Fan-Favorite Anime Turning 20 In 2022

According to the seasonal charts on MyAnimeList, 76 new anime series premiered on Japanese television in 2002. Twenty years later, the number of anime in production has only skyrocketed. Notably, the Winter 2022 season alone counts 41 new series, which is over half the total of the industry's yearly output just two decades earlier. 2002 was a big year for anime fandom in the United States, with the launch of Adult Swim's Saturday night anime block and the American release of Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," which would go on to win the Oscar. Anime was booming at the turn of the millennium, and we can credit breakthroughs in the early 2000s as paving the way for the mainstreaming of the art form in the early 2020s.

With that said, much of the anime class of 2002 has been forgotten years later. You're unlikely to find many nostalgic retrospectives on, say, "Galaxy Angel Z" or "Strange Steel Fairy Rouran." The best and brightest of the year's anime, however, are well-remembered by fans as classics. If you missed out on any of these gems, here's your chance to brush up on the fan-favorite anime turning 20 years old in 2022.

The all-female manga collective CLAMP is well-established as including some of the most influential authors in the world of shojo manga. "Chobits," published in Young Jump from 2000 to 2002, was CLAMP's first-ever seinen manga. A science-fiction romantic comedy for an adult male audience, "Chobits" shares the elegant style of CLAMP's shojo work but goes significantly more sexually explicit. The anime adaptation was released in 2002, written simultaneously with the final chapters of the manga.

Set in a world where anthropomorphic persocom androids serve as people's computers, "Chobits" follows the relationship between the human Hideki and his persocom Chi. Although Chi starts the series only able to say her name, she is actually one of the rare "Chobit" androids capable of free will and emotion. Still, there's a lot to unpack in the story's treatment of sexuality, and some have criticized the anime for glossing over the deeper themes in favor of Chi fan service.

Based on Masamune Shirow's classic 1989 "Ghost in the Shell" manga (which also inspired Mamoru Oshii's 1995 movie of the same name), "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" follows Motoko Kusanagi and her Section 9 anti-terrorism task force in a cyberpunk future where most people are at least partially cybernetic. The 26-episode 1st season contains both "stand-alone" episodic stories and an ongoing "complex" narrative about The Laughing Man, a cyber-terrorist whose story is an example of the sociological phenomenon known as a "stand-alone complex."

Writer-director Kenji Kamiyama's adaptation differs from Oshii's films by capturing more of the pulpy and comical aspects of the original manga, such as the adorable Tachikoma robots. Nevertheless, the TV series still engages in heavy philosophical discussions about what it means to be human. The series aired on Adult Swim in the United States in 2003, and "Stand Alone Complex" received a 2nd season in 2004 and a CGI Netflix follow-up in 2020.

Yoshitoshi ABe is an artist most famous for doing character designs for the 1998 cyberpunk downer "Serial Experiments Lain." ABe was more heavily involved in the 13-episode anime "Haibane Renmei," adapting the screenplay from his own independently-published manga, which is as intellectually complex as "Lain" but provides a far more calming viewing experience.

The somewhat strange premise of this series centers around beings known as Haibane, who are born out of cocoons and look like humans with halos and wings (though they're not angels). They live in a walled city that they are not allowed to leave until they are no longer "sin-bound," at which point they can leave on their "Day of Flight." Living somewhat like monks, the Haibane do different jobs to help ordinary humans while following a strict set of rules. The slow-paced series is filled with symbolism and mysteries, which drive the various intense fan theories about what's actually happening. 

Believe it! No other anime from 2002 remains as popular 20 years later as "Naruto" — even if it's now old enough for a whole new generation to think of its title character primarily as "Boruto's dad." Based on the hit "Weekly Shonen Jump" manga by Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto follows young outcast Naruto Uzumaki as he trains to become a ninja. He has high hopes of become the next Hokage, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, though his fellow villagers fear him because his body houses the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox that once destroyed the village.

The original "Naruto" anime ran for 220 episodes from 2002 to 2007. Many of the latter episodes were filler arcs that were produced so the manga wouldn't get ahead of the anime's storyline. It was followed up immediately in 2007 by "Naruto Shippuden," returning to the main story with the characters now two years older. "Shippuden" kept going for 500 episodes until reaching its conclusion in 2017. "Shippuden" was followed by "Boruto: Naruto Next Generations," which follows Naruto's son.

One of the best arguments for not judging an anime by its cover, "Princess Tutu" sounds absurd and looks like a cutesy children's show but is stealthily one of the best fantasy anime ever made. Created by Ikuko Ito and directed by Junichi Sato, both veterans of "Sailor Moon," this magical girl series is a creative work of metafiction set in a fairy tale world still under the control of its long-dead author.

The main character, Duck, is a duck who falls in love with a prince and takes a human form. Duck's also capable of transforming into Princess Tutu, who uses the power of ballet to solve people's problems and recover lost pieces of the prince's heart. A strange premise, to be sure, but the resulting story has surprising maturity and emotional depth. "Princess Tutu" offers ballet aficionados a lot to appreciate, with a great classical score and plot points taken from various beloved ballets.

Fourteen years before "Your Name" broke records at the Japanese box office, Makoto Shinkai had already fully established his distinctive style as a director with the half-hour OVA "Voices of a Distant Star." Like almost every film Shinkai has touched since, "Voices of a Distant Star" is about lovers separated by a great distance — in this case, the vastness of space. Female lead Mikako is sent to fight in an intergalactic war, with only her cell phone to send messages to her boyfriend, Noburo. As the distance in light-years increases, communication takes longer and longer, with Noburo aging faster than Mikako due to the effects of relativity.

What made "Voices of a Distant Star" really stand out was the fact that Shinkai animated the entire film by himself on his PowerMac G4. Considering the technical limitations, the animation is downright incredible. Shinkai's subsequent films would grow more complex and employ more animators, but his intense hands-on touch remains a big part of his success.