Anime Like Step Up
If you loved Step Up'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
Swagger
A basketball prodigy must navigate a maze of pressure if he's going to overcome the odds against him and learn what it truly means to have swagger.
Bel-Air
The journey of a book smart teen whose life is forever transformed when he moves from the streets of west Philadelphia to live with his relatives in one of LA’s wealthiest suburbs.
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.
Star
Star is a tough-as-nails young woman who came up in the foster care system and decides one day to take control of her destiny. She tracks down her sister, Simone, and her Instagram bestie, Alexandra, and together, the trio journeys to Atlanta with the hope of becoming music superstars.
Tyler Perry's The Oval
A seemingly perfect interracial first family becomes the White House's newest residents. But behind closed doors they unleash a torrent of lies, cheating and corruption.
The Game
When her boyfriend Derwin Davis is chosen as the new third-string wide receiver for the San Diego Sabers, Melanie Barnett decides to attend a local college so she can be with him. While Derwin worries about the plays on the field, Melanie adjusts to her new lifestyle. She gets a play-by-play account of the lives and relationships among NFL wives, girlfriends and mom/managers who use their best game to help their men stay on the field and on their arm.
The Newsreader
An unconventional relationship in a world on the cusp of change; a star newsreader and an ambitious bisexual reporter join forces in a ruthless 1986 newsroom, as events unfold that will change their lives.
More Anime Like Step Up
Sullivan's Crossing
After Neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan’s personal and professional life are thrown into turmoil she returns home to Sullivan’s Crossing. While there, Maggie is forced to navigate her complicated present while confronting the painful past she has chosen to ignore for years.
Ballers
Looking at the lives of former and current football players, the show follows former superstar Spencer Strasmore as he gets his life on track in retirement while mentoring other current and former players through the daily grind of the business of football.
Parish
Gray Parish is a good man with a troubled past who gave up his life of crime for life as a family man. But when his son is violently murdered, old habits return, sending him on a relentless quest with moral intentions and dangerous consequences.
Hotel Portofino
A classic whodunit mystery, as the characters go about their lives in 1920s Italy, when Benito Mussolini's brand of fascism was on the rise.
Tyler Perry's Ruthless
A spinoff of "The Oval," follows Ruth Truesdale as she's forced to play nice with a scandalous religious cult of powerful sex crazed fanatics in the hopes of freeing herself and her daughter.
Tell Me a Story
The world's most beloved fairy tales reimagined as a dark and twisted psychological thriller.
The New Avengers
The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series broadcast during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series The Avengers and was developed by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production, the show picks up the adventures of John Steed and his team of Avengers fighting evil plots and world domination. Whereas in the original series Steed had almost always been partnered with a woman, in the new series he had two partners: Mike Gambit, a top agent, crack marksman and trained martial artist, and Purdey, a former trainee with The Royal Ballet who was an amalgam of many of the best talents from Steed's previous female partners.
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.
Vida
Two Mexican-American sisters from the Eastside of Los Angeles who couldn't be more different or distanced from each other are forced to return to their old neighborhood, where they are confronted by the past and surprising truth about their mother’s identity.
Love Me
The Mathiesons, Clara (30s), Glen (60s) and Aaron (20s), find themselves at an emotional crossroads following an unexpected event that changes their lives forever.
NCIS: Hawaiʻi
Jane Tennant, the first female Special Agent in Charge of NCIS Pearl Harbor, and her unwavering team of specialists balance duty to family and country while investigating high-stakes crimes involving military personnel, national security and the mysteries of the sun-drenched island paradise itself.
Chesapeake Shores
A divorced mom deals with an old romance and complicated family issues when she returns to her hometown with her twin daughters.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Step Up (2018): 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 Step Up.
See full details for Step Up (2018)