Six years is an era, especially for a fast-paced medium like anime. Yet there is one fact that has not changed. For more than six years the highest rated episode on IMDb remains the samewith an average that is almost scary and a volume of reviews that makes it difficult to consider it a simple stroke of luck.
The paradox is that, in the meantime, the general level has certainly not collapsed. 2025 offered episodes that made you jump out of your seatfrom the pure action of Solo Leveling 2 to the emotional blow of One Piece in the tale of Kuma’s past. Then there were darker surprises, like Takopi’s Original Sinsand a final season of My Hero Academia which continued to grind out numbers on IMDb, with rare cases of series capable of keeping each episode above 9. In a year like this, the fact that no one managed to undermine first place already says a lot.
That first place was won by Vinland Saga, season 1 episode 24. Titled “End of the Prologue”, released on December 29, 2019, it still travels on a score of 9.9 with more than 30,000 reviews. It’s not just the best episode. It is the episode that closes a discussion that began with the first episode.
5 anime that we recommend you watch if you love Vinland Saga.
The secret lies in that word contained in the title, prologue. Makoto Yukimura sets up the entire first season as if it were a setup for something bigger, a long corridor that leads Thorfinn to a wall. Throughout the series we follow him as a warrior consumed by revenge, forced to live in the shadow of the man he hates most. It works because it doesn’t sell us growth as an achievement. He sells us obsession as a cageepisode after episode, until the cage becomes the only thing we know about him.
WARNING, spoilers follow.
And then comes the ending and changes the weight of everything. Askeladd, who throughout the season emerges as the true focus of the story, takes center stage. His statement about the true king and his death are not a shock. They are the harvest of meticulous sowing beforehand, and the kind of harvest that retroactively rewrites what you just saw. Suddenly we are no longer just watching the end of a revenge. We watch an identity break apart.
Here comes the baddest and smartest thing of the episode. It doesn’t end with a solution, closes leaving the viewer with a question. What will Thorfinn do now, if his purpose has been shattered? It’s the true threshold between season 1 and season 2, when the series can finally move on the journey that was promised in the background, that of redemption and humanity.
To make everything even more beautiful is a production detail. This episode is the last of Vinland Saga made by WIT Studio and you feel the care in the way key moments are treated.
Obviously, it must be said that the IMDb rankings do not measure quality in an absolute sense, they measure the enthusiasm that can be driven by fandom, timing and social virality. Yet the very duration of the primacy, which is standing there at the top year after yearmakes “End of the Prologue” a special case. Not so much because it’s really perfect, but because it’s the signal that really made a mark and left something in the spectators.
What do we know about the third season of Vinland Saga?
One piece. New edition (Vol. 2) it is one of the best sellers on today
Related News :