10 best anime to watch if you like Takopi’s Original Sin

Premiered in 2025, Takopi’s Original Sin is an anime that blends heartbreaking tragedy with soft pastel visuals. Sent from a distant planet on a simple mission to “make Earth smile,” the octopus-like alien Takopi crash-lands beside Shizuka, a little girl whose daily suffering at school is slowly crushing her.

When despair reaches its peak and time itself rewinds, each new attempt to change the past only creates more pain. The anime moved viewers with its gentle character designs and soft visual tones concealed a powerful, emotional story about bullying, guilt, and suicidal thoughts.

Below are ten anime that carry the same powerful contrast: cute visuals hiding deep emotional damage.

Note: The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

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10 must-watch anime for fans of Takopi’s Original Sin

1. Made in Abyss

Made in Abyss (Image via Kinema Citrus)

Under a sunny island lies the Abyss, a giant pit filled with old treasures and dangerous creatures. Twelve-year-old explorer Riko and her half-robot friend Reg go deeper and deeper, losing parts of themselves, both body and spirit, with each step.

Made in Abyss anime starts with soft, warm feelings before showing something darker: happy faces meeting terrible fates, just like Takopi’s smiling toy face facing real danger. Every level of the Abyss brings new emotional challenges, similar to Takopi’s painful choices of who to save and who to lose.

The injuries the kids suffer are not just part of the story—they stay with them, growing worse, and are shown through clever color changes and haunting sounds that make the pain feel real.

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2. Wonder Egg Priority

Wonder Egg Priority (Image via CloverWorks)

Four teenage girls jump into strange dream worlds created by “Wonder Eggs.” Inside each egg is someone who died by suicide. By defeating nightmare versions of their fears, the girls hope to bring those people back, at the cost of their mental health.

Bright colors and silly clothes cover up serious pain, just like Takopi hides his deep confusion. This anime shows picture girlhood as a maze of guilt, where winning often feels like losing a part of yourself. Instead of ending with peace, each fight brings new problems: sleeplessness, self-hate, and deep sadness.

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3. Bokurano

Bokurano (Image via Gonzo)

Fifteen middle-schoolers agree to test-pilot a strange robot. Soon after, they learn the dark truth: after each battle, the chosen pilot dies, erased from existence—and so does a whole possible version of reality. This sacrifice matches Takopi’s painful loops: giving up one child to maybe save many others.

This anime explores how childhood breaks apart when faced with huge, serious choices, and it makes viewers care about outcomes that hurt either way. There are no clear villains. Every child has to weigh personal pain against helping others, pulling the audience into the same hard choices that Takopi explores.

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4. When They Cry

When They Cry (Image via Studio Deen)

A quiet mountain village hides old stories, strange sickness, and a festival that always ends in murder. The timeline resets often, turning peaceful summer days into new horror stories. The small-town setting and broken-down buildings feel like Takopi’s bright neighborhood hiding sadness.

Like Takopi, When They Cry also uses time travel to reveal how friends and family can change roles, showing that people are not always who they seem. As time resets again and again, the reasons behind things blur. Time travel doesn’t heal, it just repeats pain differently.

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5. Erased

Erased (Image via A-1 Pictures)

Satoru Fujinuma, a manga artist, is thrown eighteen years into the past when his hidden power activates. He must stop a child kidnapper before a classmate is killed, a crime that leads to his mother’s death years later. This story places adult thinking inside child bodies, letting characters try to fix their past.

But every change brings new results: friendships shift, secrets grow, and forgiveness slips further away. The soft lighting and quiet sounds create an emotional twist in Erased, just like Takopi finding out that trying to make someone happy might hurt them even more.

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6. Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain (Image via Triangle Staff)

Serial Experiments Lain follows Lain, a quiet schoolgirl who is drawn into the “Wired,” a version of the internet where identity disintegrates, and suicide is disturbingly treated like logging off. Gentle music plays over images of cables that initially seem playful, until they begin to coil around her mind.

This mix of digital and personal breakdown mirrors the themes found in Takopi's Original Sin, where each time reset chips away at the characters' sense of self. Serial Experiments Lain explores how attempts to help can slowly become controlling, and how support can lose its kindness when boundaries blur.

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7. Texhnolyze

Texhnolyze (Image via Madhouse)

In the dark tunnels of Lux, fighters with fake limbs and lost souls trade what little dignity they have for survival, while the surface plans for the world’s end.

Visually, it’s the opposite of Takopi's Original Sin—dark and rough instead of soft and colorful, but both tell the same truth: saving others often means losing part of yourself. Whether rescuing a girl or a city, a high price is always paid. There are no heroes.

Texhnolyze anime series makes us question our own values as we watch its characters take on problems too big for them.

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8. Girls’ Last Tour

Girls’ Last Tour (Image via White Fox)

After the end of the world, two small girls, Yuuri and Chito, ride through empty buildings in a little motorbike-tank.

They collect water, take pictures, and ask if beauty still matters when no one is left to see it. Their lonely, pale-colored world looks like Takopi's Original Sin's classroom after all the students are gone. The silence between songs and voices feels like the breath after a failed rescue.

In their world, survival is plain; in Takopi’s, it’s a miracle. Both stories quietly suggest that not everyone gets to hear the last lullaby, and that’s what makes it haunting.

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9. A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice (Image via Kyoto Animation)

In A Silent Voice animated film, we follow Shoya, who, years after bullying a deaf girl named Shoko, struggles with guilt and thoughts of suicide. He tries to reconnect with her and make up for what he did, even though he knows it might never be enough.

The soft school setting and heartfelt moments grow from the same soil as Takopi, where guilt and regret live side-by-side. One cruel act can echo louder than a hundred good ones. Both stories show characters crying in close-up, not for drama, but to show how heavy true regret can feel.

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10. Paranoia Agent

Paranoia Agent (Image via Madhouse)

In modern Tokyo, a golden-bat-carrying figure on inline skates attacks adults under stress. Soon, he becomes more than a person—he becomes a shared illusion. Takopi’s cute alien becomes dangerous by accident. Here, the attacker becomes dangerous by belief.

Paranoia Agent anime asks what happens when pressure breaks people down behind their smiling faces. In the end, the real fear isn’t the attacker, it’s being too weak to face real pain. Takopi’s Original Sin learns this the hard way: sometimes the person trying to help is also the one harming.

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Conclusion

Across different styles, from dreamy to gritty, these ten anime echo Takopi’s Original Sin: soft images holding deep sadness. Whether through time travel, the internet, or quiet city ruins, each story honors the emotions of young characters while refusing easy answers.

If you’re looking for shows that mix beauty with truth, here’s your guide. Step in carefully and be ready to feel.

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Edited by Bharath S