Be it a lighthearted dramedy of love blossoming in the silliest of circumstances, a fantastical journey to find oneself, or a heavy, dark tale of despair and psychological trauma, the genre of drama has a very wide range of what shows and films are included. In any case, drama itself focuses heavily on themes of emotionally intense personal conflict and development. Even in the rich medium of anime, dramatic themes, including realistic or relatable experiences of the human condition, and serious tones through character-driven narratives, help engage the audience’s own emotions and provoke thought.
Mysteries to keep you guessing with their whodunits. Fantasy, supernatural, and sci-fi can transcend realism yet remain relatable. Psychological thrillers that spike adrenaline and make one question reality, mentality, and existence itself. Romance evokes tender feelings and self-discovery, and has a wonderful, decades-long list of all-timers. Even comedy that induces laughter overlapping bittersweet tears — Drama takes many forms. And for whatever anime drama you’re craving, be it historical, coming-of-age, tragic, or comedic, you’re definitely going to want to add these to your watchlist.
10) Toradora!
Ryuuji Takasu is often mistaken for a delinquent in high school with his intimidating appearance, even though he’s actually gentle and kind. One day, he ends up running into an odd situation with the “Palmtop Tiger”, Taiga Aisaka, named for her feisty personality. After they sort out a mistakenly placed love letter Taiga intended for someone else, the two eventually end up confessing their affection for each other’s best friends.
Even though Taiga and Ryuuji team up to be each other’s wingmen, they start catching unrequited feelings for each other. What ever shall they do? This anime has many romance anime hallmarks, including love triangles and “will they, won’t they” tropes, yet its execution will immediately feel original and authentic. Toradora! is a classic romance dramedy that’ll be sure to tug on your heartstrings and keep you on your toes.
Toradora! can be streamed on Prime.
9) Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
The Elric brothers, in their endeavor to bring their mother back from the dead, ignored the ban on human transmutation and ended up paying a hefty price. While trespassing on the taboo cost Edward an arm and a leg, Alphonse lost his entire body. With their bio-mechanical engineer neighbor and friend, Winry, able to fit Edward with advanced automail prosthetic limbs, Alphonse had his soul bound to an entire suit of armor in Edward’s attempt to save him. Determined to restore their bodies, they set out to find the Philosopher’s Stone, an item said to allow an alchemist to defy the traditional laws of Equivalent Exchange, and become caught in the middle of a conspiracy along the way.
With secrets, mysteries, and conspiracies in a dark, fantastical, drama-packed steampunk adventure, the determined brothers face extremely high stakes in their quest. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a classic that has been at the top of the charts for anime in general for many years, and for good reason.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood can be streamed on Netflix and Crunchyroll.
8) The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Chise Hatori, a young girl who has faced ridicule from her peers and abandonment from her family because of her strange abilities, holds onto one last trickle of hope for a place to call home by selling herself in a mysterious auction after being at the end of her rope. Having been sold for five million pounds to a tall masked gentleman, she finds herself magically transported to a picturesque cottage in rural England. Learning that she’s a prized being called a Sleigh Beggy, her buyer, the magus Elias Ainsworth, also intends for her to be his apprentice and bride. With a new perspective on a world full of fae and monsters, Chise is finally able to embrace her magical side and learn to connect with others.
Although labeled as a romance anime, the genre isn’t nearly as prominent as the series’s fantasy-drama aspects as Chise navigates letting go of her past traumas and embracing her new, otherworldly life. With a cozy, rural setting and magical, fantastical creatures, The Ancient Magus’ Bride is a show that focuses largely on connecting with others and the struggles both externally and internally that come with such an endeavor, whether whimsical or realistic.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
7) Link Click
Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang run the Time Photo Studio under their landlady and close friend Qiao Ling. Under the guise of a photo studio, their trade instead involves the client providing the photo. With it, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang are able to travel back in time. While Lu Guang provides guidance with his ability to see 12 hours into the photo’s future, Cheng Xiaoshi leaps back to the moment the photo was taken, assuming the identity of the photographer along with all of their memories and emotions. The two must then work together in order to solve the client’s request and relieve them of their past regret. But witnessing increasingly tragic events progressively takes a toll on Cheng Xiaoshi and eventually garners unwanted attention.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, but to Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, and their clients, it’s worth so much more. The use of photographs here isn’t just a visual symbol, but an allegory that pervades the entirety of the narrative. The photos capture the moment the person’s life changes course; A candid view of their life’s lens and exposure to their emotions and memories; Trying to find a resolution without changing the composition of events. Link Click, as a Chinese supernatural drama, gives truly vibrant developments within the snapshots of the human experience.
Link Click can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
6) Neon Genesis Evangelion
As Earth is attacked by strange celestial alien beings known as Angels, it’s up to the mysterious scientific organization NERV, headed by Gendo Ikari, to defend humanity through the use of Evangelion, giant piloted humanoid “robots”. When Gendo calls upon his abandoned son Shinji to become one of these pilots, Shinji, alongside fellow pilots Asuka Langley Soryu and Rei Ayanami, faces a lot more at stake than defending humanity from giant monsters, as the secrets behind NERV and Gendo’s ambitions are revealed.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is widely renowned as a classic and one of the absolute best anime of not just the ’90s, but of all time. Absolutely packed with metaphysical and psychoanalytic symbolism, allegories, and frankly just all-around excellent action and imagery, this is a series that only gets more interesting over time and with every watch. With so much to offer, the rabbit hole of theories and thought-provoking relatability is practically endless. While fans over the years have been confused or even upset over the abstract original ending and esoteric analogies throughout the series, sometimes it can take even multiple rewatches to catch the obscure foreshadowing, references, and connections in this mecha psychological drama.
