After growing up on an island where the locals prefer to stay isolated from the rest of the world, Reisaline Stout, or Ryza as her friends call her, is in search of adventure to break up the monotony.
With her friends Lent and Tao, they use an abandoned rowboat to visit the mainland. While their adventure quickly ends after they meet the daughter of a traveling merchant and are saved by her bodyguards, it inspired Ryza to take up learning alchemy. Alchemy is a scientific art that entwines adventure and discovery, delighting Ryza with each new success.
With her outings now fueled by looking for new alchemy ingredients, she soon begins to unravel the secret of her hometown.
Based on a rather slice of life JRPG, Atelier Ryza makes a rather lovely, if somewhat unambitious, slice of life fantasy anime. The charm of the Atelier series has always been its characters, and Ryza is the most easy to love. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout, head on down below.
Anime Like Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout
For Fans of Alchemists
Atelier Escha & Logy – Alchemists of the Dusk Sky
In order to prepare for the eventual Dusk’s End, a nation of alchemists devote their efforts to rediscovering lost alchemic arts that may help them survive. Many alchemists gather at Central, an organization that is dedicated solely to conducting research on how to stop the Dusk.
In a small frontier town, Escha is using her knowledge of ancient alchemy to help people. At Central, Logy, having learned the latest alchemy techniques, asks to be transferred to a small understaffed frontier town.
Together, the pair make up the Development Department in the town and learn to meld their techniques together.
“Atelier” is a whole franchise of games, and much larger than you would expect a game series about just characters running an alchemist shop to be. So while Atelier Ryza and Atelier Escha & Logy are part of the same franchise, they follow different characters.
That said, Atelier is a character-driven, more slice of life series. Both series follow alchemists of various levels of skill as they form deep bonds with the characters around them. If you like Atelier Ryza, you will like Atelier Escha & Logy because they are so fundamentally similar.
Management of a Novice Alchemist
After her parent’s death, young Sarasa was inspired to become an alchemist and graduated from the Royal Alchemist Academy.
Sacrificing friendships for hard work, she graduates with top marks and under the apprenticeship of a master alchemist.
This master helps her get set up with her first alchemy shop. It is in the middle of nowhere, but surrounded by top-notch alchemy ingredients.
While starting up a new shop is hard work, Sarasa is no stranger to working hard for her dreams.
Both Atelier Ryza and Management of a Novice Alchemist are anime that follow new alchemists. However, while Ryza is a complete rookie with a teacher that is often just like, “go figure it out yourself,” Sarasa actually attended official schooling and is a recent graduate.
Both series are meant to be rather cute slice of life fantasy anime about struggling newbies, but while Ryza is adventuring and discovering new alchemy techniques, Sarasa is struggling to get a shop of her own going in a very secluded location.
For Fans of Slice of Life Fantasy
Wandering Witch – The Journey of Elaina
Ever since she was a child, Elaina has been enamored by the stories in her favorite book. It tells the tale of Nike, a famous witch who enjoyed many great adventures around the world.
After becoming a fully-fledged witch herself, she departs, becoming entangled in a number of stories of those she meets around the world.
Both Wandering Witch and Atelier Ryza follow characters who are bored of their everyday surroundings and want to see more of the world. While Elaina goes on a grand wandering journey, Ryza quickly gets derailed as she decides to return home and become an alchemist.
However, both series are often fantasy slice of life anime, but with that small element of adventure. Ryza gets her adventure as she seeks out new ingredients for her alchemy while Elaina revels in each new place she visits.
RPG Real Estate
After the defeat of the demon lord, the world is at peace. Kotone Kazairo is a newly graduated mage who is looking to start her life.
She starts by visiting Rent Plan Guide (RPG) Real Estate, to find a home. The company also happens to be the place she will also work as well.
There, she discovers the company’s dedication to catering to its diverse pool of customers and finding a home to suit all client’s needs is not always so easy.
