Anime Like Cardinal
If you loved Cardinal'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
Coroner
Jenny Cooper investigates unexplained or sudden deaths in the city of Toronto. Fierce and quick-witted, Jenny is a newly-widowed single mother with secrets of her own to unearth.
Motive
A team of Vancouver investigators, led by homicide detective Angie Flynn, sets out to uncover the motive of each puzzling murder by discovering the killer's connection to the victim. Viewers get a glimpse of the killer before and after the crime is committed.
Luther
A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts.
Murder in a Small Town
Karl Alberg moves to a quiet coastal town to soothe a psyche that has been battered by big-city police work but finds himself needing to call upon all his skills to solve the murders that continue to wash up on his shore.
Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent
An elite squad of detectives investigate high-profile crime and corruption in metro Toronto.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.
Murdoch Mysteries
A Victorian-era Toronto detective uses then-cutting edge forensic techniques to solve crimes, with the assistance of a female coroner who is also struggling for recognition in the face of tradition, based on the books by Maureen Jennings.
Private Eyes
Ex-pro hockey player Matt Shade irrevocably changes his life when he teams up with fierce P.I. Angie Everett to form an unlikely investigative powerhouse.
More Anime Like Cardinal
Dalgliesh
A recent widower and acclaimed poet, enigmatic Inspector Adam Dalgliesh employs his exceptional empathy and insight to plumb the darker depths of the human psyche while investigating complex crimes in 1970s England.
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.
Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses.
Homicide: Life on the Street
An American police procedural chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit.
Cross
Alex Cross is a brilliant but flawed homicide detective and full of contradictions. A doting father and family man, Cross is single-minded to the point of obsession when he hunts killers. He is desperate for love, but his wife’s murder has left him too damaged to receive it.
Marcella
Marcella is shocked to the core of her being when her husband Jason leaves her unexpectedly, confessing he no longer loves her. Heartbroken, Marcella returns to the Met’s Murder Squad. Ten years ago Marcella gave up her fast-tracked police career to marry and devote her life to her family. With the abrupt end to her marriage and isolated from her 13 year old daughter and 10 year old son, Marcella throws herself into work to stop herself from falling apart.
HIS & HERS
Two estranged spouses — one a detective, the other a news reporter — vie to solve a murder in which each believes the other is a prime suspect.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
From England to Egypt, accompanied by his elegant and trustworthy sidekicks, the intelligent yet eccentrically-refined Belgian detective Hercule Poirot pits his wits against a collection of first class deceptions.
The Alienist
New York, 1896. Police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt brings together criminal psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, newspaper illustrator John Moore and secretary Sara Howard to investigate several murders of male prostitutes.
The Sinner
In a small New York town, a haunted detective hunts for answers about perplexing crimes while wrestling with his own demons.
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.
Thorne
Thorne is a television drama series which debuted on Sky1 in the UK on 10 October 2010. Based on Mark Billingham's novels, the six-episode serial stars David Morrissey in the title role of Detective Inspector Tom Thorne. Part one, Sleepyhead, follows Thorne, who, while investigating a series of attacks on young women, is dragged back into the nightmares of his past as he races to find a killer. Part two, Scaredycat, sees two women murdered within hours of one another near St Pancras station, but in different ways. When a connection is made with two other murders which occurred months before, but also on the same day, Thorne realises two serial killers may be in a macabre partnership.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Cardinal (2017): 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 Cardinal.
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