Saiki Kusuo is a high school student with a special talent: he is an ESPer. Gifted with various supernatural abilities, Kusuo can’t help but feel cursed due to the inconveniences created by the existence of these powers. Trying his best to live a normal life, he unwillingly attracts the attention of eccentric characters such as the air-headed Nendou Riki and Kaidou Shun, the delusional. With every passing day, Kusuo realises that the normal life he so desperately craves is further away than he thought.

This guy is powerful, let’s start there. Kusuo has assorted supernatural abilities, X-Ray vision, telekinesis and even Restoration: the ability to revert any object and anything that object comes into contact with, by 24 hours. The only problem is that it cannot be used to undo death or petrification. Kusuo can also leap through time; however the ability activates at random and can throw him into a loop from which escape is difficult, but manageable.

In a world where magic reigns supreme and the title of Wizard King is given to the strongest mage in the kingdom, Asta and Yuno are orphans raised together who seek to become the Wizard King. However, while Yuno has incredible innate magical potential, Asta has no magic whatsoever and trains fervently to goad his powers into awakening. At 15 years old, Yuno receives the legendary Four-Leaf Grimoire while Asta gets nothing. Yuno’s achievement brings with it the attention of thugs who want to take Yuno’s Grimoire for themselves. Asta jumps into the fray to defend Yuno but is instantly outmatched. Suddenly, Asta’s rage brings out a mysterious Five-Leaf Grimoire: the Black Clover, granting him the power to overcome his opponents and stay on track to becoming Wizard King.

Julius Novachrono is a former Magic Knight who is highly obsessed with magic and enjoys seeing new forms of magic at work. His main skill, Time Magic, is the ability to manipulate the flow of time, meaning that he can accelerate, decelerate, stop and even reverse time. His Restraining Magic is also based on Time Magic as a form of Chrono Stasis. Interestingly enough, his name is a nod at his abilities of temporal manipulation too.

Natsuki Subaru leaves home to head over to the convenience store. After making his purchases, he leaves the store, only to step out into the marketplace of a fantasy world. Soon after he arrives, Subaru is attacked by a band of thugs, but a beautiful white-haired maiden named Satella appears and saves him. Grateful, Subaru wishes to be of use to her and so Satella allows Subaru to accompany her on her pursuit of the individual who stole her insignia. When they find what they are looking for, the victory is short-lived as they are brutally murdered. Subaru finds himself in that same marketplace, having the same interactions as history eerily repeats itself.

Re:Zero was an incredible ride as Subaru underwent several deaths which eventually gnawed away at his psyche. The character known as “Satella” is a mystery: most characters know Satella to be the name of the Witch of Envy. We know that the witch has an incredible hold over Subaru and is quite possibly the reason why he appeared in Lugunica to begin with. His ability in this world, Death By Return, is a classic time-travel ability which completely undoes what has happened up to a certain point… he just has to die first.

Hyoudou Issei is a high schooler who has nothing special going for him in his life, using much of his time to peep on women and fantasize about one day becoming a “Harem King”. His dream is one step closer to reality when a beautiful girl from a different school asks him out; however, she turns out to be a fallen angel who brutally murders him as the sun sets. Issei awakens to a new life when his beautiful high school senior, Rias Gremory, revives him as one of her demon servants and recruits Issei into her Occult Research Club. Now introduced to the brutal world of angels and demons, Issei must train and learn to survive with the help of his new friends.

One of the members of Rias Gremory’s Occult Research Club is Gasper Vladi, a shy human/vampire hybrid who spends most of his time hiding away from others in a box. Rias had sealed him away for a long time as his powers were uncontrollable. He is capable of stopping time due to his sacred gear: the Forbidden Balor View, and is noted as one of Rias’s first Bishops.

15-year-old Kurosaki Ichigo has always been able to see ghosts. After contact with the ghost of a teenage girl, Ichigo’s immense spiritual energy makes him a target for Hollows, evil spirits who were once human souls. However, Ichigo remains blissfully unaware of this until one night, a woman dressed in a black kimono, armed with a katana at her side, appears in his room out of thin air. She claims to be a Shinigami, an entity akin to the Grim Reaper who guides the souls of the departed to the other side. Their initial meeting turns ugly when a Hollow attacks Ichigo’s family and the Shinigami, Kuchiki Rukia, sustains heavy wounds. With their deaths all but sealed, Rukia suggests that Ichigo take some of her powers in order to defeat the Hollow. And on that day, a Shinigami was born.

Reaching far into the Arrancar Arc, the Time Manipulator on our radar is the Number 2 Espada: Baraggan Louisenbairn. The former King of the Hollows’ realm of Hueco Mundo, Barggan is an old man of incredible size capable of controlling the aging process – earning him the title of the “Espada of Old Age”. His powers bring with them a psychological element to Baraggan, whose very character is based off the concept of the fear of death. Knowing death to be the ultimate destiny from which no one can escape (except him, according to himself), Baraggan is a ruthless opponent who uses his power to literally rot the living flesh from the bodies of his opponents.

