Mahiro Oyama is a shut-in NEET that has secluded himself in his room to play games. However, his prodigious little sister, Mihari, who had always looked up to him despite drowning him out in her massive shadow of success, wants to help him.
She formulates a NEET rehabilitation plan without his knowledge and puts it into action. This results in Mahiro waking up one day as a middle school girl. Stuck in the body until the formula wears off – if it wears off – Mahiro tries his best to live out his life.
Your FBI agent is watching you real closely sometimes with this one, but it is actually a great gender-bending anime that acknowledges women’s issues that men don’t often realize. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Onimai, head on down below.
Anime Like Onimai: I’m Now Your Sister
For Fans of Gender-Bending
Kashimashi
Hazumu is a shy boy who enjoys spending time in the mountains. One day, he finally worked up the nerve to confess to his crush Yasuna, only to be shot down.
Depressed, he wanders up a mountain where he wishes on a shooting star only to be crushed by an alien spaceship and killed!
The aliens reassemble him, but being a somewhat effeminate boy, they make the mistake of reassembling him as a girl. However, his new body may be just the key to Yasuna’s heart.
Both Onimai and Kashimashi are gender-bending anime that starts off with a wildly ridiculous way of gender-bending someone, Kashimashi more so on that front. However, if you just go with it, you are rewarded with a pretty fun series with ecchi and varying girl’s love overtones.
However, as Kashimashi is built on the foundation of romance rather than the wholesome moe of Onimai, it is the much more aggressive with its girl’s love and its drama.
Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout
On their way home from a mixer, average guy Tachibana and his handsome best friend Jinguuji are attacked by a naked goddess.
When they wake up in another world, she tells them that they are heroes and tasks them with killing a demon lord.
However, much to the chagrin of woman-hating Jinguuji, Tachibana has been transformed into a super cute girl!
Both of these anime are gender-bending comedies. While Onimai does occasionally explore serious or wholesome moments, Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout rarely lets the comedy facade drop.
While Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout isn’t aimed at rehabilitation like Onimai, it does have some moments where turning into a woman does help his friends’ poor relationship with women.
She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man
Kagami is a VRMMMO player of a game called Arch Earth Online. He is a veteran player that helped form a kingdom for mages and plays the wise old man.
However, one day he purchases an appearance change item with currency about to expire and tests out what it would be like if his character was a super cute girl.
After falling asleep, he finds himself still in the body of a girl and the game feels a little more real than it used to.
Both Onimai and She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man take the diabetes-inducingly cute route when it comes to gender-bending.
While the settings differ, with She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man being a VRMMO style game, they both feature older men suddenly transformed into younger, very cute women. However, while She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man has its moments, it doesn’t often lean too hard into ecchi like Onimai can.
I My Me! Strawberry Eggs
Amawa Hibiki just graduated college and is looking to start a career as a a PE teacher. However, he has been having a hard time finding work.
In order to satisfy his landlady, he heads to the local middle school in hopes of finding work, but the principal makes it clear that she will not hire men.
However, with the help of his landlady, Amawa dresses up as a woman to prove the principal wrong and gets hired on the spot. However, he struggles to keep his secret when he starts getting into strange situations with people of all genders.
There isn’t necessarily a shortage of gender-bending anime, but they usually come in two types – ecchi comedy or very dramatic. There aren’t a ton of gender bending anime that are both ecchi comedies and also surprisingly wholesome. However, in that regard, Strawberry Eggs is an anime most like Onimai in that it is a more wholesome gender-bending anime while also still having ecchi comedy.
The big difference is that while both series follow an adult man turning into a woman, she stays an adult in Strawberry Eggs rather then becoming middle school aged like Onimai. She goes on to become a teacher and everyone becomes incredibly fond of her, not unlike what happens with every new person Mahiro meets.
For Fans of Otaku NEETs
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.
Both Onimai and Eromanga-sensei are about NEETs that are trying to be coaxed out of their NEET nest by a sibling. However, what they most have in common is how ecchi they can be with middle school girls. Onimai is the more graphic ecchi anime, but both enjoy a lingering gaze on their NEET characters.
While Onimai is about about reforming a NEET through gender-bending and female friendship, Eromanga-sensei essentially skips the gender-bending part. Her brother slowly introduces new female friends to her in hopes that she will eventually not be a shut-in. His plan is less effective, however.
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 Onimai and ReLife are about adult men that have become NEETs. Through anime-style science/magic, they are transformed! Mahiro is changed into a girl, Kaizaki is changed into a high school boy.
Both anime series have a big emphasis on social rehabilitation through friendship with very nice wholesome moments. However, there is a touch more drama to ReLife as it carries out what is essentially a school life storyline with a twist.
Himouto! Umaru-chan
Umaru Doma is, by all accounts, the perfect student. She is beautiful, smart, and respectful, at least until she gets home, anyway.
Once that door closes, Umaru dons her hamster hoodie and transforms into a bratty, lazy, junk food-gorging otaku that is fully dependent on her responsible older brother, Taihei.
Whether it is playing video games or eating the right snack combinations, Umaru knows how to live.
Both Onimai and Himouto! Umaru-chan are about a pair of siblings. One is a fully functional adult and the other one is kind of a problematic otaku.
In Himouto! Umaru-chan, she isn’t a shut-in, she is just kind of comically selfish. Both Umaru and Onimai do have a focus on their siblings trying to urge their otaku kin to be better people, however.
They both go about it comically and by mixing in a bunch of more normal girls to help them try to accept themselves.
For Fans of Ecchi Loli Anime
Slow Start
Insecure and timid, Hana Ichinose has just moved to a new town. As she also had a slow start, she will be attending school a year behind her peers.
However, she is given a good jumping off point to make some friends during her introduction and dives right in.
Onimai and Slow Start are both anime that dive full on into the moe and never look back. Despite Slow Start having high school characters, the moe makes them all look the same age.
Anyway, what Onimai and Slow Start have in common is they focus on a girl who is very timid and in a unique situation being brought out of her shell by female friends. Slow Start plays it more realistically than the gender-bending twist that Onimai has, however.
While Slow Start certainly looks very cute, fear not, it doesn’t forget to throw in some ecchi moments.
Kanamemo
After her grandmother passes away, Kana Nakamichi leaves her empty house, but has trouble finding lodging due to her age. Eventually, she comes to stay at the Fuhshin Gazette, a newspaper delivery business that will provide her lodging in exchange for work.
At her new home and job, she is finds the work is easy enough, but the wide array of odd characters are a handful.
If the element of gender-bending in Onimai wasn’t that important to you, Kanamemo offers almost everything else. Both shows are very moe and feature an almost exclusively female cast.
One top of cutely designed characters, both Onimai and Kanamemo go out of their way to also be ecchi anime. If you enjoy very cute anime girls bonding wholesomely and occasionally ending up in fan service and girl’s love situations with each other, Kanamemo is an excellent follow up to Onimai.
Yuru Yuri
After being reunited with her childhood friends in middle school, Akari is enticed to join the Amusement Club that Yui and Kyoko created in their own first year of middle school.
They convince Akari to join, only for her to discover that the club’s only function is to amuse its members.
While it does take a minute to get there, Onimai transforms into a wholesome anime about a group of cute girls doing cute things. Yuru Yuri is also very much that. However, Yuru Yuri replaces the ecchi with more comedy.
Instead of fan service moments, Yuru Yuri enjoys making dirty jokes and girl’s love shenanigans. However, since it chooses the less curvy form of moe, there isn’t much of a reason to wedge in some ecchi.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Onimai? Let fans know in the comments section below.
