13 Black & White Anime Classics You Need to Watch

Think you know your favorite anime classics?

You may want to look a little further back.

When modern audiences hear titles like Dororo or Cyborg 009, they often picture the polished color adaptations released decades later. However, the original versions of these stories were created in stark black and white, where bold shadows, heavy ink lines and limited animation helped establish their distinctive atmosphere.

Without color to rely on, early animators had to make every silhouette, expression and contrast count. The result was a visual style that could feel dramatic, eerie and surprisingly cinematic.

Black-and-white anime is not limited to historical curiosities, either. While many of the most important examples come from the early decades of Japanese television and film, modern creators have occasionally returned to monochrome for its mood, symbolism and visual impact.

Whether you want to explore the early history of anime or discover how striking monochrome animation can be, these 13 black-and-white classics deserve a place on your watchlist.

13 Black-and-White Anime Classics You Need to Watch

These selections are ranked roughly by how essential they are, balancing historical importance with how well they still hold up for modern viewers.

The list begins with several lesser-known discoveries before moving toward the foundational works that helped shape anime history. It ends with a modern masterpiece that proves black-and-white animation is far from a forgotten art form.

Kaizoku Ouji (1966)

A deeper cut for the completists. This was Shotaro Ishinomori’s first anime, a straightforward adventure about a boy named Kid who learns his father was a legendary pirate and sets out to follow that legacy.

It is not as polished or influential as the studio’s later work, but as an early, hard-to-find Toei adventure it holds real curiosity value for classic-anime hunters.

Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2002)

The weird one, and gloriously so. A punk kitten from Planet Cat Earth tumbles into a surreal story about corporate control and cosmic conspiracy, told in a stark, retro-cartoon monochrome that occasionally erupts into color.

It plays more like an art installation than a normal anime, and if you like your black and white cinema strange and a little unsettling, it is essential.

She and Her Cat (1999)

A reminder that black and white anime did not end in 1970. Before Your Name made him a global name, Makoto Shinkai built this quiet five-minute short almost single-handedly, narrated from the point of view of a cat watching over the woman who adopted him.

It is tiny, tender, and proof that monochrome can be intimate rather than merely retro.

Osomatsu-kun (1966)

Proof that early anime was not all robots and heroes. Fujio Akatsuka’s six identical, troublemaking brothers ran on pure gag-comedy chaos, and the loose, rubbery monochrome animation gives it a manic, old-cartoon charm.

If the darker picks wear you down, this is the palate cleanser, and its DNA runs straight through to the modern Osomatsu-san phenomenon.

8 Man (1963)

One of the earliest cyborg-hero anime, and a clear ancestor of everything from RoboCop to Ghost in the Shell.

A murdered detective is reborn in a synthetic body and fights crime while wrestling with what he has become. It arrived the same year as Astro Boy and helped prove that old anime could handle darker, more adult science fiction.

Ookami Shounen Ken (1963)

Toei Animation, the studio that would later give us Dragon Ball and One Piece, produced its first-ever TV series here: a Mowgli-style adventure about a boy raised by wolves in the Himalayas.

It ran at a noticeably higher frame rate than its peers, and one of its directors was a young Isao Takahata, decades before Grave of the Fireflies. Pure historical weight, and a lovely-looking show to boot.

Otogi Manga Calendar (1961)

This is the one for the record books: the first anime series ever broadcast on Japanese television, a full two years before Astro Boy. Each three-minute short taught a slice of history for the day, mixing animation with real newspaper photos and footage.

Almost none of its 600-plus episodes survive, which makes it more historical artifact than binge-watch, but no honest list of black and white classics can skip where the entire medium began.

Cyborg 009 (1968)

Nine ordinary people, abducted and rebuilt as cyborgs, turn on the arms dealers who made them, a team-superhero setup that feels startlingly modern.

Ishinomori gave it real tragedy and a darker edge than most 1960s anime, and the monochrome leans into that weight. It is one of the most forward-looking shows on this whole list.

Tetsujin 28-go (1963)

The giant-robot genre effectively starts here.

