Classic anime remakes are booming in 2025: 5 series worth rebooting next

By 2025, classic anime remakes look like one of the safest plays in the business. Studios get a recognizable name, a fanbase that’s already there, and a chance to fix older adaptations that leaned on filler, anime-original endings, or major story detours because the original manga still wasn’t finished.

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and the 2019 Fruits Basket remake already showed what a faithful second pass can do: it can end up becoming the version people treat as definitive. Better animation workflows, cleaner compositing, and more up-to-date direction also make older series easier to revisit. You can already see that push in Dororo and Urusei Yatsura, with Naruto, Magic Knight Rayearth, and The One Piece carrying it into 2025 and 2026.

For overdue candidates, Berserk, Claymore, Soul Eater, Slam Dunk, and Pandora Hearts are the obvious standouts. Their anime adaptations were fragmented, pulled away from the manga, or never finished the full story, and if you follow classic anime, this next wave looks like one to keep an eye on.

A remake still can’t just be a shot-for-shot copy, though. As One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda has suggested with The One Piece, a remake needs to feel faithful while also bringing something fresh, especially with fans in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East likely to matter just as much as viewers in Japan and North America.

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