Akane Nishimura is a quiet girl with an intimidating gaze. As such, her classmates gave her the ominous nickname of “The Grim Reaper” and started avoiding her due to fear that they would be cursed.
However, these rumors don’t deter the new transfer student, Taiyou Takada. He finds out about her nickname and her powers and immediately tries to befriend her with no hesitation, excited to be cursed and to be friends with The Grim Reaper. His cheerful disposition and ability to make everything seem positive is just what Akane needed in her first ever friend.
Children can be cruel, and this series provides a nice salve to bullying by having a character with a unique ability to make every negative thing seem so positive. Wholesome and heart-warming, if you are looking for more anime recommendations like My Clueless First Friend, head on down below.
Anime Like My Clueless First Friend
For Fans of Introverts Adopted By Extroverts
Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible
Junta Shiraishi has a special, if not sometimes inconvenient skill of being difficult for people to notice due to his lack of presence. However, while even the teacher fails to notice him, his desk neighbor Nagisa Kubo seems to never miss him.
Unfortunately, Kubo likes to tease him on a daily basis and put his near-invisibility to the test in nerve-wracking situations. However, her playful antics begin to evolve into what normal people would easy see as clear feelings for him.
Both My Clueless First Friend and Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible feature characters that people either don’t notice or actively ignore. One day, someone notices them, becomes their friend, and slowly helps them make other friends as well. Furthermore, they like really hinting at romance without really committing to being active romance anime.
Both of these series are for the quiet kids in class that feel a connection to the friendless main characters and really enjoy watching them build a happy school life. There isn’t really any drama, things are kept very light, and they are pleasant series to watch.
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.
While Horimiya follows high school-aged characters and is an actual romance anime, like My Clueless First Friend, it follows an outgoing popular person who reaches out to the quiet friendless kid in class.
While Horimiya has extra circumstances involved, both series follow these two characters of different personalities becoming friends and having good chemistry with each other.
However, as My Clueless First Friend follows elementary school-aged kids, it isn’t really much of a romance, but Horimiya is.
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 parent’s 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.
Kotoura-san and My Clueless First Friend are incredibly similar except in one way – the supernatural is actually real in Kotoura-san.
Both series follow quiet girls that are bullied and rejected so much they have shut themselves off from the world. That all changes when they meet a boy at their new school (or who transfers in) that finds their reputation or powers incredibly interesting and they become fast friends.
Their friendship parlays into the girl gaining other new friendships and they also develop romantic feelings for the boy that started it all. However, as Kotoura-san does take place in high school, it does become an actual romance.
For Fans of Chunibyous
Outburst Dreamer Boys
When Mizuki transferred to a new school, she wanted to live a normal school life and make a few friends. That gets completely derailed when she gets labeled Pink – like the Pink Ranger – by Noda, leader of the Hero Club, a school club that helps those in need.
This energetic boy obsessed with live action Super Sentai shows drags her to meet the members of his club who are all some form of chunibyou.
While she doesn’t get the normalcy she desires, the delusions of grandeur throughout the club certainly make for an exciting school life.
Taiyou from My Clueless First Friend is Noda for Outburst Dreamer Boys. You can’t not see the similarities. From the belief in chunibyou delusions to being super friendly to someone they literally just met to even looking alike.
However, whereas My Clueless First Friend follows the growing friendship between Akane and Taiyou as she comes out of her shell, Outburst Dreamer Boys is more a comedy where a bunch of chunibyou boys go about their shenanigans while also pulling a normal girl in to serve as the straight man to their absurd comedy.
A Destructive God Sits Next to Me
It was written that Miguel, the god of destruction, was sealed inside the knight Sturmhurt. Alongside Sturmhurt was the loyal Gestober who fought beside him. These two heroes would pass on, but reincarnate in the present day as classmates.
…Or so says Kabuto Hanadori to his classmate Seri Koyuki. While Seri is a normal student, he is constantly pulled into Kabuto’s chunibyou delusions. This constantly leads him to embarrassing situations that grow further out of control when the unpredictable Utsugi Tsukimiya gets involved as well.
While My Clueless First Friend is more than just chunibyou comedy, if it was the chunibyou comedy that you enjoyed and don’t necessarily need the slight romance and growing social circle element, A Destructive God Sits Next to Me is for you.
