There are a lot of different ways that anime tries to hook and reel in potential fans. Some go for big, exciting action with dynamic and well-choreographed fights like shounen action anime. Others go for capturing those tender feelings of love in many different forms like the entirety of the romance anime genre. A few even try to bring fans in with a compelling, complex story.
However, then there are anime that sort of put effort into most of the above, but the way they are really trying to appeal to fans is creating an anime that is, above all else, aesthetically pleasing.
While creating “an aesthetic” is a term that really came to power with Pinterest, enjoying the aesthetics of anything has always been around. It is why people have favorite artists; they enjoy the aesthetic that their art style creates.
However, an aesthetic anime isn’t just having superb animation and visual flair. There are many anime series that save their budget for those good sakuga moments, but when an anime is trying to appeal to those that treasure the anime aesthetic – you can tell. It has beautiful visuals throughout and they also contribute thematically to the series in how they are composed.
If you are looking for visually pleasing anime that work throughout the series to capture an aesthetic, then give these anime recommendations a try.
Aesthetic Anime
A Lull in the Sea
A Lull in the Sea creates its own seaside fantasy world where humanity is separated into two “similar, but different” species. There are humans that live under the sea and the humans that separated from them generations ago to live on land who have since lost their ability to return underwater. After the small school under the sea closed, the children there are forced to go to school on land where they find both friendship and discrimination in equal measure.
A Lull in the Sea is remembered for two things – the aesthetic and the love polygon of unwieldy size. As it follows the turbulent, drama-filled times of youth with its own supernatural upheaval intertwined into that, the roiling seaside setting aids the melancholy and uncertainty in their young lives.
Non Non Biyori
While Non Non Biyori has a pretty standard Cute Girls Doing Cute Things plot about a new city girl moving to the country and befriending the small handful of classmates in her small rural school, it is a series most remembered and beloved for the aesthetic it captures.
This series lets you know early and often that it is an aesthetic experience by dedicating full minutes to nothing but scenic shots of the countryside with none of the characters present. Non Non Biyori is not the only anime that perfectly captures the sun-soaked spirit of a youthful summer, but is arguably the anime most remembered for it.
Enjoy those endless fields of green, those lingering shots of trees or flowing water with cicadas crying in the background, and everything bathed in the warm summer sunshine.
The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague
Typically, romance anime isn’t especially aesthetic. The selling point is the progressing relationship, its cute moments, or – at best – its comely characters – not so much the general visual feel that surrounds it. However, The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague integrates what I could only describe as “the lo-fi beats” aesthetic into its romance story that takes place in a world where humans live alongside the human descendants of mythical creatures.
While a workplace romance anime, The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague revels in small moments in and outside of the workplace – focused particularly on the small joys present in each season. You follow both the main and side couples as they enjoy small slice of life moments that aren’t exactly swoon-inducing as is typical in romance anime, but still build the foundation of a lovely progressing romantic relationship.
It is always refreshing to see a romance that doesn’t rely on drama to drive the relationship forward, but it is particularly new to see a romance anime do it with such a distinct vibe like The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague does.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners
When it comes to creating an aesthetic, usually anime doesn’t work with an actual type of aesthetic. However, Cyberpunk Edgerunners is distinctly different in that it is – obviously – working with the already established cyberpunk aesthetic style. However, Cyberpunk Edgerunners has single-handedly brought the cyberpunk aesthetic back in vogue with how stunning it is presented.
The cyberpunk aesthetic and theme are defined by the juxtaposition of “high tech and low life,” meaning it presents a wildly technologically advanced world with rampant social class disparity. This usually leads to skyscrapers full of the magnificently wealthy with a cesspit of crime and squalor happening on the streets below. That is exactly the sort of story Cyberpunk Edgerunners tells.
It follows a boy who, after his mother dies from a lack of appropriate healthcare after an accident, joins up with a group of mercenaries to earn money. As he continues to augment his human body with cybernetics to enhance his abilities, he begins to lose his humanity in a sea of chrome.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners isn’t just so beloved because it takes place in the world of a popular game. It is well-beloved because it is truly one of the top-tier cyberpunk stories that has been created in recent memory.
No Game No Life
The aesthetic in No Game No Life is like someone vomited every color at full saturation on each scene similar to Cyberpunk Edgerunners, but evoking less 80’s nostalgia in neon.
No Game No Life is an isekai about a legendary gaming duo of step-siblings that are transported to a world where everything from marital spats to the territorial disputes of a country are settled by playing games. The pair, being the legendary gamers that they are, try to better the lot of the floundering human nation by conquering via their leet skills.
Unlike many isekai anime that chooses a particularly bland approach to fantasy by just setting it in a standard medieval world with magic and fantasy creatures, No Game No Life aims more at a psychedelic fantasy aesthetic. It is more akin to a modern Alice in Wonderland with less wildlife smoking the electric lettuce and more kemonomimi that might have some poppy seed packed in that pipe.
While it does have plenty of isekai tropes, No Game No Life does at least stretch its creativity muscle with the way it presents its visuals.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
For as whimsical as a fantasy setting should be, profoundly little fantasy anime actually aim at capturing that aesthetic. The Ancient Magus’ Bride has its share of interesting action but is often focused on building out the world instead – a world of real whimsy.
