Animation overload: The 10 best anime series on Hulu
Looking to get lost in a postapocalyptic world of oversexed teenage superheroes who wield emotions as heightened as their spiky hairdos? Sounds like you want to watch yourself some anime. The Japanese word for “animation” is really so broad in meaning that it covers multiple genres and styles — anime can be deeply somber, it can be utterly terrifying, or it can be total goofballs. Heck, sometimes it’s all of these things in the span of a single scene. But as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart infamously said about pornography in 1964, we know it when we see it. And we know the best ones when we see them even more so.
Here are the 10 best anime series currently streaming on Hulu.
1. Cowboy Bebop
The legendary Cowboy Bebop ran for two seasons and 26 episodes back in 1998, and tells the story of the space cowboy Spike Spiegel and his merry band of bounty-hunter outlaws aboard the spaceship Bebop. The year is 2071 and Earth is uninhabitable — humanity now lives on moons and space-rocks where lawlessness pervades, which… well, if I had to live on a space-rock, I’d probably turn to a life of crime, too. Not a lot of lifestyle choices on a space-rock! The series follows Spike and his team as they hunt down different criminals each episode to earn their bounty, with the big bad of Spike’s ex-bestie, Vicious, lurking about doing his own damage until their inevitable big showdown. One of the most beloved anime series ever made, Netflix live-actioned it in 2021 with John Cho in the lead, to little acclaim. Just watch the classic!
How to watch: Cowboy Bebop is now streaming on Hulu.
2. One-Punch Man
It’s the same problem that plagues Superman movies — if your superhero is too superpowered, finding somebody for them to fight that’s an actual challenge becomes an issue. For Saitama, the lead hero of One-Punch Man, it’s all right there in the title: He can obliterate anybody with a single punch. So where do you go from there? Smartly, the manga artist called ONE who created this series put this problem right at the center of it. Basically Saitama is just bored most of the time, and the series gets a lot of humor out of that. But it also leads Saitama to seek out bigger and bigger duels, needing that sweet real challenge high, until he’s literally fighting “God.” Talk about an overachiever.
How to watch: One-Punch Man is now streaming on Hulu.
3. Sonny Boy
Written and directed by Shingo Natsume (who also worked on One-Punch Man), Sonny Boy tells the story of a student named Nagara who finds himself and his entire school class suddenly and inexplicably transported to a different dimension. As the students try to figure out not just what happened to them but also the strange rules of this new world — where physics itself works differently — they discover they have all gained different superpowers as well. The fascinating thing about how Sonny Boy handles all of this, though, is that the focus remains on the young people’s relationships. The big action happenings are usually skipped right over, and we watch how they deal with the aftermath instead. Naturally, they start forming cliques and rivalries in what reveals itself to be an excellent metaphor for everybody’s isolating and strange high school experience.
How to watch: Sonny Boy is now streaming on Hulu.
4. Yu-Gi-Oh!
One of the better-known stateside mangas thanks to its aughts-era Saturday morning airings and the tremendously successful card game that goes along with it, Yu-Gi-Oh! tells the story of young Yugi Moto. A picked-on nerd at series’ start, Yugi solves an ancient Egyptian artifact called the “Millenium Puzzle” which has two immediate effects — it possesses him with the spirit of a gambler, and it unleashes the “Shadow Games” upon the world. Caught up in an endless tournament of “Duel Monsters” card battles with various foes (including his main nemesis, a corporate prick named Seto Kaiba), Yugi and his gang of good-natured pals travel around throwing their magical cards down at the bad guys, endlessly one-upping one another with bigger, badder creatures, over and over again. And again. It’s basically the same thing every episode. And let someone who intimately knows via the experience of watching this on Saturday mornings during his early 20s tell you, this is exquisitely mindless hangover television. The epitome of veg-out TV.
How to watch: Yu-Gi-Oh! is now streaming on Hulu.
5. Assassination Classroom
I think most of us had that one substitute teacher in school who grabbed our attention and made us wonder who the heck this person was and what their story might be. Well, in Assassination Classroom, a 2015 series based off Yusei Matsui’s manga, this fascinating homeroom substitute called Koro-sensei turns out to be, uhh, an enormous space octopus who’s just eaten the moon and is currently threatening to destroy the world. But he somehow also finds the time to befriend the misfits of Class 3E in Kunugigaoka Junior High School, and it turns out that Koro-sensei is the best teacher they’ve ever had! So things get complicated when the government tasks the school kids with killing their teacher before he can gobble up Earth. Besides this series, the Assassination Classroom manga has been turned into a video game and two live-action films, but the 22 episodes of this wildly over-the-top anime are really where it’s at.
