25 Must Watch MAPPA Anime

MAPPA is the studio behind some of the biggest anime of the last decade, from Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man to the final run of Attack on Titan.

So below are the best MAPPA anime worth watching, fact-checked and grouped by mood so you can skip the scroll and pick your next one.

The Best MAPPA Anime to Start With

New to the studio? Then start here, because these are the shows that turned MAPPA into a household name and the easiest way into the best MAPPA anime.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Jujutsu Kaisen is the show that broke MAPPA into the mainstream. Yuji Itadori swallows a cursed finger belonging to the demon Sukuna, and before long he is pulled into the hidden world of jujutsu sorcerers.

Adapted from Gege Akutami’s manga and directed by Sunghoo Park, season one ran from October 2020 to March 2021 across 24 episodes. Still, it is the animation on the Gojo fights that truly sells it.

So whenever someone tells me modern shonen looks flat, this is what I show them.

Chainsaw Man

Denji is a broke devil hunter who fuses with his pet chainsaw devil Pochita and becomes the human-devil hybrid Chainsaw Man.

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga is unhinged in the best way. However, MAPPA’s 2022 adaptation leaned into a gritty, cinematic look that split fans down the middle, and I land firmly on the side that loves it.

Attack on Titan: The Final Season

With Attack on Titan, MAPPA inherited the biggest show in the world. Because Wit Studio made the first three seasons, the change in look when production moved over in December 2020 felt jarring at first.

Still, it was mostly vindicated as the story barreled toward its ending across the Marley and War for Paradis arcs. Taking this on was an enormous swing, yet they stuck the landing.

Vinland Saga Season 2

Season two is another Wit-to-MAPPA handoff, and another quiet triumph. Instead of the first season’s Viking carnage, it gives you a slow, brutal farm arc about Thorfinn reckoning with what his revenge cost him.

Because director Shuhei Yabuta and most of the core staff carried over, it never drops a beat. Still, it is not the crowd-pleaser season one was, though it might be the better show for it.

Hell’s Paradise

Hell’s Paradise is a feudal-Japan death-row fantasy from Yuji Kaku’s manga. Gabimaru, a legendary Iwagakure ninja awaiting execution, gets offered a pardon if he can retrieve the elixir of life from a mysterious island, though the Yamada Asaemon executioner clan watches his every move. Altogether, it is gorgeous and gnarly, and one of MAPPA’s strongest recent adaptations.

MAPPA Sports Anime Worth Watching

People forget this, but MAPPA is quietly one of the best sports-anime studios around.

So if you specifically want MAPPA sports anime, these four cover the spread.

Yuri!!! on Ice

First, the figure-skating phenomenon. Japanese skater Yuuri Katsuki is ready to quit after a crushing Grand Prix Final loss, until living legend Victor Nikiforov shows up to coach him.

When it aired in late 2016, it became a global sensation for its choreography and its central relationship. Sadly, a planned film spent years in development before it was cancelled in 2024, which still stings.

Fighting Spirit: Rising

You may know this better as Hajime no Ippo: Rising, the third season of the beloved boxing anime.

Since the franchise had been a Madhouse staple for years, Rising, which aired in 2013 and 2014, marked the point where MAPPA took the gloves. By then Ippo is a featherweight champion, yet the fights hit as hard as ever.

Days

Days is a gentler soccer story. Tsukushi Tsukamoto is a timid kid with zero natural talent, yet he earns a place on his high school team through sheer heart, so the show becomes all about grit over gift. In fact, the manga has sold over ten million copies.

If you like an underdog sports story, then this 24-episode 2016 series is an easy one to fall into.

Dance Dance Danseur

Ballet almost never gets the sports-anime treatment, so Dance Dance Danseur is a rare one. After his father dies, Junpei Murao buries his love of ballet to chase a more conventionally masculine image, until a transfer student named Miyako Godai reignites it.

Because it was quiet and low-profile when it aired in 2022, it flew under the radar, but it remains one of MAPPA’s most underrated shows and a real showcase for how they animate movement.

Dark and Twisted MAPPA Anime

MAPPA also has a real appetite for the grim and grotesque. So these are the dark MAPPA anime I reach for when I want something with teeth.

Dorohedoro

Set in a filthy dystopia called the Hole, Dorohedoro follows Caiman, a man with a reptile head and no memory, while his friend Nikaido helps him hunt the sorcerer who cursed him.

Q Hayashida’s manga is a cult classic, and although MAPPA’s 2020 adaptation leaned hard on 3DCG, it won me over fast. Overall, it is grimy, funny, and completely its own animal.

Dororo

In Dororo, a samurai lord trades pieces of his newborn son’s body to demons in exchange for power.

The boy survives, so he is fitted with prosthetics, and eventually he sets out to reclaim his body one demon at a time alongside a young thief named Dororo. Because it draws on Osamu Tezuka’s 1960s manga and was made with Tezuka Productions in 2019, it carries real weight. Still, it stays criminally slept on.

Banana Fish

Banana Fish is a crime saga updated from the 1980s to the modern day. Ash Lynx, a brilliant and damaged gang leader in New York, gets tangled up with a gentle Japanese photographer’s assistant named Eiji, while a mysterious drug called Banana Fish drives the plot.

Because Akimi Yoshida’s manga was ahead of its time, the story still lands, and MAPPA’s 2018 adaptation is a gut-punch. So do not go in expecting a happy time.

