Love 'The Apothecary Diaries'? Here're 5 More Brilliant Detective Anime, Ranked by IMDb

The Apothecary Diaries is an engaging title featuring palace intrigue and elegant detective mysteries that the main character solves using her medical knowledge and natural ingenuity.

For fans of Maomao, we've recalled five detective titles featuring eccentric geniuses who spend their days in the library, schoolchildren investigating forty-year-old crimes, and demons possessing other people's bodies.

5. 'Dusk Maiden of Amnesia', 2012

IMDb Score: 7.3/10

Teiichi and Kirie attend Seikyou Private Academy, which is rumored to be haunted by ghosts. Teiichi can see the dead, and Kirie also possesses supernatural powers.

They are all members of the Paranormal Investigations Club, along with Momoe, a new student who is inquisitive but inattentive. Momoe is unaware that the club is actually led by a ghost, Yuuko, who died in the school sixty years ago.

Nicknamed the Dusk Maiden, Yuuko founded the club to uncover the truth about her own death with the help of Teiichi and Kirie – but she barely remembers her own death.

4. 'Gosick', 2011

IMDb Score: 7.3/10

In the fictional European state of Sauville during the 1920s stands the prestigious St. Marguerite Academy. Kazuya, a young man with a grim appearance who is nicknamed the Black Reaper, studies there.

One day, he notices a golden glow in the library and discovers Victorique, a golden-haired girl and the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat, locked within the academy's walls. With a keen intellect but little emotion, she secretly helps her police officer brother solve crimes.

Kazuya convinces Victorique to leave the academy for the first time to investigate cases on her own.

3. 'Hyouka', 2012

IMDb Score: 7.7/10

Sixteen-year-old Hotaro is the antithesis of the ambitious teenager – he is completely uninterested in studies and sports.

At his older sister's urging, he agrees to join a school club and chooses the literature club, which is about to close due to a lack of members. At his first meeting, he meets Eru, a beautiful girl obsessed with mysteries.

She instantly draws Hotaro into her passion. Together, they revive the club and transform it into a detective agency. Now, they must solve the mysteries of their classmates and a crime that occurred at the school forty years ago.

2. 'The Summer Hikaru Died', 2025-...

IMDb Score: 7.9/10

A high school student named Hikaru disappears in the mountains of a small Japanese town. Six months later, he returns to his normal life with almost no memory of what happened.

His best friend, Yoshiki, who is still reliving the experience, is certain that the person who returned is not Hikaru. Gathering his courage, Yoshiki demands the truth. The entity in Hikaru's body admits that it is not Hikaru and asks Yoshiki to accept this fact or else it will kill him.

Resigned to his loss, Yoshiki agrees to give the imposter a chance. However, when people begin dying in town, Yoshiki can't shake his suspicions that the killer is the one who took Hikaru's place.

1. 'Summer Time Rendering', 2022

IMDb Score: 8.2/10

After the death of a childhood friend, Shinpei returns to his hometown on an island off the coast. The official story is that it was an accident – the girl drowned while saving a child.

However, Shinpei notices strange marks on the girl's body, and soon, the rescued girl's family disappears without a trace. The locals whisper of a curse: anyone who sees their doppelgänger is doomed to die. It turns out that, shortly before her death, Shinpei's friend actually saw her own exact copy.

What began as an investigation into an accident becomes a confrontation for Shinpei with an ancient curse and the island's terrible secrets.