Time travel anime aren’t the most popular of the bunch. Though time travel anime are tricky to make, they are worth the trouble.
All, time travel anime are all about a character travelling back in time to change a rotten bad ending. He is fighting against time to alter the past events enough, so that the future he came from never comes true.
Despite time travel anime not being as popular as other genres of anime, you can still reap its benefits if you nail them right. There are quite a few time travel anime whose popularity knows no bounds.
Here are 10 Time travel anime where the character is racing against time to change a rotten bad ending:
1. Stiens; Gate: The One Where The Characters Attempt A Time Heist By Sending Text Messages To The Past
Stein’s; Gate is a time travel masterpiece. If you are someone who doesn’t wants to fully dive into time travel anime and rather just scratch its surface. Then look no further, let Stiens; Gate raid your gateway of time.
The anime has a unique set of characters. One fine example would be Makise Kirusu, who is even smarter than the protagonist.
Rintaro Okabe the protagonist of the show is the most popular character in the anime. His voice acting has to play a huge role in that. His voice modulation skills are stellar. He can be funny at times and intense at the right next moment. He can also raise a high-pitched voice when he is in mad-scientist mode. He has nailed every voice tone there is.
Steins; Gate is the best time travel show. The anime also talks about the consequences of time manipulation.
2. Tokyo Revengers: The One Where MC Is Sent Back In Time To Save His Ex-girlfriend
Though the anime has the most generic theme for a travel anime where an anime guy travels back in time to save a girl in this case his ex-girlfriend Hina Tachibana. But it still manages to provide some fresh unseen content for the fans. For example, the anime highly centres around various types of gangs run by high school kids engaging in gang fights. Well if we are talking about gangs then motorcycles can’t be kept out of the pictures. Watching high school kids ride cool motorcycles is the coolest thing ever.
Tokyo revengers have the most variant hairstyles out of all the animes out there, period. If you are looking for the coolest anime hairstyles then look no more.
Even the outfits worn by the characters are dope. Every gang has their unique wardrobe collection. I personally really like the white jacket worn by headless angles.
“Cry Baby” from Tokyo Revengers is the most motivating anime op out there today.
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3. Orange: The One Where Letters Are The Ones Travelling To The Past
A group of friends send a bunch of letters 10 years in the past addressed to themselves telling them to correct the mistakes that were made in the past to free themselves from a life of regrets in the future.
Orange is a Sci-fi psychological romance drama. The anime touches upon very sensitive topics like suicide and the guilt of someone’s death. Watching this anime in one go is next to impossible. It’s emotionally and mentally draining. Orange is not for everyone. Choose wisely before deciding to watch it.
Orange defines the concept of what is time travel? in the simplest way possible. What happens when someone tries to alter the events of the past to change the future? Can you really change the future?
When someone tries to manipulate the flow of time will it change the future or will it just shift it to another alternate reality? If you are someone who has these questions about time travel. Then Orange has to be your pick.
In this anime whatever the characters try to change in their past, the future from where the letters came from is still going to remain unchanged. It’s just going to create an alternative reality along the original timeline.
4. Erased: The One Where Satoru Fujinuma Gets A “Revival” Before Every Accident
Satoru Fujinuma experience a phenomenon called the “Revival” where he is sent several minutes back in time whenever an accident occurs around him.
However, things take a turn for the worst when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder and gets a revival that sends him 18 years back in the past. Now he has to somehow figure out how him becoming a murder suspect in the future is related to some unknown event that happened 18 years ago.
This anime has a Sherlock movie vibe to it. Try imagining yourself as Sherlock while watching the anime trying to figure out the identity of the killer. It will just make the whole experience of watching the anime a lot more engaging.
5. Mirai Nikki: The One Where “Future Diaries” Are The Key To Survive An Unforgiving Last Man/Women Standing Battle Royale
All the characters enter into a last man/woman standing battle royale with their respective cellphones which is actually a future diary containing events of the future to crown the next God of Time and Space.
