MyAnimeList is one of the largest public anime databases, and it publishes several different "top anime" rankings side by side. They are built from different columns of the same user database, and they disagree almost completely. We collected the top ten of five of those rankings in September 2026 and put them on the site as charts, and the overlap between them is the most interesting thing in the data.
Start with the two headline lists. The ten highest-rated TV series are led by Frieren: Beyond Journey's End on a weighted score of 9.25, ahead of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Re:Zero Season 4, both on 9.11. The ten anime listed by the most members are led by Attack on Titan, on 4,426,403 member lists, ahead of Death Note on 4,364,468. Only two titles appear on both lists: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Hunter x Hunter (2011). Eight of the ten most-watched shows on the site are nowhere near its ten best-rated, and eight of the ten best-rated shows are nowhere near its ten most-watched.
The popularity list contains the weakest scores on the site
The reason is visible in the scores of the popular shows themselves. Sword Art Online sits seventh by members, with 3,334,743 lists, on a score of 7.23 - the lowest score of any title in the popularity top ten. My Hero Academia is sixth with 3,350,576 members and 7.82. Attack on Titan, the most-listed anime in the database, scores 8.58, which does not come close to the 9.02 needed to enter the rating top ten. Being watched by everyone and being rated highest by the people who watched it are not the same achievement, and a long-running shonen series with a wide audience is usually strong on the first and mid-table on the second.
The rating list has the opposite problem. Two of its ten entries are shows that are still broadcasting right now: Re:Zero Season 4, on 9.11 from about 329,000 members, and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - Kashin-tan, on 9.08 from about 165,000. Those member counts are a twentieth of Attack on Titan's. A score built from a self-selected audience of a few hundred thousand people who chose to watch a fourth season is a different measurement from a score built from four million people, and MyAnimeList's weighting reduces but does not remove that effect.
Gintama holds six of the twenty top slots
One franchise distorts both rating lists at once. Gintama has three entries in the TV top ten - Gintama° at 9.05, Gintama' at 9.02 and Gintama': Enchousen at 9.02 - and three more in the ten highest-rated films, where Gintama: The Final is second on 9.05, Gintama: The Final Chapter fourth on 8.89 and Gintama Movie 3 eighth on 8.80. That is six of the twenty highest-rated slots on the site held by one series, because each broadcast run is catalogued as its own entry and each one is rated mostly by people who already liked the last one.
The film list is worth reading on its own terms anyway. No film reaches the level of the best series: the highest-rated film, Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc, scores 9.05, and five TV series score higher than that. Spirited Away, released in 2001 and the oldest title in the film top ten, finishes tenth on 8.77.
Favourites measure attachment, not quality
The third ranking is the most revealing. The most favourited anime is One Piece, marked a favourite by 256,072 users - and One Piece ranks 39th by score, on 8.73. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is second on 245,701, Hunter x Hunter third on 232,372. A favourite is one click and users can hold several; a score is a considered number out of ten. The favourite list rewards the shows people spent years with, which is why a series that has been broadcasting continuously since October 1999 tops it comfortably without ever threatening the rating table.
What none of these numbers measure: viewership. MyAnimeList counts the people who use MyAnimeList, an English-language site whose users skew towards people who catalogue what they watch. Nothing here reflects broadcast ratings in Japan, streaming hours on Netflix or Crunchyroll, or box office. A show can be enormous in Japan and barely register in these tables, and the current-season entries can and do move as more people finish them.