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.
This series is so often intriguing in that it feels like it should be a romance anime, but actually really isn’t. Yet, without the love story, you find yourself just fine enjoying the complex characters and their school life. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Skip and Loafer, head on down below.
Anime Like Skip and Loafer
For Fans of Coming-Of-Age Tales
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.
Skip and Loafer seemed like it would be a more dedicated romance at first, but it was actually more of a coming-of-age exploration of its characters. Kimi ni Todoke sets itself up the same way. It establishes its potential love story upfront, but puts the vast majority of its effort toward wholesomely showing you the main character grow as a person and build friendships.
These series also both share a passion for softer character designs and color palates to let you know what sort of wholesome, positive tone they are going to portray. They are the sort of encouraging anime series that you feel happy to watch, even if both are painfully slow with romantic progression.
Insomniacs After School
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.
Both Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After School are more than just romance anime. They are part of a newer wave of romance anime that treat even side characters as actual characters. You get to explore some side characters stories and how they feel about others instead of just seeing them used to prop up the main couple.
However, the biggest similarity between these two series besides actually utilizing side characters as characters is that they are both more coming-of-age stories than they are love stories. Insomniacs After Dark is more of a romance anime, but like Skip and Loafer, a lot of it is young people just stumbling through life, trying to find sure footing.
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 is a more direct and focused romance anime, like Skip and Loafer it treats its side characters as actual characters with stuff going on and not just opportunities for main characters to play off of. You get a sense of all the characters and all of them have some sort of flaws.
If you enjoyed the dynamic in Skip and Loafer, but do wish it was more of an actual romance, Horimiya is for you.
Honey and Clover
Honey and Clover follows a group of college students who meet Hagumi, an artist with a tremendous amount of talent who transfers to their school.
From there on, Honey and Clover tells stories about the joys of falling in love, the pain of letting go, and the journey to discovering who you really are.
While Honey and Clover follows college students with just slightly different life worries than a high school student, both Skip and Loafer and Honey and Clover tell more complicated and real stories about the characters rather than just cheerful romance and sugarcoated life moments.
However, Honey and Clover, as an older series, does feature older tropes and, in particular, has a love affair with one-sided love triangles. So it has more of a romance focus compared to Skip and Loafer, but still does share a similar love of complicated characters.
Blue Spring Ride
Futaba Yoshioka was an attractive middle schooler, popular with boys, but not with girls. It left her feeling lonely, but none of that mattered as long as her crush, Kou Tanaka, liked her.
However, when Kou moved away, Futaba decided to change herself, purposely adopting unattractive traits to be popular with the girls, but one day, Kou comes back as different of a person as she is.
Both Skip and Loafer and Blue Spring Ride tell stories about likable female protagonists who care perhaps too much what others think of them and handsome mysterious male leads that you just know have a sad backstory lurking behind that pretty face.
However, while Skip and Loafer isn’t really a romance anime in the traditional sense, Blue Spring Ride… Well, it is all traditional romance anime, perhaps too much so at times since older romance tropes can be a bit frustrating.
What you get in both series is a female lead who often stumbles and has the support of her male friend, but while Mitsumi excels at picking herself up even when supported by Sousuke, Futuba is often pretty bad at picking herself back up.
For Fans of Plain, but Likable Girls
Heroines Run The Show
In order to continue pursuing track and field, Hiyori left her small hometown and moved to Tokyo. After her father gets injured, she takes a part-time job to support herself.
The job, as it turns out, is to be a manager-in-training for two male idols who just happen to be her two irritable classmates as well.
While Skip and Loafer with its coming-of-age focus on relationships and Heroines Run The Show and its focus on managing complicated male idols are decidedly different plots, the similarities between these two sit firmly between the main characters.
Like Mitsumi, Hiyori is a plain looking country girl who movies to Tokyo. This time, she wants to be a track and field runner instead of Mitsumi’s lofty political aspirations. Hard-working and determined, she gets a job to cover living expenses and that job just happens to be managing two male idols that are also classmates.
Essentially, Hiyori is Mitsumi if she was less supported by family and friends in Tokyo where less nice.
O Maidens in Your Savage Season
The girls of the literature club have recently been reading sexually charged pieces of literature. This combined with a newfound interest in adult relationships sends each member spiraling off into the world of sex and intimate relations.
Skip and Loafer and O Maidens in Your Savage Season are have two different plots, but are actually united by their diligence in creating interesting, flawed characters.
Of course, the biggest similarity is between the main characters. Mitsumi and Kazuza have that similar plain girl looks and have romantic feelings for men that are objectively out of their league.
However, while Skip and Loafer only lightly explores romance in between its more slice of life plot, O Maidens in Your Savage Season is all about how interested young women become in love and sex during puberty.
For Fans of Complicated 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.
Skip and Loafer focuses more on the friendships while still building towards more romantic feelings. By comparison, Tsuki ga Kirei dives full-on into romance and solely focuses on that. What these series then share is portraying how complicated relationships are.
Unlike more traditional romance anime that focus on the sweetness of feelings, both Skip and Loafer and Tsuki ga Kirei aren’t afraid to show you the unhappy complexity that comes with sharing yourself with other people without being too melancholy about it.
They also both employ a similar fondness for softer, unique art styles.
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.
Both Skip and Loafer and Just Because enjoy showing you that romantic feelings don’t always go exactly the way you would hope or how most romance anime displays them. They are messy and sometimes they just don’t end up in a happy place.
While Skip and Loafer is generally more positive and upbeat about the relationships between the characters, by comparison, Just Because is all anxiety as they are confused about their own feelings and all-around unsure of how others feel about them.
Sing “Yesterday” for Me
After college, unsure of what to do with his life, Rikou gets a job at a convenience store.
There, he becomes visited by a high school dropout with a pet crow as well as has rekindled feelings for a senpai that visits the store one day.
This is the story of the growth of several individuals as they take their first steps into adulthood.
Skip and Loafer is cheerful and positive, which actually makes it quite a different experience from the melancholy-steeped wanderings of Sing ‘Yesterday’ for Me. Furthermore, Sing ‘Yesterday’ forMe follows older characters that are sort of adrift in young adulthood, which is also a less hopeful time.
However, what these two series have in common is they take a more realistic approach to romance, friendship, and relationships in general. The characters are kept more on the complicated real side rather than just being easy stereotypes.
That said, Sing ‘Yesterday’ for Me is definitely not the same encouraging experience that Skip and Loafer presents, but is still quite the interesting watch for those who like their characters to be complex.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Skip and Loafer? Let fans know in the comments section below.
