Ryuuto Kashima is a normal high school boy, ignored by most girls and with only a handful of close friends. One day, as a punishment from his friends, he is forced to ask out Runa Shirakawa, a gyaru and the most popular girl in his class.
Much to his surprise, when he asks Runa out, she agrees. The date progresses to her bringing him back to her room where he learns that she might be more experienced in the bedroom due to her previous boyfriends sleeping with her and then leaving her, but she is just as inexperienced with love as him.
Turning down a chance to sleep with her, Ryuuto and Runa decide to take it slow where they both slowly learn what it really means to fall in love.
While lacking a lot of depth, this provides a surprisingly wholesome modern view on dating and falling in love. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me, head on down below.
Anime Like Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me
For Fans of Dating the Popular Girl
My First Girlfriend is a Gal
Although he has reached the spring of his youth, Junichi is finding it harder than expected to get a girlfriend, but that is due in no small part to his friends brazen habit of reading dirty magazines in class.
In order to “help” him, his virgin friends submitted a love letter in his name to the resident gyaru of his class, Yame Yukana. However, while she may dress like a gal, this tough-looking girl is actually as pure as the snow.
My First Girlfriend is a Gal and Our Dating Story actually have the exact same premise carried out in the exact same way. An unpopular boy is forced by his equally unpopular friends to ask out the gyaru girl in his class. To his surprise, she says yes. To his even more surprise, she is not the mean popular woman everyone thinks, but is actually quite nice and pretty naive.
So what’s the difference between My First Girlfriend is a Gal and Our Dating Story? Ecchi.
My First Girlfriend is a Gal is very much about the first love between a guy and his surprisingly innocent gyaru girlfriend, but it is done with a lot more lewdness. If you wished there was a lot more shining flesh and big booba in Our Dating Story, then that is what My First Girlfriend is a Gal offers in spades.
3D Girlfriend
Tsusui Hikari is an otaku that mostly avoids social life. He only really has one friend at school and is otherwise mocked by his classmates. One day, he ends up having to clean the pool with Igarashi Iroha.
She is blunt, truant, and a troublemaker, but she stands up for Hikari when people make fun of him. While he is harsh with her, she never dismisses him. Could real 3D love be in the air?
Like Our Dating Story, 3D Girlfriend is about an unpopular guy who ends up dating a popular and fashionable gyaru girl. However, while Ryuuto is a bland, but very nice, Tsutsui in 3D Girlfriend is a bit of a bitter otaku.
Both series are primarily romance anime, but do have a bit of drama to them. Our Dating Story gets that from its love triangle, 3D Girlfriend gets it from more serious issues that would be pretty major spoilers to elaborate on further.
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten
After seeing the “angel” of his school, Mahiru Shiina, sitting in the rain, Amane Fujimiya gives her his umbrella and catches a cold because of it.
While he expected her to return the umbrella eventually, he is surprised when she, a girl who is also his neighbor, comes over to take care of him.
Seeing the unsightly state of his apartment, she helps him get that in order and suddenly he finds that she is doing small household tasks for him every day after school as they spend more time together.
Both Our Dating Story and The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten are tales of first love where a normal guy starts to fall in love with a popular girl. At first they see each other in secret, but more and more people find out until it is out in the open.
While both series have their drama surrounding the personal life of the female love interests, they are both primary focused on the couple getting to know each other and the sweet romance that is unfolding. If you just want to watch two people being kind to each other back and forth, these are both very much that. However, The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten does feel a bit more melancholy than the often bright and light-hearted Our Dating Story.
For Fans of Love Triangles
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers
Jirou Yakuin, third-year high school student and otaku, has had a crush on his childhood friend, Shiori. He hopes to be paired with her for their school’s upcoming marriage practical – an exam where two people are paired to live together in order to practice married life as they are observed and scored.
For popular Akari Watanabe, she hopes to be paired with the handsome Minami. Much to each other’s dismay, Jirou and Akari and paired together while Minami and Shiori are paired together.
Luckily, if both couples rank in the top, they can change partners, thus do Akari and Jirou venture to pretend to have a perfect married life.
