A Poll Timed to Tokyo Day
Japanese anime news site Anime Anime published the results on July 17, celebrated in Japan as "Tokyo Day" because Edo was renamed Tokyo on that date in 1868 under the old lunar calendar (September 3 by the modern one). The reader poll asked which anime fans most associate with Tokyo, a question the site last posed in 2024. This year's survey ran from June 25 to July 2 and collected 117 responses. About 60 percent came from male readers, and people in their 30s made up the largest age group at roughly 30 percent.
Love Live! claimed the top spot with about 10 percent of the vote, a big climb from seventh place in the previous edition. The original series follows Honoka Kosaka and eight fellow students at Otonokizaka Academy, who form the school idol group μ's to save their school from closure. The TV anime premiered in 2013, and Love Live! The School Idol Movie hit theaters in 2015.
Real scenery drove the win. Readers singled out the show's Akihabara streetscapes and Kanda Myojin, the actual Tokyo shrine where Nozomi Tojo works part-time as a shrine maiden. The shrine has since become a treasured stop for fans visiting the series' real-world locations. One voter acknowledged that plenty of later Love Live! entries are also modeled on Tokyo, but picked the original because the μ's era left the deepest impression.
One Vote Separated the Next Two
Tokyo Revengers, the 2024 winner, slipped to second with about 8 percent support. The series sends Takemichi Hanagaki, a man at rock bottom, back to his middle school years to save his former girlfriend Hinata Tachibana. Since its 2021 TV anime debut, it has expanded into live-action films and stage plays. Voters cited the scramble crossing where the Tokyo Manji Gang shot its founding photo, and the thrill of watching gang wars erupt across familiar districts like Shibuya and Shinjuku.
Jujutsu Kaisen held third place, the same position as last time, and finished just one vote behind second. The dark fantasy stars Yuji Itadori, who transfers into Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High and battles vicious curses alongside his classmates. Readers liked that the school is literally a metropolitan institution, and several pointed to Season 2's Shibuya Incident arc, which plunged the entire district into an unprecedented disaster. Others remembered the large-scale promotional campaigns the franchise has run around Shibuya Station. Season 3, covering the first part of the Culling Game storyline, aired in 2026.
KochiKame, Bocchi the Rock! and the Rest of the Top 10
Fourth place went to KochiKame (Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Koen-mae Hashutsujo), the long-running comedy about a scheming cop stationed in Katsushika ward's Kameari neighborhood. A four-way tie at fifth brought together March Comes in Like a Lion, BanG Dream!, Bocchi the Rock! and Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included. Gintama, Sailor Moon and Detective Conan shared ninth.
The comments beyond the top three read like a Tokyo guidebook. Detective Conan voters noted that Beika Town sits inside Tokyo, that the Tokyo Tower-inspired Toto Tower has hosted many cases, and that the 2022 film Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween staged its showdown with a bomber in Shibuya. Sailor Moon fans praised the guardians fighting against the urban backdrop of Azabu-Juban, a real neighborhood in Minato ward. Supporters of the cosplay comedy 2.5 Dimensional Seduction highlighted its Comiket episodes set around the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, plus manga chapters that visit Shibuya and Nippori, and said they are looking forward to seeing which streets Season 2 will draw.
One newcomer also drew votes: Magical Sisters Lulutto Lilly, the latest entry in Studio Pierrot's magical girl series. A reader saw the heroines eating crepes in Harajuku and busking in Shibuya as a tribute to the franchise's earlier shows.
Looking Ahead
Two of the ranked series return this fall. Tokyo Revengers Season 4, officially titled Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc for international audiences, premieres in October 2026. Magical Sisters Lulutto Lilly kicks off the second half of its split-cour run the same month, and the first half is already streaming with English subtitles on Tubi in the United States and Canada.
As for the poll itself, Anime Anime revived the Tokyo question after a two-year gap, so the next edition will likely wait until 2028. Until then, Love Live! holds the title.