Perhaps this is only a phenomenon that happens to a select few. However, sometimes you watch an anime series based on curiosity, get some ways into it, and wonder why people even really like the show. However, upon continuous watching, something strange happens – You find you really actually like it. Like, you can’t get enough. Suddenly, you are six seasons in and retreating to the internet to demand when the next season of the show is. Now you are addicted through some sort of subliminal trickery like you just lost several hundred hours playing Candy Crush or something.
If you have that sort of need deep inside you to be addicting to something, well… First, get some help and stay away from select substances. Second, try these addictive anime recommendations!
Best Addictive Anime
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
In Phantom Blood, it is hard to see why there are so many diehard Jojo fans. In Battle Tendency, it becomes a little clearer, and each arc of Jojo becomes more enjoyable than the next. Without even meaning to, you are entirely invested in the wild lineage of the Joestar family and each bizarre adventure that comes next.
What really nails home the addictive nature of Jojo is the characters. They may be cheesy and occasionally music-themed, but they are some of the most creative creations in anime. Furthermore, while the show follows the formula of simply walking to the next battle, sometimes the next battle isn’t a battle at all, sometimes it is a tense game of cards or playing a video game. Stand powers mean a number situations are possible, not all of them the knock-down, drag-out fist fights.
One Piece
Let’s be real, of all the big shounen anime series, One Piece is a hardest to get into. Not just because it has an intimidating amount of episodes, but because its initial few arcs are among the weakest of the series. It’s hard to sell 900+ episodes based on that.
However, much like Jojo, once the charm of One Piece grows on you, 900 episodes doesn’t seem like enough. The battles keep getting bigger and an seemly endless world continues to be explored and built out into what amounts to the closest thing you can get to an actual adventure in anime.
Death Note
Not every addicting anime has to be based in shounen-style battles. What makes Death Note addicting is its penchant for plots and plot twists. You enjoy watching the main character use his intellect to outsmart people who are actually he good guys as he ultimately gets corrupted by his own power. His plots become more intricate every time, and when they are successful, it is a rush for you, the audience.
It really does become a case of needing to see what happens next. Furthermore, Death Note does well in injecting silly and very meme-able moments and treating them with absolute seriousness like intensely eating potato chips or gleefully screaming delete as you kill people.
Hunter x Hunter
All shounen series have something that makes them addicting. (You’ll see a lot on this list.) You have to be addicting if you want to run for the length of time that they do. Hunter X Hunter isn’t about sprinting to the next ninja mission or dealing with yet another soul reaper problem. Instead, it is more akin to One Piece in that the mission of the series is often just adventuring and getting tied up in local issues.
While Hunter X Hunter feels pretty young even for a shounen anime in the beginning, its Hunter Trials arc shows its cleverness, enough to keep you watching. Then you get to arcs like Chimera Ant where it suddenly becomes the most brutal shounen of any of them.
That is what makes Hunter X Hunter addicting. Ultimately, it is an adventure that you won’t expect what comes next, but are absolutely invested in seeing for yourself.
Attack on Titan
I am of a mind that Attack on Titan hooked audiences early by seeming like it killed the main character in the first few episodes. While that was a lie, it still enjoyed making it seem like the characters were always in peril.
That sense of danger certainly was a hook, but what ultimately what makes Attack on Titan addicting – so addicting that new seasons crash Crunchyroll – is that sense of not know what comes next and needing to see. Attack on Titan does twisting plot well. If you are already a fan, think about how the show started and where it has ended up. It is definitely in a completely different place.
Symphogear
If you enjoy anime for highly nuanced and mature stories, then you probably don’t fall for too many addicting anime series. However, if you enjoy big, bright action that can only be described as “anime AF,” then Symphogears is designed to hook you much in the way a gacha game is designed to get you to spend money.
It has the campy “music can save the universe” theme that unironically hooked many on Macross, a never ending parade of anime girls that appeals to the standard magical girl anime fan, and each season becomes about how much big action they can get away with without it being just too ridiculous. It is, in every sense, the perfect recipe to hook a large bulk of anime fans, and hook them hard.
Code Geass
Back in ye olden days, Code Geass was called “Death Note with Mechs,” and that was really never untrue. For the same reason that Death Note is addicting, so, too, is Code Geass. It is a chess game where the main character manipulates his pawns to get his ideal outcome, made all the easier with an eye power that forces absolute obedience.
As the series goes on, the schemes become more complex as he goes from being a school boy and terrorist to essentially ruling a kingdom. The climb is messy and brilliant, and the show occasionally takes turns that you didn’t see coming.
From The New World
There are many great mystery anime series, and all of them have an addicting sense about them as they invite you to try to answer the questions that they pose. From The New World is a series that front loads tons of questions about the world shown after humans start developing telekinetic abilities and then fast forwarding that world to a thousand years in the future where civilization is vastly different.
While the addicting thing at first is exploring the world. Eventually, you keep watching because the series does start answering all the questions that the world posed to you. The biggest thing an anime can do to entice addiction is making you need to know what is going to happen next, and From the New World is very much that.
Food Wars
It takes a talent to create an exciting, addicting shounen anime, and not have it be about fighting. Food Wars is still often about competition, but they’re not fighting. They’re cooking.
For as many competitive cooking reality shows as there is out there, it makes sense that an anime about competitively cooking would also be addicting. You get to see great food, get that same exciting sense of competition, and you get to see people spontaneously burst from their clothing.
While it lacks the joy of eating delicious food yourself, one of the most charming things about Food Wars, unlike similar exciting shounen food series like Toriko, is that the recipes are indeed very real and very replicatable.
86
There is no shortage of anime about war. However, there is a woeful shortage of war anime where the battles are more than just a place for the hero to do something heroic. 86 is an exploration of human cruelty, discrimination, and legacy through the lens of a war against self replicating machines and waged through minorities forced into military service and slated for genocide via battlefield.
Perhaps the struggle for survival isn’t necessarily addicting for some, but the 86 is also one of those shows where you continue to watch for the next hard punch to the gut. While “no one is safe” anime always has characters that are indeed safe, 86 does well to suspend that sense at times, drawing you in to see what happens next.
Dr. Stone
Like Food Wars, Dr. Stone built a shounen action series around action that is not always in the form of actual battles. Instead, the excitement in Dr. Stone comes from the sense of advancement. You get to feel the same sense of excitement and discovery as the characters as they essentially rapidly progress through human scientific history.
Again, like Food Wars, the show is teaching you things about science, but doing so in a way that you can be excited about it. Learning is often made not fun, but it doesn’t need to be.
Do you have more anime series that have a strange addicting nature for you? Let fans know in the comments section below.
