Slice Of Life Anime That Will Warm Your Heart

Key Takeaways

• Slice-of-Life anime offers cozy, wholesome content for viewers seeking a break from action and fantasy.
• Laid-Back Camp, Restaurant to Another World, and The Way of the Househusband are top slice-of-life anime to watch.
• Sweetness & Lightning combines heartwarming moments, delicious food, and family love.

When fans hear the word anime, the first things that usually spring to mind are action, martial arts, and fantasy. After all, the most popular titles that this medium has to offer—Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Demon Slayer, and My Hero Academia, just to name a few— belong in these genres. That’s why these are the genres loved by most anime fans.

However, there are times when viewers are simply not in the mood for such loud, busy, and fast-paced action fantasy stories. All they want is some cozy anime without overly complicated stories and flashy effects. Something nice and simple to soothe one’s weary bones. For such a situation, Slice-of-Life anime is the best option.

7 Laid-Back Camp

Cozy Camping In Scenic Locations

One of the best things that you can do to help relax your weary bones and calm your tired soul is to sit outside beside a warm bonfire while looking at the countless stars above your head with a cup of hot chocolate in your hand. In other words, camping. If that sounds like your kind of jam, then fans should watch Laid-Back Camp.

This anime is about a couple of friends from their school’s camping club who are crazy about camping. Here fans will see how they plan their trip, the different camping destinations that they’ll visit—all of which are based on real places, by the way—and the kind of fun and relaxing activities that they do when they camp together.

6 Restaurant To Another World

Delicious Cuisines For Magical Creatures

One of the fastest ways to cure the heart is to fill one’s stomach with delicious foods. Thankfully, loads of anime revolve around foods that came out within the last couple of years, so viewers have quite a few to choose from. One of the most interesting ones of them all has to be Restaurant to Another World. Why? Because it’s the perfect marriage of slice-of-life and isekai.

In Restaurant to Another World, a Western-style restaurant called Nekoya from Tokyo has a mysterious door that connects this fine establishment to a world filled with magical creatures, like elves, dwarves, beastmen, and the like. So every Saturday, Nekoya closes its Tokyo doors and focuses on serving good food to its magical customers who have never eaten such fine cuisine before.

5 The Way Of The Househusband

Former Yakuza Becomes A Devoted Househusband

There’s something wholesome about seeing two people who are genuinely in love and want to do the best for each other. The Way of the Househusband perfectly fits that description. Not only that, this title also offers way more good stuff inside, which makes it stand out from other similar titles.

As a former Yakuza member, Tatsu is an intimidating man. His brazen language, the tattoos that can be seen from his loose shirt, the sharp gaze behind his sunglasses, and his threatening attitude, all of these are enough to scare people off. What most people don’t realize, however, is the fact that Tatsu is a gentle househusband who loves to cook delicious foods for his wife. Not only that, he is also highly knowledgeable about domestic life. Which store sells the cheapest vegetables? How to clean a stubborn stain from your clothes? How to make a healthy and delicious hot pot? He knows it all.

4 Polar Bear Cafe

Daily Life At A Cafe Owned By A Chill Polar Bear

When talking about things that can warm your heart, fluffy animals have to be among the top five. And when it comes to fluffy animals, bears are surely at the top of the list, especially pandas and polar bears. Sure, a real polar bear is a dangerous animal and should only be admired from afar, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are among the most adorable-looking creatures on Earth.

So it goes without saying that anime that revolve around panda and polar bears will be absolutely wholesome and heartwarming. But what if the polar bear in this anime is a cafe owner who likes to play puns with his customers? Not only that, what if the panda is a lazy boy who works part-time in a zoo because his mother has been nagging him to get a job? If that sounds like your type of slice-of-life comedy, then you should watch Polar Bear Cafe.

3 Hakumei And Mikochi

A Wholesome Life Of Tiny People In A Big World

• Japanese Title: Hakumei to Mikochi
• Seasons/Episodes: 1 Season/12 Episodes
• Release Date: Jan 12, 2018
• MyAnimeList Score: 7.69/10

The true charm of a slice-of-life anime, and what makes it so wholesome in the first place, is the fact that it is a snapshot of the day-to-day life of the characters. In a way, this genre is all about depicting mundane things in interesting and wholesome ways. In this regard, Hakumei and Mikochi is one of the best this genre has to offer.

At its core, Hakumei and Mikochi is a story about tiny people living in a big world. Viewers follow the two main characters as they go through their days. They see them riding a pair of beetles in search of a giant bird that resides on top of a hill. There’s also the time when they shop around a town-sized market, visit a bar that offers local delicacies, meet a monkey shop owner who asks Mikochi to try his brand-new soy sauce, have lunch underneath a giant tree at the heart of the market, and stand on the harbor to watch the sunset.

2 Teasing Master Takagi-san

A Heartwarming Interaction Between Two Pranksters

Out of every genre in fiction, romance has to be at the top of the list when it comes to producing stories that can warm your heart. Unfortunately, along with heartwarming, romance also offers heartbreak to create a compelling drama. And that’s where the slice-of-life comes in. So fans need an anime that has the heartwarming element of romance, minus the drama, and the wholesome element of slice-of-life.

The one title that fits that description the most has to be Teasing Master Takagi-san. This is a story about two middle schoolers—a boy named Nishikata and a girl named Takagi—who clearly like each other but are too shy to admit their feelings. So they resort to teasing and playing games instead. Nishikata will challenge Takagi to all sorts of little games every day, only to be defeated by Takagi and get teased for it. Their interaction is so sweet and heartwarming that viewers can’t help but smile throughout each episode.

1 Sweetness & Lightning

A Wholesome Story Of Love, Family, And Food

Sweetness & Lightning is somewhat of a culmination of the previous entries. It’s a story about a single father, Kohei, who tries to do his best for his young daughter, Tsumugi, so fans get that sweet and innocent love of The Way of the Househusband and Teasing Master Takagi-san.

The way Kohei does it is by learning how to cook his daughter’s favorite dishes from one of his students, Kotori, whose mother is a chef but rarely at home to eat together with her. So there’s the realistic element of Laid-Back Camp and the delicious foods of the Restaurant to Another World in it as well. The sight of little Tsumugi excitedly eating the Hamburg Steak that her father made for the first time is simply cuteness overload, on par with the bears and pandas of the Polar Bear Cafe.

This anime is lighthearted, funny, heartwarming, and just the perfect thing to watch after a tiresome day. If there’s only one anime that fans can watch from this list, then they should definitely check out Sweetness & Lightning.