Successful businessman Ryou Amakusa is used to being the target of women’s affections despite never asking anyone out himself. One day, after feeling dizzy from a lack of sleep, he nearly falls down some stairs at the station. He is saved by high school otaku Ichika Arima, a girl who gives him her own lunch for energy and runs off. He later finds out she attends his little sisters’ school, and after offering his body in thanks, he falls in love with her and her disgusted reaction.
Everyone has their opinions on age gap romances, but it ends up a cute show. If you need more anime recommendations like Koikimo, then let’s head on down below.
Anime Like Koikimo: It’s Too Sick to Call This Love
For Fans of Age-Gap Romance
After The Rain
Akira Tachibana used to love running, but after an injury, she can’t run like she used to. Now, she passes time by working in a family restaurant where she finds herself slowly falling in love with the divorced manager.
This is a bit of a reverse of roles. In After The Rain, a high school girl falls for a much older man and the much older man has reservations about it. Overall, they are both age gap romances, but After The Rain comes at it in a more mature and realistic way.
Higehiro: I Shaved Then Brought Home a High School Girl
Office worker Yoshida finally worked up the courage to ask his boss out, only for her to swiftly reject him. On his way home from getting completely drunk to drown his heartbreak, he sees a high school girl sitting outside by herself late at night. After discovering that she was a runaway, he ends up taking her home while constantly shutting down her efforts to pay for her stay with her body. Talking to her further, he discovers that she traveled for six months from Hokkaido trading sexual favors for what she needed. While trying to figure out what to do, he puts her to work cooking and cleaning instead so she can have a place to stay.
Both series aired in the same season. They have a similar age gap romance premise, but go about it much differently. Higehiro ends up addressing serious issues and the concerns of their romance where Koikimo seems to disregard any concerns that the female lead seems to have about things.
Ristorante Paradiso
Nicoletta is on her first trip to Rome with a mission – to ruin her mother’s life after she walked out on her 15 years ago. She tracks her mother down to a restaurant, but as soon as she enters, everything changes. She becomes enamored by the place, and one waiter in particular. Suddenly, her urge for vengeance fades and her desire to cook starts to grow.
Both series address age gap romances in a sort of unique way. However, Ristorante Paradiso maintains a more mature tone overall but still has those nice moments as well.
For Fans of Popular Person-Average Person Romance
Class President is a Maid
After their high school’s recent transfer from all-boys school to co-ed, it wasn’t easy for Misaki Ayuzawa to become the school’s first female class president. While she inspires terror at school, she also works part-time at a maid café to help her struggling family. However, when one of the most popular boys at school, Takumi Usui, discovers her secret, her world is about to get a whole lot more complicated.
Both series are about one handsome and popular guy suddenly deciding that they love a girl who doesn’t really want anything to do with them. Of course, over time, you see her feelings start to soften at times.
Wolf Girl and Black Prince
In order to make friends with some popular girls, Erika Shinohara has taken to lying about having a boyfriend. In order to prove it, she hastily takes a picture of a man, but her friends recognize him as a school mate, the popular Kyouya Sata. In order to avoid humiliation, she asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend. He accepts, but only if she agrees to become his dog.
Both series feature a popular person with a bad personality taking an interest in your standard average girl. They also are a bit twisted. In Koikimo, it is the age gap thing, while in Wolf Girl and Black Prince, it is the whole dog /servant thing.
Itazura na Kiss
Kotoko Aihara finally worked up the nerve to confess to her crush, Naoki Irie, only to be coldly shot down. Her bad luck continues when her newly built house is crumbling to the ground in an earthquake. While her father gets an offer from a his old friend to come live with them while it is being rebuilt, her bad luck continues when that family turns out to be the home of Naoki Irie who just crushed her long-hidden love for him into the dirt.
Both series are an exploration of how if you just persistently pursue a person who doesn’t appear interested, they will eventually at least like you. The gender roles are reversed in Itazura na Kiss and the love interest can be a bit more abrasive than the relationship in Koikimo.
For Fans of The Thin Line Between Love and Revulsion
Blend S
Maika is a person with naturally bad luck, although much of that comes from her mean-looking eyes. These eyes have since prevented her from gaining part-time employment in order to fund her dreams of studying abroad. However, one day she meets a man named Dino who runs a very special café. Inside, the waitresses all adopt very specific personas for the customers, and Dino wants Maika to be his sadistic-type girl. However, despite having the eyes for it, Maika isn’t a sadist.
If you enjoy Koikimo for the older man that is rather obsessed with a high schooler, Blend S contains a similar element. However, it is just a comedy show and not really a romance.
Inu X Boku SS
Ririchiyo Shirakiin is the sheltered daughter of a rich family, but she has been dependent on them her entire life. However, while she seeks to change that, she has a sharp tongue that needs minding. When she moves into a high security apartment complex to start her new life of independence, she discovers that the residents are not only strange, but everyone in the apartment – including herself – are half-human and half-yokai. Furthermore, as a condition of being able to move out, she now has to live with her new bodyguard, Soushi – a handsome and oddly submissive secret service agent.
Both series, despite the supernatural element in Inu X Boku, are about older men that are charming and obsessed with a younger girl that do not appear to really be into them, at least at first.
My Little Monster
Shizuku Mizutani cares little of others and only about scoring top marks. However, when she is tasked with taking something to her desk neighbor, Haru Yoshida, her world begins to change. Haru, too, knows little of human nature and hasn’t been to school for awhile due to fighting. Yet, it is the lack of friends that they both have that soon forms a friendship between them.
While My Little Monster is more your standard high school romance, it is similar to Koikimo since it is about a boy that is really into a girl who, in turn, is not really into him. Those feelings then change later as it progresses into an actual romance.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Koikimo? Let fans know in the comments section below.
