anime where two people are forced to live together

40 Romance Anime Where They Live Together

There are a lot of tropes that go into romance anime, and because they are often so successful in creating the atmosphere and drama that most romance anime viewers demand, those tropes are abused to hell and back.

One such well-beat trope is having the male and female lead live together.

Maybe it is a forced marriage sort of thing, or a homeless sort of thing, or a sibling… sort of… thing. Well anyway, it is the perfect set up for as many romantic encounters as possible. Who wants to wait until two lovers meet up at school? No one.

If your tastes in romance anime demand you search for series in which the boy and the girl are living together due to circumstance, then these anime recommendations will feed that need.

Best Romance Anime Where They Live Together

pet girl of sakura hall anime

Pet Girl of Sakura Hall

Unable to resist taking in abandoned kittens, and amassing quite a collection of them, Sorata Kanda is forced to move to Suimei High School’s infamous Sakura Hall. This dorm is used to house all the misfit students that don’t quite fit in the regular housing.

There, Sorata meets an array of different oddballs that inspire him to work towards getting back into the regular dorms and away from them. However, when a new transfer student moves in, he meets the incredible artist, Shiina Mashiro.

While talented, she is completely incapable of taking care of herself, and so, Sorata brings her into his care and his strange days truly begin.

While they all live together in a dorm, because Sorata becomes pretty much a caretaker to Shiina, they spend a lot of time together. Expect some really great comedy, but the romance itself is a bit sparse.

final approach anime

Final Approach

Ever since his parents died, Ryo has been living alone with his sister. However, while they are living happily, they become entangled in a secret government project.

In order to combat the declining birth rates, the government is testing a program that arranges marriages for young people. Coming home late one night, he walks in to his new wife Shizuka and a whole slew of government bodyguards. While Ryo is unwilling to go along with things, Shizuka proves to be more enthusiastic.

This anime series takes this trope and displays it in perfect form. Although it is a bit older looking, it does focus on a building romance in which one party takes a little warming up to the situation.

rec anime

Rec

Matsumaru is a salaryman that got stood up by his colleague on a date. As he was about to toss his movie tickets, a cute girl tells him not to and goes on the date with him instead.

While taking her home, it turns out that they live in the same area. It also turns out her apartment caught fire.

With nowhere else to stay, he invites her to stay at his place.

Rec in and of itself is actually a pretty interesting romance. It focuses on a relationship that progressed suddenly, and deals with the aftermath of that. As far as anime romance goes, it is actually pretty realistic with its feelings.

eromanga sensei anime

Eromanga Sensei

When their parents married, Masamune Izumi was thrilled to have a new adorable little sister. However, after their parents died, his little sister Sagiri became a shut-in. Now her only caretaker, Masamune supports them as a light novel author.

However, one day he finds out that the mysterious illustrator Eromanga-sensei that draws the lewd covers for his light novel series is actually his reclusive sister.

While not straight up blood related, this does focus on the relationship between step-siblings. It plays things coy for awhile, but this is a romance. It is just a bit of a creepy one.

brighter than the dawning blue anime

Brighter Than the Dawning Blue

Linked by a single contact point, the Moon and Earth are connected. It is at this contact point where Tatsuya lives. Under the supervision of the Sphere Kingdom, the Moon Kingdom’s princess Feena Fam Earthlight comes to live at his home in order to experience Earth.

While it sounds very sci-fi, don’t be fooled. This is a pretty standard romance where the pretty girl just happens to come from the moon for a homestay.

fruits baskets anime new

Fruits Basket

When Tooru Honda finds herself homeless, she decides to live in a tent in the wilderness. However, one day she is discovered by a classmate, Yuki Souma, and invited to come live in his house.

From there she gets to know many members of the Souma family, not realizing that they all are inflicted by a curse. When they hug the opposite gender, they turn into an animal from the Chinese zodiac.

Fruits Basket is a classic romance anime and staple of this trope. Essentially, your standard earnest and hard-working shoujo protagonist finds herself entangled in the problems of one large and predominantly male family.

naoki-irie-from-mischievous-kiss

Itazura na Kiss

Kotoko Aihara finally works up the nerve to confess to her crush, only to be coldly shot down. Her bad luck continues when her new house is crumbled to the ground by an earthquake.

