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Christmas episodes in shonen anime are about as ubiquitous as Tournament arcs are. Not all Christmas episodes in shonen anime involve romantic confessions or an abundance of gifts, but there are a few that do.
Then you have things like Gintama's Santa arc where all sorts of holiday tropes are lampooned or Toradora! which made an entire arc out of the season. The point being: For every heartwarming special, there's a shonen anime that turns up the volume on its own ridiculousness.
This article will focus on ten shonen anime series that made such an indelible impression on viewers that they became instantly recognizable symbols of not only that series, but the entire genre. In fact, they're so popular that they're on a lot of recommended viewing lists.
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Disclaimer: These episodes will contain spoilers for the various shonen anime profiled. It also reflects the author's opinions solely.
"Presenting'' the 10 most recommended classic holiday episodes of shonen anime of all time
1) Toradora! Episodes 17 - 19 - “Mercury Retrogrades at Christmas,” “Under the Fir Tree” and “Christmas Eve Festival”
Toradora!, despite being a romantic comedy, is a shonen anime, considering its manga was published in a shonen magazine. More to the point, this is one of the shonen anime most infamous for making an entire arc out of Christmas. The basic idea revolves around a string of touching events that take place between Taiga and Ryuuji in the days leading up to the holiday party. You can count on hijinks any time Taiga tries to play cupid.
It's considered iconic for a shonen anime given that Taiga was treated like literal garbage at their school. So to see her being happy and content for once, complete with singing to the school with Ami, gives the impression that she's come extremely far.
In Episode 19, Ryuuji surprised Taiga by arriving at her house on Christmas Eve dressed as a Santa Claus teddy bear, rather than as a joke like their usual shenanigans.
2) Love Hina (OVA) – Christmas Special: Silent Eve
The Love Hina Christmas Special is surprisingly heartfelt for a rom-com shonen anime where the protagonist gets hit a lot for his accidental pervert moments. The basic plot is incredibly simple: Keitaro is trying to buy Naru a present and is fussy about it. Meanwhile, Shinobu is due to reunite with her father on Christmas Eve, having not seen him since she ran away to move into the boarding house, the rest of the cast shares.
For a 45-minute special, it makes the most of its runtime by focusing on the actual heart of the romantic drama between Naru and Keitaro. It's also notable and iconic for not having much if any fanservice, no "flying Keitaro" humor, and genuinely playing the story and conflicts absolutely straight.
It's also worth noting that this is where Naru and Keitaro finally get together after 25 episodes of "will they, won't they" and tsundere actions.
3) Komi Can’t Communicate (Ep. 16 & 17) – “It’s just a merry Christmas”, It's just a snowman / It's just a snowball fight / It's just the end of the year / It's just New Year's"
Komi Can't Communicate stars Komi, is about Komi, a high school student who has severe social anxiety and is unable to communicate with others. Komi learns to communicate effectively in Season 2's two-holiday episodes, which include gift exchanges, Komi's family, and an epic snowball fight. All of this adds up to a fantastic Christmas and New Year's episode duology.
The shonen anime showing all of Komi's friends trying to get her gifts whilst she's trying to do the same and avoiding them is great. The snowball war between Komi and friends and some neighborhood kids, however, pushes this into iconic territory for how over the top it's portrayed.
Where else will you see a snowball war as epically depicted as here?
4) Digimon Adventure 02 (Ep. 38) – “A Very Digi-Christmas (Holy Night the Digimon Big Gathering!)
What's better than catching up with the first generation of Digi-Destined during the holidays? A crossover involving the two casts of the first two Digimon Adventure series. The gist of this episode is that it's the holidays and, while several of the D2 kids are cleaning up the Digital World after the Digimon Emperor Ken was defeated, everyone is rushing to get gifts and be with their families.
This episode is also iconic for showing Ken, the former Digimon emperor, making amends with the rest of the group. He starts by cooking them food and inviting them over for the holidays. It's cut short then by a rabid Digimon being unleashed in the real world.
It's fun seeing both Digidestined work together to solve a crisis like that. Plus, the episode ends on a new problem: Control Spires are showing up all over the world and they really need to step up their game.
5) Dr. Stone - Spartan Crafts Club
Dr. Stone's Christmas-themed episode is surprisingly well done for a shonen anime taking place in a dystopian world. The story follows Senku, Kaseki, and Chrome trying to help villagers get ready for winter, assisting with projects like storing electricity and helping automate several processes. Since we're talking about Dr. Stone, that means they start by repurposing materials from the waterwheel they built to create light bulbs.
