After being abandoned by her family, Chise Hatori is a 16-year-old teenager without hope.
In order to not have to worry about herself, she sells herself to slavers, only to be purchased by Magus Elias Ainsworth.
There, she is told she will become his apprentice and, in the future, his bride. Together, they work to build a relationship and work to control her own magus powers that will eventually result in her early death.
We expected a romance, but this series goes above and beyond to deliver a vast magical world that feels as dark as it is bewitching. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like The Ancient Magus’ Bride, head on down below.
Anime Like The Ancient Magus’ Bride
For Fans of Fantasy Romance
Spice and Wolf
For generations, Holo was a revered wolf deity that helped the local wheat harvest in exchange for tribute. However, as the villagers become more self-sufficient, they no longer need or even believe in her anymore.
During her annual festival, she sneaks into the cart of Kraft, a visiting merchant, hoping he will let her hitch a ride home.
Unlike other fantasy romance anime that tend to focus more on romance than anything else, both Spice and Wolf and The Ancient Magus’ Bride gives you a rewarding and slowly growing romantic relationship, but feed it to you while exploring other – equally as interesting – plots.
Both series take place in an well-built fantasy world where each location feels unique and the stories are never quite the same adventure. The Ancient Magus’ Bride is often about Chise stumbling face-first into problems that she helps with while Spice and Wolf gets its diversity of stories from being about a goddess traveling with a merchant as he goes place to place.
Snow White With The Red Hair
Shirayuki is an herbalist that lives a normal life in the country of Tanbarun. However, when her beautiful red hair is noticed by the Prince Raji, he tries to make her his concubine.
She then decides to cut her hair and flees into the forest. It is there she is rescued by the second Prince of neighboring country, Wistalia, named Zen.
In order to repay her life debt to him, she sets her hopes on becoming the court herbalist in the capital of Clarines.
While you could say that both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Snow White With The Red Hair are both “must-watch” fantasy romance anime, they do have quite a few differences.
Both series take place in a fantasy world, but Snow White With The Red Hair often feels like it is using its non-romance plots to lead you right back to the swoon-worthy romantic moments. Furthermore, while the romance in The Ancient Magus’ Bride is more of a “Beauty and the Beast” style affair, Snow White With The Red Hair has a more traditional “Prince and Common Girl” type of fairy tale relationship.
Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts
After hundreds of years of war between the kingdom of beasts and the neighboring human kingdom, a peace treaty was signed. The conditions of this treaty say that humans must offer a sacrifice to be devoured by the King of Beasts every year on a particular night.
Sariphi is the latest sacrifice to be sent, adopted by her parents to specifically protect their true-born daughter. Despondent after learning that truth and feeling like she has no home to return back to anyway, Sariphi is fine with dying and unafraid of the King of Beasts.
Intrigued by her lack of fear, the King of Beasts begins to grow closer to her, and when the day of sacrifice comes, he defies his advisors and decides to takes this interesting girl as his wife.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Sacrificial Bride and the King of Beasts are “Beauty and the Beast” style fantasy romance anime where a somewhat normal girl who oozes empathy and kindness falls in love with a misunderstood man with a monstrous face.
While The Ancient Magus’ Bride explores a number of different arcs of action, adventure, and intrigue in between the romance, Sacrificial Bride and the King of Beasts is more about trying to solve the discrimination problem and ensuing political intrigue inside of a kingdom. Both series are fantasy romance, but the actual romantic element of them is rather small since they both choose to instead focus on the actual plot rather than contrived romantic drama.
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale
Fairies once lived free alongside humanity until humans discovered that stripping a wing from a fairy means literally holding their life in your hands. Now, fairies are enslaved to humans.
Ann is a young girl aspiring to become a Silver Sugar Master like her late mother was. To further this goal, she sets out to the royal capital, and on this dangerous journey she purchases a warrior fairy named Challe Fen Challe to protect her.
As Ann believes in the freedom and equality of faeries, she buys him and offers to give his wing back when she reaches her destination. However, as they travel, their bond together grows.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Sugar Apple Fairy Tale are fantasy romance anime that explore the relationship between a human girl and a more mysterious non-human that has lived quite a long time.
However, unlike Chise and Elias that get along rather well at first, Ann and Challe have a little bit more of a rough start in their relationship. Regardless, both relationships started when one party purchased ownership of the other.
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale has a great plot, but it is often more focused on romance within that plot rather than anything else. The relationship drives the drama, and the drama drives the show.
For Fans of Embracing Emotions
Somali and the Forest Guardian
With humanity all but extinct after severe prosecution, the world is ruled over by spirits and all manner of strange creatures.
One day, a golem that serves as guardian of the forest meets a young human girl.
She has no memory of her parents, but the golem decides to at least seek out other humans to return her.
While not a romance, both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Somali and the Forest Guardian take place in fantasy worlds and explore that world as part of that plot. Instead of romance, Somali and the Forest Guardian explores a more found family sort of relationship.
