Ninja Mono

Short form anime series on this site can often be underappreciated. In the same way poetry is radically different from fiction novels, which are radically different from screenplays and so forth, I view shorter series, typically OVAs, in the same way. Too frequently they're compared to TV series, and there will be many comparative allusions roughly paraphrasing, "You can't expect much from the story/characters because of how short it is", or other similar comments. The value of the efficacy of the presentation in both shorter and longer series are for the most part incomparable to each other. They both strive to do very different things through very different means despite the shared medium of "anime". Of course, what constitutes the differences or goals of a creator is quite vast, but the point is that from my personal view, because the context of the existence of shows that would either be shorter in length or longer are so different and require much different means for communicating the information that they present, I think they should be judged by different standards. How a person judges them is up to themselves, but I do believe short series are worthy of the praise that many would only attribute to more lengthy series. What I want to do is give reverence for the fun-sized length series I have come across and enjoyed to some degree.

What constitutes a “short” series is something shorter in length than a standard minimum length TV series, which is 12 episodes in length. The focus is not on the number of episodes, but rather judging roughly the amount of time. So, if there is a series with 24 episodes, but they are only 3 minutes in length, for example, that would constitute a short series.

Anime with various degrees and types of "moe" aesthetics that began after Neon Genesis Evangelion and before Azumanga Daioh. Moe and moe-adjacent aesthetics do exist before this time period, but they are not included in this this because I wanted to specifically focus on the aforementioned time period (maybe I'll make a "proto-moe" stack that includes them).

Entries are listed in chronological order.
This is not an exhaustive list.
Hentai are not included even though there are many that fit the criteria.

[The first entry, Saber Marionette R, actually aired before Eva but the rest of the Saber Marionette series aired after and I wanted its image for the stack's cover.]