About The Anime Order

The Anime Order exists to answer two questions that long-running anime makes unreasonably hard: what order do I watch this in, and which episodes can I skip?

Why the site exists

Anime franchises are not built for newcomers. Prequels air years after the sequels they lead into — Fate/Zero came out five years after the series it precedes. Long shonen series pad their run with studio-invented filler while the manga catches up: roughly 40% of Naruto and 45% of Bleach never happened in the source material. Someone starting a 1,100-episode series deserves a straight answer about what to watch and in what order, and most of the existing answers are buried in forum threads.

Where the data comes from

Franchise relationships — which series is a prequel, sequel, side story or alternative version of which — come from AniList. Per-episode filler and recap flags come from MyAnimeList through the Jikan API. Cover art is served from AniList and remains the property of its respective rights holders.

That data is refreshed nightly, so new seasons and newly flagged episodes appear without anyone having to remember to update a page.

What is automated and what is not

Release order is derived from air dates and is always accurate. Filler blocks are computed from episode flags. Both are mechanical, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Recommended watch order is different. It is a judgment call that no database holds — Fate is the standard example, where the usual advice is to start with the prequel rather than the release order. Where a franchise has a recommended order that differs from the broadcast order, that ordering and the reasoning behind it are written by hand, and the page says which one you are looking at.

Corrections

Upstream episode flags are community-edited and occasionally wrong, and a binary filler flag cannot express "mostly canon with a filler subplot". If you spot something incorrect, please say so — corrections are applied by hand and survive the nightly rebuild. Email theanimeorder.real@gmail.com.

Affiliation

The Anime Order is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to AniList, MyAnimeList, or any anime studio, licensor or streaming service.