You don’t always need the anime episode to be 20+ minutes long.
Who said that good stories should always be long? Many anime manage to be great despite being only one cour long. Sometimes, you can have even less.
Here, you have a selection of series that are very short, with episodes way shorter than your standard length of 24 minutes. That means you can easily sit down and watch one of them in one evening.
Tsuredure Children
Do you like short and sweet romance stories? If the answer is “yes”, then Tsuredure Children (Tsurezure Children) might be a perfect anime for you. It doesn’t actually feature one continuous story: it’s an anthology of short romance stories featuring school students.
Each episode is 12 minutes long, but it’s split into multiple segments, and all stories slowly develop — there’s something unique about all of them.
Space Patrol Luluco
If you’re a fan of Studio Trigger’s works, then Space Patrol Luluco (Uchuu Patrol Luluco) is an absolute must-watch.
In a span of thirteen 8-minute episodes, it manages to do a lot of things: it’s a great coming-of-age story, it’s a funny comedy with a classic Trigger style, and it’s also an anime built entirely on references — if you liked Kill la Kill or Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt or Inferno Cop, the characters from those all make an appearance here.
Senryu Girl
Another anime short for romance fans, Senryu Girl (Senryuu Shoujo) has 13-minute episodes — which is a perfect format for it. It tells a story of a romance between a former middle school delinquent — who is putting his school life back on track — and a girl who prefers not to speak.
How does she communicate? Through classic Japanese poetry, of course. The premise might sound odd, but the anime is surprisingly wholesome — try it out.
She and Her Cat: Everything Flows
She and Her Cat: Everything Flows (Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko: Everything Flows) is a rare work by Makoto Shinkai that isn’t a movie.
It’s based on an earlier OVA by him, and in just four 8-minute episodes, it tells a heartfelt tale — Shinkai is great when it comes to writing slice-of-life moments. And, of course, since it’s made by him, it looks absolutely gorgeous as well.
Teekyuu
You can probably watch a couple of seasons of Teekyuu in one sitting. The reason for that is the episodes being 2 minutes long. The anime compensates for that with an absolutely insane dialogue pace that is nearly impossible to keep up with — but that’s the fun of it.
The series is an insane comedy with a lot of odd and completely random jokes — the premise is actually about a tennis club but the anime only comes back to it every now and then. There are 9 seasons of it (each one being one cour of 2-minute episodes) — and that’s not even counting spinoffs and specials.