A tight, self-contained high-school romance story, Tomo-Chan Is A Girl! has quickly emerged as one of the best shows in its genre in recent years. The show centers on outgoing and athletic Tomo Aizawa, who confesses her feelings to her best friend, Jun, at the start of their first year of high school.
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The only problem is that they’ve been friends for so long that Jun doesn’t actually see her as a girl. Tomo-Chan doesn’t waste time with a long will-they won’t-they journey but still hits all of the high notes of the clueless male lead trope. The show explores themes of gender expression, expectations, and the way friendships evolve as we get older.
10Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagotoro
Hayase Nagotoro’s new favorite hobby is relentlessly bullying an older student who she only refers to as “Senpai.” Senpai (Naoto Hachioji) is an introverted art club member who only wants to sit alone in the art room and draw but is constantly interrupted by Nagotoro and her friends.
Nagotoro uses her beauty and Senpai’s inexperience to tease him, and it doesn’t take long to see that this behavior is all to hide her crush, but Senpai is just too shy and nervous to recognize it.
9Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible
Junta Shiraishi has so little presence that people often forget he’s there. He goes through life quite literally invisible to his peers. That is until one of the most attractive and popular girls in his class, Nagisa Kubo, starts talking to him on a daily basis. The boy couldn’t be more clueless as to why this pretty girl is so invested in him, but nevertheless, she can slowly pull him out of his shell and help others not only see him but see his worth as a person.
8Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple
Kenichi Shirahama is an absolute weakling. He has been bullied all his life, but everything changes when he meets a beautiful transfer student named Miu. Her martial arts prowess inspires Kenichi, who realizes he will have to get stronger if he ever has a chance at standing alongside her. Fortunately, Miu’s home is a dojo that is also home to a number of masters of various martial arts. Through their tutelage, Kenichi will develop not only martial arts prowess but the confidence he needs to exist in Miu’s world.
7My Love Story
Takeo Goda is the kindest and most sincere person you’ll ever meet. He’s also a hulking giant with a weird face that has been rejected by every girl he’s ever developed feelings for. Fortunately, that mix of strength and kindness is exactly what Rinko Yamato is into, and she happens to encounter Takeo when he saves her from a groper on the train.
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The two will begin an incredibly shy, bumbling romance that is almost too earnest to endure. They’ll need all the help they can get from their friends to make any progress.
6Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl
Going even further than Tomo-Chan in its exploration of gender, Kashimashi starts out following Hazumu Osaragi, a high school boy who was just rejected by his friend Yasuna Kamiizumi. After dying, when an alien spaceship crashes into him (as you do), he is brought back to life, but the aliens accidentally revive him as a girl. Now living as a girl, Hazumu discovers herself engaged in a love triangle that would have been entirely inaccessible as a boy. A sweet queer love story for the ages with just a tinge of the supernatural.
5My Next Life As A Villainess
The clueless romance protagonist is a well-trodden trope, but few reach the levels of complete airheadedness achieved by the hero of My Next Life As A Villainess. When she is reincarnated inside her favorite otome game as the villain, the girl now known as Catarina Claes sets to work preventing all of the doom flags that result in her character’s death or exile in the game. Completely unbeknownst to her, rewriting the course of the game also makes her the primary love interest for every significant character in the story, male or female.
4Toradora!
Look up the definition of a tsundere, and you’ll just find a picture of Toradora’s female lead, Taiga Aisaka. The story focuses on Aisaka and her classmate Ryuji Takasu, both of whom present personalities to the outside world that run entirely counter to who they really are. Through pure chance, the two become neighbors and begin an awkward friendship as they try to work up the ability to confess to their crushes. Over time a web of complex relationships will emerge.
3Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War
Where Tomo-Chan is extremely earnest in its attempt to get two ignorant goofs to figure out how to date each other,Love is War’sprotagonists are too smart for their own good.
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Believing that whoever confesses first loses, Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane are head over heels for each other, but neither can admit it to the other; instead, they begin an intricate battle of wits to trick the other one into confessing first.
The original gender-bending harem comedy, Ranma ½, is the root of nearly all modern comedy romance anime. Written by renowned mangaka Rumiko Takahashi, the series follows Ranma Saotome, a powerful martial artist with a problem.
Whenever he is splashed with water, he turns into a girl. As if that weren’t enough, his father also promised him as the fiance to the stubborn and hotheaded Akane Tendo. While the pair will slowly grow to care for one another, their relationship is complicated at every turn by other potential suitors and all sorts of curse-based hijinks.
1Ouran High School Host Club
Haruhi Fujioka has zero interest in feminine pursuits or the finer things in life. But after earning a scholarship to the upper-crust Ouran Academy, Haruhi runs into trouble when she breaks a priceless vase.
To save her scholarship, she’ll have to pose as one of the boys in the school’s host club, a group of seemingly vapid rich boys who dote on the girls of the school with various costumed tea parties and events. The boys each discover Haruhi’s feminine side in turn and must struggle with the complicated feelings that she creates.
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