“Adventure” is a pretty easy tag to slap onto your standard action anime, but not every anime series really captures that feeling of adventure.
You know the feeling. The one where you are excited to see where the characters go next and what they will encounter there.
A good adventure anime goes hand-in-hand with being able to craft a world that is equally as interesting as the plot or the characters.
If you are looking for an anime series that lives up to the adventure that the standard “action adventure” promises, then check out these anime recommendations about exploring anime worlds below.
*Note – For this, I’m going with the less obvious.
Shows like Full Metal Alchemist, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Fairy Tail, DBZ – You get where I’m going. All the big shounen anime have an element of adventure to them.
Some would argue that being able to do it well is what contributes to making them a smashing success. Regardless, I want to highlight the less obvious of the adventure anime genre.
Best Adventure Anime
Made in Abyss
Made in Abyss is the quintessential adventure anime. The entire plot is about two characters that want to reach the bottom of the titular Abyss where few have reached and none have ever returned from.
However, don’t be fooled by the cute potato people character designs. They serve to disarm you for the trauma that awaits.
You see, the Abyss starts off as an innocent enough adventure, but the deeper you go in the Abyss, the more dangerous it becomes. The more morals and ethics devolve as those who reach the deeper levels cannot go back up.
The exploration in Made in Abyss remains some of the best you can find in the adventure anime genre, but it does become kind of traumatic and haunting in what it shows you.
Mushishi
As a story about a guy that simply observes phenomenon caused by small entities known as mushi, the discovery in Mushishi is high even if the overall action is low.
Mushishi is a highly atmospheric anime, encouraging you to discover with your eyes and spelling out every detail of the world.
Every episode is something new too, so no singular story in this episodic series goes on longer than it needs to.
Ultramarine Magmell
After a new continent spontaneously appeared in the world filled with new flora and dangerous fauna, it launched a brand new Age of Discovery in the world.
Ultramarine Magmell is an episodic show about a young man that rescues explorers on this new continent.
Every episode explores some new situation on the continent or adventurers imperiled by a new vicious monster, all while leaving crumbs towards the greater plot.
From the New World
In From the New World, you follow the main characters as children, and discovering the world and seeing it in simple terms as children would.
That scope expands as they enter their teenage years and adulthood throughout the show.
The perfect, safe world they knew as children is grossly twisted into a darker reality as they discover various secrets about the cost they pay for their comfortable society.
A Place Further Than the Universe
A Place Further Than the Universe is a more unique gem of the adventure anime genre in that it doesn’t take place in a fantasy world. It has a goal that seems like a fantasy in our reality, but is carried out in a very grounded and real way.
In A Place Further Than The Universe, some high school girls want to go to Antarctica, like actual explorers, and they reach that goal without being ridiculously anime-level unrealistic about it.
It really makes you feel as though you are on an adventure with them because the steps they take seem like very valid steps one would take to get to Antarctica.
Danmachi – Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
For as large as the fantasy genre of anime is these days, there are very few solid dungeon crawling anime.
However, Danmachi remains a stalwart pillar of it, even if there is more action in this particular adventure anime.
In Danmachi, every level in the multi-layered labyrinth below the hub city is different and challenging, requiring the characters to grow stronger or put themselves in more peril each new time they venture in.
Like any good dungeon crawler, stronger enemies and better loot await!
Dr. Stone
Dr. Stone is all about discovery, but that discovery is often aimed at scientific innovations.
In Dr. Stone, the main characters were all turned to stone for 1,000 years until nature lined up just right to thaw out one super genius.
In a world rapidly changed from the one they knew, Dr. Stone is all about one man’s quest to bring back civilization through science.
It is pretty interesting to see how he works through the problems of not having the appropriate tools or materials to do what he wants. What you often get are rudimentary versions of various inventions.
As Dr. Stone goes on, it also moves into more standard adventure anime outings like exploring the world. Eventually they get to the point where they can make boats an other travel aids to facilitate an “Age of Discovery,” as it were.
7 Seed
Although a post-apocalyptic anime, the world these small groups of modern humans wake up to in 7 Seeds is anywhere from a couple hundred to a thousand years old after humanity went extinct from a meteor.
