My 5 Favorite Anime Sites From 2025

Once Again, Lots of Material for My 5 Favorite Anime Sites From 2025

I look forward to Friday nights. That’s when I go through each active anime site on My Massive List of Anime Sites. It’s a great way to decompress from the work week. It’s also a way for me to renew my faith in humanity!

At the end of the year, I total the number of my favorite posts for each site, and I publish the list of the five sites with the highest count. I’ve been doing that since 2018! Please don’t feel bad if your site’s not on the list. When I say “favorite,” I mean posts that captured my attention or celebrated aspects of anime that are interesting to me. Put another way: I’ve never read a post that I thought was terrible. Not in all the years I’ve been doing this.

Putting the Numbers into Perspective

This year, I celebrated 260 posts that represented 72 individual sites. That compares favorably to 2024, where I celebrated 260 posts and 74 individual sites and 2023 with 260 celebrations and 80 individual sites. To me, this suggests that the entertainment value across all the anime sites has remained consistent.

Like last year, there’s some less cheery news. I’m tracking fewer active sites at the end of 2025 as compared to, well, all the years that came before. Here’re the active site numbers for the last few years:

• 2022: 330 sites
• 2023: 275 sites
• 2024: 236 sites
• 2025: 214 sites

I think this tracks with the decline of hobby blogging in general. Still, 214 sites is respectable, and the quality continues to be high. So it’s not all gloomy!

Maybe I’m biased, but it looks like the decline is leveling off. Though the lower number of sites might contribute to the curve. Math’s not my thing.

Honorable Mention

There were two ties just outside of the top five, so I thought it only fair I mention them here.

Ninth Place (tie)

• Anime Rants: 9 celebrations
• MIB’s Instant Headache: 9 celebrations

Seventh Place (tie)

• Hanime on Anime: 13 celebrations
• Merlin’s Musings: 13 celebrations

My 5 Favorite Anime Sites from 2025

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Fifth Place: ARUM JOURNAL

Number of Appearances: 14

Last Year’s Position: Third Place (with 18 celebrations)

ecargmura’s site ARUM JOURNAL captured my attention again with a liberal dose of good humor and a wide variety of reviews. In fact, ecargmura manages a publication schedule that can only be described as impressive! Maintaining that cadence is tough, and I can say that from experience! As will be true with all of the top five, it’s going to be tough for me to pick my favorite of the 14 posts that caught my attention this year. But if I had to pick one, I’d say it’s the one I highlighted in 2025 week 22, when ecargmura revealed a talent for seeing something so obvious that most of us, including me, missed.

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Fourth Place (tie): The Magic Planet

Number of Appearances: 19

Last Year’s Position: Outside the top ten

the yuletide sorcerer from the site The Magic Planet has a knack for surgically disassembling an episode to see what makes it tick. The cool thing about it is how entertaining the result is to read! It’s like the equivalent of a National Geographic special with its lush photography as writing instead! My favorite post of theirs is probably the season-ending review of Cinderella Gray in 2025 week 52. They truly ended the year on a high note!

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Fourth Place (tie): Anime Evo

Number of Appearances: 19

Last Year’s Position: Number 1 (with 21 celebrations)

FlareKnight, on the site Anime Evo, did well again this year! 21 celebrations last year and 19 this year shows a remarkable consistency. His superpower is breaking a show down from the perspectives of theme and narrative and helping me understand why a show would be enjoyable or not. That skill was on full display in my favorite post of his from 2025 week 20.

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Second Place: Shallow Dives in Anime

Number of Appearances: 20

Last Year’s Position: Number 4 (with 17 celebrations)

Dewbond’s site, Shallow Dives in Anime, sets the standard for no-nonsense, ignore-the-group-think-opinion reviews. I tell you, when I read almost any social media post, I have to ask myself if the content represents how a living, breathing human being thinks — or is it a contrivance to generate clicks? I don’t have that problem with Dewbond’s reviews. With every one of them, I know I’m getting his honest perspective. My favorite post of his from this year was back in week 3, when he showed that not only does he call it like he sees it. He cultivates an enviable level of introspection!

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First Place: Confessions of an Overage Otaku

Number of Appearances: 21

Last Year’s Position: Number 5 (with 16 celebrations)

The Overage Otaku’s site Confessions of an Overage Otaku routinely does something with such ease and grace that it looks easy — but it’s anything but. I’m talking about spittin’ facts (to quote Mira). That is to say, educating us and making it so enjoyable it doesn’t feel like education at all! Seriously, The Overage Otaku could teach teachers a thing or two. Professors as well. I think my favorite post of his is from 2025 week 15. I’ve been writing for longer than most of y’all have been alive, and I still learned something from his post.

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Closing Notes

If you find your site on this year’s list, I want to say thank you. Your posts materially improved the quality of our world, and I’m not even kidding when I say that. All acts of creation are by their nature good. The posts you shared go beyond mere existence to celebrate the entertainment niche called anime, and each of the posts celebrated here and throughout the year helped me appreciate that medium even more.

And if you don’t find your site on this list? Thank you, too, for the same reasons. Back in 2018 when I started this list, I debated whether it was a good idea or not. I didn’t want anyone to feel like I didn’t appreciate their work. But my site is all about celebrating anime (which you can probably tell by the number of times I used that word in this post!), so I decided to err on the side of celebrating a subset.

So, all of you anime bloggers who posted in 2025, thanks for making the world just that much better! I’m looking forward to seeing what you can come up with in 2026.

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More Posts from Other Sites to Crow About/My 5 Favorite Sites

• Other Sites to Crow About – My Favorite Sites from 2018
• Other Sites to Crow About – My Favorite Sites from 2019
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2020
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2021
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2022
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2023
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2024
• Other Sites to Crow About – My 5 Favorite Sites from 2025

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