While her father gets an offer from a friend to come live with them, her bad luck continues on when that family turns out to be her crush that just crushed her long-hidden love for him into the dirt.

Itazura na Kiss is perhaps one of the better examples of unhealthy romance in anime, but the hot-and-cold attitude of the male lead has its charms.

Belldandy floating down to Keniichi to hug from the Ah My Goddess anime

Oh! My Goddess

Through the Goddess Help Hotline, humans can call to have their wish granted. However, Keiichi, a college student, accidentally calls and summons Belldandy.

In a joke he wishes that she would stay with him forever. Now, this young man finds himself living alone with a goddess.

Although the show is showing its age, Oh My Goddess is one of the more fun examples of this particular trope. He jokes and wishes for her to stay with him forever. Granted!

Of course, living with a woman gets him kicked out of his dorm and the pair move into a Buddhist temple where their love blooms and drama grows.

inu x boku ss anime

Inu X Boku SS

Ririchiyo Shirakiin is the sheltered daughter of a rich family, but she has been dependent her entire life. However, while she seeks to change that, she has a sharp tongue that needs minding. As such, she moves into a high security apartment complex whose residents are not only strange, but half demon as well.

She also finds herself in the company of her new secret service agent, Soushi. He is a man who is handsome, quiet, and creepily submissive. All these factors combined will make sure her high school life is not a dull one.

While surrounded by supernatural, this romance tends to stay pretty grounded and normal. It also tosses in some master / servant relationships as well as a bonus.

kimikiss anime

KimiKiss Pure Rouge

Kouichi and Kazuki’s childhood friend Mao is coming home from living abroad in France. However, Kouichi is surprised to discover that his mother agreed to let Mao stay with them.

If you judge KimiKiss by its synopsis alone, then you are probably going to take a pass on one of the best doki-doki inspiring romance anime series around.

At a glance, it sounds like nothing remarkable, but it deeply explores how feelings develop and transform in a friend group.

engaged to the unidentified anime

Engaged to the Unidentified

On Kobeni Yonomori’s 16th birthday, it is discovered that her grandfather arranged for her to marry the mysterious Hakuya Mitsumine.

Shocked, she now finds herself living with her future husband, his deceptive little sister, and her own perverted older sister. However, Kobeni takes it in stride, adjusting to her new life and trying to learn more about the new additions.

There are only a sparse few moments in Engaged to the Unidentified that one could call romance. Because the male main tends to remain the strong silent type, he blends into the background compared to the comedy between Kobeni’s older sister and Hakuya’s young sister.

This is primarily a comedy, but there is romance there as well.

marmalade boy anime

Marmalade Boy

Miki is a simple high school girl, but her life becomes much more complicated when her parents decide to divorce after a holiday.

Even more shocking, they both are remarrying in what appears to be a partner swap with a couple they met on holiday. While Miki is thrown for a loop by this, she develops an instant crush on the other couple’s son, Yuu.

The set up here is pretty strange, the animation is also quite old, but it is a solid romance classic. It has that sort of complicated anime romance that you only really see in older anime too.

kawai complex anime

The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior

Kazunari Usa is starting high school and finally talked his parents into letting him live alone.

Excited for his new life, he moves into the Kawai Complex boarding house, only to find his new roommate a complete BSDM weirdo. Being put off by the eccentricity of it all, he is on his way to leave when he runs into his senior in high school, Ritsu Kawai, who also lives there.

The sheer presence of this cool beauty talks him into giving life in this new house a try.

Similar to the Pet Girl of Sakura Hall, Kawai Complex heavily revolves around a boy moving into a boarding house with a girl he likes. Of course, he also has to deal with the number of other weird people that live there as well.

The romance in this show is slow, so don’t expect a lot of pay off, but it has some nice moments and good comedy.

midori days anime

Midori Days

Seiji is a legend at his high school. With a single punch he can take down anyone with his right hand. However, he is desperate for a girlfriend. His reputation keeps getting him shot down.

Then, one day, he wakes up to discover that his right hand has turned into a miniature of a girl from his class, Midori. Now with a living small girl in place of his hand, Seiji is kind of at a loss.