While More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers is quite different with its marriage practice-focused plot, it is just a different set up for the same tale Our Dating Story is telling.
Both series feature unpopular guys that end up dating (or practicing marriage with) the popular gyaru in their class. While Our Dating Story manifests a love triangle a bit later, More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers makes it clear immediately that he had a crush on another girl.
As the male main characters are nice guys, both women in his love triangle develop feelings for him, and the drama is fully focused on which he will choose.
However, while Our Dating Story has a pretty clear main love interest, More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers can be a bit more vague with that.
Golden Time
Banri Tada has finally been accepted into a private law academy in Tokyo, but due to an accident, he is without all his memories.
During his freshmen orientation, he meets Mitsuo Yanagisawa who is consummately stalked by a girl from his old school.
Banri begins to hit it off with both of them. As they spend more time together, their fates seem intertwined, but for better or worse?
While Golden Time is a romance that takes place in college, like Our Dating Story, it focuses on a vivacious popular blonde girl who is laser-focused and completely loyal to the man she is dating at any one time.
While both follow the unfolding romance between a guy and his more beautiful new girlfriend, both soon turn into love triangles as women from the past make an appearance and their feelings for the main character are decidedly complicated.
Essentially, both series have a clear main love interest, but present the main character with a love triangle between the woman they love now and the woman that had romantic feelings for in the past.
Love and Lies
In order to encourage successful marriages and to combat the low birthrate, the Japanese government now assigns marriage partners at the age of 16. Unwilling to face the severe repercussions that come with denial, Yukari Nejima goes along with it, despite confessing to his long-time crush.
However, is his reciprocated love doomed to be crushed when he gets his marriage notice?
While the whole government-arranged marriage in Love and Lies is quite different from the tender first love story in Our Dating Story, what Love and Lies and Our Dating Story share the most is a similar type of love triangle.
Both series are non-harem love triangle romance anime where instead of two girls falling in love with a boilerplate male main character, two women fall in love with a man because he is quite literally the sweetest, most kind guy on Earth. If you liked Our Dating Story because Ryuuto was an absolute cinnamon roll towards everyone, Yukari in Love and Lies is the very same.
However, while there is a pretty clear winner to the love triangle in Our Dating Story, Love and Leis keeps things a lot more vague so it is often less satisfying as a romance.
For Fans of Not Judging People By Appearances
My Dress Up Darling
Living with his grandfather who makes beautiful Hina Dolls, Wakana Gojo has loved them since he was a child. He aspires to one day make Hina Dolls as good as his grandfather, but his dedication has made him a bit of a loner in school after a girl in his childhood said that boys shouldn’t like dolls.
After a run in with the beautiful and popular Marin Kitagawa, he discovers that she wants to cosplay a character from an eroge game.
However, her sewing skills leave something to be desired, and after seeing her passion, Gojo agrees to help her make her costume.
While My Dress Up Darling is more about cosplay than anything else as the romance is sluggish, but present, it features the same message as Our Love Story – People are often different from how you perceive them to be based on looks.
Both series feature unpopular guys that grow very close to the popular gyaru girl in their class. Our Dating Story is fully dedicated to romance while My Dress Up Darling has them grow closer over time. However, what you find out immediately in both is that the popular girls aren’t mean and judgmental, but are instead kind, passionate, and often judged by others.
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 Our Dating Story and The Dangers in My Heart are romance stories about first love where a guy falls in love with the popular girl. However, while Ryuuto is a very normal guy, Ichikawa is more of an edgy outcast.
Our Dating Story moves into dating quickly while The Dangers in My Heart is a slow build up of them gradually falling in love. Regardless, they have a similar premise of the popular girl actually being kind of adorably silly instead of mean and difficult to get along with.
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 Our Dating Story and Horimiya are first love stories with the message of not judging people based on their looks. That is a smaller part of Our Dating Story while Horimiya centers a plot around it.
Both series are about unpopular guys dating a more well-liked popular girl. They then find out that the popular girl is misunderstood in her own right, and they help each other deal with their personal drama.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me? Let fans know in the comments section below.
