Action scenes have to be exciting in order to keep the viewer engaged. Animating action and movement is hard, and a lot of works with interesting premise fall short just because the animation wasn't on par with everything else (We're looking at the One Punch Man Season 2 here). But if you want some nicely choreographed, detailed, and creative fight scenes — we've got a list for you.
These shows paid attention to making the action feel visceral, tangible, and entertaining.
Despite the art style that may appear at first somewhat weird, the animation and fight sequences in this series are top-notch. Attention to detail, clever use of distortion that is only available for the animation medium, colors, smears, the synergy of sound and color — everything makes the fights in this show about a 14-year-old timid psychic boy outstanding. There are lots of scuffles, big and small, and you can feel the scale, the mass, the power behind the punches and the kicks. And every single fight is different.
Akudama Drive
This series feels like someone mixed together Danganronpa and Tarantino. The amount and quality of the resulting violent scenes are astonishing. The blood splatters all over, the characters all have their unique abilities that make their fighting styles special, and there is a lot of creative usage of anything that can come in handy. Studio Pierrot also played a lot with the color schemes and the angles in the action scenes, and that made the experience feel even more cinematic.
When you have two samurai with unique fighting styles and base the plot on them being different (at least partially), you make them fight quite a lot to properly showcase their abilities. While Jin, the more stoic samurai, seems like your regular swordsman, Mugen, the outlaw, mixes his swordsmanship with hip-hop and break-dancing, creating an absolutely unique style that no one, except Jin, can deal with. The scenes feel realistic enough to make you shudder at some moments and creative enough for you to cackle in glee.
Sword of the Stranger (Stranger: Mukou Hadan)
The whole 90 minutes of a story about an orphan, his dog, and a ronin running away from assassins culminate in one of the most epic and beautifully choreographed sword fighting scenes in the anime. It's visceral, with a clever usage of the terrain, of the objects surrounding the characters. And it's not the only fight in the movie, but the most special one.
It's a visual spectacle, one that is wild, horrifyingly insane, and cool. Gurren Lagann's action is something that cannot be overlooked; it's something that moves the show forward and makes you cling to the edge of your seat in anticipation. Gainax destroyed laws not only of physics but of common sense in their fight choreography in this show — and it's amazing.
God of High School
This whole series is based on one huge tournament arc, so expect a lot of fights — and these fights are creative, as the school kids participating in them are allowed to use any martial style, any weapon, any methods in order to end up victorious. And trust us, the imagination of these kids should be studied properly.
86
The story follows a legion of misfits forced to fight for the republic that declared them misfits. It's a mix of sci-fi and military, so the clarity in action scenes is of utmost importance, as it also adds a bit of machinery into the equation, and that heightens the level of detail. It's gruesome and heavy and hard and allows you to fully feel how devastating a conflict like that may be.
Hajime no Ippo
It's a classic. It's what you would call a staple in hand-to-hand combat animation. The boxing in Hajime no Ippo is more than just punches: it's the lifestyle, it's the soul of the fighter that is translated into the animation. The fights are the essence of this series, they are insanely tactile: you feel how every punch lands, how characters get weary and tired, how their mood changes even with the sound off — just by the animation alone. It's remarkably vivid and perfectly encapsulates what makes boxing so high-octane.
Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song
In a world dominated by AIs humanity, of course, ends up on the verge of extinction. A hundred years before that, however, the AIs are still somewhat controlled by humans, and Vivy is one of the first autonomous AIs tasked with bringing people happiness through her songs But she's contacted by an AI from the future, one that is now engaged in the war, and asks Vivy for help. This series doesn't only have impeccable action but also combines it with solid character development and wonderful music. The fluid, crispy, ultra-detailed animation really brings the devastating fight sequences to life, one of the most interesting hand-to-hand combat scenes in the past few years.
It's hard to do fights.
Action scenes have to be exciting in order to keep the viewer engaged. Animating action and movement is hard, and a lot of works with interesting premise fall short just because the animation wasn't on par with everything else (We're looking at the One Punch Man Season 2 here). But if you want some nicely choreographed, detailed, and creative fight scenes — we've got a list for you.
These shows paid attention to making the action feel visceral, tangible, and entertaining.
Despite the art style that may appear at first somewhat weird, the animation and fight sequences in this series are top-notch. Attention to detail, clever use of distortion that is only available for the animation medium, colors, smears, the synergy of sound and color — everything makes the fights in this show about a 14-year-old timid psychic boy outstanding. There are lots of scuffles, big and small, and you can feel the scale, the mass, the power behind the punches and the kicks. And every single fight is different.
Akudama Drive
This series feels like someone mixed together Danganronpa and Tarantino. The amount and quality of the resulting violent scenes are astonishing. The blood splatters all over, the characters all have their unique abilities that make their fighting styles special, and there is a lot of creative usage of anything that can come in handy. Studio Pierrot also played a lot with the color schemes and the angles in the action scenes, and that made the experience feel even more cinematic.
When you have two samurai with unique fighting styles and base the plot on them being different (at least partially), you make them fight quite a lot to properly showcase their abilities. While Jin, the more stoic samurai, seems like your regular swordsman, Mugen, the outlaw, mixes his swordsmanship with hip-hop and break-dancing, creating an absolutely unique style that no one, except Jin, can deal with. The scenes feel realistic enough to make you shudder at some moments and creative enough for you to cackle in glee.
Sword of the Stranger (Stranger: Mukou Hadan)
The whole 90 minutes of a story about an orphan, his dog, and a ronin running away from assassins culminate in one of the most epic and beautifully choreographed sword fighting scenes in the anime. It's visceral, with a clever usage of the terrain, of the objects surrounding the characters. And it's not the only fight in the movie, but the most special one.
It's a visual spectacle, one that is wild, horrifyingly insane, and cool. Gurren Lagann's action is something that cannot be overlooked; it's something that moves the show forward and makes you cling to the edge of your seat in anticipation. Gainax destroyed laws not only of physics but of common sense in their fight choreography in this show — and it's amazing.
God of High School
This whole series is based on one huge tournament arc, so expect a lot of fights — and these fights are creative, as the school kids participating in them are allowed to use any martial style, any weapon, any methods in order to end up victorious. And trust us, the imagination of these kids should be studied properly.
86
The story follows a legion of misfits forced to fight for the republic that declared them misfits. It's a mix of sci-fi and military, so the clarity in action scenes is of utmost importance, as it also adds a bit of machinery into the equation, and that heightens the level of detail. It's gruesome and heavy and hard and allows you to fully feel how devastating a conflict like that may be.
Hajime no Ippo
It's a classic. It's what you would call a staple in hand-to-hand combat animation. The boxing in Hajime no Ippo is more than just punches: it's the lifestyle, it's the soul of the fighter that is translated into the animation. The fights are the essence of this series, they are insanely tactile: you feel how every punch lands, how characters get weary and tired, how their mood changes even with the sound off — just by the animation alone. It's remarkably vivid and perfectly encapsulates what makes boxing so high-octane.
Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song
In a world dominated by AIs humanity, of course, ends up on the verge of extinction. A hundred years before that, however, the AIs are still somewhat controlled by humans, and Vivy is one of the first autonomous AIs tasked with bringing people happiness through her songs But she's contacted by an AI from the future, one that is now engaged in the war, and asks Vivy for help. This series doesn't only have impeccable action but also combines it with solid character development and wonderful music. The fluid, crispy, ultra-detailed animation really brings the devastating fight sequences to life, one of the most interesting hand-to-hand combat scenes in the past few years.
