You like characters? Why wouldn’t you? Sure, a series can do crowds of generic characters, some who may or may not even get faces, but it is not the same as creating a series with tons of characters that all have unique designs and personalities. If you enjoy learning about a lot of characters in a series, there are quite a few anime series that can set you up.
Best Anime With a Large Cast
Kingdom
While the Kingdom manga has literally tons of characters in it that pop in and out of the story, the anime itself only embraces a fraction of that due to its lack of subsequent seasons. However, even a fraction of the characters is enough to still be a pretty long list. While it takes place in a fictional historical area, you can still find some historical inspirations too.
Assassination Classroom
Part of the many charms of Assassination Classroom is that it takes a literal classroom of problem children and embraces them. It focuses on the main character at times, but every student has a name, a personality, and a back story to them. The anime does a decent job of exploring that as well. Considering some series don’t even give a face to every student in a classroom, this is a major achievement.
My Hero Academia
Like Assassination Classroom above, this is another series that focuses on a class and gives character traits to every student in it. However, My Hero Academia goes above any beyond with its characters. Not only do you learn about the students, but it expands into Pro Heroes and a decent sized cast of villains as well. Tons of heroes. Tons of unique quirks. There’s a lot to love here.
Attack on Titan
Unlike some other series on this list, Attack on Titan, while having a large cast of characters, doesn’t always make them noticeably unique. The whole world is based on being kind of realistically bland in terms of humanity, so some characters look really similar to others. Furthermore, there are no super powers or anything to really differentiate them. It is just the small things like Sasha like potatoes or Levi is a neat freak that sort of set them apart.
Code Geass
Full of political intrigue and rebellion, you should expect a pretty large cast. However, what pads out the cast is the fact that the main character plays a lot of characters himself. He has his school friends, he has his rebellion associates as Zero, he has all his relatives and associates as a banished prince. It is a lot of people, but luckily they all have pretty solid character designs so you can remember the way they look even if you don’t recall their name.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a series that grows with each season. As each season focuses on a new generation of the Joestar family, this means that the character roster grows. Furthermore, as you get into the story, Stands are introduced that may have their own look and personality as well. If you love muscles or at least creativity in character design, this is a series for you.
A Certain Magical Index
Throughout A Certain Magical Index, its sequels, and its side stories that follow other characters, you are introduced to a lot of different characters. Because it has a couple side series, this means it has several “main” characters now who interact with each other, yes, but also interact with separate people. This is definitely a series that, because there are so many characters and concepts, you really need to be focused on it while watching.
Naruto
Naruto, on its own, had a very large cast of characters. You had the kids, the adults, the villains, and eventually that expanded to the leaders of the different ninja villages and their associates. Now, though, it has grown even larger. Now with Boruto you have all the children of those previous children characters. The roster has grown just bananas in its sheer size.
Hunter X Hunter
Like most shounen series, Hunter X Hunter primarily focuses on the relatively small core group. However, the character list expands exponentially as you go into the different arcs such as the Chimera Ants or Killua’s family Some of these characters you only see for a little bit, but they leave a big impact.
Bleach
Up until the Soul Society arc, the cast list in Bleach is rather small. However, once it enters that arc, it is like the author decided that he really likes creating characters. From Soul Society on, most villains are part of an organization and those organizations are all pretty large. However, as Tite Kubo has a real talent for creating unique looking characters akin to Hirohiko Araki and his Jojo Bizarre Adventure, it really isn’t a problem.
One Piece
In One Piece, Luffy’s pirate crew grows pretty quickly, but it is part of a world that just keeps expanding with no end in sight. In truth, because of its high episode count, you really have to have a large character roster at this point. Many characters are reoccurring, but there is always another villain out there ready to make an appearance.
Dragon Ball
Throughout the Dragon Ball series, including Z, Super, and even GT, it has always been kind of a villain of the week sort of show. Except the villains aren’t beaten in just an episode. The characters fight their way up to the main villains and often make friends along the way. As it is a villain of the week sort of series and it has so many episodes to it, it has collected a lot of characters.
Danganronpa
The Danganronpa games are well known for having very… Unique looking characters. While you only see characters from the first two games in the anime series, as well as some new ones, they are all pretty distinctive. The whole “thing” in Danganronpa is everyone that goes to that school has a special talent. They are the best of the best at fighting, fashion, cooking, gaming, or just being lucky. As such, they are all designed pretty quirky.
Do you have more anime series with a lengthy cast of characters that we missed? Let fans know in the comments section below.
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