Updated May 28, 2019 1.5K votes 629 voters 21.5K views
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Vote up the best next watch for fans of Death Parade.
Death Parade, a 2015 anime from Madhouse, was one of the greatest anime to come out that year. In the world of Quindecim, Decim and the other Arbiters of the afterlife use a series of violent and painful competitions to determine which souls should be reincarnated, and which should be permanently erased. Though initially steadfast in his methods, Decim begins to question whether or not he's judging humankind fairly.
If it was one of your personal favorites, you might be looking for some anime similar to Death Parade. Your best next watch depends on what it was you liked about the show. If your favorite part was the brutal games that dominated the first few episodes, you might want to take a look at Kakegurui, a surprisingly dark anime about high stakes gambling. If you were intrigued by the question of what it means to fairly judge human action, Psycho-Pass might be right up your alley. If you want to experience another inventive take on the afterlife, you should watch Angel Beats! or Haibane Renmei.
Which anime like Death Parade is your favorite? Vote it up to let other viewers know what they should put on their to-watch list.
Light Yagami and Decim both try to determine the fates of other living beings. Light is a human borrowing the powers of a god to create a world free of criminals. Decim is an Arbiter whose job is to decide who gets to be reincarnated and whose soul will be destroyed. Neither of them has much information to go on - Light decides who to eliminate based on whether they've been accused of a crime, and Decim uses brutal competitions that don't yield much information. Light loses his humanity, while Decim gains his.
Psycho-Pass depicts a world in which people are judged as potential criminals - and punished - before they've ever committed a single crime. As the series progresses, the characters begin to question and even fight against the unfair system that they once upheld, but never succeed in completely dismantling it. The same can be said for Death Parade - Decim judges people on the basis of how they perform in torturous games, but later realizes that putting people in horrifying situations can actually change who they are. He starts to question his methods and gain perspective on human psychology, but he doesn't completely shift his methods.
If your favorite part of Death Parade was the gruesome beginning, when the focus was on the painful games that determined who would be reincarnated and whose soul would be destroyed, you might like Kakegurui. This anime, which takes place at a high school that's dedicated to the fine art of gambling, features high stakes competitions that put everything on the line. With scenes like the one where Midari pleasures herself with a gun to her head, Kakegurui takes the intensity found at the beginning of Death Parade and supercharges it.
Violet Evergarden tells the story of a former child soldier who takes a job as an auto memories doll - someone who transcribes the feelings of others into letter form - in order to understand what her major meant when he told her he loved her. Like Decim, Violet does not understand typical human emotions at the start of the series but ultimately learns from the people around her. Both series are episodic, with each new encounter pushing the protagonist toward a deeper appreciation of the human soul.
Danganronpa: The Animation is a fast-paced battle royale that pits the characters against each other as determined by a larger force. Basically, it's what you get if Death Parade focused on the souls waiting to be reincarnated instead of on the Arbiters. Danganronpa is a little flashier and a little less serious, so if you preferred Death Parade's high octane action scenes to the slow-paced and introspective ones, check it out.
Like Death Parade, Angel Beats! provides a peek into a kind of purgatory - the place where people go after they die in order to determine their final resting place. In Angel Beats! a group of kids, who lost their lives before they could resolve their personal struggles, is given the opportunity to do so. There's no arbiter controlling their process, which makes Angel Beats! a kind of Death Parade without Decim.
