Fumiya Tomozaki is the top player in Japan at a fighting game called TackFam. Despite holding such a title, he is a failure at everything else, blaming it on the unfair rules and mechanics of life.
One day, the second best TackFam player asks to meet up.
Tomozaki discovers that they are actually Aoi, one of the most popular girls at school. She, however, is disappointed that someone she respected is a failure at life.
Now, she aims to teach him how to succeed at the glorious game of life.
It’s the social rehabilitation anime that every Smash Bros fan needed in high school. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, then head on down below.
Anime Like Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki
For Fans of Outcasts and The Popular Girl
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
Hachiman Hikigaya firmly believes that a joyful youth is something that people make up just to lie to themselves.
After writing an essay criticizing relationships, he is forced to join the Volunteer Service Club that is aimed at helping others solve their problems.
With the only other member being the icy Yukino Yukinoshita, they use their wits and cold views on society to help others.
Both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU are about main characters who are outcasts, and are somewhat okay with that. However, when their attitude attracts the attention of someone else, suddenly they are forced into a situation that makes them form meaningful connections with others and expand their social skills.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is a more straightforward social rehabilitation anime while My Teen Romantic SNAFU forces a pragmatic main character help other people with their problems, bonding him closer to them and his club members through allowing them to understand each other.
While, at a glance, both series seem like they will quickly turn into romance anime, they both move slowly with the actual romance and instead let character drama carry the plot.
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 Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is about a gamer being socially rehabilitated enough to have a shot at both friends and a girlfriend, and Horimiya is about two people misunderstood by others finding acceptance with each other – these slightly different series live in a similar vein.
Both series follow male main characters who are outcasts. Although, Miyamura in Horimiya isn’t a nerd, he just looks like one. Regardless, these male main characters are approached by a woman who starts to pull them out of their shell.
In Horimiya, Hori emotionally rehabilitates Miyamura who suffered from bullying. It then quickly progresses to them starting to date. This is in contrast to Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, which is much more focused on social rehabilitation and romance both moves slowly as well as isn’t between the two you think it will be between.
3D Girlfriend
Tsusui Hikari is an otaku that mostly avoids social life. He only really has one friend at school and is otherwise mocked by his classmates.
One day, he ends up having to clean the pool with Igarashi Iroha. She is blunt, truant, and a troublemaker, but she stands up for Hikari when people make fun of him.
While he is harsh with her, she never dismisses him. Could real 3D love be in the air?
Like Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, 3D Girlfriend follows an outcast gamer/otaku male main character. However, while Tomozaki is mostly apathetic about it, if just sadly lonely, Tsusui is often presented as downright bitter at being an outcast.
Both series become about a fashionable popular girl that bursts into their life and starts to rehabilitate their reputation with others. While Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is literally about rehabilitating his social skills, 3D Girlfriend is more about a slow rehabilitation and confidence building through dating her. It also eventually focuses more on romantic drama as it goes on rather than social reputation.
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten
After seeing the “angel” of his school, Mahiru Shiina, sitting in the rain, Amane Fujimiya gives her his umbrella and catches a cold because of it.
While he expected her to return the umbrella eventually, he is surprised when she, a girl who is also his neighbor, comes over to take care of him.
Seeing the unsightly state of his apartment, she helps him get that in order and suddenly he finds that she is doing small household tasks for him every day after school as they spend more time together.
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten is almost a reverse situation to Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki. In The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, the girl is popular, but timid. The boy is unpopular, but perfectly capable at socializing. Both series feature the pair becoming friends.
However, while Hinami simply helps Tomozaki rehabilitate his social skills, The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten is more the romance anime that you maybe expected Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki to become.
Accel World
Haruyuki Arita is a loser at school, constantly ridiculed by his peers. Like so many, his only escape is into the virtual world of video games.
One day, his video game skills attract the attention of Kuroyukihime, the school’s popular student council vice president. She introduces Haru to a new game called Brain Burst that accelerates the human cognitive process to the point of which time appears to stop.
However, it is really actually an Augmented Reality Massively Multiplayer Online (ARMMO) Fighting Game where people fight each other in fierce duels in order to obtain Burst Points which can be spent for acceleration abilities in the real world.
Both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Accel World follow gamer outcasts who have a popular girl they meet change their life.
While Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is about leveling up his actual interpersonal skills, Accel World is focused more on playing a game and earning confidence through his abilities and skill in it. Essentially, if you hoped that Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki would have more actual gaming, then you were probably looking for Accel World.
Both series also like to bait you with romance, but have progression move rather sluggishly.
For Fans of Social Rehabilitation
ReLife
Arata Kaizaki is an unemployed 27-year-old that has thus far been living with the financial support of his parents and part-time jobs. After leaving his first job after only three months, he has not been able to find proper work.
However, after a night of drinking with his friends, he meets a mysterious man that offers a drunk Arata a pill that will turn him 17 again so that he can redo a year of his youth, all expenses paid.
Will Arata find what he needs to live a happy life after one year in high school again?
Both ReLife and Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki are about male main characters who sort of failed to launch and have all but given up on doing so. However, while Tomozaki failed and gave up in high school, Kaizaki in ReLife was stunted by a traumatic event at his first job.
Regardless, both series are about those main characters rehabilitating their social skills by, well, socializing with people. ReLife forces him to go back to high school, however.
