Fruits Basket: Prelude

Parent('s) struggle to look after children. It shows how both mothers worked to bring up children after the death of their husbands. 

The stories have a similar atmosphere, I felt like they both revolve around grief. The storytelling is also quite alike with many retrospective scenes and the narrator is the FL in both. Plotwise there are not many similarities, but it's worth a watch for romance and drama fans.  

Both stories are about a forbidden love between a student and a teacher in other words between an adult and a minor so if you didn’t see any problem with the prelude of fruits basket, you will enjoy kotonoha as well. Teachers genders are swapped in both movies which allows you to look at this controversial storyline choice from different perspectives. 

Both animes portray the struggle of human relationships, especially those family and marriage related. 

Follow-up films featuring the mothers of the main characters, showing how they first found love, had their daughters, and struggled to become parents. Fairly short, yet sweet stories.