How to watch: Assassination Classroom is now streaming on Hulu.
6. Attack on Titan
Running for four seasons spread out across a decade, Attack on Titan was a massive success both in its native country and in the U.S., where Hulu actually premiered episodes during its last season at the same time they aired in Japan. It finished its run last year, so you can binge all 94 episodes of the series, which is set (where else) in a post-apocalyptic future. This specific post-apocalyptic future is due to the Titans, a race of evil giant humanoid creatures that have wreaked total destruction across the globe. That brings us to our lead character, Eren Jaeger, who watched his mother get gobbled up by one, only to later discover he has the ability to transform into a Titan himself. Which Eren then uses to get his revenge, one evil giant humanoid creature at a time.
How to watch: Attack on Titan is now streaming on Hulu.
7. My Hero Academia
If you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then you know that the big deal with the character of Xander (Nicholas Brendon) was that he was a powerless regular dude amid a bunch of super-slayers and witch-champions and immortal demons who fought the good fight anyway. His ordinariness was what made him special. My Hero Academia is basically that — Deku is a young boy born without powers in a world where nearly everybody has powers. But he manages to become a hero despite that, lifting himself up by his bootstraps and getting into the big academy for superheroes anyway, winning the more powerful people he meets along the way over through sheer force of can-do attitude. Which is a good thing, because a big League of Super Villains just formed, and it’s comin’ this way!
How to watch: My Hero Academia is now streaming on Hulu.
8. Star Wars: Visions
One of the best received of the current Star Wars spin-off-mania programs we find ourselves buried beneath, Star Wars: Visions succeeds because of its willingness to be different. Different not just for telling stories unrelated to the 40-year Skywalker Saga we’ve all come to know so intimately, but wildly different in tone and execution from episode to episode. The show accomplishes this by having each episode of the anthology tell its own standalone story that’s designed and delivered by an entirely different animation studio. One week you’re watching the Sith-Jedi War get turned into a feudal-era revenge tale from the animators behind JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; the next, the folks behind the Scott Pilgrim anime are telling the story of a droid who dreams of becoming a Jedi. And at approximately 13 minutes each, none of these outstay their welcome — heck, you’ll probably want spin-offs of their own for several.
How to watch: Star Wars: Visions is now streaming on Hulu.
9. Undead Unluck
With shades of Pushing Daisies and X-Men‘s Rogue, Undead Unluck (based on Yoshifumi Tozuka’s manga) tells the story of 18-year-old Fuuko Izumo, whose mere presence causes people to drop dead. After an accident leaves hundreds of people (including her own parents) exactly that, Fuuko goes into hiding for years. Ultimately she decides she can’t continue living with this curse and is going to end it all… only to stumble upon her perfect foil, a dude named Andy who’s immortal.
The two hit it right off and find in each other reason to keep going, but before they can celebrate too much, they find themselves being chased by a shadowy group called The Union that wants to use their powers for mysterious reasons. They propose teaming them up with the other “Negators,” a collection of people who “negate” the rules of the world — you know, little things like life and death. And on the other side of the battlefield? Oh, just God. These anime sure do love to make shit epic, huh?
How to watch: Undead Unluck is now streaming on Hulu.
10. One Piece
If you’d like to set yourself a viewing challenge, tackling One Piece is your ticket — the show premiered in 1999 and now has nearly 1,200 episodes under its belt. That’s 50 percent more episodes than The Simpsons! That said, you should prepare yourself going in that Hulu doesn’t yet have all 20 seasons of the show streaming; they’re up to season 11 at this point. But that’s still hundreds of hours adapting Eiichiro Oda’s manga, so by the time you make it through, they’ll probably have added more. One Piece tells the story of treasure hunter Monkey D. Luffy and his team of Straw Hat Pirates, who’re on the (long, long, long) hunt for the ultimate treasure of the title, which crowns the person that finds it Pirate King. Although at this point, one wonders if they’re very good at their job, to be honest. It’s been 1,200 episodes and you’re still looking. Come on, Monkey, get your act together.
How to watch: One Piece is now streaming on Hulu.