18-year-old Okabe Rintarou, self-proclaimed mad scientist, rents out an old room in a building in Akihabara, where he and his friends Shiina Mayuri and Hashida “Daru” Itaru create inventions Okabe dubs “Future Gadgets”. When their “Phone Microwave”, a Future Gadget which turns bananas into a green gel for some odd reason, soon becomes capable of sending emails to the past, the three are given the ability to change history. However, despite the exciting developments, Okabe soon realises the true danger of being able to transcend time.

Going by the alias “Hououin Kyouma”, Okabe is an incredibly eccentric and highly entertaining character who, for lack of a simpler expression, gets put through the most. The Phone Microwave leads Okabe into a torturous cycle of watching his best friend Mayuri die countless times in multiple timelines. In the ongoing Steins;Gate: 0, Okabe is a shell of his former self after being able to return to a timeline where Mayuri lives; however that comes at the cost of Okabe losing Makise Kurisu, his romantic interest. However, familiar events begin to transpire as the stifling possibility of having to do it all again looms on the horizon.

The Holy Grail is an ancient artifact of incredible importance. Said to be capable of granting any wish, the Grail has been the catalyst of three brutal wars which ended with no winner. Be that as it may, the Holy Grail does currently reside in the possession of the wealthy Einzbern family, who are certain that the fourth war for the Holy Grail will be different. They hire Emiya Kiritsugu, a man said to be a “Magus Killer”, whose contract with the Einzberns involves marriage to their only daughter, Irisviel. Emiya now finds himself in a deathmatch against six others, each armed with an ancient familiar, each participant having different motivations.

Emiya Kiritsugu, the Mage Killer has an affinity towards elemental magic; however, he has an innate temporal manipulation ability called Innate Time Control, which allows him to control the flow of time in a space and separate that from the outside world. Emiya is also capable of an ability dubbed Time Alter, which isn’t Emiya playing with time itself, but manipulating his own body so that it moves in a way in which the flow of time is no longer in sync with his body, allowing for incredible bursts of speed as well as increased offensive and defensive potential.

Picking up where Dragon Ball Z left off several years ago, Earth is peaceful after the defeat of Majin Buu; however, peace is fleeting as the existence of a never-before-seen threat: gods. Awakening from a long slumber is Beerus, the God of Destruction. Fuelled by a prophecy claiming the existence of a Super Saiyan God, Beerus forced himself into slumber as his attendant, Whis, searched the universe for this entity. Soon enough, their sights land on an obvious contender: Son Goku.

With the world-building that Super heralded back in 2015, alongside the Battle of Gods and Resurrection of F films, the Gods of Destruction exist almost as demiurges, assisted by angel attendants. This is where Beerus’s Whis comes in. Capable of turning back the hands of time a few moments, Whis has saved the Earth from total annihilation before, when a defeated Frieza used a familiar planet-destroying tactic to gain the upper hand. Naturally, after seeing the destruction that his own hubris allowed, Goku takes the glory from Vegeta and defeats Frieza. This was only capable with Whis’ temporal abilities.

29-year-old Fujinuma Satoru is a struggling manga artist who finds himself hurled several minutes back in time before a calamity occurs. Yet to understand the extent of this ability, Satoru calls it “Revival” and tries to use it to save as many lives as possible. When tragedy strikes home and Satoru is framed for the murder of a loved one, Satoru’s Revival sends him 18 years into the past, to 1988. He realises that the murder for which he was framed is intricately linked to the abduction and killing of his classmate, Hinazuki Kayo. Satoru comes to understand the true extent of the damage caused by her death and vows to prevent it; however, is it really that easy?

ERASED is a title which is remembered for the intense amount of hype which it had amassed in the early stages of 2016. Coincidentally, it aired in a year characterised by “time-travel anime”, including some titles which are mentioned on this list. Focusing more on Fujinuma Satoru, the detached mangaka protagonist who is of anomalous age for an anime protagonist at either point in the story. Satoru’s life was never the same again and he very much seems to have suppressed the memories surrounding Kayo’s death until his mother is murdered. Very quickly on, we are offered a tortured protagonist, one who’s sense of justice gets him into trouble on various occasions.

High school senior Konno Makoto is a girl caught in limbo. Completely blank with regards to her future, her teachers apply pressure to get her to figure her life out; however, when she realises that she is capable of literally jumping through time, Makoto’s future takes a backseat to the sheer wonder that is the present. Trying to poke her way around her newfound power, Makoto soon realises the true terrifying potential of time travel.

The thing about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is that it approaches its protagonist much like in a slice of life setting. Makoto is just a regular teenage girl who is trying to forge a path forward into the future while not knowing what it holds. We’ve all been there and for those who went through high school will recognise the consuming level of doubt and worry surrounding the period of time of limbo between high school and adult life. Her time travel power is integral to her growth as a character from the beginning of the film as it allows her to explore her relationships with other characters – multiple times. Also, we learn a lesson from it all: time waits for no one.