As he is short, fat, and unattractive, Park Hyung Suk has been constantly bullied by his classmates and discriminated against based on his looks. In order to escape his bullies, he decides to transfer to a vocational preparatory school for a new start.
However, after moving into an apartment by himself near his new school, he wakes up in a different body – one that is tall, handsome, and strong. However, his old body is still asleep on the floor next to him. Hyung Suk soon discovers that he can switch between bodies by going to sleep.
Now he must learn to navigate the popularity that his hot new body has brought as well as unravel why and how he started body switching in the first place.
While Lookism is a Korean-made anime based on a Korean manhwa, anime as a medium is branching out all over the world. As it is made in the anime style, why not cover anime like it? If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Lookism, head on down below.
Anime Like Lookism
For Fans of Changing From Unpopular to Popular
Masamune-kun’s Revenge
As a child, Masamune Makabe confessed his love to the wealthy and beautiful Aki Adagaki. However, she brutally rejected him and nicknamed him “Piggy” due to his chubby appearance.
Fleeing to his grandfather’s home in the country, Masamune toiled endlessly to become fit. Once he became skinny and handsome, he returns to his old neighborhood in order to wreak vengeance on the girl that wronged him.
With the help of Aki’s maid, Masamune sets out to make her fall in love with him so that he can be the one to break her heart.
Like Lookism, Masamune-kun’s Revenge follows a chubby boy who becomes a hottie. However, there is no body switching involved. He was bullied for being chubby as a child, left, got fit, and returned to get revenge on the girl that insulted him.
However, the bullying in Masamune-kun’s Revenge was mostly a misunderstanding, and as such, it doesn’t quite have the same feel as Lookism and its criminal-levels of assault and bullying. Furthermore, Masamune-kun’s Revenge is more of a romantic comedy than Lookism.
Kiss Him, Not Me
Chubby Kae Serinuma is an avid fujoshi who secretly ships her male classmates. However, after her favorite anime character dies, she becomes so stressed that she loses weight rapidly.
Upon returning to school, her classmates, including the attractive men she ships, realize how attractive she really is.
There’s only one problem, while the boys vie for her affections, she just wants them to turn those affections towards each other.
Both series follow a main character who suddenly goes from husky to hottie, and they initially have to deal with the massive new influx of positive attention.
The major difference is that Kiss Him, Not Me follows a female character. While she was kind of picked on previously, Kae was one confident fujoshi and it sort of bounced off her thick skin. So when she starts getting attention from a new reverse harem that forms around her, she is actually kind of upset that they are so into her as she likes to ship them with each other.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki-kun
Fumiya Tomozaki is the top player in Japan at a fighting game called TackFam. Despite holding such a title, he is a failure at everything else, blaming it on the unfair rules and mechanics of life.
One day, the second best TackFam player asks to meet up.
Tomozaki discovers that they are actually Aoi, one of the most popular girls at school. She, however, is disappointed that someone she respected is a failure at life.
Now, she aims to teach him how to succeed at the glorious game of life.
Unlike Lookism, Tomozaki isn’t unpopular because he was chubby. He was unpopular because he has bad social skills. While Lookism has Hyung Suk rehabilitate his social skills through having a hot new body he can switch into, Tomozaki’s social skill and reputation is rehabilitated by being helped by a popular girl.
An interesting element in Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki-kun is that it displays actual techniques to improve social skills rather than just the pure wish fulfillment that is Lookism.
Romantic Killer
All high schooler Anzu Hoshino loves is video games, chocolate, and her cat, Momohiko. She has shunned everything else, especially a romantic life.
However, one day a magical creature alters her reality where she can’t have any of those three things that she adores and is told that in order to return to her normal life, she must indulge in the dating sim situations that have been set up around her involving the new troubled transfer student Tsukasa Kazuki, her childhood friend Junta Hayami, and a wealthy sheltered student named Hijiri Koganei.
Whereas Lookism is about Hyung Suk heavily bullied and wildly unhappy with his school life, Romantic Killer has Anzu happy in her unpopularity. She is an otaku and perfectly happy to go right home and play games by herself.
What they have in common is they are kind of forced to be more popular through some sort of magical interference. However, while Lookism explores other things, Romantic Killer leans into poking fun at what is essentially an otome game that she is forced to play in real life.
For Fans of Body Swapping
Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches
Ryuu Yamada used to be a thug, but he wanted to change his reputation in high school. He went to a school where no one knew him, but by second year he was so bored that he became a slacker again.
