Anime Like Underground
If you loved Underground's Drama 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
The Underground Railroad
Follow young Cora’s journey as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. After escaping her Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, Cora discovers no mere metaphor, but an actual railroad full of engineers and conductors, and a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil.
Roots
The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.
Queen Sugar
Two sisters, Nova Bordelon and Charley Bordelon, with her teenage son Micah moves to the heart of Louisiana to claim an inheritance from her recently departed father - an 800-acre sugarcane farm.
The Book of Negroes
Kidnapped in Africa and subsequently enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata must navigate a revolution in New York, isolation in Nova Scotia and treacherous jungles of Sierra Leone, in an attempt to secure her freedom in the 19th century.
Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs: the wealthy, aristocratic Bellamys. Downstairs: their loyal and lively servants. For nearly 30 years, they share a fashionable townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s posh Belgravia neighborhood, surviving social change, political upheaval, scandals, and the horrors of the First World War.
Roots
An adaptation of Alex Haley's "Roots", chronicling the history of an African slave, Kunta Kinte sold to America and his descendants.
Julia
Through Julia Child’s life and her singular joie de vivre, the series explores a pivotal time in American history – the emergence of public television as a new social institution, feminism and the women's movement, the nature of celebrity and America's cultural evolution.
Tell Me Lies
When Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco meet at college, they are at that formative age when seemingly mundane choices lead the way to irrevocable consequences. They quickly fall into an addictive entanglement that will permanently alter not only their lives, but the lives of everyone around them.
More Anime Like Underground
Downton Abbey
A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy.
Taboo
Adventurer James Keziah Delaney returns to London from Africa in 1814 along with fourteen stolen diamonds to seek vengeance after the death of his father.
Atlanta
Two cousins work through the Atlanta music scene in order to better their lives and the lives of their families.
Sweet Magnolias
Lifelong friends Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue lift each other up as they juggle relationships, family and careers in the small Southern town of Serenity.
Tyler Perry's Sistas
There's nothing that bonds a group of single black women together more than sidestepping the land mines of living, working and dating in Atlanta. In a sea of swipe-lefts, social media drama and unrealistic #relationshipgoals, these friends try to find their Mr. Right.
Chapelwaite
In the 1850s, Captain Charles Boone relocates his family of three children to his ancestral home in the small, seemingly sleepy town of Preacher’s Corners, Maine after his wife dies at sea. Charles will soon have to confront the secrets of his family’s sordid history, and fight to end the darkness that has plagued the Boones for generations.
Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots
Follow the complicated dynamic between the rich and powerful Cryer family and the hired help who work in their opulent Savannah, Georgia, mansion.
Snowpiercer
More than seven years after the world has become a frozen wasteland, the remnants of humanity inhabit a gigantic, perpetually-moving train that circles the globe as class warfare, social injustice and the politics of survival play out.
Ambitions
A multigenerational family saga centered around one woman who, having recently relocated and intent on revitalizing her marriage, finds herself going head to head with some of the most powerful and deceitful players in the city.
The Blue and the Gray
The Blue and the Gray is a television miniseries that first aired on CBS in three installments on November 14, November 16, and November 17, 1982. Set during the American Civil War, the series starred John Hammond, Stacy Keach, Lloyd Bridges, and Gregory Peck as President Abraham Lincoln. It was executive produced by Larry White and Lou Reda, in association with Columbia Pictures Television, then owned by The Coca-Cola Company.
Dynasty
Follows two of America’s wealthiest families, the Carringtons and the Colbys, as they feud for control over their fortune and their children focusing on Fallon Carrington, the daughter of billionaire Blake Carrington, and her soon-to-be stepmother, Cristal, a Hispanic woman marrying into this WASP family and America’s most powerful class.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Underground (2016): Drama 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 Underground.
See full details for Underground (2016)