In Ouran High School, the typical student is a member of the wealthy elite, but not Haruhi Fujioka. Accepted on a scholarship, Haruhi wants to avoid all the glitz and glamour in order to study hard and become a lawyer.
While looking for a rare quiet place to do so, Haruhi stumbles upon a host club. Frantic to get away from these weird boys, Haruhi breaks a valuable vase. In order to pay back the debt, the club demands that Haruhi becomes a host.
There is only one problem, contrary to what the boys believe, Haruhi is actually a girl.
There won’t ever be an anime quite like Ouran High School Host Club, but you can try to fill that Tamaki-shaped hole in your heart with these fine anime recommendations.
Anime Like Ouran High School Host Club
For Fans of Reverse Harems
Fruits Basket
When Tooru Honda finds herself homeless, she decides to live in a tent in the wilderness. However, one day she is discovered by a classmate, Yuki Souma, and invited to come live in his house.
From there, she gets to know many members of the Souma family, not realizing that they all are inflicted by a curse. When they hug the opposite gender, they turn into an animal from the Chinese zodiac.
Like Ouran High School Host Club, Fruits Basket is a mix of romantic and comedic moments as a singular girl tries to navigate an endless parade of handsome men.
Since Fruits Baskets has recently been remade, you can also watch it in modern animation and see the story told as it was meant to be told.
The Wallflower
Four boys are offered to live in a fantastic mansion free of rent, but on one condition. They must make the girl of the house into a fine young lady.
Enter Nakahara Sunako. She loves horror movies, death, and all things gloomy, stemming from a junior high school trauma.
Blinded by all things beautiful, these four handsome men have their work cut out for them.
While it is a fine reverse harem, it is more your standard one compared to Ouran High School Host Club. There is really only one main love interest, and the main character isn’t quite as trope-breaking Haruhi.
Aoharu x Machine Gun
Hotaru Tachibana has always had a habit of confronting evildoers, so when she hears her best friend was tricked by a local host club, she disguises herself as a boy to go punish them.
However, she gets distracted by the leader Masamune Matsuoka when he challenges her to a toy gun battle.
Hotaru loses and now must join Masamune’s survival game team in order to pay off the huge damages to the host club.
Almost identical in plot, it is easy to see the similarities between these two anime series. The only real difference is in the small details.
In Ouran, the host club treats ladies like princesses, while in Aohara they play military-like survival games.
Whereas Haruhi dresses like a boy because she really doesn’t care, Hotaru likes dressing as a boy, but often corrects people of her true gender.
Boys Over Flowers
Coming from a poor family, Makino Tsukushi is wildly out of place at the glamorous Eitoku Academy.
She wishes to finish her education quietly, but crossed the F4, the four most powerful and popular boys in school.
However, while they have declared war on her, she will not be beaten and it is this spirit that caught their leader’s eye.
Like Ouran, Boys Over Flowers is about a girl that is surrounded by rich and handsome men, becoming increasingly intertwined in their lives.
It is a solid rom-com drama, but if I am being honest, it hasn’t aged well. The animation, anyway. As the animation is old (and wasn’t great to begin with) and the manga is that older style of shoujo art, I actually recommend finding a live action drama for this series. It has been adapted in almost every Asian country at this point, and many actually are quite good.
My Next Life as a Villainess – All Routes lead to Doom
At eight years old, Katarina Claes, the only daughter of a duke, hits her head and suddenly remembers she was once a seventeen-year-old otaku that got isekai’d.
She realizes that she is now in the world of Fortune Lover, the otome game that she had been playing before her death.
Unfortunately, she is not the heroine, but rather the villainess who usually ends up dead or exiled at the end. As such, she endeavors to change her fate and avoid all doom flags.
Both Ouran and My Next Life as a Villainess are considered to be trope breakers.
What makes My Next Life as a Villainess so unique is that it is a reverse harem, but the main character also accidentally causes the female characters to love her too.
Aside from that, it is more rom-com-ish antics of rich people at a fancy school like Ouran High School Host Club, but My Next Life as a Villainess has much less focus on romance.
Kakuriyo – Bed and Breakfast for Spirits
Since she was a child, Aoi could see spirits.
After one day feeding a hungry spirit, she is whisked off to the hidden realm where an ogre states she will be his bride. It seems her grandfather sold her off to marry him in order to satisfy his debt.
Instead, Aoi refuses and works off the debt owed in a bed and breakfast.
Both series feature down to earth girls that wind up with a rediculious amount of debt, and start working in order to pay it off. Kakuriyo is a much smaller harem, and they are all supernatural creatures.
Like Ouran, it is a little low on the actual romance, but you do get to watch it grow.
For Fans of Cross Dressing
Maria Holic
In search of true love, Kanako Miyamae transfers to Ame no Kisaki Catholic School, inspired by how her parents fell in love with each other there.
However, the school is now split between the sexes, so all Kanako has to choose from is women. When she meets the beautiful Mariya Shidou, Kanako believes she has found that special someone, except she is actually a he.
