From cursed blades to reality-warping artifacts, anime has given us weapons that could reshape worlds. Some grant their wielders godlike power. Others come with terrible prices. And a few are so broken they practically guarantee victory.
We’ve ranked the most powerful anime weapons based on raw destructive capability, versatility, lore significance, and how much they’ve shaped their respective series. These aren’t just tools—they’re legends.
The List
25. Scissor Blade
- Series: Kill la Kill
- Why it’s here: Forged to cut Life Fibers, the only weapon capable of permanently destroying clothing-based life forms. In Ryuko’s hands, it grows to absurd sizes and combines with Senketsu for devastating attacks.
24. Ea (Sword of Rupture)
- Series: Fate series
- Why it’s here: Gilgamesh’s ultimate weapon predates the concept of swords. Enuma Elish, its ultimate attack, recreates the primordial forces that separated heaven and earth. It’s literally a weapon that existed before the world was formed.
23. Dominator
- Series: Psycho-Pass
- Why it’s here: A gun that reads your target’s psychological state and determines if they deserve death. In Lethal Eliminator mode, it liquefies targets instantly. The terrifying part? You can’t fake your way out of its judgment.
22. Dragon Slayer
- Series: Berserk
- Why it’s here: Too big to be called a sword. After being bathed in so much demonic blood, it exists in both physical and astral planes, making Guts one of the few humans capable of harming apostles and demons permanently.
21. Tessaiga
- Series: Inuyasha
- Why it’s here: A sword forged from a demon’s fang that grows stronger with each enemy absorbed. Its various techniques—Wind Scar, Backlash Wave, Adamant Barrage—make it adaptable to any situation. And it seals Inuyasha’s demon blood, preventing him from losing himself.
20. Zangetsu
- Series: Bleach
- Why it’s here: Ichigo’s Zanpakuto evolves with him, from a giant cleaver to twin blades representing his merged heritage. In Bankai form, Tensa Zangetsu compresses his power into devastating speed and cutting ability that threatens even transcendent beings.
19. Z-Sword
- Series: Dragon Ball Z
- Why it’s here: The legendary blade sealed the Old Kai for millions of years. While it broke against Katchin, that breaking released a being capable of unlocking Gohan’s true potential—making it more valuable broken than whole.
18. Punisher
- Series: Trigun
- Why it’s here: Nicholas D. Wolfwood’s signature cross-shaped arsenal contains a machine gun, rocket launcher, automatic pistols, and works as a devastating melee weapon. It weighs hundreds of pounds—only someone enhanced by Chapel can wield it.
17. Anti-Spiral Missiles
- Series: Gurren Lagann
- Why it’s here: Missiles the size of galaxies thrown at galaxy-sized mecha. This is peak Gurren Lagann absurdity—weapons so large they warp the scale of conflict beyond human comprehension. And the heroes catch them and throw them back.
16. Murasame
- Series: Akame ga Kill!
- Why it’s here: One cut equals certain death. The cursed blade contains a poison that kills almost instantly with no known cure. There’s no fighting it, no resisting it—just one scratch and your fate is sealed.
15. Excalibur
- Series: Fate series (and others)
- Why it’s here: The Sword of Promised Victory, crystallized hope of humanity. When unsealed, its power rivals the strongest Noble Phantasms. In Saber’s hands, it’s won the Holy Grail War multiple times and destroyed entities far beyond normal Servants.
14. Lostvayne
- Series: Seven Deadly Sins
- Why it’s here: Meliodas’s Sacred Treasure creates physical clones that retain a portion of his power. Combined with his Full Counter ability, he can create armies of himself, each capable of reflecting any attack back with multiplied force.
13. Ryujin Jakka
- Series: Bleach
- Why it’s here: The oldest and most powerful fire-type Zanpakuto, wielded by Yamamoto. Its flames can reach 15 million degrees, hot enough to destroy soul society just by being active. Its Bankai, Zanka no Tachi, is considered too dangerous to use in populated areas.
12. Spear of Longinus
- Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Why it’s here: A weapon created by an ancient alien race, capable of piercing AT Fields and killing Angels—beings that shrug off nuclear weapons. Two of them were used in Instrumentality to reshape all of humanity.
11. Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
- Series: Gurren Lagann
- Why it’s here: Is a mecha a weapon? When it’s 52.8 billion light-years tall and throws galaxies as shuriken, yes. STTGL represents the ultimate expression of Spiral Power—a weapon formed from fighting spirit itself, larger than the observable universe.