Need something a little different to keep things zesty? Well, this captures some of that classic anime weirdness. There is some comedy you can expect, but it doesn’t take things as far as you might think (or hope?).

aesthetica of a rogue hero anime

Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero

Several selected members from Earth were chosen and sent to other worlds. Only about half of them returned, with many who did bringing back several trinkets.

For Akatsuki, what he brought back was not a trinket, but the daughter of the demon lord he defeated.

Hiding the identity of the girl he brought back as his little sister is what enables these two to live together. Unfortunately, it also gets in the way of the romance. There is a little more action here than most series on this list, but it is still applicable.

love hina anime

Love Hina

After making a childhood promise with a girl who moved away, Keitaro is dedicated to getting into the prestigious Tokyo University. Unfortunately, he is hopelessly stuck failing his entrance exams.

In order to continue trying, he moves out of his parent’s house into his grandmother’s inn to work as a manager. However, what he doesn’t know is that her hot springs inn is also an all-girls dorm.

Like several other entries, Love Hina is about a man living in a boarding house, but this time he is surrounded by a harem since it is an all-girls house. As the manager, he is tasked with running it, but he also needs to study for his university entrance exams in order to fulfill a promise he made to a childhood friend whose name he has completely forgot.

Could it be that she is actually living there with him?

Clannad anime

Clannad

Tomoya Okazaki is a delinquent who finds everything dull and believes he will never amount to anything. That is, until a girl named Nagisa catches his eye one day on his way to school.

Suddenly, Tomoya begins to notice Nagisa more and more. She is sickly and weak, but she always tries her best in order to follow her dream of reviving the school’s drama club. Claiming he has nothing better to do, he decides to help Nagisa, and along the way ends up helping several other girls and potential drama club members.

However, as he learns more about the girls and helps them overcome their problems, he might just be able to overcome his own as well.

While a portion of Clannad isn’t about the two main characters living together. Eventually, due to the boy’s poor circumstances at home, he moves in with his love interest and her nice family.

While Clannad uses the trope, it isn’t the main focus like with some other series. Instead, it is just one more vessel for the main couple to get closer together.

Unfortunately, they don’t use it for as many fun scenes as they could have, but there is plenty of aww-inspiring scenes throughout the series to make up for it.

monster musume anime

Monster Musume

With his parents abroad, Kimihito Kurusu is living the quiet alone life. Or rather, he was until an incompetent interspecies exchange coordinator made him the caretakers of a Lamia named Miia.

With a supernatural creature now living in his house, it serves to not only break up his peace, but attract other supernatural beings as well.

This trope is no stranger to the occasionally supernatural, but Monster Musume takes it even further by having a series of mythical creatures lusting after the main character.

If I am are being honest, Monster Musume is more fan service and harem than romance, so don’t expect a lot of depth to it.

My Wife is the Student Council President anime

My Wife is the Student Council President!

Hayato Izumi is the perfect respectable student and is running for student council president. However, after his competition, Ui Wakana, promises sex education and free condoms, she wins by a landslide.

Still sore about his loss, things become even more complicated when Ui moves in with him.

Apparently their parents, the filthy lushes that they are, made a drunken promise to have their kids marry each other. Can he keep their life a secret and the student council in line at the same time?

Like the on-the-nose name suggests, this series is about a guy who has the girl that beat him out for class president move in with him.

The premise for it is weak, but it is a perfectly excellent set up for the comedy that happens within. The series is about hiding the secret from the student body while also trying to make marriage work.

yuuna and the haunted hot springs anime

Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

Yuragi-sou was once a hot springs inn, but is now a boarding house that only has a few residents.

Rumor has it that the boarding house is haunted, and this rumor has attracted a homeless psychic that is hoping to exorcise the ghost in order for an affordable place to stay.

However, he discovers that it is not a malicious ghost, but a ghost named Yuuna that all the other residents can see as well.

The ghosts are spooky! And sexy! This is yet another boarding house anime series that leans towards comedy and sometimes ecchi.

girlfriend girlfriend anime

Girlfriend; Girlfriend

After loving her for years, Naoya Mukai finally confesses his love to his childhood friend, Saki. However, just as he settles into dating her, a girl named Nagisa comes out of the woodwork and confesses her secret love for him.

