After her mother remarries, fashionable Yuzu moves to a new city. However, with her all-girls school being strict and conservative, she immediately butts heads with the stoic student council president. Worse yet, later that night she discovers that the student council president is now her new stepsister.
While likely pretty offensive to actual lesbians with all that sexualization, Citrus certainly does do it in a pretty enthralling way. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Citrus, then head on down below.
Anime Like Citrus
For Fans of Aggressive Romance
Netsuzou Trap
Yuma and Hotaru are neighbors and childhood friends. Nervous about landing her first boyfriend, Yuma goes to seasoned Hotaru for advice, but it turns out that advice becomes more like practice. And yet, this passion slowly drifts into the foreground as their secret tryst turns into real feelings.
Do you like that spark you feel during those exciting kissing scenes in Citrus? Then this can provoke the same emotions. However, many people gave this show bad ratings because of the NTR plot. However, if you enjoyed Citrus for the yuri fan service, then this will continue your roller coaster.
Super Lovers
During one fateful summer, Haru, the eldest son of his family, bonds with his new adoptive brother, Ren. The boy has no social skills and is distrustful of humans, but they slowly grow closer. Years later, Haru has forgotten his summer with Ren after an accident. However, when Ren shows up on his doorstep, Haru must struggle to remember.
This series is yaoi, but in it you have a relationship between siblings that aren’t related by blood. Furthermore, one of those siblings is excessively aggressive with their sexual advances. In Super Lovers, the age of Ren is a little concerning, since much of their first meeting is when he is just a young teen.
Nana
This is the story of two girls, both of which are named Nana. Nana Komatsu is a naive girl addicted to love who is moving to Tokyo to chase after her boyfriend going to school there. Nana Osaki is a proud punk rocker that is moving to Tokyo to become a rock star. By chance, they meet on the train. By even bigger chance, they end up wanting to rent the same apartment only to decide to rent it together.
Nana isn’t yuri, despite some confusing emotions between the two Nana’s later in the series. However, what Nana has in common with Citrus is the fact that it shows that love often isn’t that sort of normal fairy tale romance that is painted for us as children. Sometimes it is sudden, unexpected, fleeting, and (apparently) borderline sexual assault.
Happy Sugar Life
Once with a reputation for messing around with men, high school girl Satou Matsuzuka has finally fallen in love – with a young girl she keeps locked in her apartment. Shio, this young girl, seems to have no other place she would rather be than in Satou’s arms. However, Satou is ready to do anything to protect their relationship.
If you like problematic and weird girl’s love shows, here’s one more! Instead of that forced sexual action, Happy Sugar Life follows a lesbian relationship following the kidnapping of an under-aged girl. The romance itself is surprisingly wholesome, if not filled with Stockholm Syndrome. Fair warning, the show grows pretty violent as it goes on, too.
For Fans of Complicated Human Feelings
Sweet Blue Flowers
Introverted Fumi is entering her new all-girls high school for her first year with a broken heart. However, she reconnects with her old best friend, Akira, who is going to another neighboring all-girls school. Together they both reconnect and discuss their various love problems.
As a girl’s love series, don’t expect the same passionate kisses you get from Citrus. Instead, you have two girls distinctly opposite in personality exploring all the options of love in front of them. This is one of those great series that explores realistic feelings like Citrus does, but doesn’t do it with ample sexual assault or hardcore fan service.
Scum’s Wish
To the outside world, Mugi and Hanabi look like the perfect couple, but the truth is that they are only dating each other because they can’t be with the people they actually want to be with. For Hanabi, it is her childhood friend-turned-homeroom-teacher and for Mugi it is his older tutor that has been teaching him since middle school. In order to stave off the loneliness, the pair find solace in each other’s arms.
While the characters in Scum’s Wish are just awful people (they are good characters, but awful as people), it has a way of not sugar-coating romance. Both shows show romance as realistic, messy, and something that often makes people do kind of terrible things. Both shows explore romantic feelings really well and add sex into the equation, despite Scum’s Wish being a hetero romance.
