Anime is one of Japan's greatest cultural exports with its films enchanting audiences across the globe. Ultimate Anime celebrates the medium's most incredible achievements and indelible moments to date. Packed with film stills and essays on directors and Japanese pop culture, Ultimate Anime is an irresistible "way in" to the art form for newcomers as well as an essential purchase for even the most hardcore followers of the medium.

Whether looking at the ephemeral arthouse tragedy of Belladonna of Sadness, the iconic legacy of Cowboy Bebop, or the genre-­busting touchstone of Suzumiya Haruhi, there are worlds beyond worlds worth exploring once a new fan has finished their first Studio Ghibli binge. Written by anime expert Joe O'Connell, Ultimate Anime takes readers on an exciting tour of the finest examples of the art of anime by its greatest creators.

Ultimate Anime is written by Joe O'Connell. Published by Thames & Hudson. (November 4, 2025)

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Joe O'Connell, a Youtuber who runs a channel called Beyond Ghibli, takes on an imposing, possibly impossible task here, as he travels chronologically from 1972 to 2024, highlighting anime series and movies that he believes are exceptional examples of their genres. Overwhelmingly, he does a very good job of it.

The book is organized chronologically, but at the beginning of the book we are presented with series indexed by genre, director as well as the chronology O'Connell follows. Each individual title is give a synopsis, with information of the year of release, the “type” of media, the director, studio, genre and if there is originating material on which it is based. This is followed by editorial suggestion in the form of other series that might be of interest or related to the title and the page that entry can be found. These short entries included the only puzzling piece of information, as each title was given a little icon without explanation. After I read a few of the entries I realized that the icons were specific to O'Connell's interpretation, so that Heidi - A Girl of the Alps from 1974 is given an icon of mountaintops and recommended for related reviewing was The Summit of the Gods from 2021, which was then given the suggestions Haikyu!! and The Rose of Versailles as titles of interest. O'Connell explains these decisions, so rather than being something to disagree about, they'd make great topics for longer conversations with the right person. For instance, the entry about Elfen Lied was incredibly well argued and it was with this entry that I was really sold on the book itself. Each entry then gets a deeper look with both synopsis and light analysis and a smattering of color pictures, many of them iconic.

The whole collection slightly favors seinen series (as might be expected when one looks at what is released in theatres, but O'Connell does a reasonable job to provide key shoujo series and even a josei title or two.

Even on series I felt were questionable, O'Connell's otaku-ish enthusiasm is so engaging that I came away from this book thinking that it does exactly what it is intended to do – make people want to watch anime.