Monster Hunter Stories: Ride On is an Animated Adaptation of Monster Hunter: Stories that loosely follows its source material's plot. It aired from 2016 to 2018, with a total of 75 episodes.
This anime contains examples of:
- Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Whilst the English dub settles for using the original opening themes, the episodes on the Arait Play English YouTube channel instead uses a unique theme song. An instrumental of it is used for the closing credits.
- Butt-Monkey: Navirou is never taken seriously, with various characters making snide and insulting comments on his appearance, gluttony, uselessness, and ego, and a Running Gag involves him getting set on fire by Ratha.
- Canon Foreigner: The anime introduces many new characters that were not present in the game outside of the 1.3 update that was exclusive to Japanese versions, with notable examples including Nariki, Hyoro, Mille, Genie, Stone, Anvis, and the Black Riders.
- Damsel in Distress: Avinia is kidnapped by Lord Anvis and his Black Riders due to her long-lost village of Kuang holding the secret to obtaining ultimate power in the form of the Rite of Overlapping.
- Despair Event Horizon: Doctor Manelger undergoes this in the second season, losing his will to conduct research due to his past failures and becoming completely despondent outside of eating donuts and stacking cans. Navirou and the Numbers, despite their qualms with helping out their hated enemy, choose to help him rediscover his passion for research due to him having a clue as to where Avinia was taken, which could only be revealed upon him snapping out of his stupor.
- Dub Name Change: Oddly inverted, at least at first. The first thirteen episodes of the English dub uses the Japanese monster names. Later releases redubbed lines in those episodes to use the English names, though the episodes released on the Arait Play English YouTube channel uses the original versions.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Lilia's Energy Drinks are noted to be incredibly spicy, with their drinkers developing red faces and having smoke blowing out their noses, and both her friends and strangers alike are wary of them as a result.
- Killed Off for Real: The last shot of Lord Anvis following Gale being freed from his possession and everyone celebrating the end of his reign of terror shows him feebly walking across the shores of Monsonne Plains, his physical body having been broken and battered by Gale's previous Heroic Sacrifice, before Shadow approaches him from behind and pulls out a knife while insulting him under her breath, indicating that she killed him offscreen as revenge for killing her sister through a botched Rite of Overlapping.
- Knight of Cerebus: Unlike the other human antagonists, which have all displayed comedic and/or sympathetic traits, there is nothing redeemable about Lord Anvis, and when he appears, the series takes a noticeably more serious shift in tone.
- Madness Mantra: Anvis when under the effects of the Rite of Overlapping repeatedly says "Disappear" as he attempts to kill off the heroes, and Gale falls under it as well when Anvis's consciousness possesses him following his Heroic Sacrifice.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: As opposed to becoming a Knight Templar almost immediately following the aftermath of the village attack like in the game, Cheval, despite wanting to exact vengeance for what happened, has qualms about going through with the eradication of Blighted monsters and wonders if he truly is doing the right thing by killing them off. It's not until Vlau's necklace is destroyed that he fully commits to having Blighted monsters killed off.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Tigrex EX is revealed to have survived its battle with Lute, and upon being subdued by the Numbers and having its modifications removed by Doctor Manelger, it runs off into the wild, free from human influence at last.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Although the show is lighthearted overall, Lord Anvis is a rather cruel and vicious man, getting the Black Riders to rob Riders of their Kinship Stones on the threat of death if they fail him, being perfectly willing to harm and kill young children to get what he wants, coldly sacrificing one of his top subordinates to test an incomplete Rite of Overlapping, and laying siege on entire cities and threatening the lives of everyone in them upon the successful application of the complete Rite of Overlapping, which he accomplished by threatening to slit Avinia's throat if Gale didn't comply, forcing him to reveal the remaining lyrics to save her. He was also personally responsible for the deaths of Avinia and Gale's parents, murdering them in cold blood because their dad used an incomplete Rite on him after he held their mother at knifepoint, and this revelation fills the heroes with utter disgust. A throwaway line from one of his soldiers also implies that he kills them for the smallest of offenses, such as talking to him at the wrong time.