The series follows a girl who, after a lifetime of neglect, sells herself into slavery to not have to worry about where she will live or have to take care of herself. She is purchased by a mage who seeks to teach her how to control her rare magic that will eventually lead to her early death as well as use her to learn about the human experience.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride is a slow and deliberate tale that explores a magical world unseen by humans that exists alongside it on the fringes and in the dark mysteries of the forest. It explores fae lore present in our real world by creating a captivating and truly magical aesthetic full of whimsy.
Mushishi
Mushishi is a wandering anime that works quite hard to allow the audience to view the many aspects and experiences of life from a neutral perspective, using nothing more to sway your perception of events than the visuals that surround them.
Mushishi follows a man that travels to study the phenomenon caused by mushi – entities that can cause both good and bad phenomena in nature and when they intersect with humanity. As the mushi have no sentience, the main character is determined to find out why they cause such a range of different events through his observation.
Like many an aesthetic anime, Mushishi works strongly with the Japanese concept of “mono no aware,” or the impermanence of all things, which it explores through the aesthetic. The main character wanders through each of the four seasons on his journey and tells episodic tales of phenomena that start and usually end before he moves on. It offers you serene, detailed visual backgrounds and is often minimal and muted with dialogue.
Akebi’s Sailor Uniform
Akebi’s Sailor Uniform has a plot synopsis that is a very hard sell to people that don’t like slice of life or Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime, which is essentially what this series is. However, instead of making the girls extra moe, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform goes hyper-realistic with the visuals in a way that invites you to see the world through the still-shiny eyes of a child.
This series follows a country girl that was so captivated by the sailor-fuku that she joins her mother’s old high school just to wear one. However, while her mother makes a sailor uniform just for her, it turns out the dress code at the school has changed since her mother attended. Regardless, the school recognizes her passion and her mother’s hard work, so they allow her to continue to wear it. From there, traditional friend-making in an all-girls school commences.
Again, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform sports a very basic slice of life plot and has nothing else driving it forward than the dawn of another day. However, visually, the series captures the aesthetic of those fleeting school days where the world was still something to be explored and each day was an opportunity to do something new.
March Comes In Like A Lion
Have you ever wanted to see how depression is represented in visual form?
It is the easy route to use a bleak color palette and slather scenes with crushing vanta black to portray the devouring hole of depression, but March Comes In Like A Lion is more subtle and more effective. Its faded colors and long empty moments of staring into the vast open sky tell the same story as crushing vanta black but in a more modern portrayal of depression where it isn’t sadness that is crushing you, it is a all-consuming empty feeling inside.
March Comes In Like A Lion follows a ranked shogi player in his last days of high school. Alienated by his adoptive family due to his talent, he lives alone and endures the crushing loneliness of being cut off from social connections. However, a family of three girls soon wedge their way into his near-empty life, with their lucent color palette and cheerful smiles, to show him a bright spot he can call home.
March Comes In Like A Lion is a long aesthetic journey from crushing depression to peaceful contentment outside the pressures of immense talent. Furthermore, as this story evolves, so too do the visuals that it is using to further convey the change.
Laid-Back Camp
Laid-Back Camp is a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime where the “thing” they are doing is going camping in the winter because one character doesn’t like the summer crowds.
As with any CGDCT anime, the appeal is in the aesthetics as well as the relationship. Laid-Back Camp in particular captured hearts by being a highly visual feast of real locations that people can actually go see themselves in living color.
The aesthetic in Laid-Back Camp revels in realism and the beauty that can be found if we just, on occasion, looked up from our life at it. Similar to Non Non Biyori, Laid-Back Camp loves its long lingering shots of landscapes – it just prefers doing them in winter instead.
Violet Evergarden
While you can consider much of Kyoto Animation’s modern catalog of anime to fit this bill, Violet Evergarden remains their magnum opus in terms of aesthetics.
Words and whimsy dominate Violet Evergarden’s post-War styled fantasy aesthetic as the series follows a child soldier who must now find her place in a world of peace after her life’s purpose is gone. She gets a job as a writer of letters for other people but struggles to find the right words that convey the proper emotions people want injected into those letters.
In this profession, she is hoping to find the meaning behind the last words said to her by her deceased superior officer.
Violet Evergarden loves deeply personal and emotional stories, as well as exploring all forms of love – from romantic to filial to platonic admiration. The whimsical melancholy throughout its stunning visuals accentuates this story about love and loss, elevating it to another level.
The Movies of Makoto Shinkai
You can make a very solid argument that creating an aesthetic is best saved for anime movies. As films are often more focused on a concise story, the limited linear storytelling makes it easier to convey themes through the aesthetic rather than having to plan a full twelve-episode commitment. Regardless, the entire appeal of Makoto Shinkai’s films – Your Name, Suzume, Weathering with You, and even his older 5 Centimeters Per Second – is that he creates an aesthetic experience where the visuals are as much setting the tone and mood as any dialogue and character actions.
The fact that he enjoys hyper-realism in his backgrounds and doesn’t tell stories that are too detached from reality helps augment the more poignant stories that he is trying to tell.
Do you have more anime recommendations that you think are real aesthetic experiences? Let fans know in the comments section below.
