Although the exact holiday traditions in Japan differ from those in Western countries, Christmas is still a time for hope, joy, and togetherness – as the very best Christmas anime celebrate. In Japan, Christmas is viewed as a romantic holiday, meaning that many popular romance anime culminate in the stars finally confessing their love on Christmas Eve. That means there’s a lot of truly great episodes vying for their place on this list.
Screen Rant’s pick of the ten best Christmas anime celebrates those which embrace the spirit of the holiday to create beautiful, heartwarming moments. These Christmas-themed specials and episodes demonstrate that the best parts of the spirit of Christmas are cross-cultural.
10 Azumanga Daioh
Azumanga Daioh Embraces the Opportunity to Give Chiyo-chichi a Makeover
Although Christmas plays a minor role in Azumanga Daioh, the Christmas episode is the perfect example of this series’ best and funniest running gag, demonstrating Azumanga Daioh‘s surreal sense of humor. When the ten-year-old genius Chiyo tries to explain where Christmas presents come from, the other characters interpret this as meaning that Santa is literally Chiyo’s father. Since the characters also all imagine Chiyo’s father as a big orange cat, this leads to a hilarious imagined scene of the Father-Cat wearing a Santa hat, wishing Chiyo a Merry Christmas.
9 K-On!
K-On! Opts for Friendship Over Romance
Kyoto Animation’s popular Slice of Life series K-On! has a Christmas episode, but it’s a marked change of pace from the usual romance-centric depictions of the holiday, focusing on friendship and familial bonds instead. Even seven episodes into the series, it’s clear that the members of After School Tea Time have become cherished friends to one another and that Sawako is their trusted mentor.
The most heartwarming aspect of the episode is the recurring theme of the sisterly love between Yui and Ui, which is depicted as having existed since the two were little girls. There’s also plenty of levity in the episode and Mugi’s impression of a sunfish is one of the funniest gags in the entire series.
8 My Hero Academia
MHA Uses Christmas to Break Up the Gloom
The idea of superhuman characters doing mundane, everyday things is a fantastic premise to generate humor. My Hero Academia‘s Christmas episode in the fifth season is an excellent demonstration of this. The episode starts on a dark note, foreshadowing tragedy and calamity to come, but that’s put aside for at least as long as Class 1-A’s Christmas party lasts. There’s an inherently comedic quality to seeing superheroes dressed up in Santa outfits, and that’s true even when those heroes are teenagers in high school. My Hero Academia fully embraces the situation’s comedic potential for a light-hearted respite in the spirit of the holiday, breaking up more serious story lines.
7 How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift?
Romantic Failures Offer Plenty of Opportunity for Comedy
How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift? is up there with the best fitness anime of all time, focusing especially on the importance of having a group of like-minded gym buddies. The friendship group of the four main girls is the driving factor of both the plot and the humor of the series. The main conflict, such as it is, of the anime’s Christmas-themed tenth episode is the girls’ futile attempts to find boyfriends at their gym’s Christmas party. The girls are not particularly successful in that endeavor, and the series’ perpetually sarcastic narrator provides plenty of humor as he keeps up a running commentary on their misadventures.
6 Buddy Daddies
A Heartwarming Christmas Episode… About a Young Girl’s Father Being Assassinated
For an episode that culminates in an intense shootout, the first episode of Buddy Daddies is surprisingly heartwarming. Hired killer Kazuki infiltrates a human trafficker’s penthouse Christmas party dressed as Santa to assassinate the criminal. Meanwhile, the trafficker’s estranged daughter arrives, hoping to meet her father for the first time. After claiming to be her dad to get her out of harm’s way, Kazuki realizes her real father is the target he just assassinated. Thanks to a few truly dark coincidences, Miri gets her Christmas miracle, kicking off an adorable Found Family anime series.
5 Strawberry Marshmallow
Sibling Love Makes for a Heartwarming Christmas Watch
The central theme behind Slice of Life anime Strawberry Marshmallow is that being an older sibling is equally vexing and rewarding. Throughout the series, Nobue’s much-younger sister Chika and her friends Miu, Matsuri, and Ana are depicted as the single biggest source of frustration in her life, even as Nobue is also depicted as sincerely and genuinely caring about her sister and her friends.
This is best demonstrated in the Christmas episode, where Nobue, Chika, Miu, and Ana go as far as dressing up as Santa and his reindeer to personally deliver Matsuri’s Christmas present to maintain her sense of wonder and belief in Santa. It’s a remarkable act of selflessness and a surprising demonstration of Christmas spirit for a character like Nobue, who’s consistently presented as aloof and uncaring.
4 Sailor Moon S: The Movie
Tuxedo Mask Steals the Show
The second Sailor Moon movie sees the Sailors battling an ice-themed villain and has a pretty neat subplot about Luna becoming temporarily human. Tuxedo Mask, as usual, appears just in time to help Sailor Moon, but this time he does so dressed as Santa, while piloting a giant Christmas-themed blimp complete with sleigh and reindeer to wish Sailor Moon and Chibi-Moon a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It makes very little sense, but it’s a truly adorable moment that makes the most of the Christmas theme.
3 Kaguya-sama: Love is War
Kaguya and Miyuki’s Romance Gets Taken Seriously
The bulk of the humor in Kaguya-sama: Love is War derives from the fact that the romantic leads Kaguya and Miyuki are shrewd and intelligent people who turn into absolute idiots around each other, going to increasingly absurd lengths to avoid confessing their feelings. This is all helped by a wonderfully sarcastic narrator. But despite this silly premise, Kaguya-sama does nevertheless have genuine emotional gravity.
The scenes where Kaguya and Miyuki are finally honest about their feelings are legitimately touching. Kaguya-sama‘s Christmas episode is the best demonstration of this. While it never completely abandons the sense of humor that typifies the series, the Christmas episode is the most sincere and straightforward depiction of Kaguya and Miyuki’s romance.
2 Love Hina
Love Hina Nail the ‘Christmas Eve Confession’ Trope
Love Hina is one of the most popular romance anime series and is perhaps one of the genre’s best examples of a plot driven by constant false starts. During childhood, Keitaro promised to attend the University of Tokyo alongside a girl whose name he’s since forgotten. Every time it seems like Naru is going to be confirmed as the girl, another potential candidate is introduced, and every time it seems like Naru and Keitaro are finally going to confess and end up together, something happens to drive them apart.
Thanks to Naru and Keitaro’s relationship getting constantly strung along, Love Hina‘s Christmas special is one of the most memorable moments in the series. The Christmas special is one of anime’s best examples of a Christmas Eve love confession. It takes the entire original anime series, plus almost the entire runtime of the special, but Naru finally gets to give her confession to Keitaro.
1 Tokyo Godfathers
Tokyo Godfathers Is the Best Christmas Anime Out There
On Christmas Eve, three homeless friends discover an abandoned baby and race to return her to her parents. While there is a certain whimsical quality to the story and the plot is driven by a series of coincidences, there are no overtly supernatural elements like Satoshi Kon’s other movies. Indeed, Tokyo Godfathers is most noteworthy for being an absolutely beautiful and heartwarming movie that fully embraces the spirit of hope and joy. This isn’t just an anime including Christmas, but truly embodies the festive spirit – hence why it’s our pick for the best Christmas anime to watch this holiday season.
