During their summer vacation, 15 children are enjoying summer camp together. One day, they decide to go explore a cave by the sea, inside they meet a mysterious man named Kokopelli who is surrounded by high-tech equipment.
Kokopelli claims to be a game developer and asks if the children would help him test it.
Each child signs a contract, but instead of playing a game, they are actually piloting a giant mech to defend the earth from 15 different alien invasions.
Feeling kind of emotionally and mentally violated after Bokurano, yet strangely hungry for more? For more anime recommendations like Bokurano, head on down below.
Anime Like Bokurano
For Fans of Watching Kids Die
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki are your typical middle school girls, but one day they encounter a cute creature named Kyuubey that offers to grant them one wish. In exchange for their wish, they must become magical girls and protect humanity from witches.
While Sayaka accepts right away, Madoka is more hesitant, not knowing what she would wish for.
However, her decision is even further delayed when the mysterious Homura Akemi, a transfer student, begs her not to accept.
Madoka Magica seems so cute and innocent on the outside, but the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
As with Bokurano, each death hits you more brutally as you bond with the characters. It is not so much that they are visually shocking, but rather tug on your mind.
In both series, the characters are guided by a cute being with dark motives, as well as tasked with winning their fights or watching the world be destroyed.
Gantz
Kei Kurono is an apathetic young man that, while waiting for his train, runs into a childhood friend. When a homeless man falls onto a track, his friend coaxes him into helping save his life.
Unfortunately, the train comes in and they both die.
However, they both wake up in a strange room with other recently deceased people and a big black ball that tells them to kill aliens in order to gain their freedom.
Only a couple deaths in Bokurano can be described as “brutal,” but if you enjoy watching young people die horribly, then Gantz is probably for you.
In both anime series, the participants are forced to play a death game against their will, and in competing, the participants must overcome the unfairness of their lot and deal with their unavoidable doom.
Future Diary
Yukiteru Amono spends his precious youth on his cell phone, writing a diary of events that happen around him and talking with his imaginary god friend.
However, one day, his god friend Deus Ex Machina grants him the power of the diary, something that allows his cell phone to update with events that will happen in his future.
However, he must now kill eleven other people with similarly powerful diaries in order to get the ultimate prize – Godhood.
Another death game, another long list of characters with psychological problems. If Bokurano was a hit with you for its dark, violent plot, then Future Diary will become your new love.
Both series ultimately deal with a bit of a multiverse theory as well as tell the sad tales of kids who know they are likely to die.
Infinite Ryvius
In the distant future, Kouji Aiba and Aoi Housen are training to be astronauts in the Liebe Delta.
However, when saboteurs strike the station while the kids are on a dive procedure, the space station plummets into a plasma field linking the planets.
With all the adults onboard killed, it is up to the young astronauts-in-training to make the journey home and deal with the growing tension between them.
Infinite Ryvius is like Lord of the Flies on a space ship.
While the characters in Bokurano have their tensions, they grow absolutely out of control in this anime.
Both are dark, both are brutal, and the only difference is the enemy placed in front of them.
Shadow Star Narutaru
During her summer holiday with her grandparents, Tamia Shiina meets a strange-looking creature. She names it Hoshimaru and takes it home with her after the summer.
However, to her surprise, she finds that other kids have a creature like Hoshimaru. Even more shocking is that not all masters of these creatures are friendly.
Both Bokurano and Shadow Star Narutaru are made by the same author.
As such, you will notice a lot of similarities between them. The most notable similarity is the horrific suffering of young children.
It also shares that more bare bones and realistic art style as well.
Now and Then, Here and There
Shu is a typical Japanese boy, but when he sees a mysterious girl atop a smokestack, he follows her and is pulled into a strange desert world.
It is here that Shu is forced to discover a world filled with the tragedies of war. Genocide, torture, hunger, and thirst are abound, but Shu is determined to try and save the girl that he saw.
While Now and Then, Here and There lacks the same robot used for world saving battle plot, it is a show about how terrible much of humanity is as shown through the lens of a young child.
NTHT is more war crimes and less mecha.
From the New World
After the sudden outbreak of psychokinesis, the .01% of the population that developed it started using their powers for nefarious means.