Instead of shooting her down, he is charmed by her feelings, and suggests to both her and Saki that he date both of them.

While the premise works on the theory that any girl in the world would actually go for this, it does wedge a lot of ladies under one roof with one guy.

It is more a comedy because of how unrealistic the romance is, though. It is definitely more ecchi and caters more towards male watchers who just want to live in pure fantasy.

tonikawa anime

Tonikawa – Over the Moon For You

After being ridiculed for his strange name, Nasa, like the space agency, decides he will become a man even greater than the starry sky.

However, one night, that all changes when he sees a beautiful girl. She ends up saving him from being fatally hit by a truck while crossing the street to talk to her. Having chased her down despite his serious injuries, he asks her out.

She says she will go out with him if they marry. He agrees, and passes out.

Waking up to find her gone, he abandons his ambitions until one day when she shows up with their marriage registration.

This trope overall leans toward ecchi, I know. However, if you just want fluffy, wholesome, entirely unrealistically pleasant romance. This is the your series.

higehiro anime

Higehiro – I Shaved and Then brought Home a High School Girl

Office worker Yoshida finally worked up the courage to ask his boss out, only for her to swiftly reject him. Getting completely drunk, he sees a high school girl sitting outside by herself late at night.

After discovering that she was a runaway, he ends up taking her home while constantly shutting down her efforts to pay for her stay with her body.

After discovering that she traveled for six months from Hokkaido trading sexual favors for what she needed, he puts her to work cooking and cleaning instead so she can have a place to stay.

This isn’t the predatory anime it sounds like. In fact, mostly it is an older man helping a damaged young girl. You start to root for them, but boundaries are maintained.

sky of connection anime

Sky of Connection

Twins Haruka and Sora Kasugano are coming back to a town filled with memories for them.

After their parents died in a horrible traffic accident, the twins want to start over peacefully at their grandfather’s house.

However, it is their own suppressed memories and emotions that come back to haunt them.

Incest. No step-siblings here. Just two blood-related siblings living together and acting on those taboo-yet-strangely-prevalent-in-anime feelings.

kannagi anime

Kannagi

In order to make a statue for school, Jin carves a piece of an old sacred tree. When he takes it outside, it gathers earth and becomes a girl.

This girl, who was the guardian deity of the tree, is pissed it was cut down. She invites herself to stay in his home and upends Jin’s life.

Goddesses. Always inviting themselves over to stay indefinitely. Always somehow worming their way into the hearts of their hosts with their cute antics.

testament of new devil sister anime

Testament of New Devil Sister

One day, Basara’s father brings home two beautiful girls and introduces them as his new siblings.

However, it isn’t long before he learns that these two girls are actually demons. More specifically, the former demon lord’s only daughter and her succubus servant. Of course, Basara himself is a former member of Heroes, an organization sworn to fight demons.

However, after developing feelings for them, he decides to protect his new sisters instead.

Notorious as an ecchi anime, Testament of New Devil Ssiter also fits this partiular trope. If you are looking for bare flesh and lewdness, this does it well. Or at least in great numbers.

invaders fo the rokujyoma anime

Invaders of the Rokujyoma

After his father relocated, Koutarou Satomi moves into the Corona House’s Room 106 because it is cheap.

However, after wandering into a cave at his part-time job, he finds his apartment invaded with mystical creatures that all lay claim on it.

This is definitely more harem than romance, but it does feature a number of girls fighting over a singular tiny room. It’s a lot of people for one closed space.

domestic girlfriend triangle

Domestic Girlfriend

Natsuo is in love with his teacher Hina. In order to try and forget his feelings, he goes to a mixer and meets a girl named Rui.

Oddly enough, she asks him to do her a favor – to have sex with her. He does so, but soon he is faced with a unique problem.

His father has remarried and he now has two new stepsisters that he knows too well – Rui and Hina.

This is a hot dumpster fire of a romance, but I mean that in the best way. The drama is stupid, but entertaining. It isn’t for those looking for a real tender romance, but rather for those that like their love complicated.

