Your top 3 anime of the decade (so far)

Oh no, the half-decade is upon us, I must come out with 3 choices fast!

Tho, what kind of anime fan you must be to like only 3 titles in 5 years?

As usual with questions like these, I'm only counting series which actually began on anywhere from January 1st, 2020 - present, and no second or later seasons of any series released during that time period in cases where the series originates prior to that date range. So series new to the 2020s decade, basically.

It's tough because I feel like this question has come up a number of times before at various points in time since 2020, including at least one within the past year that I saw and answered, but I'm never as confident or secure in my answers as I am in the case of some favorites rankings simply because knowing we were early - or now closer to mid-decade, and knowing there was a lot of the decade still left to go, I retained a sense of fluidity always open to the prospect of new titles supplanting my chosen favorites and the list constantly evolving until the end of the decade. Of course even when the decade ends it could still change if you're watching series from this period further into the future for the first time, but that's at least the point where everything that will ever be out from the decade will be out, and then it's purely on you.

So I've been keeping a list (viewable on my profile page actually) to assist me in keeping all the titles I identify as potential favorites of the decade in one place, and will periodically add to or cull titles from it. So far I'm up to 40 different titles. But we're only about halfway through the decade in its sixth year of 2025, and I'm not planning to allow the list to grow past 50, so will have to start eliminating more and/or getting even more selective on new entrants soon.

I've also done Top 5 - 10 lists for each year of the decade excluding the current year we just started, but unlike the decade those years are over so that factor plus the smaller selection makes it a bit simpler.

I do think, however, that my top level choices are starting to firm up and solidify, even if in the long run in the second half of the decade up ahead of us they end up dropping one or multiple rank placements down or disappear from the elite list entirely (can't predict or worry too much about the future). But I haven't shuffled around and changed these top three at least in a while so they're on pretty solid ground.

1.) Tengoku Daimakyou (2023)
2.) Sonny Boy (2021)
3.) Dorohedoro (2020)

Honorable mentions/runners-up: Urasekai Picnic (2021), Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020), Lycoris Recoil (2022), and Arknights (2022)

Yeah, and to think that it's one of those seasonal shows I picked up on a whim midway through the season in which it was airing, after about five episodes were already out. And the description (synopsis) superficially read like it'd be a different slightly newer version of Yakusoku no Neverland, which at least the first season of I found decent and above average, but it ended up quickly surpassing it and I cared for it way more.

I think that one of the decisive factors in what it comes down to as far as why it ranks so highly for me is that I've watched many dozens of series these past five years since I started watching seasonals regularly in 2021 (but have also seen a good bit from 2020), but few come close to it in terms of how well-written it is. Mainly in its honest frankness and realism, how subtly the mystery and organic revelations into it are handled, and how well-woven into the fabric of the story and integral to it the chronology of events is. They made some intelligent writing choices which showed such impressive delicacy and restraint like in the case of

The overarching story and mystery is dramatic and bleak and existential, but there is enough downtime and scenes spent with smaller moments in the characters' day to day lives that you can just forget about and be in no rush to get to all that and enjoy the here and now as long as it lasts (talking about mainly for the Maru and Kiruko side of the story here). Any series which can balance and incorporate as seemingly disparate genres and aspects as Sci-Fi horror with dark mysteries, adventure, Slice of Life mundanity and pacing, romantic tension, comedic relief, etc. is sure to win points with me.

Any series with a focus on two or a small group of travelers traveling on a long and extended open-ended journey I'm also biased toward since that mirrors my top favorite anime series and is not as widely commonplace as one might initially think.

Plus, animation in general is typically the lowest on the totem pole in my hierarchy of considerations when evaluating a series, but I couldn't not be impressed with the series' visual style. Both the realistic art style for the character designs and background art which seem extremely fitting for a modern post-apocalypse tale like this, and the fluidity of the animation which in some cases, like much of the entire first episode, was legitimately movie-quality.

Oh, all that and the fact that music is high up in that aforementioned hierarchy of considerations and it has what I'd consider the best OST of the decade (only a few series, like Arknights, even come close to me). It's underacknowledged in general, the series is, but I couldn't understand why immediately as/after it was airing and in the few years since then that it's been out that I heard so relatively little on this forum and online anime communities as a whole about the haunting and gorgeous OST, but I could only conclude that it's because many of the people concerned must have very different music tastes.