The winter 2022 anime season is well underway and, with 51 shows on offer, picking what to watch can feel like a bit of a minefield.
Luckily for you, we’ve been sifting through this season’s best anime and have put together a selection of top-tier offerings, and there’s a little something for everyone here…
Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2
Attack on Titan is absolutely insane right now; there’s just no other way to describe it. We can hardly believe we started watching this show nine years ago, and now, with the second part of the fourth and final season, the near-decade-long journey is almost over.
If you don’t know AoT, you’re missing out on not just one of the greatest modern anime masterpieces but also one of the greatest anime of all time.
In a fantasy world, humanity is under threat from horrific man-eating humanoid giants, the titular titans. The show follows Eren Yeager and his childhood friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert as they join the Survey Corps, an elite anti-titan task force, and seek to stop the monsters and uncover the secrets of the world they know so little about.
The action that follows is spectacular, and its violence is harrowing and horrifying. AoT is also blessed with top-tier visuals, an epic soundtrack, and a story that goes so deep and throws in so many twists and turns it’s almost too much to take in. Attack on Titan is an absolute masterpiece, and it’s something every anime fan needs to experience.
Why we love it: The conclusion to one of the greatest anime of all time
Where you can watch it: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Demon Slayer: Entertainment District Arc
After its phenomenal first season, and the incredibly successful Mugen Train movie (plus the seven-episode extended TV remake, which counts as the first part of season two), Demon Slayer returns for its next instalment, and it’s simply awesome.
Set in Japan’s Taisho era (1912-1926), bloodthirsty demons roam the land, and it’s up to the Demon Slayer Corps to stop them. The series follows new recruits Tanjiro Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma and Inosuke Hashibira, each with their own superhuman skills, as they take on the horrific creatures.
Where Season One of Demon Slayer delivered multiple snappy story arcs and went big on variety in terms of locations and monsters, adapting the manga’s later, longer arcs means that the anime has now slowed its pace to better do justice to its source material. The 11-episode Entertainment District Arc (so short it’s already over, but that means you can binge it easily!) centres all the action in one location, Tokyo’s Yoshiwara red-light district, but that’s no hardship. The storytelling is as sharp as ever, the characters are even more entertaining, the action is just brilliant, and the calibre of the fights is simply out of this world.
Each episode feels five minutes long, the cliffhangers are just as infuriating as they were in Season One, and it always leaves you desperate for the next instalment. If people shouting out the names of special moves as they perform them and inner-monologuing mid-fight isn’t your thing, Demon Slayer won’t change your mind, but if you want a fast-paced and thrilling fantasy action anime, it doesn’t get much better than this.
Why we love it: The story, the fights, the soundtrack, the sheer awesomeness of it all
Where you can watch it: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Sabikui Bisco
Where do we even begin with Sabikui Bisco (Rust-Eater Bisco)? In post-apocalyptic Japan, a rust wind ravages the land and infects humans, slowly killing them. There’s no known cure, but legend has it there’s a mushroom that can consume the rust and save the country, and Bisco Akaboshi is on a quest to find it. Also, he rides around on a giant crab, fights shady government agents wearing pink bunny heads, and his weapons of choice are arrows that cause giant mushrooms to instantly explode from wherever they land.
If that sounds weird, you don’t know half of it. You absolutely never know what this show is going to throw at you next: from hippos armed with machines guns, to a plane that’s part-snail, it’s absolutely insane at every turn. It’s also incredibly enjoyable. It looks so cool, Bisco is just a straight-up badass, and the soundtrack is one of the most eclectic we’ve ever come across, in a good way.
It’s not for everyone, but you owe it to yourself to give this a shot.
Why we love it: One of the wildest anime rides of this season
Where you can watch it: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Ranking of Kings
Okay, we’re cheating a little bit because Ranking of Kings started airing in the autumn season, but as we didn’t do an autumn season list, we had to include it here because it’s just too good to miss out on.
On the face of it, Ranking of Kings seems like a simple and sweet anime with a touching story to tell. Prince Bojji was born deaf and, despite both his parents being giants, he’s tiny. His step-mother, step-brother and pretty much everyone in the kingdom thinks he’s useless, and even his only friend, the shadow creature Kage, started out trying to take advantage of him. But Bojji’s spirit is uncrushable, and he’s determined to prove everyone wrong and show them just what he’s capable of.
The show’s simple art and animation style gives it a decidedly old-school feel, and that, along with its seemingly slow pace, will put off a lot of people raised on flashier-looking modern anime offerings. But anyone who swerves Ranking of Kings is missing out on an absolute treasure of a show. Once the plot kicks in, it keeps you guessing until you don’t know who you can trust, and things get dark and violent very quickly, belying the show’s cutesy appearance. Ranking of Kings delivers a huge helping of heart, humour, with plenty of drama and mystery, and it’s a show that it’s impossible not to fall in love with.
Why we love it: Cute on the outside, dark on the inside, and just so good
Where you can watch it: Crunchyroll, Funimation
Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout
If you’re the kind of guy who sometimes wishes they were a cute anime girl, or the kind of guy who has absolutely not ever fantasised about that sort of thing at all no way (uh-huh…), then we’ve got just the show for you.
Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout tells the totally normal story of 30-something friends Hinata Tachibana and Tsukasa Jinguuji. After a night out in the city, a goddess appears out of nowhere and sends the two guys to a magical fantasy world with instructions to become heroes and defeat the demon lord. So far, so isekai. Except that Hinata is now a cute blonde girl and, after upsetting said goddess, the pair have been cursed to fall in love with each other, which they attempt to resist at every opportunity.
Tsukasa has been endowed with insanely OP stats, while Hinata’s only power is to make every man who looks at her (him…?) instantly fall in love and lose all self-control, which results in absolute chaos at every turn. You can already tell that this is not going to be highbrow entertainment, and it’s even more ridiculous than it sounds on paper, but it’s also ridiculously entertaining. It’s just so over-the-top and outrageous, and you’ll be sure to laugh through its sheer absurdity.
Total Fantasy Knockout knows exactly what it’s doing, and it does it so well, but it also has the occasional, surprisingly deep moment, which makes the show feel like it has just that little bit more to offer. Above all else, though, it serves up a heaped helping of dumb fun, and we can’t get enough of it.
Why we love it: The most fun you’ll have this season, whether you wish you were an anime girl or not
Where you can watch it: Crunchyroll
For more anime, check out our top animes from the Spring here, from the Summer here and our interview with Jujutsu Kaisen Englsh dub voiceover actor Adam McArthur here.
