Anime Like Defending Jacob
If you loved Defending Jacob's Drama and Mystery 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
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.
The Undoing
Grace and Jonathan Fraser are living the only lives they ever wanted. Overnight a chasm opens in their lives: a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and her family.
Scream: The TV Series
What starts as a YouTube video going viral, soon leads to problems for the teenagers of Lakewood and serves as the catalyst for a murder that opens up a window to the town's troubled past. Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies. Everyone is fair game.
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.
Miss Marple: The Body in the Library
Amateur detective Miss Jane Marple investigates the murder of a young woman whose body is found in the library at Gossington Hall, home of Colonel and Mrs. Arthur Bantry.
Missing You
When Detective Kat Donovan matches on a dating app with the fiancé who disappeared years before, she learns that some secrets are best left in the past.
Gracepoint
When a young boy is found dead on an idyllic beach, a major police investigation gets underway in the small California seaside town where the tragedy occurred. Soon deemed a homicide, the case sparks a media frenzy, which throws the boy's family into further turmoil and upends the lives of all of the town's residents.
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.
More Anime Like Defending Jacob
56 Days
When an unidentified body is found in a luxury apartment linked to Oliver Kennedy and his girlfriend Ciara Wyse, Detectives Lee Reardon and Karl Connolly reconstruct the couple's deadly romance across the past 56 days.
The Better Sister
Chloe moves in New York's most elite circles with her lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky tries to make ends meet and stay clean. When Adam is brutally murdered, the investigation sends shockwaves through the family and exposes long-buried secrets.
One of Us
A horrific double murder rocks the lives of two families living side-by-side in isolated rural Scotland. But instead of focusing on the investigation, One of Us explores the fallout for the grieving relatives, and the dark consequences that threaten to shatter their lives.
The Outsider
When an insidious supernatural force edges its way into a seemingly straightforward investigation into the gruesome murder of a young boy, it leads a seasoned cop and an unorthodox investigator to question everything they believe in.
Homicide: Life on the Street
An American police procedural chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit.
Fool Me Once
When ex-soldier Maya sees her murdered husband on a secret nanny cam, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy that stretches deep into the past.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.
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.
Twisted
A one-hour mystery full of twists and turns that follows Danny Desai, a charismatic 16-year-old with a troubled past who returns to his hometown after spending five years in juvenile detention. Immediately branded an outcast, Danny attempts to reconnect with his two childhood best friends, Jo and Lacey. But when a fellow student is found dead in her home, Danny instantly becomes the prime suspect and town spirals into a frenzy of suspicion and mystery. Jo and Lacey must decide if their childhood friend is unforgivable, or if he's really a victim being persecuted for his own twisted secrets.
Presumed Innocent
A horrific murder upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney's Office when one of its own is suspected of the crime—leaving the accused fighting to keep his family together.
Pretty Little Liars
Based on the Pretty Little Liars series of young adult novels by Sara Shepard, the series follows the lives of four girls — Spencer, Hanna, Aria, and Emily — whose clique falls apart after the disappearance of their queen bee, Alison. One year later, they begin receiving messages from someone using the name "A" who threatens to expose their secrets — including long-hidden ones they thought only Alison knew.
Towards Zero
After a scandalous divorce, a tennis star, his ex-wife and a volatile mix of guests converge at a coastal estate. When murder strikes, a troubled detective must unravel the truth.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Defending Jacob (2020): Drama and Mystery 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 Defending Jacob.
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