Sometimes plot isn’t all that important to the anime viewer. Sometimes you just want to watch people do cool things and not think too hard about it.
While most action anime generally makes at least some effort to create a plot, or filches one from a similar series, tournament-based anime often has a plot that could be summed up in a sentence.
If you just want to watch characters brutalize each other as they rise up the ranks of a tournament ladder, we got your anime recommendations for you.
This particular list focuses on action shows that have the plot surrounding some sort of overall singular tournament. I’ve left off series that are just “mostly” various tournaments like DBZ, Yugioh, and a goodly chunk of sports anime.
Best Tournament Fighting Anime
Baki
Baki is a staple in the genre of just having muscled men beat each other purely for fun and under the loose guise of some sort of tournament to prove they are the strongest.
In fact, it is old enough that one could perhaps name it progenitor of the whole thing.
The story is, for the most part, pretty simple. Baki is the son of the strongest fighter in the world, and thus wants to beat his father’s ass. In between all that, many people want to fight him first. There isn’t always a tournament going on, but that is usually how it is framed.
Kengan Ashura
You would think for as simple a premise as it is and for how much of a staple it has been in other media, gladiatorial style fighting anime would be more of a thing.
Kengan Ashura brings gladiatorial battles into the future where businesses and other people settle disputes through blood sports and proxy fighters.
Record of Ragnarok
Gods versus humanity’s greatest fighters. It is just that simple.
However, while pitting human warriors against omnipotent beings seems very one-sided, Record of Ragnarok inserts some plot magic to make it more sporting.
The interesting thing is that despite being made more sporting, humanity is still at a huge disadvantage.
While other tournament anime series on this list do having things going on outside of the tournament, this is as pure tournament as it can get. It’s one fight, and when that ends, you get maybe 10 minutes of intrigue before the next is starting.
Shaman King
The entire premise of Shaman King is that every 500 years, all the shamans in the world will fight with their spirit partners in order to basically become god.
While the tournament just takes place in fights all over the world rather than a formal setting much of the time, it did make for an easy way to frame this beloved shounen series.
Law of Ueki
Similar to Shaman King, Law of Ueki is a vastly lesser known shounen anime series which features the same sort of tournament among the spirits.
Godhood is on the line and the characters basically just wander about the world to battle each other. It really is quite similar to Shaman King, but with much less unique characters.
Zatch Bell
One more shounen tournament fighter about entities and humans partnering up in order to decide a king.
In Zatch Bell, the fighter is a small doll-like child that is actually a demon. 1,000 of those little beasts are sent to Earth to fight in order to decide the next king in a last-man-standing sort of way.
Queen’s Blade
In order to decide their Queen, female warriors are invited to fight in a tournament. However, Queen’s Blade, while it legitimately does have some interesting fights, isn’t known for its battles.
It is known for its boobas.
Ecchi as hell, the exposed amount of skin is occasionally what makes the battles unintentionally hilarious in this tournament anime.
God of High School
God of High School starts simply about a boy entering a tournament to decide the strongest high school fighter. It then proceeds in a very exponential JRPG sort of way to where he is basically fighting gods at the end.
Still, the tournament consumes most of the first season and the fluid animation it uses truly makes those fights a treat to watch.
Juuni Taisen: Zodiac Wars
In Juuni Taisen, a tournament in which the strongest mercenaries from Chinese Zodiac-inspired families are invited to compete in what is basically a death match with one wish granted to the winner.
They are either born into and trained to represent their Zodiac family name or adopted into the family as a representative. These means they each have unique battle styles that are fun to watch when attempting to murder each other.
However, as tournament anime is often guilty of, the only plot here is character back story, even by the end, the tournaments’ purpose is kept basic, vague, and unexplained.
Food Wars
Food Wars, outside of being about watching people make delicious food and burst forth naked from their body coverings, is all about ranking.
