The Best International Shows to Ever Stream on Netflix

“Tear Along the Dotted Line” is an Italian animated series both directed by and starring famed Italian cartoonist Michele Rech, whose pen name is Zerocalcare (“zero timescale”). In the show, a young cartoonist in Rome, named simply Zero, travels to the Piedmontese city of Biella with two friends and an imaginary armadillo who is actually his conscience. Along the way, he thinks about his life and loves, especially his affection for a girl named Alice, who is now beyond his reach.

Based on a manga series by the influential writer/cartoonist Naoki Urasawa, “Monster” is a Japanese animated show about a Japanese surgeon named Kenzou Tenma who is working in Germany. After he makes a drastic decision to save a young boy’s life, he finds himself suspected of being a serial killer. He’s innocent, but the truth leaves him shocked if not powerless.

This is a period drama, set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The story concerns Eugene Choi, a formerly enslaved young man who escapes to America, where he finds a new life and ends up joining the U.S. Marines. When he returns to his native country, he falls in love with an upper-class woman who is unfortunately already betrothed to a prominent nobleman. He also discovers a Japanese plot to invade Korea, and ends up fighting for the land of his birth.

“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” is an anime series that follows young Tanjiro Kamado, a charcoal-seller in early 20th-century Japan, as he embarks on a quest to avenge his family after they’ve been murdered by demons, and also to cure his sister of her demonic transformation. With the help of a corps of demon-slayers and his own newfound powers, Tanjiro battles ferocious fiends in a dangerous world. A 2020 film sequel to the series, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — The Movie: Mugen Train” became the highest-grossing Japanese movie of all time.

“Dark” is a German time-travel thriller about the interconnected lives of four families as they explore the eerie and mysterious happenings, including the disappearance of children, in their small town of Winden. The secrets that bind the families together and have torn them apart are gradually revealed, as “Dark” delves into parallel worlds and spirals towards an apocalyptic conclusion.