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.
As much a coming-of-age story as it is a romance, Insomniacs After School is one of those anime series that really captures you in the whimsy sometimes. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Insomniacs After School, head on down below.
Anime Like Insomniacs After School
For Fans of Stargazing
At The Mercy of The Sky
After moving away for seven years, Saku Ooyagi returns to his hometown and reconnects with Mihoshi Akeno. While things are awkward due to how they parted in the past at first, Akeno is determined to recruit Ooyagi into the Astronomy Club that she founded.
Both Insomniacs After School and At The Mercy of The Sky are romance anime between a cheerful girl and a grumpy bespectacled boy who are forced to be in an Astronomy Club.
However, while Insomniacs After School dedicates itself to exploring the worries that the characters are keeping pent up inside, At The Mercy of The Sky is more your standard anime romantic comedy where things are kept light.
Asteroid in Love
As a child, Mira met a boy named Ao at a campsite. While they were gazing at the sky, Mira learned there was a star with her name, but none with Ao’s name. She made a promise that one day they would name an asteroid after him.
Years later, Mira is reunited with Ao at their school’s Earth Science Club. This is also when she discovers that Ao is actually a girl.
Asteroid in Love and Insomniacs After School both explore the starry passions of the Astronomy Club. However, while Asteroid in Love is similar in its love of the night and the stars, but it is different from Insomniacs After School in decent number of ways.
Most notable, you will find that aside from some shoujo ai-baiting, Asteroid in Love isn’t a romance. It is a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime and also has its focus split between Astronomy and Geology since their club is a combination of the two.
For Fans of Iyashikei Slice of Life
Call of the Night
After rejecting a confession from a girl at school because he doesn’t understand love, Kou stops going to school and starts wandering the night with insomnia.
One night, he encounters a mysterious girl who believes people that stay awake at night are dissatisfied with the way they spent their days.
Following her into the night, she brings him back to her place and suddenly starts to suck his blood. Discovering her true nature, Kou now seeks to be a vampire, but to become one, you need to make a vampire fall in love with you.
In short, what Insomniacs After School and Call of The Night have in common is that they are both about insomniacs, romance, and – most importantly of all – they both love beautiful shots of the night sky.
Call of the Night differs in that it follows the romance between an insomniac and a vampire, so it has a supernatural element to it that Insomniacs After School lacks.
Both series keep things particularly low drama and also both capture a certain magic about the night time.
March Comes in Like a Lion
Rei Kiriyama recently started to live alone in his last year of high school. He is able to financial support himself as a professional Shogi player, but while he officially became a pro in middle school, he is collapsing under the pressure to succeed.
Burdened with his own problems, Rei has found solace among a kind family of three sisters, the Kawamotos. The oldest, Akari, likes to take in strays and Rei is the latest.
While he feels conflicted about spending time with them, they provide the accepting affection that he has gotten nowhere else.
It is established early in Insomniacs After School that those with insomnia often have something bothering them. The series explores what is weighing on the minds of both characters and they find salves to that from their relationship with each other.
March Comes in Like a Lion is also about characters with feelings that weigh heavily on their mind. While March Comes in Like a Lion does have romantic elements, the romance is not the focus like in Insomniacs After School. Instead, you watch the main character slowly heal through his relationships with a variety of people.
Both series also enjoy their long, lingering, ponderous scenery shots that always accents the melancholy of their teenage angst.
For Fans of Coming-of-Age Romances
Your Lie in April
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.
Both Insomniacs After School and Your Lie in April start off with a depressed bespectacled main character who meets a vibrant girl that he develops feelings for. However, they go down two opposite paths.
Insomniacs After School becomes a satisfying coming-of-age romance that only pokes at the potential for tragedy and Your Lie in April hurts you with the love the characters develop for each other.
Insomniacs After School isn’t a tearjerker, but is a rather touching romance. Your Lie in April is actually a tearjerker.
Orange
On the first day of a new semester, Naho Takimiya oversleeps. On her way out after being late for school, she finds a letter waiting for her that says it is from herself ten years in the future.
The letter ardently states her regrets that she has surrounding a new transfer student Kakeru Naruse. Thinking it is a prank at first, Naho ignores it, but when the events described within begin to come true, Naho decides that she will try to help her future self.
Both Insomniacs After School and Orange are coming-of-age romance anime surrounding a pretty close group of friends and often focus on the friend group goofing off if it is not progressing the romantic relationship.
However, while Insomniacs After School often threatens to take a turn towards tragic character drama, Orange actually does. It establishes early that one character is fated for tragedy and often focuses on the ways the characters can build their relationship with him so that doesn’t happen.
While Insomniacs After School focuses on the thoughts keeping the characters awake at night, Orange has more of a focus on regret while also giving the characters a supernatural way to erase those regrets.
Just Because
Due to his father’s work, Eita Izumi is used to moving around. In the final semester of high school, he moves back to his hometown.
There, Eita reconnects with his old best friend Haruto who is obsessed with baseball for an unknown reason. He also reconnects with Mio, a girl he once had unrequited feelings for.
As their high school years rapidly approach a close, Eita’s arrival seems to spur on a series of anxieties and buried emotions in everyone around him.
While Insomniacs After School isn’t particularly big on drama, it captures a certain sense of uncertainty when it comes to the relationship it is building between the main characters. Just Because is also a romance series that touches on the uncertain nature of relationships when you are a teenager. Eventually you grow up, and everything can change.
Both series emphasize enjoying things in the moment, although Just Because is more frustrating as a romance because of what it is trying to communicate to the audience about young romantic relationships.
Tsuki ga Kirei
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.
There is much about Insomniacs After School that is soothing. It tells a romance story and doesn’t really rely on the normal relationship drama that romance anime sometimes uses to keep things interesting. Both Insomniacs After School and Tsuki ga Kirei detail young relationships with uncertain futures but strong feelings behind them.
While enjoying their romantic relationship, you are also getting to watch both sides grow as people through their experiences in what equates to two lovely coming-of-age romance anime.
Horimiya
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.
Both Horimiya and Insomniacs After School are part of the wave of “newer” romance anime that no longer relies on the old contrived drama tropes to keep a romance story interesting.
Instead, in both series you follow characters that meet, develop feelings, and clearly communicate those feelings. The only drama is their own personal issues that they will eventually overcome or talk through with their love interest.
This general lack of drama also allows a little more time to involve the side characters in the story, in which you see them enjoying their own small stories like actual characters instead of being used like tools for the next dramatic moment.
Skip and Loafer
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.
Both Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After Dark enjoy focusing more the coming-of-age elements than the romance. Skip and Loafer plays very coy and non-committal with the obvious romantic pairing, even later on in the manga.
What these series have most in common is they focus more on a friend group rather than just the romance of the main characters. You are being told character stories for those on the cusp of young adulthood and not a romance story.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Insomniacs After School? Let fans know in the comments section below.
