Slice Of Life Anime that will warm your heart

Key takeaways

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

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

But there are times when viewers are just not in the mood for such loud, busy and fast-paced action fantasy stories. All they want is a cozy anime without overly complicated stories and flashy effects. Something nice and simple to soothe your tired legs. For such a situation, Slice-of-Life anime is the best option.

7 Relaxed camp

Cozy camping in scenic locations

One of the best things you can do to relax your tired legs and soothe your weary soul is to sit outside next to a warm fire while looking at the countless stars above your head with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. Camping in other words. If that sounds like your kind of jam, fans should watch Relaxed 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 they'll visit — all of which are based on real-life locations, by the way — and what kind of fun and relaxing activities they do while camping together.

6 Restaurant to another world

Delicious dishes for magical creatures

One of the fastest ways to heal the heart is to fill the stomach with delicious food. Thankfully, there are plenty of food-themed anime that have come out in recent years, so viewers have plenty to choose from. One of the most interesting 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 worlda Western-style restaurant called Nekoya from Tokyo has a mysterious door that connects this fine establishment to a world filled with magical creatures, such as 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 food before.

5 The houseman's way

Former Yakuza becomes a devoted householder

There is something healthy about seeing two people who are genuinely in love and want to do the best for each other. The houseman's way fits that description perfectly. Not only that, this title also offers a lot more good stuff inside, making it stand out from other similar titles.

As a former Yakuza member, Tatsu is a terrifying man. His brash language, the tattoos visible from his loose shirt, the sharp gaze behind his sunglasses and his menacing attitude, all these are enough to scare people away. What most people don't realize, however, is the fact that Tatsu is a mild-mannered householder who loves to cook delicious food for his wife. Not only that, he is also very knowledgeable about home life. Which store sells the cheapest vegetables? How to remove a stubborn stain from clothes? How do you make a healthy and tasty hot pot? He knows everything.

4 Polar Bear Cafe

Daily life in a cafe owned by a chilly polar bear

When you talk about things that can warm your heart, fluffy animals have to be in the top five. And when it comes to fluffy animals, bears are certainly 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 creatures on earth.

So it goes without saying that anime revolving around pandas 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, but what if the panda is a lazy boy who works part-time at a zoo because his mother has been nagging him to get a job? If that sounds like your kind of slice-of-life comedy, then you should watch Polar Bear Cafe.

3 Hakumei and Mikochi

A healthy life of small people in a big world

• Japanese title: Hakumei to Mikochi
• Seasons/Episodes: 1 season/12 episodes
• Release date: 12 January 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's a snapshot of the characters' everyday lives. In a way, this genre is about depicting everyday things in interesting and wholesome ways. In this respect Hakumei and Mikochi is one of the best this genre has to offer.

At its core, Hakumei and Mikochi is a story about small 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 lives on top of a hill. There is also a time when they shop around a market in a big city, visit a bar that offers local delicacies, meet a monkey shop owner who asks Mikochi to try his brand new soy sauce, have lunch under a giant tree in 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

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 heartache to create compelling drama. And that's where 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 title that best fits that description must 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 teased for it. Their interactions are so cute and heartwarming that viewers can't help but smile during every episode.

1 Sweetness & Lightning

A wholesome story of love, family and food

Sweetness & Lightning is something of a culmination of the previous posts. 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 for The houseman's way and Teasing Master Takagi-san.

How Kohei does it is by learning to cook his daughter's favorite dishes from one of his students, Kotori, whose mother is a chef but is rarely home to eat with her. So there is the realistic element of Relaxed camp and the delicious food Restaurant to another world in it too. The sight of little Tsumugi excitedly eating the Hamburg Steak her father made for the first time is simply an overload of cuteness, on par with the bears and pandas in Polar Bear Cafe.

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