Both series are about non-human characters learning more about emotions and love thanks to their human companion. However, as the human companion is a child in Somali and the Forest Guardian, she isn’t a particularly robust character. She is merely there for cuteness.
My Happy Marriage
Despite being the firstborn daughter of a noble family known for its supernatural abilities, Miyo is treated little different than a servant by her father, stepmother, and stepsister after not manifesting any supernatural abilities.
After years of abuse and neglect, Miyo is told that she will be married off into the Kudo household. Kiyoka Kudo has built a reputation as a cruel man, having chased off several fiancees already. Knowing that she can’t return home and will be left homeless if the marriage fails, Miyo is ready to bow and scrape. However, she finds Kiyoka Kudo to be a quiet, but kind man. Unfortunately, not everyone takes her marriage into the Kudo family so well.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and My Happy Marriage are historical-laced fantasy romance anime about a girl who has completely shut herself down emotionally after a long period of emotional abuse. Furthermore, both girls have unique powers that make them a target for others.
Each story is fully focused on rehabilitating the female main character by welcoming her into a more accepting and nourishing household. Her self-confidence goes up, she learns to use her abilities, and her male love interest learns what it actually means to love someone.
Violet Evergarden
After the Great War and her time in it came to an end, Violet Evergarden is adrift. Her purpose was once only battle, and now she must find a new one.
After recovering from the loss of her arms, Violet takes up a job at the CH Postal Services. Here she transcribes people’s thoughts into what should be emotional letters. While the “emotional” part seems to greatly escape her, she aims to learn how to move people with words.
Both Violet Evergarden and The Ancient Magus’ Bride follow female main characters that have emotionally shut themselves down. However, starting their life over again, they end up in an atmosphere that helps them grow and learn all those important emotional things.
While Violet Evergarden doesn’t start as a romance, it has its moments later on. Regardless, a large part of the charm in either series isn’t the love affair, but watching the young women grow into actual people. In that growth, they embrace their own emotions as well as use their experience to empathize with others.
For Fans of The Unseen Spiritual World
Natsume’s Book of Friends
For as long as he can remember, Takashi Natsume has been chased by spirits, but recently he discovered that the reason was because his deceased grandmother had passed on to him her “Book of Friends,” a book containing all the spirits she had brought under her control.
Now Natsume realizes that these spirits haunt him in hopes of gaining freedom. With few friends, no loving home, and constantly hunted by malicious spirits, Natsume looks for a place where he belongs.
Although their stories go two different ways, Natsume’s Book of Friends and The Ancient Magus’ Bride are about main characters who can see spirits and who are made into outcasts because of it. However, The Ancient Magus’ Bride has a lot more actual magic involved.
While both series have a good balance between slice of life and some occasional action, Natsume’s Book of Friends is more slice of life than anything else. He helps spirits with different issues, and it maintains a widely episodic storytelling. This is very unlike The Ancient Magus’ Bride that has a more linear plot.
The Tale of Outcasts
Wisteria is an orphan who is forced to beg on the street for her orphanage in order to be fed. Her days are bleak, but her nights have a small ray of hope in the form of Marbas. This apathetic immortal demon comes to her window and they enjoy chats, despite him being hounded by hunters wherever he goes.
One day, Wisteria finds her freedom from her situation through Marbas, binding the two of them together with a promise to see the world. However, their pact did not come without a cost.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and The Tale of Outcasts feature female characters who live in squalor as outcasts because of their special ability to see spirits. Furthermore, both do something pretty drastic to escape that situation, which leads to them being bound to a supernatural creature.
The Tale of Outcasts often feels like a less fleshed out version of The Ancient Magus’ Bride because it has a lot of the same elements, but doesn’t pull them together with as much finesse. The main characters have feelings for each other, but The Tale of Outcasts mostly ignores that to go for more action. The male lead doesn’t understand much about humanity, but both of them grow due to their female companion. The world is a magic-laced English affair, but while it feels magical in The Ancient Magus’ Bride, The Tale of Outcasts makes it feel a little less inspired.
Both series do tell supernatural stories that aren’t afraid to make otherworldly creatures evil or vicious, but also gives them complex personalities and motivations beyond just their nature.
Earl and Fairy
In Scotland, Lydia Carlton makes her living as a fairy doctor. Though no one believes her, she insists that she can see and communicate with fairy creatures.
However, Edgar believes in her powers, and after rescuing her, becomes her employer hoping that she can help him deal with the many mysteries that follow him.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride actually doesn’t focus on its romance element as much as you’d think. There are certainly some swoon-worthy moments, but The Ancient Magus’ Bride has far too much plot going on to ignore it for just romantic moments. If you did like the supernatural English setting, but did wish romance was a larger part, then Earl and Fairy is for you.
Both series focus on female leads that were outcasted because of their ability to see and communicate with spirits. However, they are bought or hired by a mysterious man that they slowly grow closer to because of their abilities.
The huge difference, however, is that Elias is a curious, but mostly kind creature. Edgar is more of a flirty roguish type of man.
Kakuriyo – Bed and Breakfast for Spirits
Since she was a child, Aoi could see spirits. One day, while feeding a hungry spirit, she is whisked off to the hidden realm of spirits where an ogre states she will be his bride.
