Anime Like American Crime Story
If you loved American Crime Story's Crime and 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
Interrogation
Based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files, with the goal of turning the viewer into a detective.
Accused
In this crime anthology series, viewers discover how an ordinary person got caught up in an extraordinary situation, ultimately revealing how one wrong turn leads to another, until it’s too late to turn back. Told from the defendant’s point of view, each episode opens in a courtroom on the accused without knowing their crime or how they ended up on trial.
True Detective
An American anthology police detective series utilizing multiple timelines in which investigations seem to unearth personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within or outside the law.
Fargo
A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.
The Act
A seasonal anthology series that tells startling, stranger-than-fiction true crime stories with the first season following Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother.
DCI Banks
A thrilling drama based on the novels by Peter Robinson. Stephen Tompkinson and Andrea Lowe star as the tenacious and stubborn Chief Inspector Alan Banks and the feisty and headstrong Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.
More Anime Like American Crime Story
Castle
After a serial killer imitates the plots of his novels, successful mystery novelist Richard "Rick" Castle receives permission from the Mayor of New York City to tag along with an NYPD homicide investigation team for research purposes.
Baretta
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title role.
Ellis
DCI Ellis, a tenacious cop, is parachuted into failing investigations alongside her partner DS Harper. Each case will bring her to a different police station where she'll have to not only immerse herself in the case, but also win over the local police.
The Lincoln Lawyer
Hotshot LA defense attorney Mickey Haller will do whatever it takes to win as he navigates the criminal justice system from his trademark Lincoln.
Goliath
Once a powerful lawyer, Billy McBride is now burned out and washed up, spending more time in a bar than a courtroom. When he reluctantly agrees to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the biggest client of Cooperman & McBride, the massive law firm he helped create, Billy and his ragtag team uncover a vast and deadly conspiracy, pitting them all in a life or death trial against the ultimate Goliath.
Criminal Minds
An elite team of FBI profilers analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again. The Behavioral Analysis Unit's most experienced agent is David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU who returns to help the team solve new cases.
The Sinner
In a small New York town, a haunted detective hunts for answers about perplexing crimes while wrestling with his own demons.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.
21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street revolves around a group of young cops who would use their youthful appearance to go undercover and solve crimes involving teenagers and young adults.
We Own This City
The story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force — and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with American Crime Story (2016): Crime and 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 American Crime Story.
See full details for American Crime Story (2016)