Been away from anime for awhile? We understand. You go out and have your life, anime will always be waiting for you when you come back. They always come back. If you are finally coming back and stopped watching sometime in or before 2020, here are all the best anime series that you missed and definitely should go back and watch.
If you are looking to watch the best anime of 2020, then you definitely need to check out there anime recommendations.
Best Anime of 2020
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
With sketchbook always on hand, Midori Asakusa has a passion for drawing both the world around her and the world in her boundless imagination. In stark contrast, her best friend Sayaka Kanamori and her calculated approach to life keeps her grounded.
After a chance encounter with model Tsubame Misuzaki who has a passion for drawing fluid characters, Kanamori, sensing a money-making opportunity, suggests they start an animation club.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, if you look past the jokes and silliness, is really quite the love letter to all animation. It has references that are subtle and special to those that recognize them, and even for those that don’t, its it still a damn fun series.
If you have a long love of anime, it is very much worth watching Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken to see the sheer amount of work that goes into it.
Jujutsu Kaisen
In order to gain more power, demons search for fragments of the legendary demon Sukuna to consume them.
One day, Yuuji Itadori, who just lost his grandfather, learns of this as he saves his school friends from being consumed by demons after they break the seal on one of the body parts of Sukuna that was at their school.
In order to stand a chance, he eats it, revealing himself as a rare vessel that can utilize and control the curse of Sukuna, meaning when he dies, Sukuna’s curse dies with him.
There’s always that one shounen anime per year that really steals the show, and for 2020, it was Jujutsu Kaisen.
Jujutsu Kaisen is a perhaps a little darker than fans of shounen battler anime are used to, but no one hated that it was. It elevates the sense of danger when you can see the terrible things that a villain can do in visceral, heart-breaking glory.
However, the real reason Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the best anime of 2020 is because it doesn’t use a main ensemble that is just another series of stereotypes. You can see the obvious parallels between the main characters and the main characters in Naruto, but Jujuitsu Kaisen makes them more complicated characters and, most importantly, makes “the girl” of the team actually useful.
Dorohedoro
Hole is a disorderly district where death and mutilation are common. The residents of Hole are the dregs of society and the test subjects of the magic users that live separate from it. As such, these residents are constantly tested on or just murdered by these mages.
In Hole is Kaiman, a man with a head cursed to be that of a lizard, but with an immunity to magic. He spends his time set on hunting down these magic users in one small bit of justice for the people that live in Hole.
While Mappa’s CGI practice may put you off, giving this one a pass is a mistake. Dorohedoro does the incredibly difficult task of melding comedy and horror seamlessly.
The series makes the horrific seem normal, even comical at times. Furthermore, it has an antagonist that is very much just a normal person on the other side of the main character’s goal. He’s not evil for evil’s sake as so many antagonists can be these days, but instead is just kind of doing his job.
Tonikawa: Over the Moon For You
After being ridiculed for his strange name, Nasa, like the space agency, decides he will become a man even greater than the starry sky. However, one night, that all changes when he sees a beautiful girl.
She ends up saving him from being fatally hit by a truck while crossing the street to talk to her. Having chased her down despite his serious injuries, he asks her out. She says she will go out with him if they marry. He agrees, and passes out.
Waking up to find her gone, he abandons his ambitions until one day when she shows up with their marriage registration.
This one’s popularity, at least at first, is more due to the year it premiered in. 2020 was a rough one for some, and Tonikawa provided what a lot people want. An easy love story where two strangers get married and live very happily.
There is no drama, and it is just two people going through the steps of love. It’s a cozy anime with some cute moments, but not the most ambitious story in the world.
Tower of God
Bam spent his whole life trapped beneath a mysterious tower with his closest friend, Rachel. One day, Rachel disappears, claiming she is going to climb the tower. Bam manages to open the door to it as well and attempts to climb in order to be reunited with Rachel.
However, what awaits him is a new ordeal on each level, and he is not the only one trying to climb.
You’ll find mixed opinions about this one. A large part of the issues come with the hype around it. Tower of God is a popular Korean webtoon, and one of the first manhwas to get an anime series. Its big problem?
Hype.
It didn’t live up to that hype, but it was still a perfectly fine, even actually pretty good anime series. When things don’t live up to the hype, people tend to nitpick.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom
At eight years old, Katarina Claes, the only daughter of a duke, hits her head and suddenly remembers she was once a seventeen-year-old otaku that got isekai’d.
She realizes that she is now in the world of Fortune Lover, the otome game that she had been playing before her death.
Unfortunately, she is not the heroine, but rather the villainess who usually ends up dead or exiled at the end. As such, she endeavors to change her fate and avoid all doom flags.
No one could know that the fact that My Next Life As A Villainess was one of the best anime of 2020 would launch a whole sub-craze among the craze that is isekai. Not only is isekai very popular, but now isekai specifically about villainesses being nice is a growing trend.
This series isn’t the most cerebral plot, but it is unique among isekai romance. She commits to no male love interest and even the female characters grow to love her. As such, it is very much like she builds a whole bisexual harem.
Kakushigoto
Kakushi Goto is relatively well known for the lewd manga that he creates. However, when his daughter Hime was born, he vowed to keep his profession a secret.
This is the story of the great lengths he goes through to keep his ecchi manga profession a secret from his beloved daughter.
Childcare anime is always low-key, but well received. Kakushigoto still has the wholesome moments that people love, but it more comedy-focused than usual.
It is a solid series for the now-degenerates that may one day become parents.
God of High School
In Korea, they host the God of High School tournament. In it, the strongest high school fighters battle it out against each other for the top prize.
