Shows Like Suzume — Emotionally Driven K-Dramas & J-Dramas About Loss & Becoming

A 939-year-old goblin wants to die but can't — until a young woman who can see him becomes the one who decides when his story ends. Goblin is the K-drama that proved magical realism and emotional devastation could be the same thing. Same architecture as Suzume: a fantastical premise that's really a container for processing grief and learning to let go.

Five friends in 1988 Seoul are about to graduate into adult life — and the show spends every episode building the sense that what you're about to lose is the best thing that ever happened to you. Reply 1988 is the K-drama Suzume would recommend if it could: a coming-of-age story about the specific grief of leaving childhood behind, rendered with extraordinary tenderness.

A young woman in 1998 faces a collapsing economy, a sport she loves, and the question of whether the future is still worth believing in. Twenty-Five Twenty-One is Suzume's Korean cousin: a story about surviving what the world does to your plans, and finding that the thing that saved you isn't the thing you expected.

An autistic young man and his rough uncle clean up the belongings of deceased people — and discover the stories they left behind. Move to Heaven is Suzume's emotional equivalent: each episode uses what people left behind to understand what they went through, and to grieve in a way that feels like celebration. Devastating and healing at the same time.

Two people who broke up years ago are forced to revisit their shared past through a documentary crew — and discover what they lost was more than they knew. Our Beloved Summer is Suzume's quieter cousin: the same quality of a story about two people discovering that the thing they thought was over was actually the thing that mattered most.

An anthology on Jeju Island following the women of a fishing village through life, love, loss, and second chances. Our Blues has Suzume's quality of treating grief without euphemism — the show knows exactly what it's doing when it lets its characters be sad, and trusts you to understand that being sad is part of being alive.

If you loved Suzume's two souls pulled together by something bigger than either of them, Your Name delivers exactly that. At its core, it's about grief handled honestly enough to make you feel it. The pacing is emotionally heavy — you'll need to sit with it after.