10. Samehada
- Series: Naruto
- Why it’s here: A sentient sword that eats chakra and chooses its own wielder. It can drain opponents mid-combat, heals its user, and even fuses with them. Kisame and Samehada together were near-unstoppable, with virtually infinite chakra reserves.
9. The Sword of Totsuka
- Series: Naruto
- Why it’s here: An ethereal blade that seals anything it pierces into an eternal genjutsu world of drunken dreams. There’s no escape, no unsealing—just permanent removal from existence. Itachi’s Susanoo wielded this perfect offense.
8. The Founding Titan
- Series: Attack on Titan
- Why it’s here: If a titan is a weapon, the Founding Titan is the ultimate one. It can control all Eldians, rewrite their biology, create colossal titans from scratch, and reshape memories across generations. In the wrong hands, it’s a species-ending threat.
7. Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon
- Series: Gintama
- Why it’s here: Just kidding. (But its finish really is high quality.)
7. Longinus Smasher
- Series: Getter Robo Armageddon
- Why it’s here: A weapon that channels Getter Rays powerful enough to destroy entire battleships with a single shot. The Shin Getter Robo’s ultimate attack can devastate armies—and that’s before it evolves into more powerful forms.
6. Ea (Enuma Elish at Full Power)
- Series: Fate/Strange Fake
- Why it’s here: When Gilgamesh actually tries, Ea’s output is stated to be capable of destroying the world. In Strange Fake, he fights seriously and demonstrates power levels his stay Night self never approached.
5. The Death Note
- Series: Death Note
- Why it’s here: Write a name, person dies. No defense, no escape, no detection. The Death Note isn’t powerful because of raw destruction—it’s powerful because it’s perfect assassination. Light killed thousands with nothing but a pen.
4. Dragon Balls
- Series: Dragon Ball
- Why it’s here: Seven balls that summon an eternal dragon capable of granting almost any wish—resurrection, immortality, planetary destruction, or even erasing beings from existence (Super Dragon Balls). The stakes of every Dragon Ball arc come from these.
3. The Infinity Gauntlet (Anime equivalent: Super Dragon Balls)
- Series: Dragon Ball Super
- Why it’s here: The Super Dragon Balls, created by Zalama, have no limitations. Zeno used them to wish away entire universes. They can undo anything, create anything, and have no known restrictions except gathering them.
2. The Anti-Spiral’s Infinity Big Bang Storm
- Series: Gurren Lagann
- Why it’s here: An attack that replicates the energy of the Big Bang and concentrates it into a blast. The Anti-Spiral, weaponizing the birth of universes, nearly ended Team Dai-Gurren with raw creation-level force.
1. Zeno’s Erasure
- Series: Dragon Ball Super
- Why it’s here: Not a physical weapon, but the ultimate power. Zeno erases universes on a whim. Not destroys—erases. No trace, no afterlife, no memory. When Zeno decided the Tournament of Power’s losers would cease to exist, they did.
What makes Zeno’s power the ultimate “weapon” is its completeness. You can’t resist it. You can’t escape it. You can’t even fight back because you cease to exist so completely that you never existed. Even immortals are vulnerable—Zamasu’s merged form was erased entirely.
The only reason Zeno isn’t constantly terrifying is his childlike personality. But that makes him scarier—a being with no malice who simply decides things should be gone, and they’re gone.
Honorable Mentions
- Gae Bolg (Fate series) – Reverses causality to always hit the heart
- Tenseiga (Inuyasha) – Revives the dead, making death impermanent
- Shusui (One Piece) – Black blade that increases cutting power indefinitely
- Kubikiribocho (Naruto) – Regenerates from the iron in blood
- Soul Edge (Soul Calibur) – Corrupts wielders with infinite power hunger
- Yamato (Devil May Cry) – Cuts through dimensions themselves
- Chains of Heaven (Fate) – Grow stronger the more divine the target
- Gun (Trigun) – Vash’s revolver, planet-scarring potential
How We Ranked
Destructive Capability: Raw damage output matters. Universe-ending weapons outrank city-level ones.
Versatility: Can the weapon adapt? Weapons with multiple functions or unexpected applications ranked higher.
Defenses/Counters: Is there any way to resist or block it? Weapons with no counter ranked higher than those with known weaknesses.
Lore Significance: What role does the weapon play in its world? Artifacts central to entire cosmologies outrank random powerful items.
Wielder Dependency: Does the weapon work for anyone, or does it require a specific wielder? More accessible power ranked slightly higher.