A boy named Shotaro commands a towering wartime robot by remote control, and that single image, tiny kid versus enormous machine, set a template every mecha series since has borrowed from. Long before Gundam’s sleek color mechs, this was the blueprint, drawn in bold black and white.

GeGeGe no Kitaro (1968)

Shigeru Mizuki more or less codified the yokai genre with this one, and monochrome suits it perfectly.

Kitaro, the last survivor of a ghost tribe, guards humans from malicious spirits, and the high-contrast inking gives the folklore an eerie, woodblock-print quality that the glossier color remakes lose. If you want to see where modern supernatural anime came from, start here.

Dororo (1969)

Tezuka again, and one of the darkest, most atmospheric anime of its era. Hyakkimaru, a ronin whose body parts were stolen by demons before he was born, reclaims himself one monster at a time, and the stark black and white makes every shadow and severed limb land harder.

There is a historical footnote too: Dororo debuted in April 1969, making it one of the last major anime produced in monochrome before color took over.

Astro Boy (1963)

This is where television anime begins. Osamu Tezuka’s robot boy with a human heart was the first half-hour anime series, and to make it on a shoestring budget Tezuka pioneered the limited-animation techniques that shaped the entire industry.

The monochrome is not a gimmick, it is the raw, foundational look of the medium, and Astro Boy’s blend of action and real emotional weight still lands more than sixty years on.

Modern Spotlight: Uzumaki (2024)

Five years in the making, this four-episode adaptation of Junji Ito’s legendary horror manga is a stark reminder of why black and white remains the ultimate medium for psychological dread.

Set in Kurouzu-cho, a fictional town consumed by a curse involving spirals, Uzumaki rejects modern color in favor of a chilling, high-contrast look that mimics one of Ito’s manga pages brought to life.

It hit famous production troubles after a stellar first episode, but it is still essential viewing: Colin Stetson’s woodwind-heavy score, from the composer behind Hereditary, and the grotesque, fluid body horror prove that some nightmares belong in monochrome.

Why So Many Classic Anime Are in Black and White

The black and white era was not an art-house choice at first, it was a budget and technology reality.

When anime moved to television in the early 1960s, Japanese broadcasters were still years from a full color transition, and color production was expensive.

Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy (1963), the first half-hour TV anime, ran on razor-thin budgets that pushed Tezuka to invent limited animation, reducing frames, reusing cels, and holding on static shots to save money.

Monochrome was part of that same economy.

The medium is even older than Astro Boy.

The first anime series ever broadcast in Japan was Otogi Manga Calendar in 1961, a run of three-minute historical shorts.

Color did not truly arrive until Kimba the White Lion in 1965, the first color TV anime, and even then black and white hung on for years.

The era finally wound down around 1969 to 1970, with late gag comedies like Fujiko F. Fujio’s Umeboshi Denka (1969) and Tezuka’s own Dororo among the last major shows made in monochrome, several of them shot that way purely because the budget would not stretch to color.

Far from a limitation, that constraint produced a distinct visual language: heavy inking, high-contrast shadow, and expressive character design doing the work that color would later take over. That is exactly why the best black and white anime still feel so striking today.

Black and White Anime: Quick Answers

What is the best black and white anime? Astro Boy (1963) is the essential starting point as the show that launched TV anime, with Dororo and GeGeGe no Kitaro close behind for atmosphere.

Is there a modern black and white anime? Yes. Uzumaki (2024), Adult Swim’s Junji Ito adaptation, is the standout recent example, animated entirely in high-contrast monochrome.

What was the first black and white anime series? Otogi Manga Calendar (1961) was the first anime TV series ever broadcast in Japan; Astro Boy (1963) was the first popular half-hour series.

Why were old anime made in black and white? Japanese television was slow to move to color and color production was costly, so early anime like Astro Boy were made in monochrome on extremely tight budgets.

From the earliest frames of Otogi Manga Calendar to the modern dread of Uzumaki, these classic black and white anime prove that a limited palette can be the boldest choice of all.

Which monochrome classic is on your watchlist?

Let me know in the comments.