Quiet and relatively timid, Sawako Kuronuma is misunderstood by her classmates. Due to her long black hair and shyness, they have taken to calling her Sadako, the ghost girl from The Ring. Longing to make friends, she is drawn to Kazehaya Shouta, the most popular boy in school and his refreshing personality. However, when Kazehaya starts talking to her, Sawako’s lonely world begins to open up.

Slow burning to an occasionally frustrating degree, Kimi Ni Todoke provides one of the sweeter and realistic romances out there. Few other romance anime series can touch Kimi Ni Todoke, but these anime recommendations can try.

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Anime Series Like ReLife

For Fans of Socially Unusual Women

The Wallflower

Four beautiful boys are offered a chance to rent a fabulous mansion completely for free, but there is a catch. They must turn the lady of the house into a actual lady. For you see, Nakahara Sunako isn’t your typical girl. She is gloomy, she likes horror movies, the occult, and is all around strange. Due to the trauma of being called ugly when she was younger, she doesn’t go out much and beautiful things hurt her eyes.

Sawako in Kimi Ni Todoke is one horror movie obsession from being Sunako in The Wallflower. Both not only look similar, but once Sunako starts to normal out, they act like each other. However, while Kimi Ni Todoke has a strong drama focus, The Wallflower is meant to lean more towards comedy.

Hiyokoi

Hiyori is a small and timid girl that had to miss a year of school after an accident left her hospitalized. Now repeating a grade with no one she knows, she struggles to make friends with her poor social skills. However, she may find more than just friends.

Change a few things about Hiyori and Hiyokoi and Kimi ni Todoke might just be the same anime. The key different is that Sawako is strong and healthy, but both girls are unsocialized and that becomes the theme of the anime. However, Hiyokoi features less competition for the male love interest.

Kotoura-San

Haruka Kotoura is a school girl that can read people’s minds. Unfortunately, it has caused her nothing but trouble, eventually causing her parents divorce. After she moves to a new school, she tries to avoid her classmates, but a classmate of hers finds her power not scary, but intriguing.

Although Kotoura-san has a touch of supernatural to it, at its core it is extremely similar to Kimi Ni Todoke. Both feature girls that are alienated for one reason or another, and then slowly brought out of their shell by the sudden interest of a guy. Through their friendship, they actually are able to make friends of their own as well as develop a romance.

For Fans of Slow Romance

We Were There

Nanami Takahashi is ready to enter her high school life and hopes to make as many friends as possible. However, she makes a fool of herself on during class nominations by calling a student by the fake name he gave her. This student is actually the super popular Motoharo Yano who has most of the girls in their class in love with him. At first Nanami is mad, but soon she, too, begins to like Yano.

While slightly less dramatic than Kimi Ni Todoke, We Were There features the same slow burn romance that is shown through character growth. Initially, both main girls end up admiring the male protagonist, but slowly they actually end up loving them.

Blue Spring Ride

Futaba Yoshioka was liked by boys and hated by girls in middle school, but she didn’t care as long as Kou Tanaka noticed her. However, after Kou moves away and she enters high school, she does everything she can to be less attractive to the boys in her class so she can have girl friends. Yet when Kou comes back, even though he is a different person, the feelings come back as well.

Because both Blue Spring Ride and Kimi Ni Todoke share an animation studio, these two series literally look the same. However, they also both tell similar stories about growth and change where characters make friends, endure misunderstandings, conquer trauma, and eventually fall in love.

Lovely Complex

Risa is very tall for a girl. Atsushi is very short for a boy. They are both in love with different people who actually end up dating each other. With both their loves taken, the two form an unlikely friendship that soon turns into something more.

Like love stories that move a little slowly and have a big old scoop of awkwardness on top? Well, then! Like Kimi Ni Todoke, Lovely Complex tells the awkward tale of two high schoolers slowly falling in love while also featuring the development of several side characters. With a nice mix of comedy and romance, these two series both sit at the top tier of the romance genre.

For Fans of Not Realizing You Were in Love All Along!

Say, “I Love You”

After a traumatic incident in her past, Mei Tachibana swore off making friends, deeming all people as untrustworthy. While her quiet life seems to be going quite normally, her core as an introvert is shaken by a few chance encounters with the popular Yamato Kurosawa.

The female protagonist in both Kimi Ni Todoke and Say, “I Love You” are extremely similar. They are both deeply misunderstood by their peers, but some of the kindest girls in reality. Both anime series also have these girls pursued by a popular guy that in turn causes them to make friends, so their plots are not all too different.

My Little Monster

Shizuku Mizutani cares little of others and only about scoring top marks. However, when she is tasked with taking something to her desk neighbor Haru Yoshida, her world begins to change. Haru, too, knows little of human nature and hasn’t been to school for awhile due to fighting. Yet, it is the lack of friends that they both have that soon forms a friendship between them.

Although the heroines are ostracized by their classmates for completely different reasons, they both sit on the fringe. However, Shizuku is more emotionally stable and her sheer bluntness doesn’t make conversation quite the chore as it is in Kimi Ni Todoke, but both do provide a show that covers two girls having their world expanded and the trials that go with it.

His and Her Circumstances

Yukino Miyazawa is the perfect student to her peers, but it is all just a front to get the praise and admiration she thrives on. So naturally when Soichiro Arima takes her spot as number one in the class rankings, she goes a little batty. Yet after Arima finds out her true personality, he begins to blackmail her with it.

The major theme of both series is character growth. While Kimi Ni Todoke takes a more gradual and careful path, His and Her Circumstances follows the characters as they grow in both their love and their own personality.

Have your own recommendations for anime series like Kimi Ni Todoke? Tell us about it in the comments section below.