Anime Like Death Note: 12 Shows for the Mind Games

Nobody finishes Death Note and asks for more notebooks. What you miss is the potato-chip scene: Light Yagami hiding a tiny television in a bag of crisps so he can kill on schedule while a camera watches him study, and the show treating that absurd plan with total seriousness. The appeal is a rigged game played by two people who are smarter than you, and the sick pleasure of watching the liar nearly slip.

Most “anime like Death Note” lists give you psychological thrillers. That is too broad. Below are four shows that reproduce a specific part of the Light-and-L dynamic, then eight shorter picks for when you know which part you want.

The closest match Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

• 25 episodes, then R2 for another 25
• the story finishes

A brilliant teenager gets a power that forces obedience, decides he can fix the world with it, and starts lying to everyone he loves.

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Code Geass for another brilliant liar

Lelouch vi Britannia is Light with a better excuse. He is an exiled prince living under a false name in occupied Japan, and the power he receives in episode one (say a command while making eye contact, and the target obeys once) is Death Note’s notebook with the ethics dial turned slightly less dark. He uses it to build a masked rebellion, and the show’s best episodes are chessboard set pieces: Lelouch on a rooftop, radio in hand, explaining exactly how a battle will go, followed by the battle going that way until one variable he did not account for walks in.

The variable is usually Suzaku, his childhood friend, who has chosen to reform the empire from inside. Their friendship carries the same charge as Light and L sitting in the same tennis court, each knowing what the other suspects. Code Geass adds giant robots, a school comedy B-plot, and a much larger cast, which is the tradeoff: it is louder and sillier than Death Note between the set pieces, and some episodes are pure fan service.

Where it beats Death Note is the ending. The two seasons together finish the story, and the finale is the kind people still argue about because it lands. Content notes: mass civilian death, a genocide, and one recurring plot device involving memory that some viewers find cheap.

For the long hunt Monster

• 74 episodes
• complete adaptation of the manga

A surgeon saves a boy's life and spends the next decade discovering what he saved.

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Monster for the long hunt

Dr Kenzo Tenma is the L of this story and Johan Liebert is the Kira, except Johan never explains himself, never gloats, and is barely on screen. Monster is set in Germany in the years after reunification, and its pleasure is patience: Tenma travels from Düsseldorf to Munich to Prague following people who met Johan once, and every one of them has been quietly ruined by the meeting. A single episode about a retired detective, or a couple who took in a foster child, can be the best thing you watch that month.

If Death Note’s hook was the sprint (Light versus L is decided in the first 25 episodes), Monster is a marathon that rewards the same instinct for reading people. It has no supernatural element. Its violence is rare and therefore lands harder. What it lacks is Death Note’s showmanship: no Ryuk, no theatrical confessions, and stretches in the middle where you will wish Tenma would just find the man.

The 74 episodes adapt the whole manga, and the ending is an ending. Content notes: child abuse, a massacre in an orphanage told in flashback, and a running theme of suicide.

For the games without the genius Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor

• 26 episodes
• a second season of 26 continues

A broke gambler is trapped on a ship where rock-paper-scissors is played for debt. He is not a genius. That is the point.

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Kaiji for the games without the genius

Kaiji Ito owes money to the wrong people and gets one night on a cruise ship to clear it by playing a card version of rock-paper-scissors. The first arc is Death Note’s logic games without a Light to protect you: Kaiji works out the rules, spots the exploit, and then watches a man he trusted use it against him. The show draws his face as a relief map of sweat and jagged lines, and the narrator counts every second of a decision like a boxing referee.

Choose it if the part of Death Note you loved was the notebook’s fine print, the rules that could be turned inside out. Kaiji is nothing but fine print. The middle arc, involving a steel beam and a skyscraper, is one of the most physically stressful hours in television animation. Skip it if you need a protagonist who stays in control, because Kaiji cries, begs, and makes the wrong call constantly, and the show loves him for it.

The first season closes its main game. Against All Rules, the second season, is another 26 episodes and a different casino. Content notes: gambling as coercion, self-harm as a plot device, and a body-horror sequence involving fingers.

For a rule that turns on you Steins;Gate

• 24 episodes
• complete, with a film and a side-story season as extras

A self-declared mad scientist in Akihabara accidentally builds a way to text the past, and spends the second half paying for it.

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Steins;Gate for a rule that turns on you

For its first eight episodes, Steins;Gate is a comedy about Rintaro Okabe, a college student in a lab coat who shouts at his own phone, and the friends who tolerate him. The microwave that sends text messages to the past looks like a gag. Then a message changes something that cannot be changed back, and the show becomes a machine for making one man solve the same puzzle over and over with a shrinking set of moves.

The Death Note connection is not the tone but the structure: a supernatural rule, precisely defined, that the protagonist thinks he has mastered until it uses him. Okabe is Light’s opposite in every other way. He is trying to save people. Watching a kind man learn exactly how much a rule costs is the show’s engine, and the last third is as tense as anything in L’s investigation.

Twenty-four episodes finish the story. The film and Steins;Gate 0 are optional. If you want a full page on where to go after it, we have one: anime like Steins;Gate. Content notes: violence against a young woman shown more than once, and an early stretch that some viewers find slow to the point of quitting. Push to episode 12.

