Best Historical Anime

Part of anime's magic is how enthusiastically it explores the past as well as the present and the future. Here's a selection of anime that delve into other times and places, and bring back a great deal for your enjoyment.

1. Baccano!

Time and place: New York, the Roaring Twenties.
Gangsters, bootleg hooch that’s actually an elixir of immortality, massacres, hijackings, past, present, future— Baccano! takes all of its ingredients, slices them lengthwise and crosswise, and mixes them into a non-linear stew of storytelling, perspective, atmosphere and invention. Its multiple intersecting plotlines and out-of-order plotting bring to mind the new wave of live-action American cable TV dramas— The Wire, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire—but it’s always unmistakably its own creation.

2. Black Butler

Time and place: Victorian-era London.
Young Ciel Phantomhive, the scion of a family with a lucrative toymaking business, has a secret: his butler is in fact a demon sworn to protect his master by any means necessary. The reasons for this diabolical pact—and the consequences it brings—form the backbone for this mix of gothic horror and lowbrow comedy. Despite the wealth of period details, don’t expect too much in the way of period accuracy —one of the antagonists wields a chainsaw , and there are references to “the movie of someone’s life” (a technology which was still at best in its extreme infancy).

3. Blood: The Last Vampire

Time and place: Japan, during the Vietnam war.
Saya looks like a teenaged girl, but she’s actually a decades-old monster hunter sent by her American military controllers to investigate a series of violent disturbances in a school on a U.S. Army base in Japan. Despite being only fifty minutes, this film does a great job of assaulting the senses and depicting an obscure part of Japan that most Americans rarely know about, let alone see.

4. Chrono Crusade

Time and place: The Roaring Twenties, New York.
If Baccano! wasn’t enough Jazz Age mayhem for you, Chrono Crusade ramps the action up to eleven and stirs in a generous dose of supernatural intrigue as well. The gun-wielding nun exorcist Sister Rosette Christopher and her demonic partner Chrono scour the tenements and speakeasy basements of 1920s New York for demonic incursions. Then the balance between the realms above and below are all thrown out of balance when Rosette’s long-lost brother Joshua turns up, and the three are sucked into a war that might be Armageddon itself.

5. Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth

Time and place: Paris in the latter 1800s.
French traveler Oscar Claudel returns from Japan with a unique bit of treasure in tow: a Japanese girl named Yune, who works for Oscar’s grandson Claude in their ironworks shop. Plot takes a backseat to some wonderfully observed details about life in Paris at the time, about East and West discovering each other, and how the two do (and do not) see eye- to-eye about many things. It’s also one of the most gorgeously-designed and -animated shows in recent years, and is worth seeing for that reason alone. The slightly sinister title seems ill-suited for a show of great cheer and wonder.