Far into the future, the town of Kamisu 66 is wholly populated by psychics with the young Saki being one of the most recent to awaken her powers. Finally she can join the rest of her friends at the Sage Academy.
However, her school days are plagued with questions that threaten to unravel the dark secrets of her idyllic village.
While vastly different in setting, From the New World, like Bokurano, introduces the young children it focuses on to the dark side of human nature.
From the New World, being set in post-apocalypse Japan. also shows the increasingly dark reality of their society as well.
You seem like a general fan of human suffering. Check out these brutal survival game anime.
For Fans of Not Getting in the F*cking Robot
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The world is on the brink of destruction following the landing of the Angels, massive monsters that want nothing more than to kill and destroy. The only hope lies with the select few that can pilot government agency Nerv’s special Evangelion-type mechs.
The pilot must be compatible in order to pilot the Evangelions, and for Nerv leader, Gendo Ikari, one of those compatible few is his son, Shinji.
With the fate of mankind on his shoulders and fights that often mean death for the pilots, is 14-year-old Shinji up to the task?
Bokurano and Evangelion. Evangelion and Bokurano. They are like the creepy hand-holding, French-kissing best friends of the mecha genre.
Both credited with reinventing the genre as more than just yelling and flashy attacks, as well as highlighting the darker sides of fighting an enemy.
Both try to tackle more dramatic and psychological topics that come with a young child being entrusted with mankind’s fate, and both feature children not wanting to get in the god-damned robot.
For Fans of Mechs Fighting Mysterious Enemies
Fafner of the Blue Sky
The children on the sleepy backwater island of Tatsuyajima all go to school thinking their lives will always be peaceful. However, little do they know that their island is the last line of defense against a hostile alien enemy.
When the enemy finally attacks, the island’s defense systems fail, and their last hope rests on the robot Fafner.
With the real pilot killed en route to the hangar, the young Kazuki Makabe is forced to take his place.
In both Fafner and Bokurano, young kids are forced to pilot something that should be beyond their reckoning.
Throughout the series, the kids are also at the mercy of corrupted adults and must face enemies whose mystery is slowly unfurled.
Where the similarities between these two truly shine is in the emotional connections between the pilots and those around them that are forged.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet
In the distant future, humanity has abandoned a ruined Earth and now lives in the furthest reaches of space fighting their eternal enemy, the Hideauze. During one of their massive space battles, a young soldier named Ledo and his mecha Chamber are flung through a warp hole into space.
He crash lands on a strange planet that is covered completely in water. To his surprise, he finds that other humans also live there aboard massive fleets of boats.
Found by the Gargantia fleet, Ledo must navigate this strange new world.
While nowhere near as violent and depressing as Bokurano, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet also features a young pilot that has to acclimate to a new situation.
Like the pilots in Bokurano discover, in Gargantia, there is more to the enemies that Ledo fights than meets the eye.
The major difference between the two is that Gargantia has some of the most beautiful animation, especially compared to Bokurano.
Darling in the Franxx
In the distant future, the land is ruined and humanity now lives in the mobile city, Plantation. Inside, they are defended from massive life forms by children raised from birth to pilot robots called Franxx in boy-girl pairs.
This story follows Hiro, once a prodigy, and now a failure. However, just as he was about to be cast aside, he meets a mysterious girl with horns that is a Franxx pilot dubbed The Partner Killer.
Both shows rely on teenagers to get in their robot and battle other enemies in order to defend the ultimately useless adults in their world.
Unfortunately, Darling in the Franxx seems to forget what it wanted to do about half way through and gets a touch muddled. Yet, there is plenty of emotional struggle to be found.
Planet With
Despite not having memories of his past, Souya lives a peaceful high school life. However, one day his town is threatened by huge objects floating in the sky.
Conventional weapons are useless against them, but the 7 heroes charged with defending the city emerge in their mechs and head into battle.
Souya, too, finds himself drawn to battle, but not against the objects, he is drawn to fight the heroes.
You’ll find a lot of the same themes from Bokurano in Planet With, such as there being multiple sides to every battle between enemies.
However, it has less of an emphasis on making children suffer. It is more your standard mecha series.
Do you have your own anime recommendations like Bokurano? Let fans know in the comments section below.