Both Atelier Ryza and RPG Real Estate are anime set in a fantasy land that follow people just working jobs there instead of doing something so common like saving the world.
In both series, you follow very cute girls as they struggle and succeed at a new job. They are built on these nice girls helping members of their community with problems that can be solved by their professions.
As these are fantasy-set slice of life anime, they have a big emphasis on friendships forged with various characters.
Smile of the Arsnotoria
In the magical academic city of Ashram, there is a school that is hidden from the rest of the world that acts like a secret garden where its students can blossom.
Within, a group of girls know as Pentagrams study general education, magic, and etiquette with hopes to become proper ladies some day.
The smileless Arsnotoria often spends her days enjoying her time with her roommates, engaging in tea parties and often just lounging around after finishing their duties. However, while they cherish this calm life, there may be something more to the Pentagrams and the city of Ashram than meets the eye.
While both Smile of the Arsnotoria and Atelier Ryza are based on games where the draw is, in part, how cute the characters are. Smile of the Arsnotoria is a mobile game, and as such, the only draw was how cute the characters are.
Both series are fantasy slice of life anime where the characters become friends and enjoy various slice of life moments together. However, while Ryza goes on adventures with her friends, in the school-set Smile of the Arsnotoria, well, they just do cute slice of life things at school. The anime also threatens to have an action element, and never actually makes good on that threat.
If you like Atelier Ryza for the moments, particularly between Ryza and Klaudia, where they just drank tea and talked about their friendship, then Smile of the Arsnotoria is indeed for you.
For Fans of Cute Girls on Adventures
Yohane the Parhelion – Sunshine in the Mirror
Yohane is a girl who has never quite fit in with everyone else in the scenic town of Numazu. While Yohane takes up a job as a fortune-teller that mostly sees her helping people around town with odd jobs, she continues to look for her place in the world.
However, darkness gathers around this idyllic town nestled between the mountains and the sea, with Yohane’s newfound magic perhaps being the key to keeping it at bay.
While Yohane the Parhelion is a spin-off of Love Live, you need not have any knowledge of the idol anime it is based on since it only really uses the characters.
Both Atelier Ryza and Yohane the Parhelion are about young girls in a rather rural city who are kind of searching for their place. While Yohane seeks more purpose than Ryza’s initial desire to escape monotony, both of them eventually find a passion that drives them.
While pursuing that passion, you enjoy them building connections with the other residents in the town in a very casual slice of life way despite a fantasy world being everywhere around them.
Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!
Because of her exceptional abilities, Misato Kurihara never got to live a normal life. However, after her sudden death, she is offered reincarnation and one wish. Her wish is to have average abilities so that she can live an average life.
Unfortunately, reincarnated as a noble’s daughter, she still has impressive magic ability.
Determined to still have her normal life, she flees to a far away hunter school and attempts to hide her abilities.
Although Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average is an isekai anime, it is a particularly cute one. Unlike Ryza who goes on adventures to gather materials and escape boredom, Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average features a main character running away to the country in order to hide her magnificent power and just make friends.
Essentially, both series are rather low-stakes adventure anime that are often more cute than action-packed. However, while Atelier Ryza does flesh out some character stories and bond you with various people around town, Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average is more often just jokes.
I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
Dying from overwork, Azusa Aizawa is allowed to reincarnate into a new world as a witch that will live forever.
Wanting to never be overworked again, she leisurely kills slimes in order to pay for living expenses. However, this meager amount of XP stacks over 300 years of doing it, and she finds herself at max level.
Fearing someone will try to thrust work upon her, she decides to try and hide her strength.
Both series follow women who set up a space in the middle of nowhere. While 300 Slimes initially has the main character hoping to be left alone, she ends up turning people who come to challenge her into lovely friends.
Atelier Ryza and 300 Slimes have some fundamental differences, the most obvious being that 300 Slimes is an isekai. However, both series are cute, low-stakes adventure anime where any action is brief and the big emphasis is on character interactions.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout? Let fans know in the comments section below.
