Fall 2016 Anime: What Defined the Season and What You May Have Missed

A decade later, Fall 2016 tends to collapse into four names: Haikyu!!, March Comes In Like a Lion, Sound! Euphonium, and Yuri!!! On Ice. That shorthand leaves out half the fun. The season paired high-scoring sequels with welcoming first seasons, then tucked some of its strangest ideas below the marquee.

This AniGems Time Capsule looks at 62 tracked Fall 2016 titles. The ratings were saved on September 19, 2026, so they show how the series are rated now rather than how opinion shifted week by week in 2016. Browse the complete set on the Fall 2016 rankings.

Sports stood beside character drama

Comedy is the most common genre in the tracked catalog, appearing on 25 titles. Action follows with 16, while Drama and Fantasy each appear on nine. Eight titles carry the Sports tag. School is the most common theme with 12 titles, followed by Strategy Game with seven and Music with six. Since one anime can have several tags, these totals overlap.

The current top five make the newcomer problem obvious:

Three of the five are sequels. The exceptions are a 22-episode drama about a teenage professional shogi player and a 12-episode figure-skating series about an athlete trying to recover from defeat. Both start from episode one.

Yuri!!! On Ice captured the season's moment

The current ranking places Yuri!!! On Ice fifth, but a retrospective based only on today's score would miss its place in 2016. The series won both the television grand prize and the fan award at the 2017 Tokyo Anime Award Festival. Its official site is also running a tenth-anniversary project in 2026.

The awards and the present 8.28 Global Score measure different things. One records how loudly the series landed in 2016. The other shows how viewers rate it now across all four AniGems sources. You can also start cold. Skater Yuri Katsuki returns home after a disastrous Grand Prix Final, and champion Victor Nikiforov unexpectedly offers to coach him.

If you watch one title to understand why Fall 2016 still comes up, make it this one.

The best entry points require no homework

Four good entry points start at episode one.

For a patient character drama: March Comes In Like a Lion

March Comes In Like a Lion follows Rei Kiriyama, a 17-year-old professional shogi player living alone in Tokyo. Meeting the three Kawamoto sisters gradually draws him out of that isolation. Shogi supplies the competitive structure, but the story spends as much time on loneliness, family, work, and the difficulty of accepting help.

Its current Global Score is 8.62 from four sources, third in the season. At 22 episodes, it asks for more time than most choices here, but it starts at the beginning and needs no prior viewing.

For color, motion, and surprise: Flip Flappers

Flip Flappers is a 13-episode original adventure about Cocona and Papika traveling through shifting worlds known as Pure Illusion. Its MAL tags combine Adventure, Comedy, Science Fiction, and Magical Girl. The show refuses to stay in one visual or tonal lane for long.

It ranks eighth in the current season data with an 8.04 Global Score. Its 81,689 combined rating entries are substantial, but far below the hundreds of thousands recorded for the largest titles. This is the pick for viewers who want Fall 2016 at its most visually restless.

For an adult workplace story: The Great Passage

The Great Passage turns dictionary editing into an 11-episode workplace drama. Mitsuya Majime struggles to express himself in conversation, then finds work on a team assembling a new dictionary. The premise sounds quiet because it is. The tension comes from the time, judgment, and cooperation needed to decide how words should explain other words.

The series has a 7.83 Global Score from 51,711 combined rating entries. It is one of only four tracked Fall 2016 titles tagged with an adult cast, and one of three with a workplace theme.

For a gentler homecoming: Poco's Udon World

Poco's Udon World begins when web designer Souta Tawara returns to his family home in Kagawa and encounters a strange child in the old udon shop. The 12-episode series mixes Slice of Life and Supernatural elements with Childcare and Iyashikei themes.

Its 7.63 Global Score comes from 59,229 combined rating entries. Choose it when a warm, low-key family story sounds more appealing than a tournament or battle series.

The sequel bench was unusually strong

Haikyu!! 3rd Season currently leads the tracked season at 9.01. Its ten episodes make up a focused third chapter, but they are a rough place to meet the team for the first time. Natsume's Book of Friends Season 5 follows at 8.70 after four earlier seasons of much quieter supernatural storytelling.

Sound! Euphonium 2 sits fourth at 8.61, while Bungo Stray Dogs 2 reaches 8.23. Four of the top six entries are continuations, which makes the upper end of the ranking less welcoming to a newcomer.

Treat those entries as destinations. Pick the franchise that interests you, start with its first season, and work toward the Fall 2016 installment.

Five shows outside the largest crowds

“Missed” is relative. Flip Flappers, The Great Passage, and Poco's Udon World each have tens of thousands of recorded ratings. All three score at least 7.50 across four eligible sources while staying below 100,000 combined rating entries. That is a fraction of the totals behind Haikyu!!, Yuri!!! On Ice, or Bungo Stray Dogs 2.

The plot separates current score from the size of the rating crowd. Flip Flappers, The Great Passage, and Poco's Udon World sit comfortably above the season's median score without approaching the largest audiences. The two deeper cuts fall to the left of the median rating-entry line.

Two smaller titles sit below the season's median of 24,046.5 combined rating entries:

• Ninja Girl & Samurai Master compresses a historical comedy about Oda Nobunaga and his young ninja retainer into three-minute episodes. Its Global Score is 7.42 from 11,909 combined rating entries.
• Scorching Ping Pong Girls applies the familiar school-team sports structure to girls' table tennis. It has a 7.17 Global Score from 21,372 combined rating entries.

Both are easy to sample. One is a rapid historical gag series; the other is a straightforward table-tennis show. Both offer something different from the season's biggest titles.

Build a Fall 2016 watchlist

If you want one approachable title, start with Yuri!!! On Ice. Choose March Comes In Like a Lion when you are ready for a longer and more inward-looking drama. Pick Flip Flappers for visual invention, The Great Passage for an adult workplace story, or Poco's Udon World for something gentler.

If you already follow Haikyu!!, Natsume's Book of Friends, Sound! Euphonium, or Bungo Stray Dogs, put their Fall 2016 installments near the front of the list. New viewers can start with the five standalone shows above. Returning viewers already have four high-scoring sequels waiting.

Old season, new watchlist.

How to read the numbers

Ratings and voter counts were saved on September 19, 2026. AniGems tracks 62 Fall 2016 titles in this dataset, which may not include every anime released that season. Forty-two titles have four eligible rating sources and 20 have three.

Filmarks and Gamer ratings are converted from five-point to ten-point scales. The Global Score weights each eligible source by log10(voters) and rounds the result to two decimals. Combined rating entries may count the same person on more than one platform and do not represent unique viewers.

The database contains only the September 2026 snapshot for this season, so it cannot show how scores moved during the original broadcast. Present-day ranking, 2016 popularity, awards, and long-term cultural visibility are related but distinct measures. Streaming availability is also omitted because it differs by country and changes over time.

Image credits

Cover artwork used in the hero and entry-point graphic was sourced from the corresponding MyAnimeList catalog pages: Haikyu!! 3rd Season, March Comes In Like a Lion, Sound! Euphonium 2, Yuri!!! On Ice, Flip Flappers, The Great Passage, and Poco's Udon World. Artwork and related marks belong to their respective copyright holders.