My Personal Favourite Anime Fights

Everyone loves a good fight scene. The adrenaline, the emotions and most importantly, two dudes wailing on each other with laser beams and all other kinds of superhuman crap will never stop being entertaining. Well, at least for me.

But before I give out my list, I want to let you know my criteria on making this list. My favourite fight scenes needs to have lots of things going for them: First is the animation itself, how well the characters move from one place to another. Second is Choreography, how clear and concise are the attacks, although some of the battles are supposed to look exaggerated so some of fights I will put here will ignore this rule. Third is emotional impact, if the characters on said fight scene aren’t just fighting for the sake of it, but on why they are fighting. And lastly, and this is the most important part to me, is how relevant the fight is to the story. Well 3 and 4 can be the same. Also SPOILERS AHEAD

I will also provide youtube links on each fight so you can see it animated!

I’ll start with one of the most anticipated battles in Anime. Naruto ended back in 2017, and during it’s run, this fight was one the most awaited because the show has been building up to this for a long time. The first part of this battle consists of hand to hand combat without any background music, and just the sounds of fists hitting each other. As the fight goes on, they turn to use their most powerful abilities, splitting the the very land they stand on. In terms of animation and choreography, this was one of the show’s finest example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puEKUrB3oeI

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But it’s relevance to the story is the main reason its one of my favourites. Both characters have strong motivations on why they want to win the fight. For Naruto, it’s to save and knock some sense into his friend, while for Sasuke, defeating Naruto would solidify his motivation on his goals.

The second fight on this list the finale of the anime “Gurren Lagann”, a mecha show that started out in small village underground and ended on a scale almost unheard of. The picture above depicts the final battle against the villains of the show, “Anti- Spirals” and the two mecha that are standing off against each are in the size of galaxies. Throwing pocket universes against each other and creating mini big bangs were just the tip of the icebergs in this fight

The reason this fight is on my list is not because of it’s significance to the story, while although very important, since it is the final battle, this fight stands out because of it’s sheer IMMENSE scale. The show started out fighting in a mini robot, to one the size of the moon and finally robots as big as the universe itself. The two pictures above the show the enormous scale this fight has, and the animation that comes with is glorious as well. Here is the fight in its fully glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWJJTGHYEps (warning: NSFW)

The anime’s theme is about breaking through your utmost limits, and the whole fight encompasses that morals, while ending in a personal note, with the main character, Simon, fighting directly against the Anti-Spiral and beating him with a drill made from his own blood

The third fight on this list is from the anime “Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. Legendary heroes from days past are summoned into the modern world as servants to take in a battle royale style called the Holy Grail War. With the price being the Holy Grail, the cup that can grant any wishes. People like King Arthur, Hercules and other heroes from different myths and stories are featured here, albeit with slight differences. These servants are basically super humans equipped with weapons that you can find in legends. But the fight I want to focus on is between the main character, Shirou and one of the “servants” summoned in the War, Archer.

What makes this fight so interesting? While the animation and choreography is marvelous, compared to the first 2 on the list, which are contests of strengths and abilities, Shirou vs Archer is more of a battle of ideologies. Which means in terms of effects, it’s not as prevalent.

If both characters fought at their full capacity, then Archer would beat Shirou all the time. Since he’s a servant, and Shirou is a normal human (with magical abilities of course) then Archer should win this fight right? But that’s not the point of the fight. Archer can beat up Shirou all he wants, and can probably kill him anytime, but his true to make Shirou give up his ideals of being a “Hero of Justice”.

Archer is a future version of Shirou, and he was summoned in the War with the sole purpose of killing his past self. His, or “they’re” dream of becoming a Hero led them to a path of killing people. His mission always makes him kill hundreds of people to save thousands, kill thousands to save millions and so forth. This fight is on this list because of it’s story significance, and especially the story telling on how Archer, while able to kill Shirou anytime during their fight, prolongs the fight long enough for him to be beaten, because at the end, Archer realized that his dream was not wrong at all.