After discovering they work at the same company, a gaming otaku and a fujoshi rekindle for the first time since middle school. After some good old fashioned after work drinks, they decide to start dating, but dating an otaku as an otaku is more difficult that one would think.
Want a romance story between adults with none of that childish drama traditional to romance series? This is a nice option. For more like Wotakoi, then check out our anime recommendations.
Anime Like Wotakoi: Love is Difficult for an Otaku
For Fans of Otaku Romance
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.
In Gamers, almost all the characters are gaming otaku while in Wotakoi really just has the main character. However, while Gamers starts off about the gaming and drifts into hormonal teens feelings, Wotakoi stays on point to its plot and presents the romance in a more mature and less complicated way.
Kiss Him, Not Me
Chubby Kae Serinuma is an avid fujoshi who secretly ships her male classmates. However, after her favorite anime character dies, she becomes so stressed that she loses weight rapidly. Upon returning to school, her classmates, including the attractive men she ships, realize how attractive she really is. There’s only one problem, while the boys vie for her affections, she just wants them to turn those affections towards each other.
Both of these shows feature a fujoshi main character. However, Wotakoi has a main character who more or less keeps it hidden while Kae is more or less your standard rabid fan girl who ships her friends.
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?
Both series are love stories about an otaku. However, while both are otaku in Wotakoi, only Hikari is ostensibly one in 3D Girlfriend. While the age difference effects the romance between both series, they are both some touching nerdy comedies, though 3D Girlfriend may not appeal to older anime fans because of the usual romance tropes as it is technically a teenage romance.
For Fans of Romance Between Adults
Servant x Service
Servant x Service follows three new civil servants in the city of Mitsuba. Each character is driven by their own personal motivations, but never-the-less they are encouraged to work hard for the city even if it is a thankless job.
Working in an office environment sucks – that’s the takeaway from both of these shows. However, because the job is terrible, you learn to enjoy the small moments with your co-workers instead. While Servant x Service isn’t huge on romance, it does capture that same mature office relationship.
I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying
Although he is an otaku and she is a casual-smoking, social-drinking office lady, Hajime and Kaoru fell in love and got married. Now they must learn how to cohabitate together despite a few odd habits on both ends.
While Wotakoi focuses on a new relationship between otaku, I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying is about a married couple. While the otaku and the normal women don’t seem suited for each other, you watch and learn what brought them together. Overall, both shows are about how it’s possible to love otaku even with their quirks.
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.
These shows are actually pretty comparable, even though Wotakoi isn’t about NEETs. In both shows, the characters are quirky and obsessive over their hobby, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fall in love and have a great relationship.
For Fans of Wholesome Relationships
My Love Story
With his tall stature, bulky muscles, and mean face, Takeo Gouda is not exactly a hit with the ladies. Men and women alike find him terrifying, but he still tries to do the right thing. One day he saves a cute girl from a molester on the train. When she reaches out to him again, he thinks she likes his handsome friend, but he is shocked to discover she actually likes him!
Although My Love Story still follows teens, it is a show that like Wotakoi, shows you that you can have a perfectly entertaining romance story without the constant drama tropes typical to romance anime. Why must you have drama when it can just all be normal and healthy?
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid
Miss Kobayashi is a programmer that lives alone in her apartment. However, one day a giant green dragons ends up on her doorstep and transforms into a women in a maid outfit. Apparently Kobayashi had gotten drunk one night and ended up saving this dragon. Now, dragon Tooru intends to repay her debt through housework.
This show isn’t about romance, but it does show the various relationships of an office worker between her co-workers and a bunch of dragons in human form. It focuses on family and friend love in the same sort of relaxing, drama-free way with some great humor.
The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall
Unable to resist taking in abandoned kittens, and amassing quite a collection of them, Sorata Kanda is forced to move to Suimei High School’s infamous Sakura Hall. This dorm is used to house all the misfit students that don’t quite fit in the regular housing. There, Sorata meets an array of different oddballs that inspire him to work towards getting back into the regular dorms and away from them. However, when a new transfer student moves in, he meets the incredible artist, Shiina Mashiro. While talented, she is completely incapable of taking care of herself, and so, Sorata brings her into his care and his strange days truly begin.
The characters in The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall are all otaku, but in different sort of ways. They have passions, such as art, voice acting, or animation, but they aren’t your traditional nerds. Yet, they are weirdoes. As such, they better connect with each other than with the normal students, and it is the same way with Wotakoi.
Got any more anime recommendations like Wotakoi – It’s Difficult to Love and Otaku? Lay them on us in the comments section below.