It is very much like they work up on a new planet where there are some familiar plants and animals, but much of it is new and dangerous after new evolution.
Perhaps just as interesting as seeing this new world is seeing the various survival strategies that are employed to not die in it.
Kino’s Journey
Kino’s Journey is all about the journey, as you might expect.
A girl and her motorcycle travel to new places and only linger there for about three days before moving on.
Much in the way of Mushishi, this atmospheric adventure anime allows you to explore all on your own while never letting one plot line get too dull.
That said, Kino’s Journey is a distinctly more philosophical anime, displaying a number of societies and types of people. Due to the sheer nature of people, Kino’s Journey is often a melancholic one.
Gargantia on the Verderous Planet
Imagine living a life where all you knew was warfare and space. Then one day you crashed onto a planet that was all water and sunshine. What a jarring shock that must be, and that is what Gargantia on the Verderous Planet explores.
Humanity fled to space after aliens destroyed Earth. Since then, they spent every day battling those same aliens in a battle for survival. Leto, a warrior in that war, is flung into a wormhole and lands on a water planet. There he is picked up by a large fleet of ships piloted by, to his surprise, other humans.
Gargantia on the Verderous Planet is a treat in its water planet visuals and its very lovable characters. You’d think a water planet has little to explore, but it is the culture of these humans that is what the show build out.
Astra Lost in Space
After being stranded in space, every episode of Astra is composed of three things – a new planet, a new problem, and the back story of one of the characters.
Every planet is different and Astra Lost in Space puts effort into making it look and feel as such.
While Astra Lost in Space is a short series that concludes with one season, it was one that can make you excited for every new episode because there would be something wildly different to see.
Appare-Ranman
This oddly overlooked series is likely one of the best recent anime series you’ve never seen.
Appare-Ranman has a certain sort of swagger to it that makes the trans-continental race a bit frenetic and odd, but never boring.
Essentially, the main characters race across America to try to win the race in order to get money to go back home to Japan. Along the way is action, adventure, and an array of even odder characters than these fish out of water.
Michiko and Hatchin
Not every adventure anime need be steeped in deep fantasy and huge monsters. Michiko and Hatchin is proof that the various shenanigans of two characters on a road trip can be exciting all on its own.
Michiko and Hatchin follows a busty badass female criminal who is looking for a man. Her best bet to find him is to kidnap his child, a daughter who is coincidentally all too happy to leave her abusive foster parents and is also looking for her father. The pair team up to travel and find that deadbeat.
The locations aren’t wildly pretty, but there is something nice and rugged about this fictionalize South American setting. They are tough places filled with tough people. However, some of the things they get pulled into are as laughable as they are horrible too.
Toriko
Toriko is a battle anime I can get behind.
The titular Toriko wants to eat everything, or rather create his perfect meal. In order to get those ingredients, he needs to fight the beasts that guard them or the beasts that are the ingredients. Along the way he teams up with an inspiring master chef to cook the food for this intrepid hunter-eater.
Toriko is a unique experience. It has the battle energy of a shounen energy and the silly energy an anime parodying shounen anime.
However, as Toriko is an anime of a longer length, you can really get lost in the grand adventure that it shows off.
Jyu Oh Sei
Similar to other adventure anime on this list, Jyu Oh Sei is about survival in a rough and rugged place.
You explore it with the characters who are unceremoniously dropped there, unprepared for anything. It is tough, but the world is as vast and interesting as the mystery it presents.
Flip Flappers
With its symbolic themes and artistic visuals, it can be pretty hard to describe Flip Flappers, but if there is one thing about it that is clear – you are meant to discover in it.
Flip Flappers is partly about discovering a wild, vibrant world, and partly about the theme of discovery itself. If you like yourself some hidden gems, this definitely fits that bill.
Aria
As Aria follows tour guides on a Venice-like water planet, really all there is to this anime is exploration.
They show off the planet, it is literally their job. While doing so, you get a unique glance at the culture, and all of that is wrapped in some of the best scenery visuals in anime.
Aria is kind of like seeing a new city yourself. It is just one that has distinctly more sci-fi elements than you are used to.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
“Adventure” – it is right there in the title. However, while they adventure to very real places, the things that go on in them are the bizarre part.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is an experience, and not one that appeals to everyone. It is the type of anime where you watch it, and at first do not see the appeal. However, at one point everythign jsut clicks into place and you end join the cult of passionate Jojo fans.