My Stepmoms Daughter Is My Ex anime

My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex

In middle school, two bookish kids met in the library, bonding over books, and eventually dating. However, as time went on, the small annoyances began to add up, and so Mizuto Irido and Yume Ayai ended up breaking their relationship off.

Getting ready to move onto high school and move on with their lives, a wrench was thrown in their new separate lives when it turns out that their parents had married and they are now step-siblings living in the same house and going to the same school.

As they try to regard each other as siblings, their feelings are proving hard to move past.

Speaking for step-siblings you were pre-in-love-with before living together, here’s another, less sexual one.

In this one, they dated in middle school, broke up, their parents married when they were in high school, so they are presently pretending to be siblings who get along fine and didn’t know each other for their parents’ sake.

It is made clear to we, the audience, that they still very much have feelings for each other. It’s actually a pretty good and surprisingly wholesome comedy.

Seto looking stern and Michishio looking shocked from the My Bride is a Mermaid anime

My Bride is a Mermaid

Michishio Nagasumi is living a normal life when he almost drowns on summer vacation. He is rescued by, of all things, a beautiful mermaid.

Unfortunately, she is from a yakuza family that states if a human sees a mermaid, either the human or the mermaid must die.

To save her life, Michishio agrees to marry the mermaid and become part of this crazy family.

Forced to marry a mermaid, the main character is also forced into their home as well. To be honest, this is a better comedy than a romance, but that’s not a bad thing.

Nyaruko from Haiyore Nyaruko-san

Nyaruko: Crawling With Love!

Mahiro Yasaka is just a normal high school student until he is attacked by a monster one day. Just when all hope seems lost, he is saved by a silver-haired girl named Nyaruko who claims to be the deity Nyarlathotep, of the Cthulhu Mythos.

She claims that the creature that attacked him is an alien called the Nightguard that was trying to abduct him.

While all that is pretty hard to swallow, it seems Nyaruko has also fallen madly in love with him.

There are plenty of “romance but with a spin” anime series out there, but this is easily the only romance anime with a Cthulhu spin to it.

While there are a lot of Lovecraft jokes wedged in there, it is actually a pretty normal romantic comedy.

please twins anime

Please Twins

Maiku Kamishiro has a past that is a mystery to him. His only clue on his family is a photograph of a boy and a girl playing in a pool as children. In an effort to learn more, he moves into his old house.

One day, two girls show up, both with the same photo, claiming to be his twin. In an effort to find out who is the real twin, he lets both girls move in.

Imagine, if you can muster, being in love with a person as both a brother and lover. Conflicting and complicated, yes? Yes.

anime like the ancient magus bride

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

After being abandoned by her family, Chise Hatori is a 16-year-old teenager without hope. In order to not have to worry about herself, she sells herself to slavers, only to be purchased by Magus Elias Ainsworth.

There she is told she will become his apprentice and, in the future, his bride. Together they work together to build a relationship and work to control her own magus powers that will eventually result in her early death.

Supernatural and romance often come off a bit cheesy, but not in this case. The Ancient Magus’ Bride is filled with subtle drama and a very slow burn romance by a guy that basically bought his future wife. It is much less creepy than it sounds.

the world is still beautiful anime

The World is Still Beautiful

Within the realms of the Sun Kingdom, it never rains. However, in the Principality of the Rain, the women of the family possess the ability to call upon the rain. So when the Sun King, recent conqueror of the world, Livius I decides to take a wife, it is only natural to pick one of the four princesses from the Principality of the Rain.

Nike Remarcier is the youngest and lost a game to her sisters, so she was chosen to go. Frustrated at her lot, she journeys to the kingdom and is surprised to find that the Sun King is not as scary as they say, and also that he is just a boy.

As the two forced to be married, they also end up forced under the same roof. However, since it is a palace, it is a pretty big roof. They end up forming a pretty nice royal romance too.

remake our life anime

Remake Our Life

As an adult, Kyouya Hashiba left his office job to pursue a career in the video game industry. However, although he tried every role, nothing has worked out. Even with the bright potential of a popular game he got a job on after giving up, the division closes down abruptly.

Now moving back in with his parents, he wishes he had gone to the arts university he had gotten into instead of the safer business university he chose so that perhaps he could have trained with the similarly aged Platinum Generation of hit game makers.