When it begins to snow, Senku effectively creates a Christmas tree by placing light bulbs on a tree and then removing the air from them. This induces nostalgia in Gen, who realizes that it is Christmas Day.
A Christmas/New Year miracle occurs when they find a large gemstone of scheelite that's used in tungsten. In other words, an ideal electrical conductor compared to copper tubes.
6) Pokémon Chronicles (Ep. 4, 22) – “Pikachu’s Winter Vacation (Delibird’s Dilemma and Snorlax Snowman),” “Pikachu’s Winter Vacation (Christmas Night and Kanga Games)” and Holiday Hi-Jynx/Snow Way Out
It was a tough call between all the different Pokemon episodes that explicitly featured Christmas and the one that got banned from U.S. syndication. So, why not combine them all?
Pikachu's Winter Vacation episodes have been iconic for several moments. From Pikachu and other Pokémon having too much fun and destroying a house to rehabilitating an injured Delibird and retrieving all of their gifts to deliver to making friends with a Winter Snorlax to rescuing a Kangaskhan from a lake.
These episodes are iconic because they feature Pikachu as the main character, whereas Pokemon Chronicles usually focuses on other characters besides Ash and his friends in one-shot episodes. The latter two are about Ash and the company.
While Holiday Hi-Jynx was banned from syndication due to Jynx's original design allegedly being based on Blackface despite still featuring Santa and Christmas, Snow Way Out is also considered a Christmas episode due to Ash and his Pokemon being trapped in the snow and surviving together.
7) Gintama - The Santa Arc
Though labeled as an arc, Gintama's “Santa Arc” is only two episodes long. It follows Kagura’s father and Gintoki, as well as numerous other roguish characters, as they compete to settle who the real Santa Claus is around there for Kagura's sake. As the story often goes with Gintama, this is done in various wacky and over-the-top hijinks involving rocket launchers, fist fights, and pie throwing.
The said episodes lampoon anime tropes and holiday tropes alike, parodying everything from The Little Match Girl to shojo anime, shonen anime, and even fanservice anime.
Gintama is known for making fun of literally every anime that came before it. Despite this, however, there's still a lot of heart in trying to help a teenager believe in the spirit of giving.
8) My Hero Academia –“Have a Merry Christmas!”
Public relations is more than a bit of a problem in the shonen anime My Hero Academia, which Class 1-A inevitably have to deal with. The first half of the special features everyone attempting to give interviews to Mount Lady and Midnight, who both grill the class extensively.
The second half of the episode, on the other hand, focuses on the Christmas holiday. To wit, all of the students (except Bakugo, as usual) dress up as Santa Claus and exchange food and gifts.
Eri attended the celebration and kept confusing Christmas with other holidays. This episode is a welcome respite from the tense Paranormal Liberation War, with even Baguko forced to unwind. It's nice to see kids just being kids at Christmas before the world falls apart.
9) Death Note (Eps. 33-34) – “Scorn,” “Vigilance”
As surprising as this sounds, the thrilling and horrifying shonen anime Death Note does have a Christmas special. In fact, there are two episodes, one of which focuses on Near decorating a Christmas tree in the secret HQ with various handheld game systems. There are also two short manga spoofs featuring Light and Ryuk arguing over what to get for Christmas.
It could be a strange coincidence that this anime depicts the holidays during Mikami's deletion spree. Regardless, it's nice to think that despite all the twists and turns, at least this anime can lighten up the death to focus on the holidays and music festivals.
10) Detective Conan (Ep. 843-844, episodes 885-886) – “The Detective Boys in a Grove (Parts 1 and 2), "Solving Mysteries at the Poirot Café" (Parts 1 and 2)
If a shonen anime like Death Note can show some festive spirit, then so can Detective Conan! The long-running detective shonen anime has plenty of Christmas-themed episodes and cases Conan Edogawa is tasked with solving, whether occurring on Christmas itself or just around that time. This entry will cover four anime episodes for the sake of brevity.
The first case is an attempted murder, occurring at a department store as everyone is trying to buy early Christmas Gifts. This involves a chef being stabbed and trying to get the culprit, which isn't easy since they have three different descriptions of the suspect.
The second takes place as everyone runs to try to catch the Tokyo Kinza Block 4 Christmas Lights. Unfortunately, this was again interrupted by an attempted murder. Weird how the festivities can be suddenly stopped by tragedy in a shonen anime, isn't it?
This concludes our list of ten of the most well-known shonen anime Christmas episodes and specials. There are probably many others that are cuter, more appropriate for the season, or even better. Readers are encouraged to share their favorite Christmas-themed episodes of their favorite shonen anime series in the comments down below.
