The Venn diagram of gamers and anime fans seems to be inching closer to a circle every year. Which makes sense as both art forms have similarly niche origins and are now both more mainstream and accessible to a global audience than any prior point in their histories. Just as there are a wealth of games today that are chock full of anime vibes, there are loads of anime with a connection to the gaming space.
Whether they be surprisingly great adaptations of a video game, about the experience of being a gamer/game creator, or make playing a game central to their plot; these are the best anime about video games that you can watch today.
Remake Our Life!
Remake our Life! opens with 28-year-old Kyouya Hashiba completely burnt out on his life and career. The game development studio he worked for went bankrupt and the liferaft of a project he scrambled to join was canceled shortly after he came aboard. This leaves Kyouya with little choice but to move back in with his parents and question all of his major life decisions. Magically, he wakes up ten years in the past just as he’s about to enter college, and vows to make a better future for himself.
Layoffs, studio closures, and general career instability are fixtures of the gaming industry in 2024, and it’s cathartic to see Remake Our Life! address the realities of working in this industry from the get go. What follows this first episode is a cozy exploration of young, passionate people learning first hand about the highs and lows of working in creative fields like game development. If you work in any industry in the digital media bubble and feel the dread that’s related to that bubble deflating over the past half a year, this anime is a heartwarming reminder of why we got into this line of work and how the highs more than make up for the lows.
Remake Our Life! is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Is an anime that’s functionally a commercial for a video game that was so broken at launch that it was delisted from storefronts arguably the least punk thing ever? Yes, but even the haters have to admit that studio Trigger’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a lavishly produced spectacle that serves as a solid entryway to the broader anime landscape. It’s also a fantastic example of the looser approach to adaptation that makes so many anime based on video games feel like a delightful expansion of those universes.
Taking place in Night City, the principal location of both Cyberpunk: 2077 and the Cyberpunk tabletop game, this anime follows David Martinez, a young man who becomes an augmented mercenary, or edgerunner, after a drive-by shooting kills his mother. What follows is a gripping story about people trying to have any semblance of comfort or security under late stage capitalism, and that system beating them back down at every possible opportunity. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a great anime if you’re in the mood for a cool looking, feel-bad time.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is streaming on Netflix.
Pokémon
With how ubiquitous the franchise is to both American and global audiences, it’s both weird and necessary to point out that the Pokémon anime is, in fact, an anime! Before Pokémon was a multimedia juggernaut, it was a couple of video games that sold well enough to adapt the games into an anime. What would follow is a decades spanning television show with over 1,200 episodes that proved integral to making Pokémon the cultural institution it is today.
While we would get some more direct anime versions of the Pokémon Red and Blue games in the form of Pokémon Origins, the mainline Pokémon anime decides to follow a new character, Ash Ketchum, as he explores the world of Pokémon on his journey to become a Pokémon Master. This direction for the anime plays into the greatest strength of the Pokémon games; the terrific worldbuilding that inspires a player to imagine their own adventure in this world. Seeing a fleshed out version of this new trainer's journey fed into the fantasy and and created countless lifelong video game and anime fans.
Use this official guide to figure out where you can watch the many iterations of the Pokémon anime.
Castlevania
Though developed by Frederator Studios and Powerhouse Animation Studios, two US based production companies, the Castlevania show is simply too sick to not count as an honorary anime! Loosely following the events of the games, the Castlevania anime follows Trevor Belmont, and later his descendent, as he and his vampire hunting contemporaries battle Dracula and his demonic horde.
Castlevania excels at nailing the tone and ambience of the games it's based on better than any of the other video game adaptations on this list. While the exploration elements of the Castlevania games would prove foundational in developing game design — hence the metroidvania genre — people were coming to Castlevania games for the vibes! The Castlevania anime perfectly captures the gothic action that the games invoke and the absolute thrill of charging in against an untold number of monstrosities in a battle against a legendary fiend.
Castlevania is streaming on Netflix.
All the Persona Anime
As one might guess from their overtly anime artstyle, there are a host of anime adaptations of the most recent Persona games! There are a total of four Persona 3 movies, a loose sequel to Persona 3 titled Persona -trinity soul-, two different anime series adapting Persona 4, a Persona 5: The Animation series, and several other Persona 5 one-shot anime episodes. These adaptations are more straightforward than the other adaptations of video games on this list, generally being closer to retellings of the games they are based on.
Considering those games are 80+ hours of some of the more difficult and demanding turn based gameplay in the genre, these direct adaptations are more than welcome! The Persona series is more popular than it's ever been, and these anime are a great way to see what all the fuss is about without committing a good chunk of your time and money to them.
