Fujito Chiyuki has dreamed of being the star model for her father’s modeling agency since she was a girl. Unfortunately, she stopped growing and is considered too short to be a good model. Regardless, she kept pursuing her dream.
Only did her resolve start to waiver in her last year of high school. However, after meeting Tsumura Ikuto, a classmate with a passion for designing clothes, does she join him on a seemingly impossible journey to achieve their dreams.
Although fashion might not be a broad subject, Smile Down The Runway explores the two sides of it in a way that even those uninterested in fashion can enjoy. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Smile Down The Runway, head on down below.
Anime Like Smile Down The Runway
For Fans of Fashion
My Dress Up Darling
Living with his grandfather who makes beautiful Hina Dolls, Wakana Gojo has loved them since he was a child. He aspires to one day make Hina Dolls as good as his grandfather, but his dedication has made him a bit of a loner in school after a girl in his childhood said that boys shouldn’t like dolls.
After a run in with the beautiful and popular Marin Kitagawa, he discovers that she wants to cosplay a character from an eroge game.
However, her sewing skills leave something to be desired, and after seeing her passion, Gojo agrees to help her make her costume.
While My Dress Up Darling is innately different from Smile Down The Runway by being an anime about cosplay, what these two anime series share is a passion… for fashion.
Joke aside, My Dress Up Darling and Smile Down The Runway are about two boys that become very passionate about making clothes, particularly for one female model or cosplayer (who is also a model).
Furthermore, both male main character sort of struggle with the lack of masculinity surrounding their passion. The story, at least in part, follows them working through that thanks to their relationship with an endlessly confident and hard-working girl.
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.
Both Paradise Kiss and Smile Down The Runway are about students of fashion and modeling. However, while both anime are also fairly drama-focused, they feature different sorts of drama.
While Smile Down The Runway often finds dramatic conflicts in the professional aspirations of the main characters, Paradise Kiss creates drama between the characters. Paradise Kiss is what can best be described as “an unhappy romance” anime, since that is the large focus of the plot.
While Paradise Kiss does feature some of the professional goals for the number of fashion students in the series, it is more a romance drama that the not-so-romance focused drama of Smile Down The Runway.
For Fans of Pursuing a Challenging Dream
Blue Period
In his second year of high school, Yatora Yaguchi goofs off with his friends and studies hard enough to make good grades. However, neither makes him happy. Bound by normal activities, he wonders if there is something more.
One day, he discovers the joy of drawing after becoming enchanted by a painting made by an art club member. Deciding he wants to do art as a living, Yatora faces a number challenges including his own hesitation on how far art can take him.
Chasing a dream to work in fashion and becoming a professional artist after only starting in high school are two different, but innately difficult dreams. Yet, both Smile Down The Runway and Blue Period feed you inspiring and addicting stories about characters that realistically chase them.
What Smile Down The Runway and Blue Period both do well from a storytelling point of view is really invest you in the events. When characters succeed, it feels so epic that it pumps you up as well. When they struggle, both drag you down into that despair with the characters. It is a particularly difficult storytelling nuance to achieve, but both Smile Down The Runway and Blue Period succeed at it.
Kono Oto Tomare – Stop This Sound
After the senior members graduated, Takezou is now the sole member of his Japanese string instrument club. Facing termination, he now begins his search for new members when suddenly a wily one bursts right into his club room.
Chika has a strong reputation as a violent thug, but due to his grandfather being a renowned koto artisan before his death, he has a passion for the koto that will help Takezou revive his dying club.
Both Smile Down The Runway and Stop This Sound feature main characters that have a passion they inherited from their family, but are told they can’t do it because of how they act or how tall they are.
However, after a clandestine meeting with another, both parties come out fired up about pursuing something they love.
Like Smile Down The Runway makes modeling and fashion look a lot more epic than you thought, Stop This Sound does the same with koto music. The performances are never boring, but instead send a pleasant chill down your spine.
Bakuman
As a child, Moritaka Mashiro wanted to be a manga artist like his uncle. However, after certain events transpired, he refocused his efforts towards studying in middle school.
One day, aspiring writer Akito Takagi notices some detailed drawings in Moritaka’s notebook and approaches him to propose they become a mangaka duo together.
Realizing that he might be able to get his crush to notice him if they make an anime adaption of it with her as the voice actor, Moritaka agrees, and thus, the mangaka Muto Ashirogi is born.
