Anime

Slow to start and worth every minute. Introduces the trick the whole series runs on: give a character one impossible dream and never let them drop it.

The first time the show stops being funny for twenty minutes and proves it can hurt. Nami's arc is still the cleanest thing in it.

Big, hot, and the first proper war. Crocodile is the template every good One Piece villain has copied since.

My favourite stretch of anything, ever. It asks whether the crew actually wants each other, and then answers it with a burning flag.

Filler-shaped but not filler. Pays off enormously later, which is very One Piece of it.

The one that broke the fandom. Watch it in as few sittings as you can manage.

Too long and I did not care. Some of the best-looking animation in television is in here.

Keeping up week to week for the first time in my life. Different, tense, and very good.

Zabuza and Haku in twelve episodes. Better written than most of what follows and it is episode 6.

Peak tournament arc. Rock Lee versus Gaara is the fight I have rewatched most in my life.

Five fights, five losses, one broken friendship. The end of Part 1 does not pretend anything is fine.

Great return. Sets the tone that the Akatsuki are a problem you cannot punch your way out of.

The high point of Shippuden. Everything the show has been saying about cycles of revenge, said properly.

Enormous, exhausting, and full of filler. There is a great forty-episode arc buried in here somewhere.

Rescue arc, tournament structure, and a cast where the side characters are cooler than the hero. Aizen's reveal still works.

Some incredible fights spread very thin. The pacing is where a lot of people quit, and I understand why.

The one everyone forgets. Interesting idea — a hero with nothing left — undercut by having to reset it.

A studio deciding to prove a point. Ruthless, gorgeous, and it finally lets the manga's ending look as good as it read.

Funnier and weirder than people remember. Kid Goku hunting for magic balls is a completely different show and it rules.

The turn. Twenty-something episodes where the good guys lose almost everything, and Piccolo gets the best moment in the franchise.

Yes, it takes forever. It is also the single most famous transformation in anime, and it earns it.

Gohan's arc is the emotional peak of Z, and the ending genuinely commits to something.

Silly in a way I did not appreciate as a kid and love now. Fusion dance included.

Wildly inconsistent. The Tournament of Power is worth the ticket on its own.