The Best Anime With Only One Season

When it comes to anime, a lot of the best ones have stories that require more than one season. From Jujutsu Kaisen to The Apothecary Diaries, many recent popular and critically acclaimed anime have storylines that extend for longer than the standard 12 to 24 episodes. So what happens when a story is short enough to only need one season? No second season or movie sequel. That’s what I’ll look at in this article: anime that arrived on the scene for a brief period of time but still left an incredible mark.

Hyouka

What happens when you combine mysteries with mundane scenarios, where the most pressing mysteries to solve are how someone manged to enter a locked room without a key? That’s when you get Hyouka. Hyouka is proof that mysteries don’t have to revolve around murders and other crimes to be engaging to watch. The main character Houtarou Oreki is lazy and detached from life, not wanting to do anything to stand out. However, thanks to his classmate Eru Chitanda, he reluctantly joins the Classics Club and becomes more involved with his classmates.

Chitanda’s natural optimism clashes with Oreki’s pessimism. The ways in which both of them change the closer they get makes for some excellent character drama. Oreki examines his pessimistic views on life and considers if it’s how he wants to view the world. And when he tries solving a mystery, his thought process is illustrated through visuals that depict possible scenarios and outcomes. It’s a more relaxed mystery show, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a mystery focused on the more mundane aspects of life.

Odd Taxi

Odd Taxi takes a cast of anthropomorphic animal characters that seem like they don’t have anything to do with each other, and then over the course of the show slowly weaves the cast together to uncover a mysterious murder. And the way in which the cast comes together is through the main character Odokawa. He’s a taxi driver who wants nothing more than to have a peaceful life. In a world of teenage protagonists, it’s nice to have a deadpan, middle-aged main character instead.

When Odokawa takes his passengers around Tokyo, the best part of the show appears – the dialogue. Every line has something important to say, whether it’s progressing the story or revealing a character trait or certain opinion. There are very few lines that are common in your typical anime, and it makes watching the show a refreshing experience. And as the show delves deeper into more criminal activities and people, it touches on topics like recovering from addiction and the downsides of compensated dating in unique ways. If you’re looking for an engaging mystery with a fun cast and don’t care about the characters being humanized animals, Odd Taxi is a must-watch.

Toradora

Romance is rarely peaceful. Relationships change over time. There are fights and disagreements. And things get even worse when unrequited crushes are involved. Toradora tackles all these awkward parts of romance when main characters Taiga and Ryuuji form an alliance to get the attention of each other’s crushes. What makes it even wilder is that the crushes, Yuusaku and Minori, are Taiga and Ryuuji’s best friends, respectively.

Toradora aired in the late 2000s, so it has all the hallmarks of romcoms from that time period. This includes slapstick violence, characters falling apart around their crushes, and the occasional “fanservice” moment. What makes the anime so excellent is its earnestness. It’s not afraid to get serious when it needs to. All the characters deal with their own insecurities regarding their romances. And the introduction of the fifth main character, Ami, creates a much needed spark that forces the couples to actually put their plans into motion, so the romance development never stalls. If you enjoy 2000s romcom tropes and appreciate Toradora’s genuine drama, there’s no excuse not to watch this.