Bullied by classmate and popular NewTube streamer Pakgo, Yoo Hobin’s high school life is an endless string of humiliation. Furthermore, he has to spend his time outside of school working jobs just to pay his mother’s hospital bills.
One night, while being bullied by Pakgo’s cameraman Jiksae in his own home, Hobin finally has enough and fights him. However, while they thought the livestream was over, it actually caught their embarrassing fight live and the video goes viral overnight. Earning a huge sum from the viral video, the pair decide to start a channel together.
The NewTube channel Viral Hit is born where Hobin fights a number of bullies, including Pakgo and other marital artists. However, what the viewers don’t see is Hobin learning how to fight from a mysterious man in a Chicken mask whose instructional NewTube videos have minimal views, but deep knowledge.
Difficult to love due to how terrible almost every character is as a person, Viral Hit does have some charming points in the martial arts of it all. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Viral Hit, head on down below.
Anime Like Viral Hit
For Fans of Learning How to Fight
Kenichi – The Mightiest Disciple
After years of reading self-improvement books, “weak legs” Kenichi finally works up the courage to join the karate club. Unfortunately, his school bully challenges him, intent on literally kicking him out.
While all hope seemed lost, new classmate Miu invites him to her dojo for training. While he was able to defeat the bully, his new strength attracted the attention of a powerful group of students, and in order to overcome them, he must train in many martial arts styles.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Kenichi
- Both series feature a weak, bullied main character who learns how to fight from martial artists
- The plots are both framed as “this bully is strong, train to counter their specific marital arts style, and them whoop their ass” story arcs.
- The main characters learn from eccentric marital arts teachers
- Both are surprisingly educational on different martial arts styles
Differences Between Viral Hit and Kenichi
- While both have a similar shounen action anime arc-based story-telling, Kenichi definitely feels more like a shounen anime while Viral Hit embraces more modern scumbag characters.
- Kenchi, as a pretty standard shounen action anime protagonist, is a lot easier to like.
- The main character in Kenichi has multiple different teachers, each of them eccentric in their own way.
Hajime no Ippo
Makunouchi Ippo has been bullied his entire life, but dreams of changing himself. One day, he is saved by Takamura Mamoru, who happens to be a boxer.
After Ippo faints from his injuries, Mamoru takes him to his gym where Ippo asks to be trained in the sport of boxing.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Hajime no Ippo
- Both series follow weak main characters both learning how to fight, and really starting to enjoy it.
- Arc-based storytelling where a new opponent is introduced and the main character trains a specific strategy to beat them.
- Pretty detailed and educational on the fighting styles and the training.
Differences Between Viral Hit and Hajime no Ippo
- Hajime no Ippo is distinctly a sports anime with very shounen sports anime storytelling, Viral Hit has a different, less inspiring, more menacing feel to it.
- Hajime no Ippo is about boxing specifically and not mixed martial arts like Viral Hit
- Ippo is a sweet cinnamon roll as a character while Hobin is a bit more difficult to love.
For Fans of Brawling as a Plot
Wind Breaker
Due to his unconventional appearance and lacking social skills, Haruka Sakura was an outcast at school. However, his status as an outsider and a target made him into a scrappy fighter that he now takes pride in. As such, he enrolls in Furin High School, a school more known for its tough delinquents than its academic record.
Looking to take the top spot among its tough fighters, Sakura gets caught up in a street brawl on his way to school where he meets a group of his future classmates. He discovers that Furin has united under one man and now the group now calls themselves Bofurin, a group that keeps the town safe from other thugs looking to caught trouble.
While still wanting the top spot, Sakura ends up joining them and finally finding acceptance and camaraderie for the first time in his life.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Wind Breaker
- High school kids brawling
- Much of the main plot is just fighting a guy, beating them, and moving onto the next
- Both series highlight different martial arts styles in the fighting
Differences Between Viral Hit and Wind Breaker
- While Wind Breaker shows off various martial arts styles, it isn’t as educational about them as Viral Hit
- The characters in Wind Breaker may be delinquents, but the main characters are depicted as honorable good guys whereas everyone in Viral Hit is some kind of terrible.
- Wind Breaker is more delinquent gang wars and less fighting bullies for YouTube money like Viral Hit.
Bucchigiri?!
Arajin Tomoshibi has returned to the town where he lived as a child with the sole hope of getting himself a cute girlfriend. However, his new school is full of delinquents with few girls in sight.
Just when Arajin has his heart stolen by the one cutie he could find, his old boyhood friend Matakara Asamine gets him pulled into a huge brawl between two gangs.
Despite wanting to train to be a Honki person, a group of mythical strong warriors from the past, as a child with Matakara, Arajin wants nothing to do with brawling and flees. However, he ends up having an encounter with a sealed genie and genuine Honki person named Senya who fuses with him and grants him incredible strength.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Bucchigiri?!
