The 90’s was the era of the shonen. Though we’ve had plenty of series to come out since then, many of which have gone on to be quite legendary, the 90s gave us some of the best-remembered series ever—from continuing the story of Dragon Ball Z to series like Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin.
While the genre had been around for decades, the 90’s was the first time they managed to completely solidify what the battle shonen genre would look like in terms of characteristics and tropes. For this list, we’re looking back at some of the highest rated shonen anime of the 90s, according to IMDB.
10 YU-GI-OH! - 7.2
Another series that feels more like a 2000’s era series, Yu-Gi-Oh revolutionized the anime world by popularizing a new genre: card games. Coming out at the tail end of the decade, the series stars Yugi Muto, a teenager who has a problem standing up for himself until he gets an ancient artifact known as the Millenium Puzzle.
The puzzle unlocks another personality within Yugi, leading him into constant battles (that involve cards...for some reason) with other individuals out to collect the Millenium Items. The series ran for over 200 episodes, and by the end not only spawned one of the most popular card games ever, it also made a way for multiple other card game based series like Cardfight Vanguard, Duel Masters, and others.
9 SLAYERS – 7.5
A series that is so quintessentially 90’s, Slayers has continued to live on through several decades, most recently airing a season in the late 2000s in Slayers Evolution-R.
Though the cast is subject to mild changes here and there, the lead character is Lina Inverse, a young woman with incredible magic powers. Her goal? Money, as much of it as possible. Originally from E&G Films, this is probably one of the best known fantasy anime ever made.
8 FLAME OF RECCA – 7.5
A little known shonen series that exists in the vein of Yu Yu Hakusho, Flame of Recca began in the summer of 1997 and was animated by Studio Pierrot.
It features Recca Hanabishi, a young boy obsessed with ninja in the modern era. But eventually Recca discovers he actually has the unique ability to control flames, just as he’s forced to deal with a group of strange men chasing after the woman he’s sworn to be his princess.
7 TEKKAMAN BLADE – 7.9
Airing in 1992, Tekkaman Blade was a reboot of an older series from the 1970s from Tatsunoko Productions. Set during the year 2300, Tekkaman Blade followed a group of heroes known as the Space Knights, as they battled against the alien race known as the Radam, who had attacked Earth.
The Space Knights’ key is a warrior known as Tekkaman Blade, a man with special power and armor that’s key to taking down the soldiers of Radam.
6 ONE PIECE – 8.3
There are some people who are doubtlessly surprised this series is even on this list, but oh yes, One Piece began in Fall of 1999, meaning it just barely qualifies for a 90’s series. If anything, it’s a surprise this series ranks so low. One Piece over the decades has become a fixture in the world of anime, the action equivalent to something like The Simpsons or Family Guy, only with vastly higher levels of quality.
Everyone knows the story: Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, sail the Grand Line in search of the ultimate treasure—One Piece. At 900 episodes and counting and with the creator claiming there’s still 15-20 percent left to go, One Piece is more relevant than ever.
5 TRIGUN – 8.3
Still the best sci-fi western series we’ve ever had, Trigun doesn’t feel like it came out in the 90’s. It’s presentation style and animation feels like one of the more well-produced anime that came out in the 2000’s, but actually studio Madhouse released this series in the Spring of 1998.
The story follows Vash the Stampede, a dangerous man with a sixty million double-dollar bounty on him for the trail of destruction he leaves behind him. But the legend doesn’t quite match up to the man, who’s actually a peace-loving guy who’s vowed never to take a life. Much like Rurouni Kenshin however, Vash’s morals are tested time and again.
4 CASE CLOSED – 8.4
Case Closed is probably the strangest inclusion on this list. The story is decidedly old school, as the series has been running since 1996 and has nearly 1000 episodes yet not much plot development has been made since it started. Jimmy Kudo was a teenaged detective with a knack for solving impossible mysteries until he ticked off the wrong organization.
Though they intended to kill him, what actually happened is they accidentally transformed him into a young kid—now he’s forced to figure out a way to return to normal size while also investigating the group who did this to him. Ultimately, the story’s been stuck on that since the beginning, even as the series has adapted and added new characters to the cast an expanded the universe.
3 YU YU HAKUSHO – 8.4
Yoshihiro Togashi’s first major epic series knocked it out of the park almost immediately. Yusuke Urameshi is a 14 year old kid who gets lucky...by dying. Turns out, he was bound for the underworld, but when he dies saving a young girl, the other side has no idea what to do with him and gives him a chance to come back to life.
However, once he does so, he finds out returning to life doesn’t come without a cost—now he’s capable of seeing things from outside the human world, and he’s thrown into the job of hunting down demons as the Spirit Detective. Everything about this show is perfect, from the opening themes to the classic 90’s animation, to the character development.
2 RUROUNI KENSHIN – 8.5
Kenshin Himura is a man once known as the Hitokiri Battousai, a legendary killer during the Bakumatsu Era. Once the Revolution was over, he made a complete change and refuses to take lives any longer.
Brought to us by Studio DEEN in 1996, Kenshin is the story of a man doing his best to avoid going back to his old ways, even though everything around him keeps pushing him back towards combat and the way of the blade. It’s a great series for the first two arcs, even if the need to do filler for the last third of the series means essentially viewers are better off skipping the ending.
1 SLAM DUNK – 8.7
Coming in at the highest of all the series, Slam Dunk released in the fall of 1993 and ran for 101 episodes, animated by the legendary Toei Animation. The series tells the story of Hanamichi Sakuragi, a young man looking to break his streak of being rejected by over fifty different girls in middle school.
Though it starts out with him wanting to get a date, he winds up getting pulled into joining his high school basketball team. There, despite initially hating the sport, he comes to fall in love with the sense of friendship and competition he discovers. One of the earlier sports anime to get super popular, there’s no surprise this series ranks at the top.