Inuyashiki

A lonely, ignored old man gets caught in an alien blast and rebuilt as a walking weapon inside a human shell. Instead of using that power selfishly, he chooses to heal and protect people.

Meanwhile, a teenager caught in the same blast uses his to kill. Since it comes from Hiroya Oku of Gantz fame, it hits hard, and although it aired quietly on Fuji TV’s Noitamina block in 2017, it is surprisingly moving.

Kakegurui

Kakegurui is my token psychological thriller in the batch. At Hyakkaou Academy, high-stakes gambling decides the entire social pecking order, until transfer student Yumeko Jabami starts playing for the thrill rather than the win.

Naturally, the unhinged faces this show pulls mid-bet are half the fun. MAPPA adapted it from Homura Kawamoto’s manga in 2017.

MAPPA Original Anime and Bold Swings

Not everything MAPPA makes is a big adaptation. In fact, some of their best work is original anime and strange one-offs. So if you are hunting MAPPA original anime, dig in here.

Terror in Resonance

In Terror in Resonance, two enigmatic teenagers, Nine and Twelve, stage a bombing campaign across Tokyo and dare the police to decode their motives.

Because Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame directed it, with a haunting Yoko Kanno score, this 2014 original is one of MAPPA’s earliest and most atmospheric works. Overall, it is moody, smart, and a little heartbreaking.

Sarazanmai

Sarazanmai is the weirdest one here, and I say that as a fan. A frog prince turns three middle schoolers into kappa, so they have to extract wish-granting orbs from zombies to survive.

Since Kunihiko Ikuhara of Revolutionary Girl Utena directed it, this 2019 original runs dense and symbolic. Altogether, it is unlike anything else on the list.

Punch Line

Punch Line is a chaotic 2015 original about a boy who gains the power to destroy the world whenever he sees underwear.

Yes, really. However, Kotaro Uchikoshi of the Zero Escape games wrote it, with music by Tetsuya Komuro, so it is far cleverer and twistier than that logline lets on.

Zombie Land Saga

In Zombie Land Saga, an unhinged producer resurrects seven dead girls to become a zombie idol group and save Saga Prefecture.

It sounds like a one-note joke, but it sneaks in real heart. Because it is a 2018 original, it had room to be strange, and it is one of the funniest things MAPPA has made. For the record, I ranked its lead, Sakura Minamoto, number one on my zombie anime girl characters list.

Takt Op. Destiny

In a 2047 where monsters called D2s are drawn to music, conductors pair with weaponized girls called Musicarts to fight back.

Since MAPPA made it with Madhouse in 2021 and tied it to a larger mixed-media project, expectations ran high. Still, it is style-forward and a little uneven, though the action set pieces slap.

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

MAPPA adapted Rage of Bahamut: Genesis from a mobile card game, which usually spells doom, yet this one rips. Long ago, gods, demons, and humans sealed away the dragon Bahamut, so a chaotic scramble over the key to its prison sets off a rollicking adventure.

Overall, the 2014 series has a loose, Saturday-morning-cartoon energy and some of MAPPA’s most fluid early action.

MAPPA Adaptations, Movies and Early Work

Finally, a few standout adaptations, one film, and the shows from MAPPA’s early days that show how far they have come.

The God of High School

The God of High School is a martial-arts tournament webtoon brought to loud, kinetic life.

Jin Mori enters a nationwide fighting tournament, and soon he uncovers powers and conspiracies far bigger than the bracket. Since it draws on Yongje Park’s Korean webtoon and comes from director Sunghoo Park, who went straight on to Jujutsu Kaisen, this 2020 Crunchyroll original is pure spectacle. Above all, the fight choreography is the draw.

Ushio and Tora

Ushio and Tora is a classic-feeling monster-hunting shonen. After a boy named Ushio frees an ancient demon called Tora, the two form a reluctant, bickering partnership against far worse threats.

Because MAPPA co-produced this 39-episode 2015 to 2016 series with Studio VOLN, it has a big, old-school scope, and it adapts a manga that first got an OVA back in the early 1990s.

In This Corner of the World

In This Corner of the World is the film MAPPA was born to make. It follows a young woman named Suzu as she builds a life in Kure near Hiroshima during World War II. Because Sunao Katabuchi directed it, from Fumiyo Kono’s manga, it is quietly devastating, and it went on to win major awards.

Yasuke

Yasuke is a Netflix original loosely inspired by the real African warrior who served warlord Oda Nobunaga in the 1500s, though here it adds mechs and magic.

LeSean Thomas created it, MAPPA animated it, Flying Lotus scored it, and LaKeith Stanfield voices the lead. When it premiered in April 2021, it looked great, yet at six episodes it feels a little slight.

Kids on the Slope

Finally, where it all started. As MAPPA’s very first release, this 2012 jazz drama from Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe follows two very different high schoolers who bond over music.

Above all, it is warm and grown-up, and it proves MAPPA could do quiet just as well as loud, right from day one.

Every MAPPA Anime on This List

Here is the whole lineup in one place if you just want to scan and pick.

So that is my fact-checked tour of the best MAPPA anime, from their scrappy 2012 debut to the blockbusters running the industry today.

Which one are you queuing up next, and did I leave off a favorite?

Let me know in the comments.