Best animated series

23850 duels later, Scooby-Doo (series) remains #1 in the Cartoons ranking with 1473 ELO points, while The Simpsons holds second place at 1440 ELO.

The sharpest divide appears between ranks 2 and 3, where 40 ELO points separate The Simpsons from Arcane. That gap marks the clearest boundary in the top tier, setting the established giants apart from newer contenders. Scooby-Doo (series) wins 63% of its duels, matching The Simpsons in win rate despite sitting higher in ELO. The podium mixes decades-old franchises with recent productions, suggesting voters reward both nostalgia and fresh ambition. Further down, The Amazing World of Gumball and South Park tie at 1395 ELO points, locked in a statistical dead heat for fourth place. At the bottom, Kung Fu Chicken languishes at rank 83 with 969 ELO points, losing nearly two-thirds of its encounters. The distance between the podium and the cellar reveals a community with firm convictions about what defines quality animation, leaving little room for shows that fail to connect.

The ranking draws on 23850 duels involving 106 players who sorted through 83 contenders. Each matchup refines the hierarchy, pushing long-running series and breakout hits into direct competition. The standings were updated on 10 October 2026, capturing the latest shifts in voter preferences. Head to VAINKEURZ to cast your own votes and reshape the order, pitting your favorites against the field in head-to-head duels that determine which cartoons rise and which fall.

Updated on October 10, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →