We all love our pets. It is one of those universal things for pet owners, so of course anime, with is passion for making slice of life everyday activities seem special, would have a passion for pets too.
However, pet anime does tend to have a little issue. Creators, or perhaps studios, don’t always give it as much effort as its close content cousin, childcare anime. This means instead of an abundance of full length anime series, you get a lot short-form anime where the episodes are only a minute or two long. Those are cute, but hard to get really invested in when you watch 60 episodes in an hour.
If you are in the mood for pet anime, but also want them to have a satisfying episode length, then why not give these pet anime recommendations a try?
Best Pet Anime
Go Forward
This series follows the point of view of Mametaro, a mix breed dog and his teenage owner, Iku. You follow his everyday life with his owner, his purebred girlfriend, Hankao and the shenanigans he gets into with all the other dogs in the neighborhood.
This is one of those heart-warming anime series where you sit back and enjoy Mametaro comically standing up for his mongrel self in a world of purebred dogs, but also him providing his own take on his owner’s life.
The series also injects a few educational tips on dog care as well, but is no means a serious educational anime.
My Roommate is a Cat
In all honesty, if you just want a slice of life anime about taking care of a pet, My Roommate is a Cat is the top tier in terms of quality of animation and minimal extra oddness going on.
The story follows an author who lost both his parents and lives alone. One day while visiting their graves, a shabby stray kitten eats the offerings and he ends up taking her home. From there, he learns how to take care of a cat and the joys of doing so.
My Roommate is a Cat has split story telling. So half the episode is from the guy’s point of view and the other half is from the cat’s. You watch him take care of a cat and you watch the cat take care of him, since he isn’t very adept at taking care of himself. It is very cute, but does dash in some drama near the end to keep things interesting.
Too Cute Crisis
Too Cute Crisis follows an alien invader who comes to Earth and deems it worth destroying – right up until she enters a cat cafe and learns the cuteness of our pets.
The cat cafe saved Earth with cuteness, and the alien invader soon adopts a stray cat of her own. From there on in, she gets caught up in the antics of the world’s most needy cat while also learning about the joys of a number of different pets.
This series is pure gushing over pets, but not just cats and dogs either! It shows off all sorts of pets and really emphasizes why people enjoy owning them. Furthermore, while not an educational anime, it does drop some applicable real life tips for pet ownership.
How to Raise a Mummy
As this series is about a boy who is sent a small, cute mummy by his father, How to Raise a Mummy doesn’t seem applicable as a pet anime. However, it very much is. If anything else, it is a cute metaphor for exotic pet ownership.
The series is about a boy learning to take care of his cute new supernatural pet, and often seeks the advice of other actual pet owners. There isn’t much applicable information in pet care in this series, but it is just as cute as the best of them.
Uchitama? Have You Seen My Tama?
This one is bit of a strange pet comedy. It follows Tama, a pet cat that often escapes from his home to interact with all the neighborhood animals. However, the plot isn’t the weird part, it is the pets.
Instead of just letting the characters be animals, they made them personifications of animals, so they are animals, but the characters are designed like anime characters. It probably great bait for kemonomimi anime fans, but it does make for less satisfying pet comedy.
Nyanko Days
Nyanko Days is about a completely average high school girl whose respite from tedium is her three cats at home. However, in a very Uchitama sort of situation, the cats are just chibi anime cat girls instead of just actual cats. They do cat antics and act very cute, but again, having them not be animals somewhat diminishes the enjoyment if you aren’t looking for kemonomimi.
Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga
Anime enjoys doing unique things with feudal warlords, Nobunaga in particular. He’s been turned into a gun, he’s been gender-bent into a woman, so why wouldn’t there be an anime about him being reincarnated as a dog?
This series follows Nobunaga’s new life as a Shiba Inu, but also has him interacting with other feudal warlords who were also reincarnated into dogs in the same neighborhood. It is silly fun and made even better if you have some basic historical knowledge of the Warring States period of Japanese history.
Shiawase Apartment’s Okojo-san
The most popular pet anime series are all about cats and dogs, but there are a few outliers for those that enjoy more exotic pets. Shiawase Apartment’s Okojo-san is one of those.
This series follows a mountain ferret that was captured and put in a pet shop. Being a wild animal, it is determined to escape, and uses a college boy to that end. However, the ferret ends up living as his pet and getting into comical misadventures.
This is one of those series where the pet is crazy and the owner is rather normal. It makes for effective comedy and allows for a wide array of both human and animal characters.
Raccoon Rascal
This older anime takes an uncommon path for pet anime by being a drama instead of just pure comedy. It follows a boy in the United States who finds an orphaned raccoon on a fishing trip whose mother was killed by a hunter. He takes the raccoon back and raises it himself as a pet.
The drama isn’t really from having a raccoon as a pet. The drama comes from the boy whose mother is sick and whose brother was sent off to war. He finds brief moments of happiness with his silly raccoon pet who acts as as rascally as raccoons often are.
Mikan’s Picture Diary
This series follows a boy who finds an orange cat and ends up adopting it. However, it isn’t long before he realizes that the cat isn’t exactly normal. He talks, walks on his hind legs, and enjoys drinking liquor. He’s a real genius cat, and it makes sure his owner’s life is never boring.
While this series may follow an abnormal genius cat, it still captures the essence of cat ownership, wherein cats often run roughshod over their owners. It uses that for comedy, and because there isn’t really any serious drama here, it is still a pretty wholesome show.
Lassie Come-Home
As it has been adapted in many different forms, people don’t really remember that beloved collie dog Lassie was originally a novel. Lassie Come-Home is an anime adaptation of that novels story.
It follows a boy in a coal mining town in England who finds a pup lost in a herd of sheep. He takes the dog home and names it Lassie. While they become best friends and the dog is loved by everyone in town, eventually they are separated and Lassie is taken to Scotland. After being set free by a girl, Lassie begins a long trek home.
There have been a number of stories about dogs on a journey to their masters, and this is indeed another one, but it does have everything people love about those stories.
Belle and Sebastian
Very similar to Lassie, Belle and Sebastian is also an anime adaptation of a book about a boy and his dog.
This time, a boy befriends a great Pyrenees dog named Belle, and together they set off on a journey to find the boy’s mother. She has been missing for awhile, but he knows she is still alive out there somewhere.
Unlike Lassie, this journey is a little less believable, but just as wholesome. You also get more interaction between owner and dog as well. Both Belle and Sebastian and Lassie Come-Home really are great little anime stories for children, but can be enjoyed by everyone.
Wanwan Celepoo Sore Yuke! Tetsunoshin
This comical little series follows a dog and his family who have moved to a fancy new house in a high-end neighborhood. The father of the family runs an IT company, but used a lot of money buying his new house, so much so that it put his company in danger.
The dog, Tetsunoshin, worried about the family’s finances, teams up with other neighborhood dogs to make money to help his family.
The series is as silly as it sounds, and definitely shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Fortune Dogs
One more weird dog anime for the road. Fortune Dogs follows a French Bulldog who was adopted by a girl named Ai. One day, he follows a girl wearing the same outfit as Ai onto a bus and ends up lost.
While in this dire time, he remembers a story Ai used to read to him about Freddy, a dog who leaves home to find the Fortune Tree to save humanity.
The dog takes up the name of Freddy and tries to head home, yet he ends up on a quest with other dogs to find the Fortune Tree.
Because the major characters are dogs, it seems only right to have a main story with attention deficit. The dog wants to get home, but he also ends up looking for a mythical tree with other characters in a bit of a fun split focus.
Do you have more pet anime recommendations that you think fans would enjoy? Let them know in the comments section below.