Students fight in tournament-style battles to settle disputes. They fight in those same cooking battles to decide who is the top student as well as to gain seats on a Student Council.
While it is not quite the violent bout of blood sport that other series on here are, if competition boils your blood, then it has some pretty good moments.
Cestvs: The Roman Fighter
Because of the ugly CGI used to make it, getting into Cestvs is a real task, but there has to be a lid for every pot.
It is surprisingly the first anime that I’ve seen to be about actual Roman gladiatorial battles, though it only focuses on the fighter using fist weapons. So really, it is more a boxing anime framed in gladiatorial battles.
Basilisk
If you don’t mind your tournament anime leaning towards the more dramatic side of tragic, Basilisk features two ninja clans forced to fight for supremacy by their shogun – and also because they hate each other.
Within this ninja battle royale, there is also a Romeo and Juliet-style relationship going on which serves as the meat of the plot outside the violence.
Sekirei
Much like Queen’s Blade but with more clothing, Sekirei is a tournament anime on the more ecchi side of things.
This time it pits bodacious alien women who awaken their powers by kissing humans with a particular gene against each other. They are made to fight other alien women and their lip-locking partners in order to decide the strongest.
Fate / Stay Night
While some of the offshoot series are about other things, the main Fate / Stay Night series (Fate / Stay Night, Fate /Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks, Fate / Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel movies, and the prequel Fate / Zero) all surround characters that are fighting in a magical tournament for the Holy Grail using summoned heroes from history and mythology as proxy fighters.
By murdering or otherwise defeating the other opponents to obtain the grail, the object will grant them one wish. Of course, while the tournament to get the grail is brutal, particularly so in Fate / Zero and Heaven’s Feel, even once the grail is summoned not everything is as it seems.
Play evil games, get evil prizes, you might say.
Future Diary
While anime like Future Diary sit firmly in the survival game sub-genre of action, most survival games often just tournaments with various games instead of one single competition. Future Diary is more focused on just one overall game with one prize on the line.
In Future Diary, each participant chosen is given a cell phone that grants them different powers to help them in the game. The goal of the game is simple. You kill everyone else, and you get to be God.
The game is simple, even the cell phone powers are rather simple. However, it is the characters that really shine here. The tournament has every kind, from psychotic terrorists to downright wimps. Unfortunately, that aforementioned wimp happens to be the main character, but he has anime’s most famous yandere girl guarding him.
Platinum End
In an incredibly similar premise to Future Diary, Platinum End also follows a series of humans who were chosen as candidates to become God next. However, unlike Future Diary, they aren’t necessarily instructed to kill each other. That is just kind of what happens anyway, though.
The interesting thing about Platinum End is that they have Angels that help them in the tournament, but those Angels chose them as participants specifically because they believed they were worthy to become God. Seeing there reasoning for some of these characters is unique.
Appare Ranman
This series follows a tournament unlike the others on here, because its actually just a race. Yet, you could say the difference between one tournament and one race is really just philosophical.
In Appare Ranman, an eccentric genius from Japan and the unhappy samurai who was trying to protect him end up sailing from Japan to America.
Broke as a joke, they decide to participant in a trans-continental race to earn money to go back home. So they build a car and enter the race with a bunch of interesting other eccentrics.
While Appare Ranman is more of a race than a proper tournament, rest assured it isn’t without fighting or intrigue.
Killing Bites
Like other anime series where the tournament is the only plot of the series, Killing Bites continues the brave tradition of having no plot or context for the tournament because that’s not what fans of this sub-genre of anime are here to see.
You want to see fights. You want them to be bloody, and some of you want them to also maybe be a little lewd. Killing Bites is all of that, but the fights are carried out by human-animal hybrids called Therianthropes.
They fight as proxy fighters for corporations, but mostly the series just focuses on the extra bloody fights and maybe splashes in some character back story from time to time.
Do you have more anime series where the plot is basically just fighting in a tournament? Let fans know in the comments section below.
