Anime Like Blue Box

Every morning, first year Taiki Inomata looks forward to heading to the school gym to practice badminton before school starts. However, it isn’t so much that he looks forward to the practice so much as he does getting to practice beside second year Chinatsu Kano, his crush who also practices basketball in the gym before school.

Taiki is devastated when he learns that Chinatsu’s parents are moving overseas, only to brighten when he learns she will be staying behind so she can continue to shoot for nationals. However, with her parents gone, he soon discovers that Chinatsu—the daughter of his own mother’s high school friend—will now be living at his house while her parents are abroad.

Growing up in the shadow of her older sister, Chihaya Ayase is strong-willed and a tomboy with no dreams of her own. However, after learning an outcast in her class, Arata Wataya, has incredible skill at karuta and his huge passion inspires her, she is pulled into the world of the poem-based card game along with her other childhood friend, Taichi Mashima.

While Chihaya grew a passion for karuta with her two childhood friends, they grew distant when they were separated in middle school. Now a high schooler, Chihaya still aims to be the queen of karuta and wants to compete with Arata again to grow her skill.

In order to work on his health, honor student Eiichirou Marou decides to spend his free time playing tennis. There, he meets Natsu, a girl who is determined to become a professional tennis player due to her love for the sport.

Her passion begins to rub off on him, but as he continues to play, the more fascinated by it he becomes.

Yamato Akitsuki recently moved from the countryside to Tokyo to attend high school. He lives with his aunt in a local bathhouse and is staying in the adjacent all-girls dormitory that she runs.

When he first arrived, he was mesmerized by a female high jumper he saw practicing at school. Meeting her at school, this girl, Suzuka Asahina is a track and field star that inspires him to join the team too. However, despite his feelings of admiration for her and his new-found talent for sprinting, Suzuka finds his clumsiness and carefree attitude difficult to deal with.

For twins Kazuya and Tatsuya Uesugi, baseball is their passion. While Kazuya is the ace of the team and beloved around town, Tatsuya, giving up on ever earning the spotlight, lets his own talents wane despite being more naturally gifted.

The only thing Tatsuya isn’t willing to give up for his brother is Minami, the girl next door and childhood friend that treats both brothers as equals. It is Minami that spurs Tatsuya to try again and ultimately come out from his brothers’ shadow.

After watching a gripping performance by a male ballet dancer as a kid, Junpei Murao fell in love with dance. However, after being pressured into finding it effeminate, he took up more manly sports like Jeet Kune Do and soccer, particularly after his father’s death made him the man of his house.

One day after a female classmate witnesses him do a kick with the earmarks of ballet to it, she asks him to join her mother’s ballet studio. Although he resists at first, Junpei finds himself willing to make endless sacrifices for the euphoria that ballet elicits.

Every night, Ganta Nakami is overtaken by insomnia that leaves him grumpy during the day. However, he happens across the easygoing Isaki Magari from his class sleeping in the Astronomy Club’s abandoned, supposedly haunted observatory. It turns out that she, too, suffers from insomnia and uses this room to sneak away for naps.

While the pair at first agree to share sneaking naps in the observatory, they are soon caught. In order to preserve their beloved nap spot, they persuade the school to let them revive the Astronomy Club where they soon share a growing love for the stars as well as each other.

In order to pursue a career in politics to make a positive change for Japan, Mitsumi leaves her rural town to go to high school in Tokyo. While she has a clear life plan for herself, she is still a country girl in a big city and ends up late and lost on her first day.

Luckily, Mitsumi is noticed by a fellow new student, Sousuke Shima, and he guides her to school. This laid-back guy is charmed by her motivated personality and strikes up a friendship with her, supporting her as she tries to make meaningful friendships with her classmates.

Although lauded for being likable and intelligent, Kyouko Hori hides the fact that she has to take care of her brother and the housework because her parents are always working.

Izumi Miyamura, on the other hand, is seen as a brooding, bespectacled otaku. Outside of school, he sports tattoos and nine piercings.

By happenstance, the two outside school personalities of these two classmates meet and they get to know a side of each other they don’t show their peers.

Although once a child prodigy in the music world, pianist Kousei Arima is left in a downward spiral after his mother’s death, unable to even hear the sound of his own piano.

Even after two years, Arima has all but left the music world behind, disappointing fans and rivals alike, and living in a colorless world. Then one day that that all changes when he is introduced to the beautiful violinist Kaori Miyazono who brings color into his world once more.

For the first time in their third year, Azumi and Mizuno were put in the same class. Initially, they are nothing more than classmates, but continued exposure sees them grow progressively closer.

As the year goes on, the pair and their classmates must come to face themselves as they mature emotionally.