10 Anime Like A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice doesn’t hit you where you expect. It’s sold as a romance, or as a story about bullying, but what it actually is — what it stays with you for — is a story about guilt. Not clean, redemptive guilt that resolves in a hug. The sticky kind. The kind where apologizing doesn’t fix anything and being forgiven feels worse than being punished. Shoya spends the whole film trying to repay a debt that can’t be repaid, and the movie is honest enough not to pretend the ledger ever balances.

That’s the real subject of this list: anime about people who broke something — a friendship, a person, themselves — and have to live with the pieces. Some are direct matches. Some share only the emotional texture. All of them understand that regret is a long game.

1. Your Lie in April

The obvious companion piece, and the right one to watch second. Where A Silent Voice is about the guilt of the person who caused harm, Your Lie in April is about the person who lives under harm’s shadow — the weight of what wasn’t said, and the cost of staying silent. Kousei’s grief is the same shape as Shoya’s: a past he can’t look at directly, expressed through performance instead of words. It’s more melodramatic and more beautiful in equal measure, and the ending is a gut-punch that still lands on rewatch. Bring tissues; you’ve been warned twice.

2. March Comes in Like a Lion

The best anime ever made about depression, and the show A Silent Voice fans deserve. Rei is a professional shogi player carrying grief and self-loathing with a quietness that feels real — no dramatic breakdowns, just the slow, exhausting work of staying alive. What connects it to A Silent Voice is the honesty about how recovery actually works: not through one big breakthrough, but through small kindnesses from patient people. The animation of his internal world is some of the most inventive in the medium. Slow, warm, devastating.

3. To Your Eternity

Here’s the strange one, and I include it on purpose. To Your Eternity is about an immortal being learning what loss is by experiencing it — repeatedly, irreversibly, forever. It’s the same subject as A Silent Voice (guilt, grief, the permanence of damage) but explored at the scale of centuries instead of one school year. The first episode alone is a masterclass in quiet devastation. It’s not for everyone — the show is openly cruel to its characters — but if A Silent Voice made you want to sit with the sadness instead of escaping it, this is the next level.

4. A Sign of Affection

The warm pick. Yuki is a deaf college student, and A Sign of Affection follows her falling in love with a boy who learns her language instead of asking her to learn his. Where A Silent Voice treats deafness through the lens of the harm done to a deaf character, A Sign of Affection simply lets a deaf woman be the protagonist of a soft, happy romance — and that contrast is the whole value of the recommendation. It’s healing. Genuinely. If A Silent Voice left you needing to see the other side of the coin, this is that coin.

5. Orange

The time-travel cousin. A girl receives letters from her future self, ten years later, begging her to save a classmate who doesn’t survive the year. The premise sounds gimmicky but the execution is grounded in exactly the A Silent Voice material: small cruelties, missed chances, the unbearable question of “what could I have done?” It’s about regret as a physical force — the future literally writing to the past — and it treats depression and guilt with more respect than most shows manage. Bring the same tissue budget.

6. Komi Can’t Communicate

The comedy counterweight, and more substantial than it looks. Komi has a communication disorder so severe she can barely speak, and the show is about her slowly building friendships with a hundred people — one at a time, each one a small victory. The connection to A Silent Voice is the fundamental subject: communication as something hard, earned, and never taken for granted. It’s fluffy where the film is heavy, but the core insight is identical, and sometimes you need the version that makes you laugh instead of cry.

7. Ranking of Kings

No romance, no school, no bully — and still the most A Silent Voice-adjacent show on this list in spirit. Bojji is a deaf prince whose kindness is read as weakness by everyone around him, and the show is about a good person refusing to become bitter. It shares the film’s core belief: that gentleness is a form of strength, and that the world punishes it anyway. The first cour is as good as fantasy anime gets, full stop. Watch it for Bojji; stay for the best stepmother in fiction.

8. Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

Ignore the title — this is the show A Silent Voice fans keep recommending to each other, and for good reason. Behind the supernatural framing (each arc is a “syndrome” that literalizes teenage pain), it’s a series of small, precise stories about guilt, insecurity, and the things people do to each other out of fear. The Kaede arc in particular is the closest television has come to A Silent Voice’s specific sadness. It’s smarter and funnier than the premise suggests, and it respects its characters’ pain enough to never mock it.

9. The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity

The manga that became the romance community’s consensus pick, and its anime adaptation arrived right on time. A boy from a “bad” school and a girl from a “good” one meet at a bakery counter, and what follows is a romance built on exactly the A Silent Voice virtues: patience, miscommunication that actually gets resolved, and the slow repair of reputations people didn’t choose. It’s gentle without being weightless, and it treats its characters’ insecurities with real care. If the film’s forgiveness theme was your favorite part, this is the show for you.

10. Beastars

The wild-card finale. Beastars is about a wolf in love with a rabbit in a society where that’s monstrous, and beneath the surface it’s the same story as A Silent Voice: a protagonist terrified of his own capacity for harm, trying to be gentle in a body the world reads as dangerous. Legoshi’s guilt isn’t earned the way Shoya’s is — his crime is in his nature, not his choices — but the emotional experience is the same: self-loathing, cautious kindness, and the terrifying work of being trusted. The CGI takes three episodes to get used to; the writing is worth it.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What’s the closest anime to A Silent Voice? Your Lie in April for the emotional register; March Comes in Like a Lion for the honesty about guilt and recovery.
• Is A Silent Voice a romance? Partly — but it’s primarily a drama about bullying, guilt, and forgiveness. The romance is real but it’s not the film’s center of gravity.
• Which of these have happy endings? A Sign of Affection, Komi, Bunny Girl Senpai (most arcs), and Ranking of Kings land warmly. The rest you should approach with the same caution you’d bring to the film itself.
• What should I watch first? If you want to cry again: Your Lie in April. If you want to heal: A Sign of Affection. If you want something completely different that still fits: Ranking of Kings.

The film’s real lesson — that forgiveness doesn’t fix the past, it just makes the future bearable — is rare in any medium. These ten shows each understand it in their own way. Start wherever the grief is.

Looking for your next watch? Our anime that will make you cry roundup and our anime where the bad boy changes for love guide are the natural next stops.