After a small portion of humanity suddenly developed psychokinetic powers, the world underwent a rapid transformation. After 1,000 years of turbulent history where regular humans struggled against those with powers, we focus in on Kamisu 66, a small town where 12-year-old Saki Watanabe finally awakened her powers. This awakening means she is finally able to join her friends at the Sage Academy. However, things in Saki’s life do not remain as simple as those precious days. With missing children in the village, rebellious rumblings, and a world steeped in myth and mystery, Saki and her friends are about to face the shocking truths of their peaceful society.
From the New World is such an great experience in which your view of the world grows with the children in the show. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like From the New World, head on down below.
Anime Like From the New World
For Fans of Dystopian Worlds
No. 6
After a series of bloody wars, humanity retreated into six city-states. However, while everything seemed peaceful and perfect to the elite of these cities, the poor suffered. One day, Shion, a resident of the elite, encountered Nezumi, a fugitive from outside the utopia. After taking him in, Shion and his family were forced from their home and now learn the ugly side of their society.
Both No.6 and From the New World tell the story about a closed society that looks perfect on the outside, but actually harbors a few horrifying secrets. Both shows also follow the heroes as they grow older and has a pretty open stance on same sex relationships.
Psycho-Pass
In the 22nd century, the justice system has changed. The Sibyl System now determines the threat level of each citizen by examining their mental state for criminal intent. This has become known as their Psycho-Pass. Once criminal intent has been identified, Inspectors like Akane Tsunemori are in charge of subjugating them. However, this tough job is not without dangers. This is why Inspectors are paired with Enforcers, like Shinya Kougami, latent criminals with just the right amount of psychopathy to keep other criminals in their place.
Both series give a unique view at a future society that has its citizens sacrifice their personal freedoms in order to live a more peaceful lifestyle. In turn, both Psycho-Pass and From the New World have their main characters question whether this is really right or even very effective, and then has them decide how to best deal with the cracks in the system.
Ergo Proxy
The domed city of Romdo is the last bastion of civilization, Inside, humans are assisted by AutoReiv androids in their daily life. However, when the AutoReivs start going haywire, Re-l is sent to investigate. Elsewhere, an immigrant called Vincent Law is blamed for the virus causing the AutoReivs to go haywire. Through circumstance, the pair are forced together and strike out into the wasteland looking for answers.
Ergo Proxy and From the New World both feature societies that function in a world that has pretty much been destroyed. In both series, the main characters both end up traveling outside the borders of their society to the world beyond and learning the truth that has been kept from them, probing the audience to consider deeper questions.
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 I realize to say an anime has a twist is in and of itself a spoiler, but since the seal is broken, let’s say that Gargantia has a similar sort of twist that you discovered in From the New World in the end. Both series enjoy letting you discover the world through the eyes of characters new to it, but Gargantia does have the distinct difference of being more sci-fi.
Land of the Lustrous
In this world, Gems inhabit the ruins of a world. Taking on certain characteristics, gems are assigned roles depending on their hardness. The hardest among them fight the Lunarians, aliens that seek to shatter them to decorate their own bodies. Phosphophyllite, or Phos, is young and fragile, but wants desperately to help the war effort of fellow gems.
Both series start off with rather weak and naive female characters who, as they explore their world, uncover a number dark and terrible happenings going on in it. While From the New World grows darker in our worldview of that world, Land of the Lustrous is painful in a different way as you watch sweet characters give more and more of themselves away in order to be useful.
We have such a love affair with worlds that have ended. Here are 30 More Anime Recommendations Set in the Post-Apocalypse
For Fans of Small Villages With Dark Secrets
Shiki
Young Megumi Shimizu dreams of leaving her small town and living a glamorous city life, at least until she died, that is. He unexpected death rocks her small village, but it also kicks off an epidemic of deaths that turns their hot summer into a season of terror. The town doctor and an antisocial youth soon form an unlikely duo to halt the death of their town.