Paradise Kiss
Third year high school student Yukari is only into studying so she can get into any college outside of her boring town. One day, she meets a suspicious stranger with bleached hair and piercings. She tries to politely leave him, but ends up meeting his friends who are fashion design students for an art school. They want her to model, but she is afraid it will interfere with her studies. Still, she ends up agreeing and it leads her into another less boring world.
Although a hetero romance series, Paradise Kiss balances drama with realistic romantic feelings. It also features highly fashionable people juxtaposed with the more studious, serious type of people similar to Citrus.
Domestic Girlfriend
Natsuo is in love with his teacher, Hina. In order to try and forget his feelings, he goes to a mixer and meets a girl named Rui. Oddly enough, she asks him to do her a favor – to have sex with her. He does so, but soon he is faced with a unique problem. His father has remarried and he now has two new stepsisters that he knows too well – Rui and Hina.
While Domestic Girlfriend follows a heterosexual lover triangle, it is also a drama-and-sex-filled tale of a romance between new step-siblings. It is, like Citrus, so stuffed full of drama that it is like watching the best kind of dumpster fire.
For Fans of Opposites Attract Girl’s Love
Strawberry Panic
Aoi Nagisa has transferred to one of the three all-girls schools on Astraea Hill. There she discovers an innate hierarchy where two Etoiles represent the student body of the three schools. However, one Etoiles named Shizuma finds herself drawn to this new transfer student.
If you take out the whole stepsister plot of Citrus, honestly these two yuri series would be very similar in plot. Both have new transfers inexplicably drawn to the leaders of their school and aggressive yuri interaction ensues.
Whispered Words
Sumika is a high school girl that gets good grades and excels at sports. However, she is secretly in love with her friend, Ushio. While Ushio is constantly falling in love with girls, she is completely oblivious to Sumika’s feelings. This means that when Ushio is dumped, it is her job to console her.
First of all, you have a black-haired traditional girl who finds herself entwined with a blonde energetic girl. They are both there for each other, but their feelings are just slightly more complex than your standard hetero romance. While Whispered Words is bittersweet, Citrus is a bit darker. However, Whispered Words explores lesbian romance in a nicely grounded way.
Candy Boy
Yukino and Kanade are twin sisters who share a room in their high school’s dorm. Together they enjoy life with each other until one day another girl seeks to express her feelings for Yukino. It is this innocent interaction that causes the sisters to reveal their true feelings for each other.
Obviously, they are both yuri romance series between sisters that share the same room. However, in Candy Boy, they are blood-related sisters. While twins in Candy Boy, they also look similar to Yuzu and Mei. Finally, while Citrus is more aggressive with its romance, Candy Boy can be a touch sappy.
Bloom Into You
As a young girl, Yuu has always loved shoujo manga and has awaited a love confession that sets her heart aflutter. However, when she gets one from a junior high classmate, she feels nothing. Unsure how to respond, she watches Nanami, her high school student council president, expertly let someone down who just confessed to her. Seeking her guidance, she asks for Nanami’s help. However, the next love confession she receives is from Nanami, could this be the romance she was waiting for?
If you are a watcher of Citrus interested in the girl’s love for the relationship and not for the smut, Bloom Into You is for you. It is perhaps one of the most careful and detailed girl’s love shows in anime and paints a great and healthy lesbian relationship between girls that seem like incompatible people at first glance.
Yuri is great, but pretty rare when compared to yuri. If you crave girl’s love, check out our Best Yuri Anime Recommendations list.
Adachi and Shimamura
One day while skipping class, Adachi Sakura and Shimamura Hougetsu meet in the second floor gym. They talk, play ping pong, and eventually become friends. However, as they spend more time together, their feelings begin to shift.
If you enjoyed the girl’s love romance between two people that seem so innately different, Adachi and Shimamura is that too, but without all the forced kissing. It instead takes a realistic approach of documenting girls becoming friends and then wondering if those feelings are something more.
Do you have any more anime recommendations like Citrus? Let fans know in the comments section below.