The Persona 3 movies are available for purchase on Amazon, the Persona 4: Golden anime is streaming on Crunchyroll, and Persona 5: The Animation is streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll. Persona -trinity soul- is unlicensed in the US.
Sword Art Online
The 2010s mega-hit Sword Art Online is the reason why there are so many anime today that take place in fantasy worlds incorporating video game mechanics. Trapped in a brand new virtual reality MMORPG, also titled Sword Art Online, our protagonist Kirito has to fight for his life as he can only escape by beating the game and will die in real life if he dies while playing.
This anime is first and foremost a power fantasy for its presumed young, male audience; but its blending of the game of death and sci-fi genres is still novel and appealing today. Video games are better than any other artistic medium at making a player feel great for engaging with the art form and slowly mastering a game's systems and mechanics. Sword Art Online does an amazing job of translating that feeling into an anime and the first half of its first season is a rock solid experience that anime fans new and old should check out.
Sword Art Online is streaming on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
Welcome to the N.H.K.
In many ways the polar opposite of Remake Our Life!, Welcome to the N.H.K. is an anime about how passions around media, and possibly creating media like video games, are sometimes the only things that keep people going. This anime follows Tatsuhiro Sato, a hikikomori — a social recluse who refuses to or is unable to engage with society or even leave their home or bedroom — who’s turned to conspiracy theories to explain his unhappiness and niche, often problematic, media to dull his depression. To try to better himself, Sato helps his more socially attuned neighbor develop an eroge game and is forced by a good samaritan to go outside for more than just food. This anime spends most of its runtime, though, exploring Sato’s deeply misanthropic mentalities.
Welcome to the N.H.K. is a weird anime that’s as critical of its main character and subject matter as it is through in its exploration of the real-life beliefs and ideologies that its protagonist embodies. To offer a point of comparison, if you liked the tone and politics of the No More Heroes games, Welcome to the N.H.K. is more than worth checking out.
Welcome to the N.H.K. is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Dragon Quest: Adventures of Dai
Unless this is your first time reading an article on a video game website — in which case, welcome and thanks for choosing this one — you’ve probably heard of the monumental Dragon Quest gaming franchise. What you might not know, though, is that these games inspired the quietly seminal shonen manga series Dragon Quest: Adventures of Dai, and that this manga was recently adapted into an anime! Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai follows a young boy raised by monsters named Dai, who turns out to be a legendary hero and, in typical Dragon Quest fashion, has to save the world from the Demon Lord.
Adventures of Dai is a solid, all ages watch and a great way to learn about the origins of many storytelling conventions in the shonen anime genre. The manga it's based on ran in the iconic Shonen Jump magazine right after Fist of the North Star wrapped, and released alongside more overtly influential genre staples like Dragon Ball and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Especially with Dragon Quest character designer Akira Toriyama’s recent passing, there’s never been a better time to check out this anime and see how games have been quietly influential on the anime medium for decades.
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai is streaming on Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Hulu.
My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999
One of the most grounded anime about video games, My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 focuses on the lives and relationships of the gamers who make up its main cast. Following a breakup with an ex who cheated on her, Akane Kinoshita ends up meeting the standoffish Akito Yamada while playing the MMO that her ex got her into. What follows is a cozy, slice of life romance that’s a great watch for anyone looking for a new comfort show.
For as popular as gaming is today, it’s strange that there are so few stories that show how casually games fit into people’s lives. My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 is a great depiction of gaming as a hobby and how meaningful the relationships formed thanks to that hobby are to people.
My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Log Horizon
If Sword Art Online is the anime that popularized the “trapped in a game” sub-genre, then Log Horizon is the anime that perfected that kind of storytelling. For as strong an opening as SAO has, it doesn’t really ground itself in the mechanics and unique tensions that any seasoned MMO player knows all too well. After all, MMO players know that there’s plenty of story material to be mined from the gameplay and social dimensions of this kind of game; like the process of researching a dungeon, planning a raid, and then convincing guild or party members to go along to with the plan and stick to their assigned roles.
Log Horizon faithfully brings these situations and processes to life. It also helps that Log Horizon’s protagonist, Shiroe, plays as a dedicated support class and is less of a vehicle for audience projection than Kirito is in SAO. Log Horizon understands the unique drama and experiences that video games can provide, and is easily one of the best anime about video games.
Log Horizon is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Lucas de Ruyter is a freelance writer for IGN.