Maria Holic and Ouran both focus on school life with characters that are cross dressing. However, while both are comedies, Maria Holic can be a little more dramatic.
Ultimately, the cross dressing in Maria Holic is on purpose while Haruhi does so out of circumstance, but both characters enjoy it.
Princess Jellyfish
Kurashita Tsukimi loves jellyfish, to the point of obsession.
One day, when she sees a jellyfish being mistreated in a pet store, she tries to stick up for it, but her social awkwardness gets in the way. Thankfully, a sparklingly beautiful woman steps in and sparks the beginning of an unlikely friendship.
While Tsukimi’s new friend charms her and her roommates, what they don’t know is that this princess is also a man.
In terms of plot and characters, Princess Jellyfish doesn’t have much in common with Ouran.
However, if you think of it in terms of if Ouran followed Ranka, Haruhi’s father, then it would actually be pretty similar.
Mayo Chiki
Due to the females of his family’s love of wrestling, Kinjirou Sakamachi developed a strong body, but a fear of women.
After a odd encounter in the bathroom, he discovers that the most popular student at his school and butler to the headmaster’s daughter is actually a girl.
In order to keep this secret, the girl says she will cure his phobia.
Both series feature girls that dress as boys and provide a service, though butlers and hosts are a bit different.
However, unlike Ouran High School Host Club, the cross dressing girl is not the main character in Mayo Chiki, she just assists the main character.
Himegoto
Arikawa Hime is being pursued by loan sharks that are attempting to collect the debt that his parents left him with. However, the Shimoshina High School student council has stepped in and offers to pay off his debt.
Yet, these “kind” girls do not want to do so for free. They want him to spend the rest of the year as a member of the student council and dressed as a girl.
Himegoto is all about someone with a substantial debt essentially paying it off by promising to cross dress.
The difference is that Himegoto is ecchi, and an ecchi very clearly aimed at a male audience.
However, if you enjoy humor and ecchi rather than romance, then it can be a fine way to pass the time.
For Fans of Comedic Love Stories
Class President is a Maid!
Being the first female class president isn’t easy, especially when a school is still transitioning from being an all-boys school to a co-ed one. However, Misaki Ayuzawa is up to the task.
While she keeps rowdy boys in line with her martial arts, she has an embarrassing secret – she works part-time at a maid cafe to help her family.
She managed to keep her job a secret until one day the popular student Takumi Usui sees her at work. He could undo her reputation, or use her secret to get closer to her.
Do you like love stories about strong women grudgingly forced into situations they gradually learn to accept, or even love? Well, this is another story like that.
Essentially the male and female leads in both anime are identical in situation, though Maid-sama is a little more “comedy through forced humiliation”.
Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun
Chiyo Sakura has fallen head over heels for the handsome and oblivious Umetarou Nozaki. However, when she confesses her love, he gives her an autograph.
It turns out this stoic boy is actually a respected shoujo manga artist. After a series of misunderstandings, Chiyo winds up not as his girlfriend, but as his manga assistant.
Like Tamaki gathered a group of lovable (albeit it handsome) losers for his host club, so, too, did Nozaki do for his manga.
Unlike Haruhi, a good deal of the comedy in this anime comes from Chiyo trying to get her sempai to notice her, and failing terribly.
However, both anime series have an interesting and hilarious supporting cast that pairs perfectly with the main love story plot.
Special A
Introduced as children, Hikari Hanazono has always been second to Kei Takishima in everything from academics to pro-wrestling.
Ever since the first time he beat her, Hikari has been on a vendetta to finally be number one, even going so far as to attend his prestigious school where both are placed in the Special A class for the most elite.
However, for all Hikari’s mental and physical prowess, she doesn’t realize one thing – that Kei is in love with her.
Like with Aoharu x Machine Gun, Ouran High School Host Club and Special A are almost the same anime.
Instead of a host club, Special A focuses on an elite class of students. Instead of a reverse harem, there is almost an even split among the genders.
However, both are funny, both have doki-doki-inspiring romances, and both feature almost identical female and male leads in similar circumstances.
Kamisama Kiss
Homeless and in debt, high schooler Nanami Momozono thinks things are looking up when she rescues a man and he offers to let her stay at his home. She soon discovers that his home is a rundown shrine.
Trying to leave, she is mistaken for the man she saved – the man that is also the land god of the shrine, Mikage.
Finding out she was tricked into being a god and not wanting to be homeless, Nanami tries to embrace her new divine duties, but has to deal with a hot-headed fox familiar to keep things running smoothly.
While Kamisama Kiss takes its plot in a more supernatural direction. If you enjoyed Ouran High School Host Club’s unique mix of comedy, romance, and occasional drama, then Kamisama Kiss will hit just right.
Like Haruhi, Nanami more your earnest shoujo lead, but she has that same way of making people fall in love with her after meeting her.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Ouran High School Host Club? Let fans know in the comments section below.
