As childhood friends and neighbors, Tomo and Jun are best friends and hang out constantly. There is just one problem.
Tomo is a girl, and Jun often forgets that.
She wants Jun to see her as a girl so she can move their friendship into something more. When she is a tomboy and Jun is as dense as can be, can Tomo escape the bro zone in order to get a start on her youthful romance?
Tomboys were always something for a niche audience, but Tomo-chan is a Girl brings that niche into the spotlight by being adorably comical. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Tomo-chan is a Girl, head on down below.
Anime Like Tomo-chan is a Girl
For Fans of Misunderstood Love Confessions
Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun
Chiyo Sakura has fallen head over heels for the handsome and oblivious Umetarou Nozaki. However, when she confesses her love, he gives her an autograph.
It turns out this stoic boy is actually a respected shoujo manga artist.
After a series of misunderstandings, Chiyo winds up not as his girlfriend, but as his manga assistant.
Both Tomo-chan is a Girl and Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun start with a girl confessing to a guy, and him completely misunderstanding what she means.
Instead of treating her like a bro like in Tomo-chan is a Girl, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun has the titular Nozaki mistake Chiyo as a fan of his shoujo manga and he ends up recruiting her as an assistant.
While Tomo-chan is a Girl has Tomo trying to get get Jun’s attention and failing, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun has Chiyo initially trying to get Nozaki’s attention and failing, but she also ends up getting kind of sucked into making manga.
The actual romance is slow going in both shows.
Kaguya-sama – Love is War
Considered a genius, Miyuki Shirogane leads the student council in his prestigious school. Alongside his beautiful and wealthy vice president, Kaguya Shinomiya, the two are regarded as the perfect couple despite no romantic relationship.
The truth is, however, they both have feelings for each other, but neither can confess.
This is the battle of two people trying to get the other to confess first!
The romance genre of anime is built on the back of confessions, and both Tomo-chan is a Girl and Kaguya-sama: Love is War render the love confession useless. Both series have dense characters who, for different reasons, have an immunity to love confessions.
While these series are about couples that can’t confess to each other, that sure doesn’t stop them from being together whenever possible. As they are friends and neighbors in Tomo-chan is a Girl, Jun and Tomo spend all the time together. However, Kaguya-sama forces the pair together in the student council.
However, Kaguya-sama, though slow going, has the benefit of being longer running. This means you get the romantic progression you really crave eventually.
Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It
One day, beautiful female scientist Ayame told her co-worker Shinya that she loved him.
Both being rational people, they expressed their lack of experience with romance and decided to use science as a way to concretely conclude if they did indeed love each other.
Both Tomo-chan is a Girl and Science Fell in Love start immediately with a love confession. That love confession almost immediately gets unraveled and fuels the rest of the plot and all of the comedy.
In Science Fell in Love, the main characters are trying to prove if they do in fact love each other through scientific hypothesis and experiments.
What you get in both shows is two people that clearly like each other, doing everything short of being an actual couple. However, Science Fell in Love does have more “couple” things between the pair because they are running experiments.
When Will Ayumu Make His Move?
One day, Ayumu quits the kendo club and decides to join the Shogi Club which only has one member.
Urushi is happy to have a playing partner and as the older student, she seeks to mentor Ayumu. However, his straightforward and honest demeanor often has her blushing with embarrassment.
While she waits for a confession from him, Ayumu has vowed that he won’t confess until he beats her at a game of Shogi.
In both Tomo-chan is a Girl and When Will Ayumu Make His Move, you have two people who get along great. They even spend a lot of time together. They are almost like a couple, but no one will make the move or acknowledge that is official.
In Tomo-chan is a Girl, that is because Jun doesn’t notice Tomo is a girl. In When Will Ayumu Make his Move, Urushi wants him to confess, and Ayumu intends to confess, but only after beating her in Shogi. As she doesn’t know that, she still does her best at the game.
For Fans of Anime Tomboys
Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro
After an encounter in the library where she teased him about his manga, Naoto Hachijouji is relentlessly teased by a younger first year girl named Nagatoro.
She takes every opportunity to toy with him and leave him embarrassed, but over time, he has found a friendship was built between them.
Both Tomo-chan is a Girl and Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro feature athletic and loud tomboys who often act like men. However, they are aware they are female when certain aspects of their anatomy come into play.
However, while Tomo-chan is a Girl is more about trying to get a guy to notice her, Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro is fully dedicated to the titular tomboy teasing her love interest mercilessly.
Both Jun’s dense nature and Nagatoro’s love of bullying and dishonest nature with her feelings keep the romance moving slow in both shows. However, Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro takes steps forward in romance, but never forgets that she enjoys bullying her senpai.
