Within the bowling club of Ikkokukan High School, Mai, the captain, prioritizes everyone having a good time over winning. However, Rina, her more passionate junior, would like to put more emphasis on victory and threatens to leave the club.
After Rina challenges Mai to a match with her continued membership on the line, Mai’s ball starts to glow during the storm raging outside, and after they are engulfed by a mysterious light, they discover that they have been sent to the Feudal Era!
…Well, this wasn’t the Cute Girls Doing Cute Sports Things show I was expecting. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Turkey, head on down below.
Anime Like Turkey
For Fans of Cute Girl Doing Cute Things, But Subverting Expectations
School-Live
Yuki Takeya is in love with school life. She loves it so much that she joined the School Living Club with three other girls, their supervising teacher, and the club dog Taroumaru. This club makes the most of living at school.
However, Yuki’s blissful school life is all a delusion.
The real purpose of the School Living Club is to prevent Yuki’s fragile reality from shattering. In reality, these girls are surviving the zombie apocalypse by barricading themselves within the school.
Similarities Between Turkey and School Live
- Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, but atypical of the genre and subverting those expectations
- You think the series is one thing in the first episode, and by the end of that episode, it is something wholly different.
- A group of girls dealing with their interpersonal drama
Differences Between Turkey and School Live
- School Live is not a sports anime, it is styled as a CGDCT anime, but they are surviving the apocalypse instead of doing something cutely.
- School Live is, despite how it looks and is sometimes, a horror anime where things can get quite dire.
- School Live doesn’t have the same coming of age elements that you get in Turkey since none of the girls are even sure they will see the next day.
Train to the End of the World
The innovative upgrade to a 7G network promised technological advancements beyond belief. However, the aftermath of its official launch has turned Japan upside down. With people now suffering from a wide range of bizarre mutations and the landscape itself transformed, society has crumbled.
In the rural town of Agano where everyone over the age of majority has turned into an animal, high schooler Shizuru Chikura is desperate to find out what happened to her friend, Youka Nakatomi. Youka had gone to Ikebukuro on the day of the official 7G launch, and hasn’t been heard from since. However, with the world dangerous and all transportation shut down, she struggles to find a way to search for her.
However, hope comes in the form of an abandoned country train and a senile conductor that teachers Shizuru how to drive it. With three classmates that decide to tag along at the last minute, Shizuru sets out on a long, strange trip to Ikebukuro to find her friend.
Similarities Between Turkey and Train to the End of the World
- Cute girls having atypical, fantastic adventures together laced with personal growth.
- A friend group of girls is rocked by drama caused by one girl that causes the world around them to change, then tries to figure out what her problem is while sorting through their personal problems in their new environment.
- Normal girls enduring some strange fantasy story happening around them.
Differences Between Turkey and Train to the End of the World
- Train to the End of the World is a surreal apocalypse, not a bowling-based historical isekai
- Train to the End of the World, as it is surreal, does have a deeper story laced with symbolism.
A Place Further Than The Universe
Upon discovering an old list she made in the last year of middle school, Mari Tamaki, who is now in her second year of high school, realizes she is not making the most of her youth. Whenever she tries to do something new, she is paralyzed with inaction.
Then one day she meets Shirase, a girl who’s mother went missing when she was in middle school on an expedition to Antarctica.
Knowing full well it is close to impossible, she works hard in order to go to search for her mother and invites Mari along for the ride.
Similarities Between Turkey and A Place Further Than The Universe
- Cute girls seemingly about to do cute things, then having interesting interpersonal drama with each other and coming of age stories instead.
- Girls that are friends, but also have their own problems to figure out.
- Life-changing journeys
Differences Between Turkey and A Place Further Than The Universe
- A Place Further Than The Universe is not an isekai affair, they are just going to Antarctica. It is steeped in realism.
- The girls in A Place Further Than The Universe aren’t as closely knit as a friend group. The series is about them becoming such, however.
- Turkey features more silliness. A Place Further Than The Universe is more drama-focused.
