15 Best Tournament Arcs in Anime

While action anime series don’t always lean on them, a good tournament is generally a oft-utilized way to fill some time and establish a distinct ranking of who is the most powerful fighter. It can be a chance to show off new techniques or build for some character growth. Unfortunately, because they are such a useful tool, they are not always made the most interesting thing. If you enjoy yourself a good tournament arc in your anime series, and want some that are actually quite interesting, these are our recommendations.

Best Anime Tournament Arcs

Tenkaichi Budokai in Dragon Ball

The Dragon Ball series is most notable for its tournaments, but uses them rather lazily. I’d say the best tournament is probably the Tenkaiichi Budokai in the original Dragon Ball because it was actually a tournament before everyone had that power creep. It was actual match ups with actual martial arts. The Cell Games tournament was epic, but it was really just people getting smashed by the villain. Dragon Ball Super recently took a decent stab at revitalizing their old standard, but again, power creep makes it feel ridiculous sometimes.

Dark Tournament in Yu Yu Hakusho

You know you crafted a good tournament arc when it is pretty much what everyone remembers from your series. Up until the Dark Tournament, you only saw a small handful of demons. However, this was the audience’s chance to get to know true power in every size and shape.

Shaman Fight in Shaman King

Shaman King is one big tournament arc. The plot is about the Shaman Fight that happens every 500 years. Winning it basically allows you to channel God and be the best like nobody every was for the next 500 years. What is great about this series, though, is that it is an international one where shamans from all over the world compete by basically wandering around and beating some ass.

Dressrosa in One Piece

You know, good for One Piece. It took them like 700 chapters to finally lean on a tournament arc, and it was actually pretty good. It would have been so easy to shove the entire Straw Hats in there, but instead it is just Luffy comically going under a the name Lucy. It does kind of forsake brackets into more of a free-for-all style though, which leads to a nice frenetic chaos that, in my opinion, is usually much more interesting and less time-consuming.

Heaven’s Arena in Hunter x Hunter

Sure there is the Hunter Exams, but I feel Heaven’s Arena was more interesting and served a better purpose. In this very tall building, people compete to get to the top floors for money and recognition. Gon and Killua climb it to improve their battle skills. However, while the floors are fun and exciting, this tournament arc is also used to be informative about the Nen powers that would become more of a focus after.

Chuunin Exam in Naruto

Remember Naruto back before it got ridiculous? Back when a weapons master like Ten Ten was still a viable way of fighting because the series was about young ninjas rather than those with jutsu akin to a deity? The Chuunin Exam arc remembers. More than that, though, it was also a well formatted tournament where the one on one battles only happened after the chaff was sorted out with other challenge type missions.

Grand Magic Games in Fairy Tail

The Grand Magic Games is actually one of my favorite bits of this series. It shows that you need not have a tournament that is all fighting. Instead, contestants are whittled down by forcing them to escape from a labyrinth or have them fight 100 monsters, even if one person did just beat them all herself. The one downside is that it sucked up a bunch of time, which is a classic example of tournaments being made into fillers.

Sports Festival in My Hero Academia

My personal favorite tournament arc is the Sport Festival. When I watched Todoroki fight Deku, it was singularly one of the best pieces of animation I had seen in recent memory. The whole festival was kept at a nice pace initially that made me really excited to see what happened next. It also saved the one-on-one fights for the end of the tournament with creative and interesting events coming before it.

Autumn Elections in Food Wars

Food Wars essentially combines tournament style battle anime, but makes it about cooking rather than fighting. Much of the series surrounds elimination style competitive cooking battles and tournaments, but the best of them is the Autumn Elections where you see characters that will become the staples of the next generation of the school, but they all still feel like they have a lot to learn. The tournaments after this arc are don’t feel like any of the characters are even students anymore.

Fifth Holy Grail War in Fate/Stay Night

Fate/Zero and the Fourth War may have the better animation and technical aspects, but the Fifth Holy Grail War was much more of an interesting story. Essentially it is battle royale style tournament in which participants are given warriors from the past to help them fight. That’s a bare bones way of putting it, of course. However, it is filled with deeper intrigue and betrayal than your standard tournament arc.

Battle City in Yugioh

Yugioh, the many iterations of it, all have various tournaments that get sillier. I remember when it was just a simple case of roaming around and challenging people to duels in order to take their MacGuffins to show you beat them. Battle City rules, bitch! Perhaps I have my nostalgia glasses on, but when your plot is a child’s card game, all you really need is new opponents with special theme decks to fight each week.

Megalonia Tournament in Megalo Box

All boxing anime has a sort of tournament style to them, but Megalo Box is a special beast. It follows boxers that are augmented with mechanics. This obviously adds that extra bit of flexibility with the action of the sport. Essentially the series is all about a character fighting his way up against increasingly more augmented men to fight the guy that whooped his ass in the first place.

Queen’s Blade Tournement in Queen’s Blade

People tend to be lured into Queen’s Blade for other reasons, but it is one giant tournament arc anime. The winner gets to be Queen. Interestingly enough, most of the fights take place before the main character even gets to the tournament by ladies she meets on the road. Yet actual tournament play does happen with each warrior bodacious in her own way and with an interesting fighting style.

The God of High School Tournament in God of High School

As one big tournament arc, God of High School and its titular tournament started off with a burst of energy, and the fights remained as such. It does have a distinct plot problem that I thought was solely limited to JRPGs in which a kid started off doing something simple at the beginning and ends up basically killing a god though.

Do you have any more tournament arcs that you are fond of in anime? Let fans know in the comments section below.