Ouran High School Host Club
In Ouran High School, the typical student is a member of the wealthy elite, but not Haruhi Fujioka. Accepted on a scholarship, Haruhi wants to avoid all the glitz and glamour in order to study hard and become a lawyer.
While looking for a rare quiet place to do so, Haruhi stumbles upon a host club. Frantic to get away from these weird boys, Haruhi breaks a valuable vase.
In order to pay back the debt, the club demands that Haruhi becomes a host. There is only one problem, contrary to what the boys believe, Haruhi is actually a girl.
Both Ouran High School Host Club and Tomo-chan is a Girl features tomboys who sort of ended up as tomboys by circumstance.
For Tomo, she ended up a tomboy because she was raised by a martial artist and her best friend was a boy. For Haruhi, she doesn’t necessarily care what she looks like and acts in practical ways.
Despite both characters being treated like boys, you root for them in their romantic pursuits. Tomo wants Jun to notice her and Haruhi comes to embrace some more feminine styles and notice the affection of a boy that developed feelings for her.
Girl Beats Boys
After growing up in an orphanage, Hinako is about to enter high school. On her way there, she is approached by a boy that claims to be her twin brother, Hikaru.
It turns out that Hinako and Hikaru are the children of a yakuza family who sent Hinako and her mother away for their safety only for tragedy to leave her in an orphanage.
Now her brother pleads with Hinako to switch places with him and attend the Shishiku Academy, a prestigious all-boys school overrun with delinquents, in his stead.
Both Tomo and Hinako are used to, or at least get used to, being around brawlers and are often okay with it due to varying degrees of tomboyishness.
While Hinako more looks like a man than acts like one, she, like Tomo, is a fighter. This is useful in her school full of violent delinquents.
While neither show has much in the way of romance, despite Tomo-chan is a Girl being a romance anime, they both enjoy comedy about the awkwardness of interactions between tomboys and guys who don’t realize they are girls.
Aoharu x Machinegun
Hotaru Tachibana has always had a habit of confronting evildoers, so when she hears her best friend was tricked by a local host club, she disguises herself as a boy to go punish them.
However, she gets distracted by the leader Masamune Matsuoka when he challenges her to a toy gun battle.
Hotaru loses and now must join Masamune’s survival game team in order to pay off the huge damages to the host club.
While both series feature tomboys that act and often look very much like boys, they are often about different things.
Tomo-chan is a Girl is a comedy show while Aoharu X Machinegun is more focused on playing airsoft. However, while that would make Aoharu X Machinegun more of a sports anime, it does have a sprinkling of romance in it.
For Fans of Evolving Friend Relationships
My Senpai is Annoying
At a trading company, junior salesperson Futaba Igarashi has flourished under the guidance of her senpai, Harumi Takeda.
However, while he teases her about her short stature, Igarashi has come to admire Takeda for his reliability in the workplace as their relationship continues to develop.
While My Senpai is Annoying takes place in an office rather than a high school, the main “couple” act quite a bit like Tomo and Jun.
Both series have main couples that treat each other well, spend a lot of time together both in and outside their official environment, and for the female lead, it is very clear that feelings are there. For the male lead – Well, they’re dense and prevent anything romantic from happening.
As a romance, My Senpai is Annoying has the distinct advantage of cute side couples so you never get frustrated by the slow romantic progression.
Wotakoi – Love is Difficult for an Otaku
After discovering they work at the same company, a gaming otaku and a fujoshi rekindle for the first time since middle school.
After some good old fashioned after work drinks, they decide to start dating, but dating an otaku as an otaku is more difficult that one would think.
Wotakoi is distinctly different from Tomo-chan is a Girl because instead of starting with a misunderstood confession, it starts with a couple of childhood friends and otakus meeting at their company and dating.
However, both shows focus on the relationship between childhood friends who get along well because they have similar interests. When they date in Wotakoi, it is more of a “getting to know you” sort of relationship rather than one of clear smitten love. So you watch them feel things out and much of the time it seems very much like they are hanging out as friends like Tomo and Jun.
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.
Despite Horimiya being a romantic comedy with romantic progression, it is a school life series that often feels like Tomo-chan is a Girl.
You explore the main couple’s relationship through not just the main couple, but their friends and family as well.
However, Horimiya, alongside being a great romance anime with romantic progression, does have some ore serious moments of melancholy though lacks the usual drama you often see in romance anime.
In short, if you like two people that get along well and often have little drama between them like Tomo and Jun, but just wish they would date already – Horimiya provides the satisfaction you are looking for.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Tomo-chan is a Girl? Let fans know in the comments section below.