Upon falling asleep one night, he wakes up as a high school graduate again getting ready to make his choice on which university to attend.

Like many other series on here, Remake Our Life takes place in a co-ed dorm. While it also has a focus on game development, there is plenty of building romance as well.

oreimo animes

Oreimo – My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute

Kyousuke has a smart, cute, and extremely bratty little sister who hates him. While they got along when they were young, they grew apart as they got older.

One day when he finds an anime DVD he doesn’t recognize in his house.

He opens it up only to discover eroge inside. Later, he finds out it belongs to his sister, who is a super secret otaku.

While the incest is strongly, strongly implied, and only at the end, I feel like this counts.

true tears anime

True Tears

Shinichirou is living the dream by living with his crush. However, while she is bright and popular at school, she is cold and distant at home.

As he tries to find the key to unlocking her heart, he has a run in with several other girls that are dealing with their own feelings.

This is one of your more drama-laden romances. However, the drama unfolds in the privacy of a home considering the girl lives there.

mother of the goddess dormitory anime

Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory

After their home burns down and he is abandoned by his father, Koushi Nagumo wanders homeless until he collapses on the street.

He is found by a woman named Mineru and taken to a female dormitory. Koushi discovers that Mineru is the temporary manager there, and she invites him to be the permanent dorm mother to the problematic female residents.

I feel like I’ve heard this somewhere before. Love Hina, perhaps? Unfortunately, the main character is much younger, but that didn’t really stop the ecchi though.

kamisama kiss anime

Kamisama Kiss

Homeless and in debt, high schooler Nanami Momozono thinks things are looking up when she rescues a man and he offers to let her stay at his home. She soon discovers that his home is a rundown shrine.

Trying to leave, she is mistaken for the man she saved – the man that is also the land god of the shrine, Mikage.

Finding out she was tricked into being a god and not wanting to be homeless, Nanami tries to embrace her new divine duties, but has to deal with a hot-headed fox familiar to keep things running smoothly.

This isn’t particularly typical to the trope since the male main is more like a grumpy caretaker than a lover sharing their home. However, while it takes time for him to warm up, the romance gets pretty sweeping later.

the duke of death and his maid anime

The Duke of Death and His Maid

After being cursed by a witch as a child, any living thing that the young duke touches will wither and die. Feared by his mother, he is sent to live in a mansion in the woods. While secluded, he is not entirely alone. He was accompanied by his aging butler Rob as well as his maid, Alice.

Despite not being able to touch him, Alice enjoys teasing the young lord and her lack of fear allows them to grow closer, eventually spurring the duke’s desire to lift his curse.

There is a trend in anime surrounding romance series that are basically just a girl teasing a guy. This is yet another addition to that, but nobody can actually touch each other.

plastic memories anime

Plastic Memories

Plastic Memories takes place in a world where people can buy androids that look and act just like real people called Giftias. However, they only have a lifespan of about 11 years. After that point, they must be collected or else they run the risk of turning violent.

This series follows the section of a company that retrieves Giftias that are close to their time. While distinctly more of a workplace romance between a new employee and one of the Giftias they employ, the pair are – in short order – made to move into company housing together. You know, for reasons.

kiss x sis anime

Kiss x Sis

After his father got remarried, Keita found himself with a new mother and two twin step-sisters. However, as the girls transitioned into teenagers, their brotherly love for Keita turned into something more.

Another not-quite-incest, but step-siblings story. This is by far and wide the most lewd of them. Which will probably sell you on it even more if you weren’t put off by it initially.

Did we miss any more romance anime where the boy and girl end up living together? Let fans know in the comments section below.

15 thoughts on “40 Romance Anime Where They Live Together”

  1. thanks a lot i would add highschool dxd and i reccomend domestic girlfriend it also runs in the catagory of harem romance and moving in together with two girls

  2. In the 2nd Season of my favorite and easily cutest romantic anime Chuunibyou or Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! (English title) Rikka is forced to move in with Yuta her boyfriend. She lived above him with her sister but was forced to secretly shack up with him when her sister had to move away for work and mother and sister are away on business.

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