While there isn’t much in the way of adventure in Part One: Phantom Blood, Jojo’s first season. The anime after the first season becomes a world-spanning adventure as you explore the bizarre happenings that the many generations of the Joestar family get caught in.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea is an experience in the best way.
The series takes place in an world that looks very different from our own, with giant spires sprouting from a vast snow sea leading to a canopy of branches and all covered by a transparent dome.
And yet, you see things like signs in Japanese where knowledge of kanji by present humans is so degraded that they are read wrong. It gives you the feeling that their world is the very far future of our own.
What Kaina and the Great Snows Sea does well is it really builds out the different cultures of the admittedly small pool of humans left that are now engaging in water wars.
The main characters are looking for a solution to the water shortage, and to do that, it often sends them into the vast and unknown world.
Girls’ Last Tour
Similar to Kino’s Journey, Girls’ Last Tour follows two girls and their ride on a journey to nowhere in particular. Unlike Kino’s Journey, this anime takes place in a world that has ended.
In the world of Girls’ Last Tour, they make it pretty clear that a war between humanity resulted in the extinction of humanity. There are no living towns in this series, no fields of crops, just snow and iron scrap. There is not a lot of beautify in the world, but Girls’ Last Tour really does entice you to want to see and learn more about it.
The girls rely on each other for company and very rarely meet the eccentric oddball that is also very close to death in this very close to dead world.
It is a melancholic journey, to be sure, but Girls’ Last Tour does find a bit of happiness from time to time.
Sakugan
Sakugan presents a unique world in which humanity lives underground in colonies fortified against the dangers that await in the labyrinth of tunnels outside.
As the tunnels outside of the colonies are littered with beasts, only the bravest become Markers that go explore and map the tunnels. Of course, the series follows a very young super genius that wants to be a Marker, despite her father telling her not to.
After an event, the father-daughter duo are thrust out into the dangerous labyrinth trying to reach an area that the girl has had dreams of since as long as she can remember.
Now, Sakugan has a bit of bad reputation because many find the young female character obnoxious and usually the cause of the dangerous situations she needs rescued from. Yet, I find her unique as a character in that she acts exactly how a kid that thinks she knows everything but lacks world experience would act.
Regardless, Sakugan may take place entirely underground, but it certainly doesn’t always feel like it with its vast and diverse tunnels.
To Your Eternity
Time is meaningless to an immortal, and no anime better demonstrates that than To Your Eternity.
The series starts with an orb. He is flung to Earth by a mysterious being for heretofore unclear reasons where he lands by a rock and becomes the rock. A wolf eventually dies by him, and he becomes the wolf. Eventually, he takes shape of a boy, learning to take the shapes of others through strong enough stimulation like the grief of death.
Much of the beginning of To Your Eternity is about this immortal-orb-then-rock-then-wolf-then-boy character learning what it means to human. Learning language, how to care for himself, and how to connect to others.
Once he masters that, though, the adventure begins. Much of the time, the immortal is pulled to locations by others. At other times, he simply heads in a direction. What you see is not just the world, but the world over the span of – eventually – decades if not hundreds of years. Characters live and, more likely, die and cities and cultures change completely while the main character is caught in the throes of one thing or another.
The Faraway Paladin
The Faraway Paladin is enjoyable for what it has, but it is an adventure fantasy anime that would definitely benefit from a second season.
While the Faraway Paladin is technically, just barely, an isekai anime, it doesn’t play out in the standard “isekai anime with an OP MC and a harem” kind of way. Instead, the main character starts as a baby and is raised by the three undead guardians of a dead city that guard the seal of a powerful being they defeated and sealed away there in life hundreds of years ago.
What is most interesting about The Faraway Paladin is that he eventually goes out into the world, but his guardians have no idea what the world is like outside their city. It could be ruins or it could be thriving for all they know.
What it does build up before sending him out is lore behind the interesting pantheon of deities in the world. After that, you and the main character are very much going on an adventure to explore the world together.
Do you have more adventure anime recommendations that really capture a sense of exploration and discovery? Let fans know in the comments section below.
