The Spring 2025 anime season has arrived, bringing forth a plethora of fresh and returning names that will attempt to keep viewers hooked for roughly three months. While perhaps not as stacked with established heavy hitters as Fall 2024 or Winter 2025, the current quarter still has an impressive selection of sequels, with Fire Force, Black Butler, and Wind Breaker all airing new episodes. The season even has two notable spin-offs/prequels in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes and Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray.
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Spring 2025 Anime Lineup: Where To Watch Every Series
My Hero Academia, Fire Force, and Wind Breaker are a few Spring 2025 anime airing on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, Netflix, or other streaming services.
Spring 2025 is not lacking in exciting new anime either, and they cover a fairly wide spectrum of genres, themes, and tones. With roughly 40 shows airing more than 400 episodes during the season, keeping up with everything can be extremely difficult. Consequently, let’s highlight the best anime of Spring 2025 to provide some guidance.
Here are a few important details and criteria:
- The current cut-off date for episodes is April 6, 2025.
- This article will be revised weekly with new Spring 2025 anime and updated rankings to reflect how each show is developing.
- Only anime that debuted in Spring 2025 are in contention, be it new shows or sequel seasons. Therefore, Winter 2025 leftovers like The Apothecary Diaries will not be considered, and the same goes for long-running shows like Case Closed.
- One Piece is not included since it is a long-running anime that just happened to take a break for a few months. Also, at this point, nobody needs to be encouraged to watch One Piece.
- Click the anime’s title to see a preview, if the article exists.
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Sword of the Demon Hunter: Kijin Gentosho
Spring 2025’s Demon Hunting Anime
An unexpectedly awesome debut, Sword of the Demon Hunter: Kijin Gentosho could prove to be Spring 2025’s stealth hit, assuming it remains consistent moving forward. Wisely starting with a long episode, Yokohama Animation Laboratory’s anime takes viewers back to Japan’s Edo period, albeit one that includes demons.
The story primarily revolves around Jinta, a human, and Suzune, a demon. These two have been together since they were children, and the latter is very clearly in love with the former. Even when Jinta fell for Shirayuki, Suzune did her best to stay out of their way, hurting herself for their happiness. Unfortunately, she is manipulated by a demon into killing Shirayuki, turning herself into a full-blown villain who wants to destroy the world and Jinta into a revenge-obsessed warrior who wants to destroy her.
Although not showcasing production value that can compare to the best action anime, Sword of the Demon Hunter‘s fight sequences have been captivating so far, largely thanks to emphasizing swift and vicious moments. Crucially, Suzune and Jinta’s actions, reactions, and motivations are very easy to understand and believe.
Shinichirou Watanabe’s Spring 2025 Anime
Due to being directed by Shinichirou Watanabe, the mind behind Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, Lazarus came pre-installed with extremely high expectations, especially since it marks a return to sci-fi action for the filmmaker. The premise is also intriguing. Set in the semi-distant future, Lazarus refers to a special squad tasked with finding Doctor Skinner, who went into hiding after announcing that his super-popular legal drug has a built-in mutation that will kill all of its users three years following its ingestion. With only a month left before bodies start to drop, the task force has absolutely no time to waste.
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Right out of the gate, Lazarus showcases the director’s trademarks through its crisp animation, jazz-infused soundtrack, and slippery protagonist, Axel, who has a fighting style that is fairly similar to Cowboy Bebop’s Spike. Except for setting up the inciting incident, the first episode is essentially an extended chase sequence, with Lazarus trying to catch Axel, a gifted escape artist, to recruit him to the team. While primarily impressive from a technical perspective, the Spring 2025 anime did a good job of setting up the story’s hook and introducing the team’s areas of expertise.
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Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray
Spring 2025’s Brilliant Seinen Sports Anime
Yes, the anime about horsegirls. A huge franchise in Japan, Uma Musume has a track record for producing quality character-driven stories, ones that manage to balance moments of levity with introspective drama that can match nearly any other sports anime. A spin-off based on a seinen manga, Cinderella Gray only loosely connects to the main series and, consequently, can be watched in isolation. More importantly, the source material is arguably Uma Musume’s crowning achievement, setting the stage for what could and should be one of Spring 2025’s best anime.
Putting aside the horsegirl aspect, Cinderella Gray is, at its core, a sports racing anime that takes a surprisingly sobering look into the highs and lows of high-end competition. Inspired by legitimate Japanese horse races, the story chronicles Oguri Cap’s journey to become a top-notch racer, showing the sacrifices and pain experienced by not only her but also her friends and rivals. The adaptation looks to be in good hands, with the first episode doing a stellar job of introducing Oguri Cap and foreshadowing the challenges that await her.
Spring 2025’s Hottest Action Shonen Anime
After a relatively lengthy hiatus, Fire Force is back for what should be its final season, one that is building upon a strong foundation set by its predecessors. While far from flawless, Fire Force is a dependable battle shonen that has consistently delivered top-notch animation, intense fights, and strong world-building. The story and characters are mostly good too, even if they stick fairly close to the genre and demographic’s traditions.
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No longer satisfied with working solely from the shadows, the White Clad cult has stepped into the limelight, opting to recruit and influence a few of the Tokyo Empire’s most prominent figures as it marches towards a new cataclysm. Naturally, Force Company 8’s members are still 100% against the White Clad, which puts them in danger of being labeled as traitors.
Fire Force has hit the ground running for its third season, delivering an opener that successfully reintroduced the main characters while also advancing the story in a way that instantly raised the stakes.
A Simple But Incredibly Entertaining Action Anime
A year after making its anime debut, Wind Breaker has picked up exactly where it left off, launching instantly into a massive melee between two schools that is just as chaotic and engaging as anything in the first season. Bofurin’s first-year students find themselves outnumbered and out-equipped as they take on Keel, a gang that has no issue fighting dirty.
Although not the most original anime out there, Wind Breaker works due to its relative simplicity, something that season 2 will hopefully preserve rather than challenge. With well-defined characters, conflicting ideologies between schools/gangs, a likable protagonist who goes on a straight-forward but effective arc, and visceral fight sequences that are grounded just enough in legitimate martial arts to avoid slipping into fantasy territory, Wind Breaker is just a well-rounded package.