For Fans of Real Sports In Unhinged Settings
Birdie Wing – Golf Girls’ Story
Known at the Rainbow Bullet, Eve is infamous among those that bet on underground golf. She has soundly beat every opponent with only just three clubs in her gold bag. However, when Eve catches the eye of professional golfer Aoi Amawashi and plays a clean game against her, she is both captivated and shaken by her defeat at the hands of this girl known as the “Innocent Tyrant” that soundly beats every opponent with a smile.
After this game-changing game, Eve starts to break free of the underworld’s hold on her and begins to take her golf game to the next level in aboveboard competitions with Aoi.
Similarities Between Turkey and Birdie Wing
- Anime girls playing a real sport, but playing it in an unhinged, non-traditional way
- Rivalry and friendship lead to interpersonal drama
- Sports anime, but not your usual sports anime plot.
Differences Between Turkey and Birdie Wing
- Birdie Wing is about golf, but sometimes they use golf as a way to win money and save neighborhoods from real estate development.
- Turkey starts off with traditional bowling, then becomes increasingly unhinged as a bowling-based isekai. Birdie Wing starts off about unhinged gambling golf, then becomes about more traditional golf.
- Birdie Wing is far more about the rivalry between two women than the friendship of a group of girls.
- Birdie Wing is not moe or styled as a CGDCT anime in any way.
Uma Musume – Pretty Derby
Famous racehorses of worthy legacy have a chance to be reincarnated into a parallel world as horse girls.
Their pursuit to be the best racehorse in Japan continues in this new form as they engage in competitive races. For one horse girl named Special Week, she had recently began her journey by enrolling in Tracen Academy, a school that nurtures the talents of horse girls like her for the races to come.
Similarities Between Turkey and Uma Musume
- They’re doing a real sport, but in an unhinged, non-traditional way
- Cute girls doing cute sports things and forming meaningful relationships with each other.
Differences Between Turkey and Uma Musume
- Uma Musume is about horse racing, but the cute anime girls are the race horses.
- Uma Musume features girls that are also horses (in that they have horse ears. That’s really the only thing.)
- Uma Musume does have a more traditional competitive sports plot.
For Fans of Back to The Feudal Era
Inuyasha
Kagome’s normal life came to an end one day when a demon dragged her down into a well at the shrine where she lived. When she next woke, Kagome finds herself 500 years in the past in Japan’s feudal area, a time in history fraught with both war and demons.
It is there she learns that she is a reincarnation of a priestess tasked with guarding the Shikon Jewel.
With the jewel returned to the world with her, Kagome must fight off the demons that want to gain its power, including Inuyasha, a half-demon that was once a lover of her past self right up until she sealed him to a tree.
Similarities Between Turkey and Inuyasha
- At least one girl is sent back to the feudal era of Japan due to a supernatural ball of some plot importance.
- Trying to get home while also trying to not die is the plot
Differences Between Turkey and Inuyasha
- Inuyasha is not a sports anime. It is a supernatural action romance.
- Inuyasha is about one girl sent back to the feudal era, and she is also very unconcerned with potentially changing the future.
- Inuyasha is a very long-running adventure while Turkey is kept more concise and focused on its single plot for its characters. Inuyasha develops arcs.
The Ambition of Oda Nobuna
High schooler Sagara Yoshiharu has the misfortune one day to time travel back to the Sengoku period. However, all the powerful feudal lords are actually cute girls.
On chance, he happens across Oda Nobuna, and begins to serve her in the place of recently deceased Kinoshita Tokichiro.
Similarities Between Turkey and The Ambition of Oda Nobuna
- A character is transported to the feudal era of Japan
- There is an uncommon amount of women in the feudal era, some of them samurais.
- Various concerns about changing history.
Differences Between Turkey and The Ambition of Oda Nobuna
- The plot of Oda Nobuna is, essentially, the main character trying to change history, so… A bit opposite from the motivations in Turkey.
- Oda Nobuna is about a boy sent back to feudal japan and all the important samurai warlords from that period are women.
- Turkey is Cute Girls Doing Sports Things and coming of age stories while Oda Nobuna is an action harem affair.
- Oda Nobuna has a lot more romantic motivations.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Turkey? Let fans know in the comments section below.