One day while on his way to the office, he trips and accidentally kisses a beautiful honor student. In a flash, they switch bodies and Ryuu is soon thrust into the world of school legends where seven beautiful witches can have their supernatural abilities awakened by kissing.
Both series feature body switching prominently in the plot. However, while body switching is really the only supernatural thing going on in Lookism, there are a lot of different powers in Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches.
Aside from body switching, there isn’t a ton that Lookism has in common with Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. Yamada is a misunderstood delinquent, so he’s not bullied, and the series becomes about him building a harem through helping troubled girls.
Kokoro Connect
One day, for seemingly no reason in particular, the members of the Cultural Research Club start randomly switching bodies with each other. It becomes utter chaos, especially when members of the opposite sex start switching.
However, when you are wearing someone else’s skin, it is hard to keep your most guarded secrets inside.
Both series have their plots surrounding a sudden body switch phenomenon. In Lookism, it is just the main character while it is a group of characters in Kokoro Connect. In Lookism, Hyung Suk can switch back, but in Kokoro Connect, the character often switch bodies at random and unexpectedly.
While Kokoro Connect uses the body switching to explore the latent character drama that was present in the group. This is contrary to Lookism where the body switching was more of a second chance for the main character to have a happier school life in a wildly superficial society.
For Fans of Getting a Redo
ReLife
Arata Kaizaki is an unemployed 27-year-old that has thus far been living with the financial support of his parents and part-time jobs. After leaving his first job after only three months, he has not been able to find proper work.
However, after a night of drinking with his friends, he meets a mysterious man that offers a drunk Arata a pill that will turn him 17 again so that he can redo a year of his youth, all expenses paid.
Will Arata find what he needs to live a happy life after one year in high school again?
Both series are essentially about people that are given a second chance to have a happy high school life. However, in ReLife, Kaizaki presumably had a fine high school life, but it wasn’t until he became an adult that his life went off the rails. So now he is being rehabilitated with social experiences in high school.
Like in ReLife, you see Hyung Suk using his positive social interactions in his hot body while at high school as motivation to improve his actual body.
Remake Our Life
As an adult, Kyouya Hashiba left his office job to pursue a career in the video game industry. 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.
Both series are about people who are unhappy with their unfair life, and they are given a chance to start over. While Lookism gives a high school a beautiful new body, Remake Our Life takes a failing adult and sends him back in time to redo his college decisions so he can have a redo at his adult life again.
Both series also share a focus on vocational schools, with Remake Our Life having a focus on game design. Although, Hyung Suk doesn’t really have such an interest in fashion design whereas Hashiba specifically wanted to study making games instead of what he originally studied in college before going back in time.
For Fans of Overcoming Vicious Bullying
Accel World
Haruyuki Arita is a loser at school, constantly ridiculed by his peers. Like so many, his only escape is into the virtual world of video games.
One day, his video game skills attract the attention of Kuroyukihime, the school’s popular student council vice president. She introduces Haru to a new game called Brain Burst that accelerates the human cognitive process to the point of which time appears to stop.
However, it is really actually an Augmented Reality Massively Multiplayer Online (ARMMO) Fighting Game where people fight each other in fierce duels in order to obtain Burst Points which can be spent for acceleration abilities in the real world.
Both series follow chubby characters who are unpopular and downright bullied by other students at their school. Haruyuki doesn’t end up switching schools like Hyung Suk, but is he suddenly given a chance to improve himself as a person and this gives him a way to sort of fight back against his bullies like Hyung Suk does.
However, the major difference here is that Accel World, over time, because much more focused on the activities in the Brain Burst game since the plot moves its focus more towards that and less on Haruyuki being unpopular.
Magical Girl Site
Aya Asagiri lives a miserable life.
At school she is bullied. At home she is beaten. Her only bright light is a cat, but one day even that is taken away from her.
However, while browsing the internet, she finds a person that takes pity on her and gives her the powers of a magical girl.
So starts her vengeance.
Both series focus on characters who are so badly bullied and abused that honestly the police should be involved. Instead of that, they give the main character magical intervention.
While Hyung Suk uses his new body more to live a happy life rather than fight back (for the most part), Magical Girl Site is a distinctly more vicious and bloody anime about bullied individuals made into magical girls.
Anime has its fair share of bullying, but no other series has bullying quite as frequent and brutal as in Lookism. Regardless, if you want to see how anime handles bullies, check out these 14 Anime That Show Bullying in All Forms.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Lookism? Let fans know in the comments section below.
Horimiya