It seems her grandfather sold her off to marry him in order to satisfy his debt that he accrued at his inn in the spirit world. Instead, Aoi refuses and works off the debt owed in the bed and breakfast as an employee.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Kakuriyo follow women who can see spirits being taken into the spiritual world by a mysterious man. While Chise was bought, Aoi was just sort of taken without a fight.
While both series focus on small arcs about solving problems in the supernatural world, Kakuriyo also has a big focus on food, since it is about her running a small restaurant. Kakuriyo also has big elements of reverse harem, but like The Ancient Magus Bride, it has a brooding, mysterious, kind man with a violent reputation as the main love interest.
Mushishi
In this world, there exist Mushi, spirits that often exist with no purpose. However, these Mushi can affect the physical world in countless forms from diseases to more pleasant phenomenon.
Why do these Mushi exist?
That is the question that Ginko the Mushi-shi, a researcher on the phenomenon, asks himself as he travels the land investigating Mushi-related incidents.
While The Ancient Magus’ Bride is always moving from one problem to the next, it is showing off a supernatural world that feels alive and diverse. Mushishi does something similar.
Both Mushishi and The Ancient Magus’ Bride are about people who can see spirits getting entangled in a number of spiritual stories.
Outside of that similarity, Mushishi is simply an episodic and ponderous anime about how the world interacts with supernatural. There is no overall plot or romance like in The Ancient Magus’ Bride. Even the main character is barely a character himself to let the stories really be the star in this series.
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.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Little Witch Academia follow girls with magical talent, but are wholly inexperienced in magic and the magical world. While The Ancient Magus’ Bride doesn’t go there until the second season, both series are also about those girls eventually going to magic school to hone their talent.
Little Witch Academia has a passion for high energy characters and action sequences. This is in stark contrast to the slow and deliberate nature of The Ancient Magus’ Bride and often makes it feel a little more youthful. However, aside from the difference in “vibe,” both series are actually surprisingly dark and follow the various dark intrigues building in the magical world.
For Fans of Diverse Fantasy Worlds
Frieren – Beyond Journey’s End
After the Demon King’s defeat, the victorious hero’s party returns home. After disbanding, the elven mage Frieren continues journeying to indulge her hobby of collecting spells. However, being a long-living elf, fifty years pass in the blink of an eye for her. Now, she finds her old companions and friends slowly passing away from age one by one.
Before his death, Heiter the cleric manages to foist his young ward, Fern, onto Frieren as her apprentice mage. Together, they travel to collect spells, but after visiting many locations that Frieren had once visited with the hero’s party, she begins to ponder the missed opportunity to form deeper bonds with her now-dead comrades and cherish the new opportunities she has with her current ones.
In most fantasy anime, a fantasy setting is just a setting. They don’t put much effort into it besides the boilerplate medieval sword and sorcery nature of it all. However, both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Frieren both use a sort of standard world, but make it feel entirely new by put detail into the locations, cultures, and characters found within.
Both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Frieren have long periods of slow slice of life and offer an almost melancholy look at the world. However, while the moments are sparse, when either series does action, it is beautifully well done.
In essence, both The Ancient Magus Bride and Frieren share the same high quality approach to fantasy, which is rather rare in these days of endless isekai.
To Your Eternity
One day, an entity, for reasons unknown, threw an orb to Earth. With no emotion or identity, the orb is meant to gather sensations and is able to take the shape of things it encounters as it learns.
For many years, it was a rock, and then it became moss, and when a wolf took its last breath near it, it became the wolf. After wandering for some time, it met a boy. After a long struggle, the boy, too, took his last breath.
With human form, now the orb sets off on his never-ending journey where he will meet many new people and have many new experiences.
While both The Ancient Magus’ Bride and To Your Eternity are fantasy anime, The Ancient Magus’ Bride sticks to a fantasy setting that is most easily described as “Harry Potter-like,” or European-inspired. Alternatively, To Your Eternity is a fantasy world, but full of its own diverse cultures that allow it to not feel too inspired by any one culture in our own world.
However, both series follow main characters that are a bit lacking in self-worth and purpose. You follow them as they get entangled with a series of others and slowly learn more about humanity.
In its own way, To Your Eternity actually feels like following Elias when he was a new entity in the world.
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.
Although The Ancient Magus’ Bride never has the main characters “wander” their fantasy land, they do often go places to solve issues. This allows them to show off a surprisingly deep world while also keeping a linear plot. Wandering Witch is really just about a mage traveling the world, which is an easier plot to have if you just want to show off a well-built fantasy world.
Both series offer detailed fantasy worlds that feel full of stories. The main characters often get caught up in these stories that are, occasionally, much darker than you would expect.
However, while the main characters in The Ancient Magus’ Bride are easy to like, Elaina is a main character you will either like for how refreshing her personality is or hate for how obnoxious her personality is.
Do you have more anime recommendations like The Ancient Magus’ Bride? Let fans know in the comments section below.
