The Best Anime to Watch This November: ‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,’ ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ and More

With anime’s fall season having already kickstarted this October, November is a quieter time for the medium. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t great options to be thankful for this month.

For starters, this month brings the theatrical premiere of the most anticipated anime event of the year. “The Boy and the Heron” is Hayao Miyazaki’s newest film — and supposedly the master director’s last. The Studio Ghibli movie, named “How Do You Live?” in Japan, has been shrouded in secrecy due to its unusual Japanese release strategy in which no plot details or trailers were released ahead of launch. But the film, about a boy living in Japan during World War II who stumbles upon a window into a completely new world, received critical acclaim out of its North American TIFF premiere and is being hailed as one of the best films of the year. The movie releases Thanksgiving for a limited New York and Los Angeles theatrical stint, before expanding across the country in December. You can watch it in its original Japanese or in a subbed English version that features notable stars like Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson, and Florence Pugh.

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“The Boy and the Heron” is the big ticket item this November, but if you don’t have the time to head to the theaters, there’s still some great anime to watch at home. Most notably, this November has finally seen the long, long, long awaited conclusion of “Attack on Titan”: a juggernaut anime series that first premiered in 2013 and played a huge role in shaping modern Western fandom for the medium. The show’s final season began airing part one in 2020 and part two wrapped late 2022, with several chapters of the manga from Hajime Isayama still left to adapt. To finally bring the story to a close, two special episodes were announced with the first premiering last spring. Now the second, an extended hour-and-twenty-minute behemoth, has finally arrived, completing the saga and making for a big close the book moment on an era of anime.

Still, there are plenty of new anime series to enjoy, including three shows from Netflix that look very promising: a novel adaptation, a manga adaptation, and a reimagining of the popular “Scott Pilgrim” franchise. Read on for our complete list of best new anime series and films to watch this November. Entries are listed in order of release date.

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