More, briefly

If the Kira debate was your favourite part PSYCHO-PASS

• 22 episodes
• a complete first season, sequels optional

A police force whose guns only fire when a computer judges someone likely to commit a crime. Detective Akane Tsunemori starts believing in the system. A killer named Makishima builds his career on its blind spot. Graphic violence, including sexual violence.

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The fit is Death Note’s argument rather than its duel. Makishima believes a society that lets a machine judge its citizens has stopped being human, which is Light’s case for Kira turned inside out. The first few episodes are procedural cases before the cat-and-mouse arrives. Twenty-two episodes finish the central conflict. The sequels are optional, and the second season, written without Gen Urobuchi, is the weakest.

If you sided with Light Moriarty the Patriot

• 11 episodes, then Part 2 for 13
• adapts a large chunk of the manga

William James Moriarty murders aristocrats to force Victorian Britain to notice its class system, and arranges for Sherlock Holmes to chase him. It is Death Note told entirely from Kira's side, prettier and less cruel.

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William is a mathematics professor at Durham who takes requests from the poor and plans the deaths of the aristocrats who wronged them. The pleasure is the one you got from Light’s early episodes without the show asking you to find him repellent. Sherlock turns up a few episodes in, and the duel starts properly. The two parts total 24 episodes and stop well short of the manga’s end.

If you want the tension without a villain to admire ERASED

• 12 episodes
• complete, and the ending divides people

Satoru is thrown back into his own body at age ten to stop the abduction that shaped his life. The first eight episodes are close to perfect. The reveal lands early and the last stretch coasts on it.

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The Death Note overlap is a clock and a killer who could be anyone. Satoru is 29 when a murder throws him back to the Hokkaido winter of 1988, when children from his class went missing. The tension is a ten-year-old with an adult’s mind trying to keep one girl, Kayo, alive by acting normal. The mismatch is the mystery, which careful viewers solve early. Twelve episodes finish the story. Content: child abuse, shown and implied.

If you liked piecing it together yourself ODDTAXI

• 13 episodes
• complete

A walrus drives a taxi around Tokyo and his passengers' small talk assembles a missing-person case. The cast is animals, the writing is not. The cleverest use of a final episode on this list.

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Hiroshi Odokawa is a 41-year-old walrus who drives nights, hands out trivia nobody asked for, and keeps turning up in other people’s stories: a comedy duo, a nurse, an idol group. Every conversation in the cab is a clue, which is the part of Death Note where you tried to get ahead of L. Thirteen episodes, and the last minute is the reason people recommend it.

If you want the escape-plan version The Promised Neverland

• 12 episodes
• watch the first season, then read the manga

Three children at an idyllic orphanage learn what the orphanage is for, and have weeks to outwit the woman who raised them. Season one is a tight cat-and-mouse thriller. The second season abandons the source material; we would not watch it.

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The children at Grace Field sit tests every morning, and three of them, Emma, Norman and Ray, score perfectly. Once they learn the truth, the rest is Light and L played by children against Isabella, the woman they call Mom, who is sharper than all three. Twelve episodes make a complete arc. Content: children in mortal danger from the first episode.

If you want a protagonist with a hidden agenda Talentless Nana

• 13 episodes
• story continues in the manga

A class of superpowered teenagers on an island, and a transfer student who is not what she seems. The first episode's last minute tells you what kind of show this is. Light's constant improvisation, scaled down to a classroom.

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Nana Hiiragi arrives at an island academy for gifted teenagers, who are told they are training to fight the Enemies of Humanity, and she introduces herself as a mind reader. The Death Note fit is watching someone keep a secret in a room full of people trying to read her, improvising alibis one step ahead of Kyoya, the classmate who has started to suspect. Thirteen episodes stop partway through the manga with the main thread unresolved. Content: violent deaths of teenagers.

If you want the games, louder Kakegurui

• 12 episodes
• a second season of 12 continues

A school where social rank is decided by gambling, and a new girl who bets for the thrill rather than the win. Faces contort, rules get exploited, and nobody is subtle. Kaiji for people who want it in bright colours.

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Hyakkaou Private Academy ranks its students by gambling winnings, and the ones who fall into debt become house pets, wearing name tags and taking orders. Yumeko Jabami transfers in and treats the rigged games as the fun part, raising the stakes the moment she works out the cheat. It fits if you liked the notebook’s rules being turned inside out. Two seasons of 12 exist and the story continues. Content: sexualised framing and violent stakes.

If you want a quiet manipulator Classroom of the Elite

• 12 episodes
• later seasons continue

A school that ranks its classes with points and lets students trade anything for them. Ayanokoji hides how capable he is and moves people like pieces. Slower and colder than Death Note, and the school setting wears thin by season three.

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Advanced Nurturing High School promises its graduates any university or job they want, then pays each class a monthly allowance of points that shrinks with every infraction. Kiyotaka Ayanokoji sits at the back doing the minimum while quietly deciding who wins, a Light who never tells anyone the plan. The mismatch is the fan-service comedy around him and an island exam that drags. The first season is 12 episodes, and three more have followed, the fourth in 2026.

What you want more of

If the investigation mattered more than the villain, our mystery guide sorts detectives by the kind of puzzle they solve. If you want something that ends as decisively as Death Note does, every pick above marked complete is also in anime with endings. For a wider search, open the Finder with Death Note selected and read the reason next to each result before you trust the percentage.