A Destructive God Sits Next to Me is just chunibyou comedy where a normal kid is pulled into the whims of his friends. As a slice of life series, there isn’t much more to it than the chunibyou comedy.
Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions
Everyone has that stage in their life where they think themselves special, different from mere humans. This phenomenon is called Chunibyou Syndrome and is most common in pre-pubescent children.
In middle school, Yuuta Togashi thought himself the Dark Flame Master. He has since grown out of it upon entering high school and looks back at those cringe-worthy times with displeasure.
Unfortunately, after a chance meeting with Rikka Takanashi, a girl believing to have a God in her eye, she attaches herself to him and brings that Chunibyou past back out.
If you enjoyed Taiyou’s youthful chunibyou dalliances and the slight romantic element of My Clueless First Friend, Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions provides that but in a more satisfying rom-com package.
Both series are about normal kids crossing paths with a passionate chunibyou that believes in supernatural and fictional things. While My Clueless First Friends follows characters young enough where that is still pretty normal, Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions addresses the cringe of having older characters that still believe in those things. Regardless, they are both pretty wholesome comedies, although Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions does have a bit of drama to it as it gets to the serious side of romance.
Mysterious Girlfriend X
Every girl is mysterious to a young man, but new transfer student Mikoto Urabe is particularly curious to Akira Tsubaki. She earns a reputation as a weirdo on her first day when she laughs in the middle of class for no reason, doesn’t interact with her classmates, and sleeps on her desk.
One day, Akira finds her napping at her desk, notices some drool that she left and impulsively tastes it. He is suddenly struck with a fever and finds out he is suffering from a love sickness that is a form of withdrawal from not ingesting more of her drool.
As such, the two enter a very strange new relationship.
Now, Mysterious Girlfriend X isn’t about chunibyou delusions like the reputation they build for Akane in My Clueless First Friend. Instead, it plays the “weird girl in class” thing straightforward. Mysterious Girlfriend X is about a normal guy falling in love with the weird girl in class who also has actual supernatural powers.
Unlike Taiyou, who spins everything into a positive, an element in Mysterious Girlfriend X is the main character having to deal with the obvious weirdness of his girlfriend, but it still follows a surprisingly touching romantic relationship where he overcomes what others think about her or them as a couple.
For Fans of Coming Out Of Your Shell
The Dangers in My Heart
Kyoutaro Ichikawa looks like a normal boy, but he has a danger in his heart – a dream of murder. He has aimed his violent tendencies at the class idol, Anna Yamada.
While reading in his haven, the library, he accidentally runs into Yamada, who comes there to secretly consume snacks. Through frequent observation, Ichikawa learns that this beautiful and popular girl is actually a huge ditz and frequently finds himself supporting her from the periphery in her ventures.
Over time, Ichikawa learns that he doesn’t actually want to kill Yamada, but rather, his desires were actually something much different.
Both My Clueless First Friend and The Dangers in My Heart follow the weird quiet kids in class that don’t have a lot of friends. However, they make contact with a cheerful, likable popular person and its starts to draw them out. This happens quickly in My Clueless First Friend, but it is more of a slow burn in The Dangers in My Heart.
You watch their friendship develop into something that often looks more like young love than it does first friendship. The biggest difference is that the main characters and their roles are gender swapped.
Kimi ni Todoke
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.
My Clueless First Friend and Kimi ni Todoke may differ in the ages of their characters, but the dynamic is the same. Both series follow gloomy girls with supernatural reputations when in reality they are nice, normal girls craving friendship. Their solitary school life ends one day when a cheerful popular boy reaches out to them and becomes their friend.
Whereas My Clueless First Friend has Taiyou aggressively being a friend to Akane, Kimi ni Todoke is more about Shouta encouraging Sawako from the sidelines as she makes her first friends more on her own.
While My Clueless First Friend plays coy as to if it will be a romance despite the clear affection, Kimi ni Todoke is a romance anime, but the romance moves at a snail’s pace. It is distinctly more an anime about a girl coming out of her shell before it is a romance anime.
Do you have more anime recommendations like My Clueless First Friend? Let fans know in the comments section below.