Neon Genesis Evangelion can be streamed on Netflix.
5) Berserk
Guts, a wandering mercenary brandishing an immense greatsword, typically prefers to work alone. But when he is surprisingly bested in a duel by Griffith, the beautiful, ambitious leader and founder of the mercenary group known as the Band of the Hawk, he finds himself inducted into the troop. Within three years’ time, Guts has become a commander in the group he’s grown close to. With Guts’s immense strength combined with Griffith’s leadership, the Band of the Hawk becomes renowned for dominating every battle. But with Griffith’s underlying dark, selfish goal, their successes in battle eventually come at great costs.
There’s no sugarcoating it: Berserk does not have a happy ending, either in the current runs of the anime or in the manga as it continues to release installments depicting a world slipping into ruin. In fact, it doesn’t have many positive developments in general. Most anything bad that can happen does. If you can imagine some of the most horrific things that could happen to people, it’s probably included in this series. Especially as a grimdark fantasy drama series, there’s also plenty of unimaginable horrors with literal unearthly monsters to terrorize humanity in unfathomably gruesome ways. Even then, more than one of the most brutal monsters are actually human, providing plenty of betrayal, trauma, and drama themselves.
4) Steins;Gate
Alongside his supportive childhood friend Mayuri Shiina and otaku hacker roommate Itaru Hashida, mad scientist Rintarou Okabe of the Future Gadget Laboratory endeavors to create scientific and technological innovations. Despite his overwhelming enthusiasm, Okabe and his team have only managed to create a microwave that seemingly only has the odd ability to transform bananas into green goo. At first, when he discovers that the microwave can be used for time travel itself, it seems like a groundbreaking scientific innovation. Unfortunately, as things spiral out of control and the discovery garners unwanted attention, Okabe soon learns that time travel isn’t just a toy, but leads to dire, traumatizing consequences for both his loved ones and his own sanity. Realizing all too late the damage that’s been done, Okabe is determined to move time itself to set things right.
Time travel may seem like an exciting prospect to have, but, as Okabe realizes, it soon becomes clear through cycles of psychological and emotional torment that not everything can be solved with such technology. Steins;Gate is a great choice if you’re looking to get invested in a psychological thriller sci-fi drama anime with deep emotional connections and the consequences of fragile conditions.
Steins;Gate can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
3) Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
While ten years is a huge amount of time for others, it’s but a drop in the bucket in Frieren’s extremely long lifespan of over a thousand. Upon disbanding after a decade-long quest to defeat the Demon King and returning to her everlasting hobby of traveling to collect spells, outliving two of her former companions, Frieren realizes how the time spent with them truly impacted her and regrets having taken the bonds and precious memories for granted. So, she journeys beyond what was once a task completed to forge stronger bonds with people and strive to create and understand personal connections.
Despite having just recently come out last year, this series has not only quickly become a renowned work of Madhouse and popular success for 2024, but one of the best anime of all time. With complex characters the audience can really get familiarized with along their extensive journey, both across the continent and inwardly, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a fantasy adventure drama that should be on any otaku’s watchlist.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End can be streamed on Netflix, Prime, Hulu, or Crunchyroll where available.
2) Takopi’s Original Sin
When an octopus-like alien creature known as a Happian from Happy Planet lands on Earth, there is only one thing it wishes to do: spread happiness. Upon meeting the despondent Shizuka Kuze, the newly named Takopi makes it his mission to make Shizuka happy. Although innocent, naïve Takopi has known nothing but happiness, for Shizuka, the opposite is true. With classmates who incessantly bully her, an absent father, and a mother who may as well be just as absent, Shizuka’s life seems to be filled with nothing but misery. That is, except for Shizuka’s sole source of solace: her dog, Chappy. Seeing the bond that Shizuka and Chappy share only drives Takopi to be ever more determined to achieve his goal. Unfortunately, though Takopi tries his best to make Shizuka smile, his efforts often lead to unintended consequences.
Centering on hard-hitting themes of trauma and feelings of hopelessness, although everything seems to go wrong in Takopi’s Original Sin despite Takopi’s good intentions to attempt to help Shizuka, there’s something to be said about putting forth effort to try to better another’s life that can still leave a transcendental impact. If not misplaced, that is.
Takopi’s Original Sin can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
1) The Apothecary Diaries
When Maomao, an apothecary’s daughter from the red-light district, gets kidnapped and sold to be a servant of the imperial palace, she’s thrust into a world of mysterious disturbances within bureaucratic disputes. Trying to hide her literacy and medicinal knowledge, when the emperor’s children begin falling gravely ill, she can’t help herself but to quietly solve the “curse” anonymously. When the beautiful eunuch Jinshi manages to single her out, she’s promoted to concubine Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting and poison taster. But as Maomao’s skills prove her indispensable, she begins facing risks that go beyond the hazards of tasting for poisons.
As a historical mystery drama, The Apothecary Diaries includes a heavy dose of drama with romantic undertones and piling on mysteries within mysteries, both episodic and throughout the overarching plot, that’s sure to keep you hooked and guessing. Maomao’s methodical and intuitive investigations often rely on a piece of wisdom from her adoptive father: staying silent on half-baked conjectures until substantial evidence supports a hypothesis. And her investigations often uncover much more than anyone could expect.
The Apothecary Diaries can be streamed on Netflix, Hulu, or Crunchyroll where available.
What’s your favorite drama anime? Mystery, romance, fantasy, grimdark, sci-fi, mecha, action, adventure — Let us know in the comments!
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