Everyone feels lonely sometimes. They feel like they don’t fit in, but one day they find the right person or people that finally make them discover they have a place in this world. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of anime series that explore this particular feeling of being an outcast. I’ve always believed that watching the right anime for how you are feeling can make a big difference. So if you feel like an outcast adrift in a sea of people that seem so different from you, perhaps check out these anime series.
Best Anime Where Outcasts Find Acceptance
Darling in the Franxx
This series is a double-sided outcast story about two people that were innately different in a post-apocalyptic world where they were expected to conform. Hiro showed all the signs of being an expert pilot, but ultimately fizzled out while Zero Two is literally shunned because of what she is. However, these two form feelings and ultimately elevate each other in to being able to excel in battle. There is much more to unravel in this series in terms of the relationships, but that’s just something you will need to watch to find out.
Kaze no Stigma
In Kaze no Stigma, the whole family is able to use the fire element. However, when one son is able to control win instead, they pretty much cast him out. He wanders, but the story starts up when he decides to return to his family, and show them just how fierce his own powers are. It is ultimately an action-y story of how being different isn’t necessarily bad, just…different.
Berserk
Berserk is about struggle and sacrifice later in the series, but it starts off very much about an outcast finding his place in the world. Gutts was born from a corpse, adopted by a mercenary, taught to fight and abused before running away from it all. He wandered aimlessly as a mercenary, not really caring if he lived or died. Then he met Griffith and the Band of the Hawk, a mercenary group where he formed bonds with the other members. He began to care about them and realized, he liked leading men and sharing victory and defeat with them. Of course, that happiness doesn’t last.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
The Ancient Magus’ Bride is a fully complete outcast story, and a magical one at that. The main girl is shunned because of her type of magic and so too is the suitor she sold herself into slavery to. While mages are solitary and increasingly rare in the world, there are even fewer that will even interact with the male lead. So, in effect, this is a wonderful love story between two outcasts in a world that doesn’t really care for them.
Naruto
Naruto, at least at first, is an outcast story to its core. It is about a kid whose parents died and the whole village shuns him because he has a demon sealed away inside him. As such, he acts out because negative attention is really the only kind he can get. However, as the story grows grander, you can still look back at that little outcast troublemaker in the beginning and revel at what a life he made for himself.
Noragami
In Noragami, there are the gods that we all know and have tons of followers. However, this isn’t about them. This is about Yato, the delivery god who has no followers and is doing odd jobs in order to buy a tiny shrine for himself. Through happenstance, he finds his first human follower after helping her out. However, you soon learn that all the people that accept Yato are strange in their own way, but it is these people that end up being crucial to his very existence.
March Comes in Like a Lion
In March Comes in Like a Lion, you watch a main character that has been outcasted in a self-imposed way for being far too good at something. In this series, that something is Shogi. However, while the game is a big part of the series, it is far more worth watching to see how he slowly gets pulled back into society by making friends and how those friends actively don’t let him shy away.
Welcome to the NHK
This anime covers the tale of a Japanese NEET, which is essentially a shut-in that is so riddled with anxieties they don’t go to school and they can’t find a job. Basically, they don’t leave their room. It explores the psychological effect of this phenomenon for the most part, but you also see the character wanting to actively change. However, the best way to do this is meeting people that he feels comfortable with. Yet, you find that the people that want to be around him also have their own problems.
Trigun
Vash is a lone wanderer of a new wild west-type planet where humanity has settled, and as you find out, not technically human. Despite being a cheerful and kind man, he has a rough cut in life. You find his enemies fearful of him and what friends he does make typically shun him from the shock of his devastating abilities. However, throughout Trigun, you explore Vash as a character as well see him understood by those around him.
Natsume’s Book of Friends
Imagine you had a special power, and you told people about it – or not – and they saw you do it. If you can’t prove it to others, you’d be shunned for it. This is what Natsume’s Book of Friends is about. He can see and speak to spirits, but of course, since people can’t see them, they think he is crazy. However, throughout the story he manages to find acceptance through both some of his peers as well as the spirits.
Kotoura-San
In a similar situation to the aforementioned Natsume’s Book of Friends, Kotoura-san tells the story of a girl who was outcasted because she could read minds. Now being able to read minds must be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but this is the only series with it that goes into the brutal realities. Even Kotoura’s own mother savagely gave her up to a relative, but not without saying some unkind words first. Yet, as she gets older, she finds a group of people that can genuinely love her, even with her powers. It is perhaps one of the sweeter romcoms out there because of how devastating her past was.
Haganai
Haganai is all about weird people. People who don’t fit in with their more demure peers and thus have become lonely. In a bit of happenstance, two of these weird people meet up and decide to form a club in order to make friends. Low and behold, their only members are other outcasts. However, this show is a perfect example of how you shouldn’t look for normal friends, but rather people you actually like.
Watamote
…If you’re an anime nerd, or just a nerd in general, this one is likely to be painfully cringe-worthy. It centers around an awkward girl who is more at home with her games than she is with people. Yet, like all people, she wants real life connections. So she tries to make them. Then she fails. Over and over again this happens. As a comedy anime, it has some laughs, but it has moments of lucid cringe-worthy nerditude that uncomfortably hit home for many who have watched.
Kimi ni Todoke
If you’re still young and in your mandatory schooling, there isn’t another story you can relate to more than this one. Kimi ni Todoke is about a sweet, but shy girl. Her kindness is often mistaken for malice because she is so shy and withdrawn that her peers are fearful when she tries to reach out. This is her tale of being drawn out of that shell and her journey to try and make friends. While also the world’s most sluggish romance anime, it is just as much about making friends as it is about finding love.
Do you have more anime recommendations where the characters are outcasted, but find acceptance? Let needy fans know in the comments section below.
