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.
For something that everyone thought was an April Fools joke, this series turned out to be a pretty decent slice of life fantasy anime in its own right. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror, head on down below.
Anime Like Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror
Watch The Inspiration
Love Live! Sunshine
If you don’t already know, Yohane the Parhelion is an alternate setting of Love Live Sunshine. In Love Live Sunshine, the main character Yoshiko is a chuunibyou that believes she is a fallen angel called Yohane. So, Yohane the Parhelion, is a play off of that.
As Love Live is an idol anime series, I truly believe that the appeal they were going for in Yohane the Parhelion was inviting fans to be like “Oh, you know this character from Love Live? Look at them as this unique fantasy version!” So if you never watched Love Live Sunshine, I think you missed a key element of enjoyment for the series.
For Fans of Slice of Life Fantasy
Atelier Ryza – Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout
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.
While both series ultimately developed a grander fantasy plot, both Atelier Ryza and Yohane the Parhelion often left you wondering what the plot was – until you realized the slice of life shenanigans in a fantasy land was the plot.
These series create interesting fantasy lands, but don’t have them immediately bursting with danger. Instead, the main characters enjoy their environment and solve smaller scale problems before a more looming issue becomes apparent.
The Flying Witch
The young Makoto Kowata is a witch, but her skills in magic leave something to be desired. To further train her craft, she moves to rural Aomori to live with her cousins.
This area, rich in nature, is the perfect place to commune with natural forces and hone her craft.
The Flying Witch immediately differs from Yohane the Parhelion by being set in our modern world. In it, magic is present, but practiced out of the public eye. Like Yohane the Parhelion, the magic practiced is also about being harmonious and in tune with nature as well.
While Yohane the Parhelion presents a more energetic series mostly due to its larger cast, both it and The Flying Witch offer you a more peaceful, less action-focused slice of life fantasy. However, while Yohane the Parhelion develops a more grand plot, The Flying Witch remains a rather chill slice of life experience.
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
Yuna much prefers staying home and playing her favorite VRMMO instead of going to school.
During an update, she receives a strange and powerful bear outfit. It was overpowered, but too embarrassing to wear in-game.
However, she finds herself suddenly transported to the world of the game, and her bear suit becomes her best chance of surviving.
While Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is an isekai and a bit more action dense, like Yohane the Parhelion, it is essentially just a CGDCT slice of life fantasy.
Both series are stuffed full of almost exclusively cutely designed female characters who have comical if not slice of life adventures most of the time, but that often lead to grander somewhat action-focused plots.
Essentially, both series have action, but the action is not really the focus of these fantasy anime series.
For Fans of Idol Appeal in Fantasy Settings
Lapis Re-Lights
Leaving home behind, Tiara arrives at Flora Girls’ Academy and meets her old friend, Rosetta.
At this academy, they train young witches to use spells for combat as well as performing orchestras in order to power themselves up with harvested mana.
Unfortunately, Tiara finds out that the new group she is put into are all on the verge of failing.
Unlike Yohane the Parhelion that keeps some of the idol appeal from its Love Live alternate setting source, Lapis Re:Lights has big idol energy all on its own.
Lapis Re:Lights is an idol anime set in a fantasy world. There is no alternate setting. Like Yohane the Parhelion, Lapis Re:Lights stuffs itself exclusively full of cute, diversely personalitied girls and even injects the occasional music element into its magic-laced tale.
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.
There was a point in Yohane the Parhelion near the beginning where it seemed to be building towards becoming like Smile of Arsnotoria where it would just be about cute girls doing cute things, baiting something more going on, and never actually having anything significant happen.
Thankfully Yohane the Parhelion did develop more. However, if you were into Yohane the Parhelion for the cute girls and didn’t need much to actually happen, Smile of Arsnotoria is for you.
Idolmaster Xenoglossia
While the moon’s destruction 107 years ago killed a quarter of Earth’s population, no one in the present day pays much mind to the large chunks of the moon orbiting Earth these days.
Haruka Amami has recently passed an audition to become what she thought was a singing idol. However, when she is sent to Tokyo, she discovers that the agency that recruited her is not for singing idols, but for girls chosen by giant mechs to intercept the chunks of moon that occasionally fall to earth.
What Yohane the Parhelion is to Love Live, Idolmaster Xenoglossia is to Idolmaster. It’s that simple.
Both series are alternate settings of popular idol anime whose big appeal is seeing the characters in an alternate setting. However, Yohane the Parhelion is a fantasy setting and Xenoglossia is a sci-fi/mecha setting.
It is also worth noting that Yohane the Parhelion is straightforward enough to have its own appeal outside of Love Live. Xenoglossia is, well, so over-the-top that it is ridiculous. You enjoy it because you liked the characters and it is kind of amazing to see them in such a ridiculously over-the-top plot.
For Fans of Finding Your Place
Little Witch Academia
Although Atsuko is an ordinary girl, she became enamored by witches and magic by a magic show she saw as a kid hosted by a witch named Shiny Chariot.
Now, she has aspires to be a witch, taking the first step by joining a renowned academy for witches called Luna Nova Academy.
Although she faces hardship as a first generation witch and fan of Shiny Chariot, whom many consider a fraud, she and her two friends do their best each new day.
While Yohane the Parhelion lets the girls run around town and Little Witch Academia occasionally pens them up in a school setting, both series are fantasy anime of a similar youthful energy.
Both series follow groups of young women who are dealing with a diverse array of fantasy problems, but also just mostly having some cute and/or comical slice of life adventures.
Little Witch Academia is more fluid and energetic, often emphasising the action while Yohane the Parhelion keeps the battles a little more grounded and is often more CGDCT.
Princess Connect Re-Dive
The nameless main character is sent to a new world. Kokoro, a girl chosen to be the guardian of her lord, travels to that specific location, told that she would find her lord there.
While teaching him of his new world, she meets several other companions and they decide to form a Gourmet Guild in search of delicious things to eat.
A major theme of Yohane the Parhelion is about a group of girls coming together to form a strong friendship and team, Princess Connect also features a group of characters coming together in a supportive friendship, but it is on a much smaller scale.
While both series are fantasy anime, Princess Connect is technically an isekai. Since the main character is a stand-in for the player of the game it is based on, it lacks the usual hero-focused isekai plot. Both series put some emphasis on the main character, but are also very much about the side character stories.
Lost Song
Rin is a songstress in a rural village capable of singing magical songs. She has been told to keep her power a secret, however.
One day, she finds an injured knight named Henry and sings a song of healing to help him. Unfortunately, she was seen and soldiers attack her village to try and capture her.
Rin flees with her brother and begins to journey to the capital where her fate will intersect with another desired songstress.
While the occasional music numbers in Yohane the Parhelion make sense with the knowledge that it is a spin-off of an idol anime, without that, it would still have a place in the plot. Long Song also built its plot around the power of song similar to that portion of Yohane the Parhelion.
Both series follow aimless young girls in a rural village who discover their special power and follow it to their destiny. The biggest difference is that Lost Song does have a split focus between two girls it treats as equally main characters.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror? Let fans know in the comments section below.