While both Smile Down The Runway and Bakuman are about characters that have a very specific passion and explore the steps they take to pursue it, the series presents it in a very different ways.
Obviously, there is a bit of a tonal difference between people who want to be fashion models/make clothes and people who want to be manga artists. As such, there is a tonal difference between these anime series. Bakuman feels much more youthful and idealistic, despite still focusing on the hardships that come with manga creation. Smile Down The Runway is focused more on character drama and the difficulties they face professionally.
Chihayafuru
Growing up in the shadow of her older sister, Chihaya Ayase is strong-willed and a tomboy with no dreams of her own. However, after learning an outcast in her class, Arata Wataya, has incredible skill at karuta and his huge passion inspires her, she is pulled into the world of the poem-based card game along with her other childhood friend, Taichi Mashima.
While Chihaya grew a passion for karuta with her two childhood friends, they grew distant when they were separated in middle school. Now a high schooler, Chihaya still aims to be the queen of karuta and wants to compete with Arata again to grow her skill.
While Chihayafuru is about Karuta, a competitive matching game that does actually count as a sport, both it and Smile Down The Runaway present themselves in a very “sports anime” sort of way through the storytelling. Like sports anime are often about the character stories more so sometimes than the sport, so are these two anime series more about the characters than necessarily what they are doing.
Both series follow likable main characters that have a difficult to reach lifetime dream. They chase it even when others around them waiver. Their chase ultimately inspires others to reach for their own dreams.
While inspiring and often unexpected hype-inducing anime, both are also series that you love for the characters and character drama over any sort of overall plot.
Ya Boy Kongming
As a general in China’s Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang Kongming had endured countless battles that shaped him into an excellent strategist. However, on his deathbed, his only wish is to be reborn in a more peaceful world.
This results in him being reborn as his younger self in modern day Shibuya, Tokyo.
After being dragged around by partiers, Kongming becomes taken with the songs of a struggling singer who ends up sheltering him. He decides to use his tactical genius to make her into a top star!
Both Smile Down The Runway and Ya Boy Kongming feature people about to give up on their passion only to be inspired by a clandestine meeting with a person they team up with. However, while Smile Down The Runway is about fashion, Ya Boy Kong Ming is about the equally niche topic of EDM music.
While both series have their inspiring and hype moments, Ya Boy Kongming is often more of a comedy. It is not a series about making jokes, but rather the comedy comes from a Feudal Chinese warlord weaving himself into the modern Tokyo club scene while still acting like a warlord.
For Fans of Defying Gender Norms
Dance Dance Danseur
After watching a gripping performance by a male ballet dancer as a kid, Junpei Murao fell in love with dance. However, after being pressured into finding it effeminate, he took up more manly sports like Jeet Kune Do and soccer, particularly after his father’s death made him the man of his house.
One day after a female classmate witnesses him do a kick with the earmarks of ballet to it, she asks him to join her mother’s ballet studio. Although he resists at first, Junpei finds himself willing to make endless sacrifices for the euphoria that ballet elicits.
Although Smile Down the Runway has a sort of a split main character focus, it certainly feels like Ikuto is the main character of the series. Dance Dance Danseur features only one main character. Both series have their male main characters deeply passionate about something that everyone else says is not manly.
Furthermore, both series feature a clandestine meeting with a girl who is deeply passionate in their same area of interest (dancing/fashion), and it inspires them to make greater strides forward.
While Dance Dance Danseur is about ballet dancing and Smile Down The Runways is about fashion, both series actually employ the same sort of “sports anime”-like storytelling where they are always building their skills for that next big competition.
Arte
16th century Florence is awash with cultural and creative contributions during the Renaissance. Arte is a young lady from an aristocratic family who wants to contribute to this unique time. However, after her father’s death, she is expected to marry rather than become an artist.
While she defies her family and looks for a mentor, she faces many obstacles in her path, one being that she is a woman.
Both Smile Down The Runway and Arte are about doing what you are passionate about, even if other people say you cannot.
In Arte, it is about a noble girl in Renaissance Italy that wants to make art, but the primary roadblock in doing so is not actually her ability, but her gender. In this way, Arte is very much like Ikuto feeling insecure about making female clothes as a man combined with everyone telling Chiyuki that she is too short to be a model despite being actually quite good at it.
Although the time periods differ greatly, both Arte and Smile Down the Runway are stories that explore passion, and explore it well.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Smile Down The Runway? Let fans know in the comments section below.
