One night, an object falls through space and time into the living room of dignified yakuza member Nitta. The object turns out to be a strange girl with psychic powers, but Nitta is reluctant to both take her in and to accept her offer to make use of those powers. Respecting his decision to not use her as a tool, this girl, named Hina, decides to help him anyway as they begin their life together.
Hinamatsuri isn’t just another supernatural child battle show, but rather is runs an intoxicating mix between deadpan/slapstick humor and nice slice of life moments. For chill, yet still entertaining series like Hinamatsuri, look no further.
Anime Like Hinamatsuri
For Fans of Unexpectedly a Caretaker
Usagi Drop
Daikichi Kawachi is a 30-year-old bachelor that works long hours at a respectable job. However, upon hearing the news of his grandfather’s death, he returns home for the funeral only to find out that his grandfather had an illegitimate daughter named Rin. Shy and unapproachable, this young child is shunned by the other members of the family. In his anger that no one will take her in, Daikichi steps up himself and begins his days anew as a single father with no prior childcare experience.
Both shows are about older, single men who are suddenly shouldered with taken care of a reserved little girl. While Hina is supernatural, she still has little working knowledge of the world, similar to Rin in Usagi Drop. However, while both shows focus on nice slice of life moments, Nitta and Hina have more of a mutual friendship rather than the parental relationship in Usagi Drop.
Alice and Zoroku
Sana is a special girl who holds the power of Alice’s Dream, the ability to materialize anything she can imagine. After she escapes from a lab where she was a test subject, she ends up in Shinjuku where she meets an old man named Zouroku, but will he help her escape her pursuers?
Both Hinamatsuri and Alice and Zoroku essentially have the same premise. Supernatural girls run away from their restrictive previous life and hide when they meet a nice, world-wise older man. However, the key difference is that Alice and Zoroku is a little more action oriented.
Beelzebub
Ishiyama High is a school full of delinquents, but they have one rule: Don’t cross Tatsumi Oga, the strongest fighter in school. One day, Oga is sitting by a riverbank when he encounters a floating man that splits down the middle to reveal a baby inside. This baby turns out to be Kaiser de Emperana Beelzebub IV, the son of the Demon Lord. It turns out raising the future lord of the underworld is more trouble than you’d think.
While Hinamatsuri is more of a mature slice of life and Beelzebub is a shounen action type of a show, they have the same basic premise – a thug gets stuck with a child. While they both have some good comedy, Beelzebub has more action and fighting.
For Fans of Psychic Children
Mob Psycho 100
Kageyama Shigeo, otherwise known as Mob, is a young psychic with a wide range of blossoming abilities. Despite having this incredible power, he just wants to become friends with Tsubomi, a girl in his class. Due to negative reactions to his psychic abilities in the past, he now tries to keep them in check. In an effort to learn to better control his abilities, Mob becomes the apprentice to Reigen Arataka, who claims to be a psychic, but is actually a con artist that exploits Mob’s very real powers for money.
Being young with psychic powers is difficult – that is the main takeaway from both shows. There will be people that want to abuse their powers, and both psychic characters in both shows fight against it. It is also worth noting, that they also share a stylish animation style as well as similar slapstick/deadpan humor.
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
Saiki Kusou has a wide array of superpowers that include things like telepathy and telekinesis. He is so overpowered that he could, in fact, conquer the world in just a few days, but Saiki just wants to live a normal life. He dislikes his superpowers and does his best to hide them so he can live peacefully. It doesn’t go well.
Although these are both anime series about people trying to live with and hide secret powers, they are also both comedy shows. Hina’s deadpan humor and Saiki’s situational comedy make them both fun to watch even if they didn’t have a plot behind them.
Kotoura-san
Haruka Kotoura is a school girl that can read people’s minds. Unfortunately, it has caused her nothing but trouble, eventually causing her parent’s divorce. After she moves to a new school, she tries to avoid her classmates, but a classmate of hers finds her power not scary, but intriguing.
Hinamatsuri doesn’t often waver from its slice of life theme, but Kotoura-san goes from dark drama to comedy often and also has a strong focus on slice of life too. Ultimately what ties these two together aside from the psychic main character is that the shows are about those characters learning to live with their abilities.
For Fans of Deadpan Humor
Nichijou
Nichijou is about the daily lives of a trio of three friends who soon find their fate intertwined with a young genius, her robot maid, and talking cat. Needless to say, the normal does not ensue.
While Hinamatsuri isn’t quite as random as Nichijou, they do share a similar love for the deadpan comedy style as well as slapstick nature. While both shows have rather weak plots, you watch them for the characters and their oft-funny interactions.
Barakamon
After losing his temper on a critic, renowned calligraphy artist Sieshuu Handa is exiled to the Goto Islands by his father for a period of self-reflection. There he seeks to find new inspiration for his art, but finds that his neighbors and some neighborhood kids keep getting in his way.
Alongside sharing the premise of a man and a young girl becoming friends in a wholesome not creepy sort of way, Barakamon remains a pretty good comedy. Often the comedy lies in the unexpected nature of the show, and the same can be said of Hinamatsuri. The characters in both are likable and make you want to keep watching.
Daily Lives of High School Boys
This is the tale of three boys that roam the halls of the all-boys school of Sanada North. Their lives are filled with nothing but giant robot drama and true love stories, at least in their imaginations. In reality, these three boys are nothing special, but they try their best to pass the time.
The only similarity between these shows is the slice of life style plot and the style of their humor. Like Hinamatsuri, you learn to love that unexpected slapstick and deadpan humor offered up by the characters, who themselves, are very easy to love.
Did we miss any more good anime recommendations for Hinamatsuri? Let us know in the comments section below.
