Six Netflix anime you could watch with your parents

Let’s be honest. There are about one thousand-and-one reasons most avid anime fans–all eager to convert everyone else–still won’t watch their favorite shows with their parents. Anime, while beautiful, is often disarming, forward and admittedly uncomfortable at times in its approach to stories on everything from love to trauma. But, for those eager to find a way to incorporate anime into family bonding time, there are a few Netflix anime you could watch with your parents.

Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean these anime don’t include emotional turmoil, the occasional lude behavior, and some exasperated yelling scenes the animators clearly had too much fun with.

But they are stories that contain more down-to-earth acting, gripping stories, gorgeous visuals and absolutely zero pornographic food-tasting sequences (looking at you, Food Wars!).

So, without further ado, as a sequel to my previous article Netflix Anime You Should Not Watch With Your Parents, here are the six Netflix anime you could watch with your parents that have the highest possibility of getting them hooked on the same entertainment that robs too many of us of too many hours of sleep.

From sci-fi to thriller, here’s a list of Netflix anime to watch with your parents

Violet Evergarden

Perhaps the most gorgeous anime ever created, even outshining Makoto Shinkai’s films, Violet Evergarden is a real testament to how far animation technology has come, and why this medium of storytelling is not just for kids.

The award-winning anime follows typewriter–or “Auto Memory Doll” violet who, after returning from war, takes up a job writing letters and, along the way, learns about the different aspects of familial, friend, and romantic love.

The Great Pretender

An original Netflix anime, The Great Pretender is Ocean’s Eleven meets Catch Me If You Can. The series is divided into blocks of episodes called “Cases,” which takes the con-artist characters around the world, from Los Angeles to London and even Singapore. The story follows a Japanese boy named Makoto Edamura, who is recruited by French con man Laurent to join his crew.

While many of the cases Laurent takes Edamura on also serve as the young boy’s hands-on training, Edamura has no idea he’s being conditioned for a much bigger con. As the anime goes on, it’s full of twists and turns that would make Soderbergh and Spielberg envious.

Eden

Produced by CGCG Studio Inc. and Qubic Pictures, Eden takes place in a post-apocalyptic world run by robots. One thousand years after humans disappeared from Earth, two robots stumble upon a pod that, inside, held a human baby girl. The robots decide to adopt the child, naming her Sara Grace, and raising her as a member of their family.

But as Sara grows, she becomes increasingly curious about the world around her and the possibility that she may not be the only human left. This is probably one of the best Netflix anime to watch with your parents as it will absolutely tug at anyone’s maternal and paternal heartstrings.

7 Seeds

Fans of the CW series The 100 will appreciate this one. Based on the manga by female artist and author Yumi Tamura, 7 Seeds follows five groups–made up of people from around the world–who wake up from a cryogenic sleep as part of an experiment to preserve humanity on Earth following a devastating meteor collision.

The events of the story can be a bit fantastical, but the life-or-death basis of the series keeps the show from getting too goofy or off-track. And despite narrating the happenings of so many survival groups, it’s not a tough plot to follow along with.

Hero Mask

Set in a fictional version of London, Hero Mask follows James Blood (note the 007 reference), an officer working for the “Special Service of Crime” (SSC) division within the Capital Police Department. When the station is attacked by an enemy James thought to be dead, he ends up teaming up with a Crown Prosecutor subordinate named Sarah Sinclair to uncover the truth.

As a series of strange events occur, involving escaped (and formerly diseased) prisoners and a mysterious face mask that gives its wearer superhuman abilities, James and Sarah’s case begins to unravel to reveal secrets they never anticipated.

Erased

To be honest, this one might be a bit iffy as a Netflix anime to watch with your parents. The story is incredible, but there are circumstances that might fill a parent, understandably, with enormous amounts of rage. So, be warned, this one will make your folks want to hug you and not let go.

Erased is a murder mystery series where 29-year-old Satoru Fujinuma suddenly finds himself launched back in time to his days in elementary school, when a series of unexplained and unsolved murders and disappearances of his own classmates took place. Determined to find the culprit after his journalist mother is murdered for learning too much, Satoru finds himself face-to-face with life’s uglier truths as he tries to catch a killer and also save a friend from deadly abuse.

Are there any parent-friendly anime you think we missed? Let us know in the comments below!