This year, Mori Jin, a Taekwondo specialist, has entered, but soon finds out there is more at play than just a simple tournament.
Like Tower of God, God of High School was another big webtoon adaptation that happened in 2020. Also like Tower of God, there was big hype, and guess what happen? It was a fine series, but the hype wasn’t realized. Again, people nitpicked.
This is the kind of battle anime that starts off somewhat normal with (highly embellished) martial arts, but gets wildly out of hand when it comes to how the power scale progresses.
Rent-a-Girlfriend
Recently dumped by his girlfriend, college student Kazuya Kinoshita tries to fill the void with an app that lets him rent a girlfriend. While Chizuru seems like the perfect girlfriend, reading the reviews online, he finds out it is an act.
He leaves her a bad review and this reveals her more sassy true self when she comes after him for it. Unfortunately, after his grandmother’s collapse, he introduces her as his girlfriend at the hospital, and thus they begin their fake relationship.
Rent-a-Girlfriend fans will always be conflicted. The girls are some of the best and cutest that harem anime has to off, but the main character is by far one of the most spineless harem kings to ever be written.
Still, the fact that the entire series is about being able to rent girlfriends has resonated with audiences enough to name this easily one of the best anime of 2020.
Adachi and Shimamura
One day while skipping class, Adachi Sakura and Shimamura Hougetsu meet in the second floor gym.
They talk, play ping pong, and eventually become friends. However, as they spend more time together, their feelings begin to shift.
Yuri and shoujo ai are rare, so a new one is always welcomed. However, a new one that is also really good as a romance? Well, we were extra lucky in 2020.
Adachi and Shimamura is refreshing because it isn’t so much a star-crossed immediate romance. They start as friends, but over the course of the series, they both begin to wonder if those feelings are actually something more. It is a slow realization and one grounded in realistic feelings.
Id: Invaded
In this world, crimes are able to be solved by piecing together a criminal’s unconscious mind in ID-wells. However, in order to enter these ID-wells, you must be a killer yourself.
Enter brilliant detective Akihito Narihisago. After his daughter was murdered, he sought vengeance on the killer and is currently serving his sentence.
However, under the name Sakaido, he enters the ID-wells in order to help his fellow detectives piece together crimes.
Id: Invaded was the hidden gem of 2020. It is a futuristic cop drama with privacy violating future technology, not unlike Psycho-Pass.
Still, it does all that the right way. Id: Invaded sets up intrigue that draws you in, and it has enough grisly serial killers murdering people in between to keep you invested.
Akudama Drive
The region of Kansai is overrun by powerful criminals known as Akudama.
One night, after picking up 500 yen dropped by an Akudama, an Ordinary Girl finds herself wrapped up in a huge plot to foil a public execution.
Now with a bomb collar around her neck, she and other Akudama must complete tasks given by a mysterious Black Cat.
As it was made by the creator of Danganronpa, for some people, that is all you need to say about Akudama Drive to get them to put it on their watch list.
However, if that doesn’t work, consider it one of the very rare cyberpunk anime that portrays a gritty, but technologically advanced society full of the most eccentric criminals.
Deca-Dence
Driven to the point of extinction by creatures known as the Gadoll, humanity now lives out of a large mobile fortress known as Deca-Dence.
Inside, the residents are separated into Gears, warriors that fight the Gadoll, and Tankers who maintain the fortress. Natsume, a Tanker, has dreams of becoming a Gear, but is forced into armor repair where she meets a surly senpai named Kaburagi that has more skills than he lets on.
With an early twist in the second episode, everything about this series changed. It went from Attack on Titan to something a loot more creative.
The nice part is Deca-Dence tells a complete story. If you hate endless “first seasons” that never get a sequel, this one gives you an ending.
The Misfit of Demon King Academy
After countless wars, Demon Lord Anos Voldigoad decided he would reincarnate into the future.
However, 2,000 years later, he has found that his descendants have become too used to peace and their magical powers weakened because of it. Reincarnated with his full strength, the sheer magical power of Anos makes him a misfit at the Demon King Academy charged with educating the next generation in waning magical prowess.
The Misfit of Demon King Academy had every right to be another bland fantasy harem anime, but wasn’t.
It IS a harem fantasy, but it isn’t bland. The main character IS overpowered, but not insufferable. The girls ARE cute, but with personality (mostly). It also provides a fresh new take on reincarnation that future new fantasy anime are sure to beat to death.
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle
In order to sow chaos and discord among the human kingdom, the Demon King Tasogare abducted the beloved human princess, Syalis.
In an effort to rescue her, a mighty hero sets forth.
Meanwhile, held in the demon castle, Princess Syalis discovers that being held captive is quite boring. She decides to sleep away her time awaiting rescue, but… She can’t sleep.
Cheap bedding, insomnia, and demonic snores plague her as she tries to get a solid night’s sleep.
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle was a pleasant surprise. I thought it would certainly be a cozy anime series that is nice for awhile, but you get bored with eventually.
It is cozy, but it also transformed itself into a really fun comedy, too. Considering the plot can be explained in a sentence, it was a surprise for it to be as good as it is.
Somali and the Forest Guardian
With humanity all but extinct after severe prosecution, the world is ruled over by spirits and all manner of strange creatures.
One day, a golem that serves as guardian of the forest meets a young human girl.
She has no memory of her parents, but the golem decides to at least seek out other humans to return her.
Another lovely father and daughter anime, but with neither of them being related and one of them not even being human.
Somali and the Forest Guardian is enjoyed for those nice cute moments, but I personally found the world where very few humans existed to be interesting to explore. What’s more, it knows how to hurt you sometimes.
What did you think was the best anime of 2020? Let fans know in the comments section below.
