7 Best One-Season Anime to Watch in a Weekend on Hulu

Hulu has you covered with these single-season animes. Commit yourself to watching each episode without missing work on Monday.

Id: Invaded (2022)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.7 / 5

Watch it if you like: Inception, Minority Report

This original animation has only 13 episodes and slid under many a radar when it was first released. If that includes your radar, you should definitely check out this trippy thriller about brilliant detective Narihisago. Although he is in prison for taking revenge on the murderer of his daughter, Narihisago continues to hunt down serial killers by diving into their psyches (or “id wells”) with digital technology. Once inside a killer’s mind, he can find clues about their motives and victims.

Death Parade (2015)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.8 / 5

Watch it if you like: Squid Game

An anime for fans of the thriller genre, Death Parade mostly takes place in a bar. All the patrons are dead, and must compete to see whose souls will be able to return to Earth reincarnated.

The games range from Twister to darts, with the memories of the competitors returning as they play. This reveals to the audience – and the demonic bartender / game master – the choices that each contestant made led to their deaths.

Trigun (1998)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.5 / 5

Watch it if you like: Firefly

We’re lucky that we live in an age of streaming, where even 25-year-old shows like Trigun can be found and enjoyed by new audiences.

With a 60 billion double-dollar price on his head, Vash the Stampede is by far the most infamous outlaw on planet Gunsmoke. Vash is actually a pacifist, but his superhuman abilities caused the destruction of an entire town, an incident he has largely lost his memories of.

On his travels, Vash is joined by a pair of insurance agents who evaluate claims of damage that are sure to follow our hero wherever he goes.

Erased (2016)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.9 / 5

Watch it if you like: Looper

When Satoru Fujinuma was in fifth grade, his classmate Kayo disappeared mysteriously. Since then, he’s experienced an inexplicable phenomenon: he regularly gets sent back in time. Twenty years after Kayo’s disappearance, Satoru’s mother is murdered.

Satoru soon realizes that the cases are connected, and then he is suddenly sent all the way back to his boyhood. Back in the body of an 11-year-old, Satoru must find a way to subvert the tragedies coming his way.

Samurai Champloo (2004)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.9 / 5

Watch it if you like: Cowboy Bebop

Shinichirō Watanabe followed up his legendary Cowboy Bebop with this historical hip-hop trip. A waitress and her two warrior bodyguards journey to find a legendary samurai in a twist on Edo-era Japan.

If you’re still mourning the end of Cowboy Bebop (or the beginning of the misguided Netflix reboot), this is an excellent place to come for similar themes and world-building.

Fruits Basket (2001)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.9 / 5

Watch it if you like: Turning Red

Fruits Basket was re-adapted in 2019 as a longer-running series, but if you’re looking for a one-weekend binge we highly recommend returning to the original.

Orphaned high schooler Tohru Honda moves in with a classmate, only to discover that her new family comes with a terrible adorable curse. A dozen family members turn into the animals of the Zodiac when – among other things – they get a hug from the opposite gender.

Gurren Lagann (2007)

Crunchyroll Score: 4.8 / 5

Watch it if you like: City of Ember

In the future, mankind is forced to live in subterranean villages by the ruthless Spiral King. Young digger Simon steals a mecha suit and goes up instead of down, discovering a whole new world on the surface of the planet – and a whole new group of people being oppressed by the Spiral King. That, of course, is only the beginning, as Simon and his new friends eventually discover an even darker enemy at work.