Love triangles are the bread and butter of the romance genre. I mean, what better way to cause friction and drama between a couple than to bring some other poor sucker into the mix? But triangles are so… Pythagorean, you know? Where’s the love rhombus? The sweaty mass of pheromones that is the love hexagon? The eternal orgy that is the love icosagon?
Oh, they’re out there.
And they are not simple.
It is said that love triangles create drama, but love polygons create comedy, and that is nothing short of the truth. Typically in a many-sided love shape, very few people ever get hurt when the main characters get together. The more people in love, the more diluted it becomes. This is often why harem shows are not laden with unrequited girl tears, but rather fan service and humor. They probably don’t truly love the main character so much as they love the idea of him.
Let us take a tour of some of the largest, most complicated, somewhat disturbing love polygons to ever be found in anime, shall we?
*Note: Most of these don’t actually form polygons. I’m sorry. I’ve failed you and I’ve failed mathematics.
This is really just a comedy article for fun. The occasional one is how I keep sane. However, if you really do enjoy love triangles in your anime, check out 20 Romance Anime Series Featuring Complicated Love Triangles
Largest Anime Love Polygons
School Rumble
As School Rumble has like 50 different characters, there is a huge opportunity for love polygons, compounded by the fact that the plot of the anime is essentially to get the desired person in your love polygon to notice you, and failing.
Inuyasha
Rumiko Takahashi is the master of the love polygon as well as series that go on, and on, and on. This means you will see her again later. However, things are kept relatively simple in Inuyasha. Simple enough that they form an actual polygon – a rhombus. Unless you count Miroku, who just throws the whole thing off.
Love Hina
Ken Akamatsu has some complex love polygons in all his series, Love Hina and Negima.. As the father of the modern harem, it is only natural that everyone loves everyone to the point where it is almost incestuous. However, is there a difference between harems and love polygons?
Technically, yes. A true harem is Characters A, B, C, D, who all want Character E, who is not sure who he wants. In a love polygon, A like B, B likes D, D likes A, and so on and so forth.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Not every love polygon has to be happy. In the case of Neon Genesis Evangelion, it was used to milk out every bit of angst by the director as well as an excuse to watch the main character spill his marshmallow fluff all over a girl in a coma.
Sometimes love can make you sad, and not for the usual reasons. Sometimes it is for creepy reasons.
Berserk
Octopus. Love octopus. Berserk is one of those love polygons that looks really simple, almost triangular, right up until you start considering side characters. Particularly in the manga, where character feelings shift as if in water.
Nagi no Asukara
The love spiderweb of the anime world, except, if you organize it right, it is really a pentagon. Well, almost anyway. But really, though. If you are a romance anime fan and want to feel really frustrated with all the one-sided love, this is the anime for you.
Ranma 1/2
Ultimately Ranma 1/2 is so successful with the love polygon trope because they allow gender bending into the universe. Sure, they could have just made those characters sexually fluid, but the 80s-90s were a different time. Realistically, I probably missed some characters on this chart. For that, I am sorry.
Just a not that you forgot Happosaï, now many more arrows will appear pointing towards girls. Also the animal creatures that is the wolf, tiger and dragon (herbes is it?)