Both series feature other characters secretly helping the main character try to revamp their social skills, and, in a bit of innovation, the romance plot is between the main character and someone who doesn’t know their under rehabilitation.
Haganai
Due to his blonde hair and bad boy face, Kodaka Hasegawa is often labeled a delinquent. When classmates shiver in your presence, it makes it difficult to make friends. Yet, when Kodaka meets Yozora, a girl that is perhaps a bigger outcast than him, the pair start the Neighbors’ Club.
In the Neighbors’ Club, those without any friends are invited to join, but not all personalities may mesh well.
Unlike Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Haganai isn’t so obviously about social rehabilitation. While Tomozaki has Hinami secretly helping him be a normal functioning person, Haganai is about a whole slew of quirky outcasts finding acceptance with each other in a club made for lonely people to find friends.
All that said, Haganai may be a club for lonely people that want friends, but it just so happens to be filled with mostly quirky girls. As such, Haganai is very clearly a harem anime.
Welcome to the NHK
College dropout Tatsuhiro Satou has been living as a hikikomori for four years, and in his isolation, he has come to believe in a number of conspiracy theories. Primary among them is that a conspirator is behind his NEET nature.
Although he tries to overcome it, his NEET nature is a deep hole to crawl out of.
While they are vastly different in tone, Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Welcome to the NHK are both about trying to help someone with social problems overcome them.
Tomozaki isn’t quite a NEET yet like Satou Welcome to the NHK, but both male main characters have women who are trying to pull them out into the world.
As the characters are a bit older in Welcome to the NHK, it takes a darker tone, but it also has a romance subplot to it that moves slowly.
Romantic Killer
All high schooler Anzu Hoshino loves is video games, chocolate, and her cat, Momohiko. She has shunned everything else, especially a romantic life.
However, one day a magical creature alters her reality where she can’t have any of those three things that she adores and is told that in order to return to her normal life, she must indulge in the dating sim situations that have been set up around her involving the new troubled transfer student Tsukasa Kazuki, her childhood friend Junta Hayami, and a wealthy sheltered student named Hijiri Koganei.
Both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Romantic Killer follow gamers who, while enjoying games, have let their social skill deteriorate and are letting their high school years pass them by. As such, the plot is about the intervention of another character who forces them to go out and interact with people rather than play games.
That said, Tomozak is legitimately bad at socializing. Anzu, however, proves to be very good at socializing – she just doesn’t want to. This gives Romantic Killer more of a comedic tone rather than the more drama-focused Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki.
Watamote
Tomoko Kuroki is well on her way to becoming a full hikkikomori. The only problem is, she has to get through high school first.
However, her short lifetime of playing dating sims and watching anime hasn’t prepared her for the social interactions of real life. Still, Tomoko struggles through each day and the social interactions that they bring.
You know how Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is about Tomozaki developing his social skills and successfully making friends in high school? Watamote is about a female otaku trying to do exactly that – and failing miserably.
Watamote is the anti-Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, as in everything she tries to do in order to make friends backfires horribly. It will either be an amazing comedy series for you, or a cringe comedy that is so painful and relatable that you need to turn it off immediately.
For Fans of Gamer Anime
Gamers
Keita Amano is an average high school student and gamer. After having an awkward encounter with Karen Tendou, the school’s idol, he discovers that she too is a gamer as she passionately begins to try to recruit him into the game club.
After paying a visit to the club, he witnesses a completely new side to his hobby due to the eccentric array of members.
Both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Gamers advertise themselves very obviously as anime about gamers. However, instead of either anime being about gamers playing games, they bamboozle you and are about friendships and romance instead.
However, even though all the characters in Gamers are indeed gamers, they are still presented as socially normal teenagers. As such, there is no element of social rehabilitation and it is mostly all just romantic drama.
Recovery of an MMO Junkie
Morioka Moriko has had enough of being an overworked corporate slave, so she decided to retire herself to the NEET lifestyle. While at home, yearning for the previous connections she once made in online gaming, she starts up a new MMO. There, she creates her character, the handsome Hayashi.
However, in her newbie struggles she meets a Lily, another character willing to help her and they begin to grow closer to each other. At the same time, in real life, Moriko also has a shocking encounter with a handsome corporate employee.
Both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Recovery of an MMO Junkie focus on gamers with social problems. However, Recovery of an MMO Junkie follows a female main character who dropped out of office life to become a NEET who plays MMOs.
While Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is about socially rehabilitating Tomozaki so he can have a normal high school experience, Recovery of an MMO Junkie is more the opposite. She drops out of society, but does feel drawn back into it after meeting a man she likes.
Netoge – And You Thought There is Never a Girl Online?
After proposing to a girl in a video game, Rusian is not only rejected, but finds out that girl is really a man playing as a female avatar. Afterwards, he makes a sweeping declaration that he will never trust girls online again.
However, years later a girl named Ako proposes to him. Although he thinks she might be a guy, he accepts. When Rusian meets this Ako and his other guild mates in real life, he finds them not only to be classmates of his, but cute girls.
While MMOs are different from the TackFam fighting game, both Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Netoge have men meeting up with the people they play games with online only to discover those people are women.
While both series follow the friendship between these two people, Netoge isn’t really focused on forcing a rehabilitation of Ako like Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is with Tomozaki. Instead, Rusian in Netoge is slowly healing her with his affection. As such, Netoge does become more romance-focused.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki? Let fans know in the comments section below.