- The main characters are weak, kind of sleazy losers that are difficult to like
- The main characters start fighting for not so noble reasons
- The plot of each series is just fighting people
Differences Between Viral Hit and Bucchigiri?!
- Bucchigiri has a supernatural element to it, meaning its fights are accentuated and not steeping so much in realism like Viral Hit
- Many of the fights in Bucchigiri are solved One Punch Man-style – done in one big punch.
- As Bucchigiri is about being supernaturally augmented for fights, it isn’t so educational about martial arts like Viral Hit is.
Baki
As the son of Hanma Yuujiro, Hanma Baki trains intensely every day in order to finally beat and surpass his father. However, at this very moment, five of the world’s most dangerous and deadly criminals are breaking out of jail.
They all seek out one thing – Baki.
They all crave the taste of defeat and hope Baki can grant it to them. However, in this dangerous fight, Baki is not alone.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Baki
- Both series follow mixed martial arts fighters pounding each other’s faces
- The opponents that the main character fights are often the worst people in the world
- Both series follow a main character working through how to counter the fighting style of his opponent.
- Both series often follow arc-based stories surrounding who they are supposed to fight.
Differences Between Viral Hit and Baki
- Baki, despite being only about fighting, does have an actual end goal to its plot while Viral Hit is more open-ended.
- In Baki, even the tongues of the characters have the well-defined muscles mass of a body builder. There isn’t much actual muscle to be found in Viral Hit.
Kengan Ashura
While many business deals are settled through contracts and meetings in the boardroom, since ancient times, many merchants in Japan have had another way to settle business disputes – Kengan matches.
In the underground merchant world of Kengan Ashura, businesses ranging from smaller shops to mega-corporations settle disputes and make business deals through gladiatorial bare-handed fights in the arena. However, the competitors aren’t the the businessmen, but rather a series of proxy warriors. Every business scouts powerful fighters to field in Kengan matches in hopes of claiming profitable victories.
Tokita Ouma is one such prospective Kengan fighter. Recruited by the CEO of the Nogi Group, he hopes the attraction of strong fighters to Kengan matches will eventually lead him to the fighter he seeks to conquer in order to fully call himself the strongest.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Kengan Ashura
- Both series follow mixed martial arts fighters pounding each other’s faces
- Fights are always about how the main character counters the unique fighting style of his opponent
- The opponents are often the worst sorts of people
Differences Between Viral Hit and Kengan Ashura
- Kengan Ashura is about a proxy tournament where fighters fight for the interests of the corporations who employ them.
- Kengan Ashura has testosterone and creatine powder seeping out through its pores while Viral Hit is more about scrappy kids having scrappy martial arts-laced fights.
- Kengan Ashura is the more viscous series with a lot more gruesome violence.
For Fans of Scumbag Characters, Everywhere
Lookism
As he is short, fat, and unattractive, Park Hyung Suk has been constantly bullied by his classmates and discriminated against based on his looks. In order to escape his bullies, he decides to transfer to a vocational preparatory school for a new start.
However, after moving into an apartment by himself near his new school, he wakes up in a different body – one that is tall, handsome, and strong. However, his old body is still asleep on the floor next to him. Hyung Suk soon discovers that he can switch between bodies by going to sleep.
Now he must learn to navigate the popularity that his hot new body has brought as well as unravel why and how he started body switching in the first place.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Lookism
- Viral Hit and Lookism are made by the same author – and it shows. A lot.
- Loser main characters find a path to become cool/badass.
- Both series make Koreans look like the biggest scumbags, bullies, and vain people on Earth.
- Both series feature the main characters standing up to, or at least befriending, bullies
Differences Between Viral Hit and Lookism
- While Lookism has a lot of fights and the occasional viral video of those fights, it isn’t specifically about learning to fist fight bullies like Viral Hit.
- Lookism is more about a loser suddenly becoming cool whereas Hobin in Viral Hit becomes a YouTube star, but he certainly isn’t particularly cool.
- Viral Hit actually is a bit educational on marital arts, and Lookism is not particularly educational at all.
Flowers of Evil
Kasuga Takao is a bookish normal student, but when he goes back to look for his book in the classroom one day, he instead finds the gym uniform of his school crush. Without thinking, he takes it.
Now, all his classmates are on the lookout for a pervert, and he is being confronted by a friendless girl in class that saw him do it.
Similarities Between Viral Hit and Flowers of Evil
- Wimpy main characters
- Both feature a main character with a crush on a beautiful girl out of their league that also does genuinely like them back. They also make every move to mess that up.
- Youthful angst
- Almost every character displays realistic human ugliness in their personality and actions
Differences Between Viral Hit and Flowers of Evil
- Flowers of Evil is very much a coming-of-age story, and one with no attempts at any glossy veneer over how turbulent that is.
- Flowers of Evil isn’t about fighting, or even bullying so much, but rather kids lashing out their frustrating in increasingly bizarre ways.
- The rotoscoping animation in Flowers of Evil is an experience.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Viral Hit? Let fans know in the comments section below.
