one
• 12 episodes
• story continues

A spy, an assassin, and a telepathic six-year-old pretend to be a family. Funny within five minutes, warm within twenty.

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If you want the lowest-risk first episode in this list, it is the one where a spy adopts a small girl from an orphanage because his mission requires a child, not knowing she can read minds. Anya’s face when she hears her new father’s secret is the show in one shot. Each episode is a self-contained mission or domestic crisis, the jokes land without any anime literacy, and the violence is cartoon-level. The twelve episodes finish an arc, not the story, and there is much more if you want it.

If you like blockbusters

For spectacle Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

• Season one
• 26 episodes
• story continues across arcs and films

A boy carries his demon-turned sister on his back through a Taisho-era Japan of swordsmen and monsters. The fights are the point.

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Demon Slayer is the show that turned a generation of non-viewers into viewers, and the reason is episode 19, a single fight animated with the budget and care of a feature film. The first season is a straightforward training-then-monsters structure with a soft heart: Tanjiro apologises to demons as he kills them. Expect graphic wounds and some very loud comic relief. The season ends at a natural pause; the story then continues through a film and further arcs.

For a harder edge JUJUTSU KAISEN

• Season one
• 24 episodes
• story continues

Curses made of human fear, a school that trains teenagers to exorcise them, and a first episode that ends with the hero swallowing a cursed finger.

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If Demon Slayer sounds too gentle, Jujutsu Kaisen is the modern action show with teeth. It is faster, bleaker, and more interested in how its fights work as puzzles. The ensemble is the draw, particularly the teacher Gojo, who treats everything as a joke until he does not. Content warning: body horror and abrupt deaths of characters you like.

If you like a plot that tightens

For thriller readers Death Note

• 37 episodes
• complete

A top student finds a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it. A detective known only as L starts hunting him.

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Death Note is a cat-and-mouse game between two people who are both smarter than you, and it is at its best in the first twenty episodes when the traps get more elaborate each week. The scene where Light and L sit next to each other at a university entrance ceremony, each knowing what the other is, is as tense as television gets without anyone raising a voice. The lead is a murderer who thinks he is a god; if spending 37 episodes with him sounds exhausting, it will be. The ending divides people, but it is an ending.

For a long story with a real ending Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

• 64 episodes
• complete

Two brothers break the one law of alchemy trying to bring their mother back, and pay for it with a body and an arm.

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If you are the kind of viewer who wants the whole story, this is the one long show that pays off every thread it opens. It starts as an adventure and becomes a political story about a military that commits atrocities and the people who serve in it. The early episodes rush; stay past episode ten. Brotherhood is a separate adaptation from the 2003 series, and our Fullmetal Alchemist viewing-order guide explains which to pick.

If you like people more than plots

For character comedy Mob Psycho 100

• Three seasons
• 12 + 13 + 12 episodes
• 37 total, complete

The most powerful psychic alive is a shy fourteen-year-old who would rather be good at running. His mentor is a con man.

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Mob Psycho 100 looks scrappy in still images, and then it moves. The animation is the loosest and most inventive on this list, and it serves a small, decent question: what does a boy with the power to level a city do about being unpopular? Reigen, the fraud who employs him, is one of the great comic creations of the last decade. Three seasons finish the story completely.

For sports fans HAIKYU!!

• Season one
• 25 episodes
• story continues

A short kid who can jump joins a fallen volleyball school. Every match is legible even if you have never watched a set.

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Haikyu!! is the sports show for people who think they do not like sports shows. The matches are shot so you always know where the ball is and why it matters, and the team is a genuine ensemble: the setter who cannot stand the hero is as important as the hero. It is long across its seasons, but the first season is a complete tournament arc.

For the classic Cowboy Bebop

• 26 episodes
• complete, plus one standalone film

Bounty hunters on a beaten-up ship take one job per episode. The past catches up with each of them in turn.

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Bebop earns its reputation, with a caveat. It is episodic, so you can watch three jobs and stop, and the standalone episodes are the best ones. The crew’s backstories arrive in fragments and are bittersweet rather than triumphant. If you want a plot that builds, choose Death Note. If you want mood, style, and one of the best English dubs ever recorded, start here.

If you would rather watch one film

For a single evening Spirited Away

• One film
• 125 minutes

A sulky ten-year-old's parents are turned into pigs, and she has to work in a bathhouse for spirits to get them back.

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Two hours settles the question faster than any series. Spirited Away is the obvious choice because it is a fairy tale that does not explain itself; you are meant to be as lost as Chihiro is when the lanterns come on. Some of the creatures frighten small children. If you want something contemporary instead, Your Name. is a body-swap romance with a twist at the midpoint that reorganises the whole film. Our film guide has more, including two for adults who want no fantasy at all.

The nine at a glance

What to do after episode three

Three episodes is enough to know whether a show’s rhythm suits you and not nearly enough to judge its story, so decide on the rhythm. If you liked the people but not the plot, you want character shows; if you liked the plot and tolerated the people, you want thrillers. Say it in one sentence, then look for the next thing with that sentence rather than with the word “anime”.

If the problem was reading, switch versions using our sub or dub guide. If the problem was length, the weekend guide lists complete stories under twelve hours. And if you finished one of the nine and want more of the same feeling, the Finder takes a title you loved and lists what shares its qualities, with a line explaining each match. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, the quiet fantasy about an elf outliving her friends, is where a surprising number of people go second.