Both of these series are what can only be described as slow burns. They can seem almost boring at times, but with the right amount of patience, you will receive an awesome reward. As they move a bit slower than other series, they give time to properly explore the human psyche and motivations behind characters. They also feature a rural setting in which there is some kind of massive deviation from traditional human genetics.
Higurashi – When They Cry
Keiichi Maebara just moved to a small rural town and has finally settled into his sleepy days playing games after school with his school mates of various ages that attend the small school house. However, as the village’s annual festival approaches, Keiichi learns about the gruesome local legends that surround it, namely the mysterious disappearances and murders that happen each year. When he asks his friends about it, they are all mysteriously tight-lipped.
Both series explore how terrifying an isolated rural setting can be. The small villages in each, even if one is in the distant future, have a lot in common including a series of well-guarded secrets that are surrounded by a series of myths. As with many mystery anime series, the mystery is then unraveled by a group of meddling kids.
Ghost Hound
In the small village of Suiten, three boys with traumatic pasts learn how to let their souls travel in between the world they know and the mysterious Unseen World. The Unseen World is one of ghosts. However, the three boys aren’t the only things coming and going from this world. Ghosts are now also beginning to pass into the real world as well.
Although From the New World pulls it off with more finesse, there are a myriad of similarities between it and Ghost Hound. Both feature a rural village with a dark atmosphere and an expanding supernatural mystery, both also follow a group of kids with powers related to the mind, and both are filled with tales of spirits.
The Promised Neverland
Grace Fields House is a home for orphans. However, even though they have no blood families, they are all one big family. That is, until the age of twelve when they are adopted out. The kids also know that they are not allowed outside the fenced yard, but one day, two children break that rule. They then discover that the children who are “adopted” are actually subjected to something much darker.
From the New World and The Promised Neverland start off about about young and innocent children, then you follow the plot that thoroughly kills that innocence. However, The Promised Neverland doesn’t have time skips, so you don’t get the same large scope of their lives as the plot unfurls.
Children of the Whales
Chakuro is a young archivist on the island of Mud Whale. This island floats above an endless sea of sand and is home to around 500 people. On this island, most residents have been blessed with special powers but they also curse them to an early death. While the inhabitants have seen other islands, they have never met or even seen any other inhabitants on them as they drift by. One day, while passing another island and sent there to scavenge for resources as they pass close enough, Chakuro meets a girl who will change everything.
From the New World and Children of the Whales actually have extremely similar set ups. They take place in a secluded village where the children have special powers. On the surface, everything there looks fine, but as you discover in the plot, something more sinister is going on.
Erased
Recently, the detached, struggling manga artist Satoru Fujinuma finds himself going back in time to just minutes before tragedy strikes around him. He has saved many lives with this power of “Revival,” but when he is wrongly accused of murdering someone close to him, Fujinuma finds himself sent back to his childhood. As he discovers, the recent death in his life is somehow connected the kidnap-murder of three children in the area that is about to happen. This time, he may be able to use his power to save more than just one life, easing his past regrets in the process.
While the murder mystery in Erased is different from the dystopian coming-of-age story in From the New World, what both series do very well is drawing you in with the intrigue of the plot, and keeping you gripped right to the end. The intrigue of the mystery is strong, and they can both be very vicious to young characters.
Haibane Renmei
Rakka is an amnesiac who only remembers emerging from her cocoon. She is born into the world as a Haibane, a group of young people who have small gray wings and halos. While she tries to live a normal life, there is much that the Haibane don’t know and must figure out.
Both series follow mysterious villages and those within them that are special and different from normal humans. In the plot, they explore the innate mystery surrounding these characters and uncover the dark and melancholy secrets about them. They also both have a passion for waxing philosophical, more so in Haibane Renmei, though.
