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.
How do you make a romance show unique? You make the main couple two of the most love adverse people in the world and you make it work. If you want more anime recommendations like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, then look no further.
Anime Like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
For Fans of Disinterested Main Characters
Hyouka
After his sister’s nagging, energy-conservative Oreki joins the Classic Literature Club. However, he gets more than he bargained for when he is dragged into a 45-year-old mystery that surrounds their club room by the endlessly curious and intriguingly cute Chitanda. Alongside his club mates, he also finds himself dragged into a host of other cases by Chitanda’s curiosity, using his keen mind to come to logical solutions.
While Hyouka has more of a mystery element to it, it features the same apathetic and disinterested main character type as My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. They both find themselves dragged into clubs they would rather not being in, but those clubs foster a change in them.
Classroom of the Elite
Koudo Ikusei High School seems like a paradise with state-of-the-art facilities and where almost 100 percent of students go to university or find employment. However, while the students appear to have a good amount of freedom, only superior students get favorable treatments. After being careless on his entrance exams for a particular reason, Ayanokouji Kiyotaka finds himself dumped in D-Class with the other inferior students.
What these series have in common is the narcissism of their main characters. They both are deeply apathetic to the world and because of their views on it, they see themselves as better than their peers. However, by being placed into not ideal circumstances, they learn to view the world at least a little better.
Oreshura
After being abandoned by his love-addled parents, Eita Kidou is a bit put off by romance. It also causes him to see through the love confession of one, Masuzu Natsukawa. As it turns out, she just wanted a boyfriend to stop the daily love confessions. While he initially declines, she takes to blackmailing him to be her fake boyfriend.
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU is all about being resistant to love, but not its whole plot. Alternatively, that is the whole plot of Oreshura. While My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU features a strong emphasis on building friendships first and the romance comes later, Oreshura kind of skips the line a little bit in that regard.
For Fans of Love Triangles
Kokoro Connect
At Yamaboshi Academy, there is a club called the Student Cultural Society, a club of five students who don’t fit into any other clubs. Everything is normal and boring until one day the club members start switching bodies. Forced to be closer than ever before, emotional scars and hidden secrets are prepared to come out.
While love triangles becomes a larger part in the second season of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Kokoro Connect is all about emotional triangles throughout the series. Both series focus on the members of a club forming complex relationships of both friendship and love. Yet, the real thing these series have in common is breaking through all those negative emotions that the characters have fostered.
White Album 2
Haruki Kitahara’s light music club is on the verge of disbanding due to lack of interest, an event that will crush his dream of playing at the school festival. However, as he solemnly plays “White Album,” the first song he ever learned to play, an angelic voice suddenly harmonizes with his lonely guitar.
If you enjoyed the dynamic in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU where the three main characters have largely unspoken feelings between each other, then White Album 2 features a similar dynamic. The difference is real the levels of selfishness between the show’s characters and love.
Toradora
Ryuuji Takasu is a gentle student with a passion for housework, but his thuggish face causes his fellow students to think him a delinquent. Taiga Aisaka is small and cute, but with an attitude as fierce as a tiger. Both of these misunderstood students also harbor feelings for their crushes, and after a series of misunderstandings of their own, they find themselves in an unlikely alliance to get their crushes to notice them.
Let’s get this out of the way, both main males have those same sort of hostile eyes that make them look mean, but the more you watch, the nicer they turn out to be. With the long history of dense male characters in anime and cute nice female mains, both shows also have in common the unique attitudes of their leads. This is actually what makes both of these romance shows so refreshing despite relatively basic plots.
For Fans of Helpful Student Clubs
Haganai
Kodaka Hasegawa is anything but a delinquent. However, because of his blonde hair and bad boy face, he has been labeled as such. 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.
Despite featuring different tropes of characters, these series share a common vibe of outcasts finding each other and improving their view on life. While Hachiman is forced into his club, Kodaka actually somewhat willingly founds his. Though despite how the clubs start, they are also both about helping people.
Medaka Box
As the perfect girl, it is only natural that Medaka Kurokami would win the election for school president by a landslide. Her first order of business is to install a “Medaka Box” in which the students could request her help. Medaka fulfills these requests with top speed, adding a flower to the student council room with each student helped. However, during her trials, she discovered a malicious plot on the academy and herself.
While Medaka Box isn’t about a club so much as it is about student council, like in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, they are all about helping people with their problems. Furthermore, Medaka Box features a rather passive male main as well as a female main that commands your attention like in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (though Yukino commands attention in a different way).
Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions
Everyone has that stage in their life where they think themselves special, different from mere humans. This phenomenon is called Chunibyou Syndrome and most common in pre-pubescent children. In middle school, Yuuta Togashi thought himself the Dark Flame Master. He has since grown out of it upon entering high school and looks back at those cringe-worthy times with displeasure. Unfortunately, after a chance meeting with Rikka Takanashi, a girl believing to have a God in her eye, she attaches herself to him and brings that Chunibyou past back out.
Like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Chunibyou is about a guy that very unwillingly gets dragged into a club. However, the club in Chunibyou doesn’t really help anyone outside of the members who join it. However, like in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, the show focuses on the characters slowly beginning to realize their feelings.
Do you have any more anime recommendations like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU? Let us know in the comment section below.