Yuno Gasai is the most psychotic and possessive anime girlfriend you will ever find. She is a killing machine and anyone who comes in her and Amano’s way will not live to see the daylight tomorrow.
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Both of them are participating in the battle royale where only one can be the last one standing. That implies that one of them has to die. Watch the anime to know what the future holds for our characters.
6. Relief: The one Where Two NEET Adults Relive the Last Year Of High School
Relife touches upon important topics such as:
- Failures in life
- Impact of office bullying
- Life of people who give up on life
- Importance of friendship in life
- How your high school experiences help shape your life
Relief features Arata Kaizaki who gets a second chance at life by relieving one year of high school again. Now will he embrace this opportunity he has been given and see a return to high school as a chance to remake his life or will he get cold feet, back out and keep living a meaningless life as a NEET? The choice is his alone.
7. The Tatami Galaxy: The One Where The Protagonist Rewinds 2 Years To Relive His Life As a Freshman To Win The Heart Of A Girl
It’s a beautiful anime depicting a boy finding his way in life by making friends, finding love in the form of a raven-haired maiden and trying to secure his dream of finding a “rose-coloured campus life” he has always dreamed of.
The anime adds an artistic touch to its animation style. The art style of the anime is unique( in a weird sense). But it still won the grand prize for the animation category at the Japan Media Art Festival in 2010.
8. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: The one where the Girl protects Herself from Dying by Leaping through Time
When you start watching the anime, in the beginning, you feel that the story isn’t catchy enough or doesn’t hold a lot of weight or isn’t going to do justice to the time travel genre of anime. You also feel that the anime is too simple for its own good.
But do stick around till the end. By the end of the movie, all your above concerns will be resolved. The anime picks up around the middle with nail-biting scenes. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, alright( it doesn’t disappoint on that front for sure). Keeping the audience nailed on the edge of their seats with amazing plot twists is a trademark of every time travel anime.
It’s the simplest time travel anime movie ever. It doesn’t have a complicated storyline and geeky characters/science nerds blabbering on about theories of time and space. That means you won’t have a problem watching this movie even if you don’t understand the whole concept of time travel yourself.
It’s the only anime, I have ever seen where A Girl goes back in time. In every other anime, the male protagonist is the one going back in time.
9. Her Blue Sky: The One Where Shinno commits The Ultimate Time Travel Taboo by travelling from the Past to The Present to meet Himself
In every time travel anime, the character takes a trip to the past but here the character travels to the future in lieu which is a first, I think.
In every time travel anime, it’s taboo for any person time travelling to make any contact with himself. But in Her Blue Sky, Shinno travels to the future with the sole objective of meeting and confronting himself.
Her Blue Sky is a beautiful romance time travel anime movie which explores young teens falling in love and trying to sort out their dynamic romantic relationships aka a love triangle.
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It has a really beautiful phrase that turns over a new leaf about the life choices we make
“The frog at the bottom of the well doesn’t know the vastness of the sea, but it does know the blueness of the sky”.
Akane chooses to stay behind in the countryside instead of moving to Tokyo. Many will say she missed the chance of knowing the busy and fast-forward life of people in Tokyo. But cause she stayed behind she caught to see her kid sister grow up.
Sometimes in life staying put where you are instead of moving forward is the right call.
10. Your Name: The One Where a Boy takes a Trip to the past to Protect a Girl from getting caught in a Comet Strike
It is one of the most visually appealing anime movies of all time. Dope animation and an additive OST soundtrack make the fans fall in love with the movie.
It has a complicated storyline. It’s tricky to understand the flow of events taking place in the movie. I literally didn’t understand the whole movie the first time, I saw it.
The boy travels back in time with the memories of the girl acting as a guiding light that he got from when they swapped bodies to protect her from getting caught in a comet strike.
Time travel anime is all about second chances at life and how you grab those chances because life isn’t generous enough to give you another crack at life cause there’s no such thing as a third chance at life.
Sansuke
