Despite his age, Dale is a skillful adventurer with quite the reputation for competence. However, one day while he was on a job, he finds a young devil girl, weak and malnourished, with a dead parent nearby. He decides to take her home and ultimately ends up adopting her. However, the question remains, why was she in the forest to begin with?
You know…Why does this have to have such a long title? It’s pretty cute, but trying to type that title out every time? So obnoxious. Anyway, you want more lessons in devil fatherhood? We got anime recommendations for that, yo.
Anime Like If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord
For Fans of Fatherhood
Sweetness and Lightning
After the death of his wife, high school math teacher Kouhei Inuzuka is left to care for his young daughter, Tsumugi. He does his best, but his busy schedule and poor culinary skills limit them to eating convenience store food separately. One day, his daughter expresses an interest to eat together after talking to one of his students in the park, Kotori, who deeply enjoys food. He rushes over to the restaurant owned by the student’s mother, but she is not there. While Kotori tries her best to cook for them, her skills are lacking. However, together, Inuzuka-sensei, Tsumugi, and Kotori learn to expand their cooking skills.
You like super cute father/child interactions regardless of setting? Good. Because that is what you get here. One is fantasy adventure and the other is more of a cooking anime, but both are about super cute children being super cute.
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.
While this lacks the whole fantasy element, it is that same tale of a guy not actually the father of a child taking care of it as if he were. Both the child and the father have challenges that you might expect such as not knowing how to take care of a child or mourning a death.
Poko’s Udon World
Souta Tawara is a web designer that has been working in Tokyo. However, when he returns to his small town to visit family, he discovers a young boy alone and with a supernatural secret. Upon the confrontation, Souta decides to quit his job and take care of this boy dubbed Poko. This anime follows their daily adventures in the Kagawa Prefecture, the Udon Kingdom.
Both series follow the newfound almost accidental fatherhood of a supernatural child. There are some quirks to that end, but mostly it is the tale of the caretaker and the child learning from each other the important lessons of life.
For Fans of Adventurers Doing New Things
I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job
Dreaming of becoming a hero, Raul joined the Hero Training program. Unfortunately, with the demon king defeated, there is no market for heroes. Instead, Raul gets a job at an electronics store. He soon finds out that his new co-worker is in fact the old demon king’s daughter.
Hey, these both have obnoxiously long light novel-esque titles! They also have the same sort of situation, too. They take a fantasy world and add something not quite in line with the trope. In one, heroes are defunct so an aspiring hero got a boring job. In the other, a super skilled hero ends up being a papa-chan because he found a girl in the woods.
Maoyu Hero and Archenemy
After fifteen years of warfare with the demon world, the Hero is unsatisfied with their advance and rushes forward to the Demon Queens Castle. There he not only finds a beautiful woman that is the queen, but she needs his help. To his surprise, she offers a way to not only help his country, but hers as well. Together, they join forces to make that dream a reality.
In both of these series, the world sets up that humans are supposed to be good and demons are supposed to be bad, and yet, they shake things up by proving that is not the case. It tilts the status quo and shows you not all demons are bad and not all humans are good.
The Devil is a Part Timer
Just as he was on the cusp of conquering his world, Satan is thrown through a portal to Tokyo. Although he cannot use magic in this world, he is still motivated to conquer it, but first, he must get a job and pay his rent on time.
Both series are a rare non-isekai fantasy anime series, but more than that, they decided to do something different with their fantasy characters. An adventurer becomes a dad instead of just some generic badass and a villain gets a really mundane part time job for comedy. They are unique and it is not a bad thing.
For Fans of Wholesome and Cute
Meddlesome Kitsune Senko-San
Nakano is a salaryman that works for a company that greatly exploits him. He returns to home each day exhausted, and one day, returns home to find an 800-year-old fox girl has invaded his home. She cooks, she cleans, and she states that she will heal his exhaustion with her occasionally questionable care.
There is definitely a different dynamic in this show, but fundamentally it is the same. One person is taking care of another, with one party being supernatural. It is wholesome and healing in the way it is presented just like If It’s For My Daughter.
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.
Similar to If it’s For My Daughter, Handa goes to an island and basically becomes a major influence for a bunch of kids. There isn’t really the same parent dynamic so much as they just become friends, but there are a lot of things that both the older and younger people can learn from each other.
Gakuen Babysitters
After the death of his parents, teenage Ryuuchi becomes the caretaker of his younger brother Kotarou. After meeting a chairman of an elite academy at his parent’s funeral, they are given room and board in exchange for him becoming the school’s babysitter – a role established to support the female teachers.
While it lacks the same fantasy element, Like If It’s For My Daughter, it does feature a boy in his late teens basically taking care of a bunch of children. The kids add a lot of cute moments and wholesomeness to the show with their antics.
Do you have more anime recommendations like If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord? Let fans know in the comments section below.
“I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord” is terrible. The first three episodes are okay-ish, but then in episode 4 Dale is basically revealed to be to be some kind of uncaring psychopath when he accepts a job to assassinate a group of devils; he doesn’t care why, he just brutally murders them all and goes home with a stupid smile on his face.
I skimmed through the rest of the series to see if the incident is brought up again; I figured that in episode 5 maybe it would turn out that none of them were actually killed or at least the girl wasn’t killed, but nope, nothing. Is it a Japanese thing? Is this considered okay in Japanese culture? Who were the people he killed? What were they doing? Why was the ambush ordered? For all Dale knew they could have been members of Latina’s family out on a picnic.
I think rising of the shield hero is also similar cuz Naofumi saves a girl in a similar fashion