The world of anime is a big one, and it can be divided into four general quadrants based on the intended audience. The shonen genre, aimed at boys, is arguably the biggest and most popular, while the shojo genre is another popular one, famous for series such as Fruits Basket and Sailor Moon. For older viewers, there are the josei and seinen genres.
Josei is meant for older female audiences, and its male counterpart, seinen, has plenty of popular titles of its own. Seinen is known for its dark, mature, and sophisticated material, with anime such as Berserk and Vinland Saga coming to mind. However, seinen can be surprisingly diverse, and some seinen series have a more balanced tone or an overall brighter tone. Not every seinen series is a Berserk clone, after all.
10 Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War Blends Seinen With Shojo
At first glance, Kaguya-Sama: Love is War seems like an odd entry into the seinen genre. It looks nothing like Vinland Saga or Gantz. However, series such as Kaguya-Sama help prove that even the seinen genre has some remarkable diversity, and it doesn't define itself entirely with gritty violence or dark themes.
Instead, Kaguya-Sama invites readers into a cheerful but complex world where the students of Shuchiin academy plot against one another to see who will confess their love first, and the cast of characters steadily grows beyond student council president Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya. There's a lot to juggle.
9 Laid-Back Camp Explores The Great Outdoors
Laid-Back Camp is another series that looks like a shojo anime, and in all fairness, any fan of shojo might give Laid-Back Camp a try and find plenty to like about it. This lovely seinen series fits the informal "cute girls doing cute things" genre, not to mention the genre of iyashikei, or relaxing, easygoing animation.
Laid-Back Camp tells the story of several high school friends who share camping as a hobby, and they learn all kinds of things about the great outdoors along the way. Many real-life landmarks and campsites are explored in great detail, too.
8 Ghost In The Shell: Standalone Complex Is Hardcore But Not Too Gritty
It's true that the cyberpunk anime series Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex has its dark and violent moments, but its grittier moments are easily balanced out with lighter moments of hope, love, and humor to make for a more enjoyable narrative. This makes it more accessible to sci-fans of all sorts.
Standalone Complex explores an exciting but dangerous near-future setting where the line between man and machine has become blurred and cybercrime is rampant. It's up to the heroes of Section 9 to keep the peace, and they will explore themes of humanity, hope, despair, and much more along the way.
7 Grand Blue Dreaming Is About Diving, Booze, & Partying
Some seinen series are seinen not because of bloody violence, but because of the use of alcohol and partial nudity, and Grand Blue Dreaming has those things in practically every episode. The main characters are all in college, something an older viewer can more readily relate to.
The protagonist is Iori Kitahara, a first-year college student who joins the diving club and meets the rowdy members who love beer-soaked parties as much as they do diving itself. The series is an upbeat and fun one with all kinds of misadventures and even some romantic subplots.
6 Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Is Seinen At Its Cutest
Series such as Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid help prove that even the notorious seinen genre has its cute side, and series such as Dragon Maid can easily appeal to fans of shonen and shojo, or even josei. The heroine is Ms. Kobayashi, an office worker who used to have an ordinary life until a dragon maid showed up one day.
That dragon maid is Tohru, who is deeply loyal to her new mistress and will do anything from laundry and cooking to doing battle with other dragon reverse-isekai characters who show up in Tokyo. This series is hardly ever dark at all. In fact, characters such as the young Kanna are the polar opposite of that.
5 Chobits Has Robot Girls
The original Chobits manga was drawn by CLAMP, an all-female manga group that also made popular titles such as Cardcaptor Sakura and xxxHolic, among others. This is another seinen series that can easily appeal to fans of shojo or josei, showing how wonderfully open the borders between these genres can be.
Chobits takes place in the near future, where advanced androids known as persocoms are like personal assistants for their owners. Then there's an unusual and highly advanced persocom nicknamed Chii, whom protagonist Hideki Motsukawa found in the trash. They soon begin a curious relationship between man and amnesiac machine.
4 I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying Is A Cheerful Slice-Of-Life Series
Some anime series are incredibly short and have mini-episodes at just half or even less than a quarter of the length of a standard half-hour anime episode. One such series is I Can't Understand What My Husband is Saying. These short but sweet series can be finished in a single sitting, and some of them, despite appearances, are seinen.
This particular anime follows the odd married couple Kaoru and Hajime, with the former being an office worker and the latter, an eccentric but kind otaku shut-in. This series appears quite cartoony, but its dialogue and scenes provide a surprisingly deep look into the world of otaku culture and modern Japanese married life. And its characters are certainly older than shonen-style high school students.
3 Golden Kamuy Is Bloody But Not Excessively Dark
The hit action series Golden Kamuy is in a similar position to Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex. While these series have their fair share of violence and some heavy scenes, they balance out those darker moments with plenty of humor and heartfelt scenes as well, so the narrative isn't singularly defined as "dark."
Golden Kamuy takes place in the years leading up to World War I, following the adventures of Sugimoto and his Ainu friend Asirpa as they trek across the chilly Hokkaido to find a great treasure before other hunters get their hands on it. In many ways, Golden Kamuy may feel like a cowboy Western movie, except set in Japan.
2 After The Rain Balances Drama With Humor & Romance
After the Rain should appeal to fans of shojo and josei, being a romance/drama starring an earnest female lead named Akira Tachibana. This seinen series appears to be a romance between Akira and her middle-aged boss Mr. Kondo, but that's only half the story.
As a whole, After the Rain is a story of hope and healing, and Akira learns to move on from her ankle injury and reignite her passion for running track, where she can be free like the wind. The story has its heavy moments, but it's balanced with more than a little humor and some slice-of-life hijinks. Nothing excessively dark or heartbreaking happens.
1 Magical Sempai Is Set In High School, Like Kaguya-Sama
Like Kaguya-Sama, the short but sweet series Magical Sempai is set in high school, but the focus is on magic tricks, not on high school life itself. An unnamed boy with a bowl cut gets roped into the magical antics of a female upperclassman, an unnamed girl who suffers serious stage fright. She's no David Copperfield.
Magical Sempai will appeal to most fans of shonen, and this cheerful, easygoing series teaches the viewers how some basic but fun magic tricks work, from card tricks to making things seem to appear or vanish in thin air. It's also funny to see a high school character act serious while wearing a top hat.