For Fans of Supernatural Coming-of-Age Stories
Denno Coil
Yuuko Okonogi and her family move to Daikoku City, the technological center for the new augmented reality technology. There, she joins an investigation agency with other children equipped with powerful virtual tools. She encounters a hacker named Yuuko Amasawa that seeks to unlock the mystery behind a computer virus that has cut off a portion of the virtual world.
Although the differences in tone make these series seem different, they have much in common. Both take place in the far future, and while Denno Coil is heavy with technology, both series follow a group of kids that unwind a supernatural mystery as well as feature that same chilling atmosphere on occasion.
A Lull in the Sea
Long ago, all of humanity lived underwater. However, a portion of them soon left to live on the surface, losing the ability to breath underwater. With this gap between them, the two societies grew apart. A Lull in the Sea tells the story of a group of kids forced to attend school above the water where they come to terms with themselves and the discrimination against them.
Although From the New World has a darker edge to it, both it and A Lull in the Sea tells a coming-of-age and romance story that is all wrapped up in a supernatural blanket. Each features the troubles of growing up while also dealing with the troubles of their society. While both series have their love polygons, A Lull in the Sea is a much messier one.
Noein – To Your Other Self
In the future, a violent battle is taking place between the La’cryma, protectors of humanity, and the Shangri-La, a dimension bent on the destruction of everything. A group known as the Dragon Cavalry is dispatched in order to look for a powerful weapon call the Dragon’s Torque. In the present, Haruka and her friend Yuu are considering running away when they encounter a member of the Dragon’s Cavalry, who believes that Haruka possesses the Dragon’s Torque.
In both From the New World and Noein, the series follows a group of kids as they explore a mysterious futuristic world where they unravel the hidden background behind their world. As the children develop their character, the audience also gets to explore the heaps of drama between them as well.
Made in Abyss
The Abyss is an enormous cave system and the only unexplored place in the world. No one knows how deep it goes, but generations of bold adventurers have descended into it. In the town at the edge of The Abyss, an orphan named Rico dreams of raiding, as her mother did before her. One day while exploring the murky depths, she meets a boy, who turns out to be a robot, kicking off the start of her epic adventure.
Whereas From the New World is a coming-of-age story where the characters grow up and their views and knowledge of the world grow with them, Made in Abyss is different in that the characters don’t grow up, but they discover dark and terrible secrets as they descend in the abyss. Most similarity is that the shows start of quite nice, and get so much darker and brutal as they go on.
Kemono no Souja Erin
In a nation that is threatened by civil war, Erin lives with her mother who tends to the Grand Duke’s powerful war-lizards as a doctor. However, after an incident with the Grand Duke’s favorite war-lizard, Erin’s mother is held responsible. While trying to save her mother, Erin falls in a river and is swept away to a neighboring region. On her quest to get home, she encounters many different people and learns the harsh truths of her world.
Both of these series are set in fantasy lands, Erin more stereotypically so. However, what they both do well is take advantage of time skips. As coming-of-age tales, the time skips really allow you to get a much larger scope of the character’s life and it allows your view of the world to expand with theirs.
Coming-of-age stories are always charming. If you want more of them, check out these 18 Coming of Age Anime Series About Kids on the Cusp of Adulthood
Parasyte
One night, sixteen-year-old Shinichi Izumi was peacefully sleeping when a race of parasitic aliens descended on Earth. One parasite infects Shinichi, trying to get to his brain to take over his body, but ends up getting stuck in his right hand. Unable to relocate to the brain, the alien, named Migi, now has no choice but to learn to coexist with Shinichi in his body in order to stay alive. Unfortunately, the other parasitic aliens are not so friendly with humans or to parasites that failed to complete their mission.
While Parasyte is a sci-fi with aliens invading Earth, one of the core elements in the show is watching the main character grow as a person. This is augmented by the alien he shares a body with, but his experiences and battles do begin to shape him in a similar way that you see in From the New World.
Do you have more anime recommendations like From the New World? Let fans know in the comments section below.
Thank you for posting. I enjoyed reading and watching. 🙂