Anime Like How I Met Your Mother
If you loved How I Met Your Mother's Comedy storytelling, these anime deliver a similar experience — selected for art style, narrative depth, and emotional impact. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Three's Company
When two single girls, Janet and Chrissy, need a roommate to share their Santa Monica apartment, they decide to offer a room to Jack, a man they find passed out in the bathtub after the going-away party for their last roommate. However, hijinks ensure when Jack must pretend to be gay in order to throw off the scent of the trio's conservative landlady.
New Girl
Jessica Day is an offbeat and adorable girl in her late 20s who, after a bad breakup, moves in with three single guys. Goofy, positive, vulnerable and honest to a fault, Jess has faith in people, even when she shouldn't. Although she's dorky and awkward, she's comfortable in her own skin. More prone to friendships with women, she's not used to hanging with the boys—especially at home.
Friends
Six young people from New York City, on their own and struggling to survive in the real world, find the companionship, comfort and support they get from each other to be the perfect antidote to the pressures of life.
The Big Bang Theory
Physicists Leonard and Sheldon find their nerd-centric social circle with pals Howard and Raj expanding when aspiring actress Penny moves in next door.
Peep Show
Peep Show follows the lives of two men from their twenties to thirties, Mark Corrigan, who has steady employment for most of the series, and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne, an unemployed would-be musician.
The Odd Couple
Oscar's life seems almost perfect...sure he's divorced and his apartment is a mess, but he's the host of a well-known sports show, and is enjoying his bachelor lifestyle in New York City. That is until his college friend, Felix, shows up at Oscar's apartment having just been dumped by his wife. Oscar does his best to console his old buddy and get him back on the dating horse, but his attempts uncover just how unresolved his own feelings are about his ex.
That '70s Show
Crank up the 8-track and flash back to a time when platform shoes and puka shells were all the rage in this hilarious retro-sitcom. For Eric, Kelso, Jackie, Hyde, Donna and Fez, a group of high school teens who spend most of their time hanging out in Eric’s basement, life in the ‘70s isn’t always so groovy. But between trying to figure out the meaning of life, avoiding their parents, and dealing with out-of-control hormones, they’ve learned one thing for sure: they’ll always get by with a little help from their friends.
Friends with Better Lives
A comedy about six friends at different stages in their lives – married, divorced, newly engaged and single – who are outwardly happy, but secretly questioning if their friends have it better. Andi and Bobby are happily married with two kids but at times long for the days they had less responsibility and more fun; Will is newly single and preaching the bachelor lifestyle, but still pining for his ex-wife; Jules and Lowell are high on their passionate new relationship; and Kate has a successful career but may take a swan dive into the L.A. River when she finds out her last remaining single friend, Jules, just got engaged. When it comes to relationships, these six friends are finding it a challenge to look at each other without wondering… who really has the better life?
More Anime Like How I Met Your Mother
Perfect Strangers
The chronicles of the rocky coexistence of midwestern American Larry Appleton and his distant cousin from eastern Mediterranean Europe, Balki Bartokomous.
Hot in Cleveland
Three fabulous, eccentric, LA best friends of a certain age have their lives changed forever when their plane unexpectedly lands in Cleveland and they soon rediscover themselves in this new "promised land."
Happy Endings
A fresh and funny take on modern friendship and what one urban family will do to stay friends after the perfect couple who brought them all together break up on their wedding day. The failed wedding forces them all to question their life choices. Then there are Alex and Dave themselves, who strike a truce and must learn to live with the changes their breakup has brought.
Hangin' with Mr. Cooper
Former NBA player Mark Cooper becomes a dedicated teacher and basketball coach in Oakland after his playing career ends. When he's not dealing with his students and players, Mark spends time with his gorgeous female roommate and other friends.
Undateable
Danny Burton is a 30-ish carefree single guy who has watched most of his friends move on to serious relationships. When his last remaining friend Shannon moves out to get married, Danny searches for a new roommate. A promising candidate is Justin, the owner of Black Eyes Bar in Detroit (frequently mispronounced "Black Guys Bar"). Justin and his friends - the nerdy Burski, oddball Shelly, and recently out-of-the-closet gay guy Brett - all have certain qualities that make them appear "undateable".
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show centers around the work and home life of television comedy writer Rob Petrie. The plots generally revolve around problems at work, where Rob got into various comedic jams with fellow writers Buddy Sorrell, Sally Rogers and producer Mel Cooley.
Baby Daddy
Baby Daddy follows Ben, a young man in his early 20s living the life of a bachelor in New York City with his buddy, Tucker, and his brother, Danny. Their lives are turned upside down when they come home one day to find a baby girl left on the doorstep by an ex-girlfriend of Ben's. After much deliberation, Ben decides to raise the baby with the help of his friends and his protective and sometimes over-bearing mother, Bonnie, and his close female friend, Riley.
Rules of Engagement
Rules of Engagement is a comedy about the different phases of male/female relationships, as seen through the eyes of a newly engaged couple, Adam and Jennifer, a long-time married pair, Jeff and Audrey, and a single guy on the prowl, Russell. As they find out, the often confusing stages of a relationship can seem like being on a roller coaster. People can describe the ride to you, but to really know what it's like you have to experience it for yourself.
Will & Grace
Will Truman and Grace Adler are best friends living in New York, and when Grace's engagement falls apart, she moves in with Will. Together, along with their friends, they go through the trials of dating, sex, relationships and their careers, butting heads at times but ultimately supporting one another while exchanging plenty of witty banter along the way.
Friends from College
Twenty years after graduation, a tight-knit group of college friends reconnects and discovers that love hasn't gotten easier with age.
The Unicorn
A tight-knit group of best friends and family helps Wade embrace his “new normal” in the wake of the loss of his wife. As a sometimes ill-equipped but always devoted single parent to his two adolescent daughters, he is taking the major step of dating again.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with How I Met Your Mother (2005): Comedy themes, comparable animation style, and similar narrative pacing. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface anime most likely to resonate with fans of How I Met Your Mother.
See full details for How I Met Your Mother (2005)