Anime Like PEN15
If you loved PEN15'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
Big Mouth
Teenage friends find their lives upended by the wonders and horrors of puberty in this edgy comedy from real-life pals Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg.
Duncanville
Like most 15-year-olds, Duncan can see adulthood on the horizon: money, freedom, cars and girls; but the reality is more like: always being broke, driving with one's mom sitting shotgun and babysitting one's sister. He's not exceptional, but he has a wild imagination in which he's never anything less than amazing.
South Park
Follow the misadventures of four irreverent grade-schoolers in the quiet, dysfunctional town of South Park, Colorado.
Home Movies
TV series about the life of Brendon Small, an eight-year-old visionary who, using his friends Jason and Melissa as actors, have managed to direct over a thousand homemade films. His parents are divorced, but it doesn't feel strange since so many other kids' parents are divorced. His friend Jason actually feels upset because his parents are still together. At school, he is taught soccer by his coach John McGuirk, or as he calls him, "that weird Irish guy".
Close Enough
A surreal take on transitioning from 20-something to 30-something centering on a married couple juggling such everyday challenges as parenthood, friendship, ham theft, stripper clowns and choosing the right day care.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with PEN15 (2019): 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 PEN15.
See full details for PEN15 (2019)