28 Cute Girls Doing Cute Things Anime That Are Quintessential Moe

Among those big doe eyes and hair colors that cover every section of the rainbow, Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime remain the quintessential genre of moe. While some people vilify moe, there is a good reason moe took over anime – A larger majority clearly enjoyed it.

Like the overly long title of an isekai anime adapted from a light novel, Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime is about exactly what it says. The characters are exclusively cute girls, and they are doing any manner of things, cutely. Often these series are plotless slice of life anime about doing nothing, but modern CGDCT anime has moved into developing more substance for the genre.

If Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime is for you, then check out these anime recommendations.

Cute Girls Doing Cute Things Anime

Nichijou

While all Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime are innately comedies in some way, pure comedy CGDCT is less common. Nichijou takes cute girls doing pretty standard school things, then gives it a big dose of crack.

Its use of rapid pacing and absolutely absurd shenanigans makes it a series you won’t ever forget.

K-On

There is a no small portion of older anime fans that attribute the rise of popularity of moe in anime to K-on. That’s probably not so true, but it was both wildly popular and quintessential moe.

The series follows a group of girls in the light music club who form a band despite the main character not really knowing how to play an instrument, but making up for it with enthusiasm.

While K-on is, on occasion, about music. People love this anime for all the fluff in between.

Laid-Back Camp

Iyashikei anime and Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime are like happy hand-holding cousins. They go together just perfectly, especially as the world continues to get more distressing.

In Laid-Back Camp, the “thing” that these cute girls are doing is camping. The series follows a passionate outdoor camper who shares her campsite with a tired, lackadaisical girl who got lost on her way to the nearby Mount Fuji. From there, as these things go, they go on more trips and more girls join.

While the girls are as cute as any, Laid-Back Camp excels in its outdoor visuals. It excels at them so much that the anime inspired a boost in outdoor camping interest in Japan.

Gabriel Dropout

Gabriel Dropout combine Cute Girls Doing Cute Things with an equally beloved genre – shut-ins that just want to stay home.

It follows a once prodigal angel who goes to Earth, as all angels do, to help guide humanity. She then gets hooked on games and pretty much just wants to do that. If it weren’t for a more responsible demon that befriended her, she would.

Gabriel Dropout is, despite how it is described, cute girls doing cute things at school, for the most part. The big overarching joke of the series being that the demons are “the good guys,” and the angels are all varieties of terrible people.

Yuru Yuri

Yuru Yuri is the story about a group of middle school girls that make up the Amusement Club. The purpose of this club is solely to entertain its members, which is the perfect premise for this sub-genre.

Now school club anime has no shortage of school clubs about nothing, and in truth almost all of them are CGDCT anime. What sets Yuru Yuri apart is that it loves to use the potential romantic feelings between the characters for cuteness in a distinctly yuri-bait way.

Love Lab

This is the story of Natsuo Maki, a girl that is known for her grace and elegance at her school. However, much of that is achieved through practice in private. One day, she decides to practice her kissing technique in private and is walked in on by Riko, the wild child of the school. Instead of exposing her, together they establish a Love Lab where they can work on techniques related to all things amorous.

While Love Lab may sound like it is trying to inject horny into the CGDCT genre, it is not. It is more comedy based on innocence and naivety.

Is the Order a Rabbit?

Is The Order a Rabbit takes a brave step outside the usual school club premise to the not so distant neighbor, the cafe setting. It follows a a girl going to high school away from home who works in a cafe for room and board.

As the main character can befriend anyone almost immediately with her superpower-like friendliness, she endears herself to a wide array of cute girls around town.

A Place Further Than The Universe

One of the most frequently noted flaws about Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime is that not much actually happens. To be honest, I have always thought that the slice of life focus was kind of the point, and also kind of the appeal.

However, if you are a “cute girl enjoyer,” but do require your anime to have an actual plot, A Place Further Than The Universe is the modern CGDCT answer.

This series follows a group of girls brought together by one’s passionate mission to go to Antarctica to find her missing mother. Now, in the realm of anime, this would then move into some scheme about those girls cutely getting there that required strong suspension of disbelief.

However, to the credit of this series, they explore a pretty grounded way of them making this journey – and of course, they are cute while doing it. There is an above-average amount of drama in this anime as they build the characters out, though.

Wasteful Days of High School Girls

While Wasteful Days of High School Girls briefly has a premise of the main character asking her classmates to introduce her to some boys since they go to an all-girls’ school, it quickly abandoned that by making every classmate ridiculous.

This is one of those comedies where everyone is just comically weird in the best possible way. Nothing ever gets done, but everything ends with some very solid jokes.

Akebi’s Sailor Uniform

In truth, the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre has entered a bit of a new age. Now, it is more about hiding the fact that the girls are just doing slice of life things by actually developing the characters and bringing all the beauty of modern animation to bear.

Akebi’s Sailor Uniform is a more modern CGDCT anime about a girl excited to go to a new school because she gets to wear a sailor fuku uniform like her mother, only to discover the school doesn’t actually use that uniform style anymore. Since her uniform was handmade, she continues to wear it and makes friends with a variety of interestingly unique girls.

Not unlike A Place Further Than The Universe, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform grounds itself down in realism. The cute girls feel much more like actual people than the moeblobs of old school CGDCT. Of course, while that is a selling point for some, there are still those who actually prefer the genre for its moe detached from reality.

Hidamari Sketch

Hidamari Sketch follows Yuno who has dreamed of going away to art school, but after being accepted, is scared of moving away. Thankfully for her, she meets a series of eccentrics in her new apartment complex that are all drawn together through the bond of being art students.

Artists are weird, everyone knows that, so get ready for characters being extra extra.

Lucky Star

Lucky Star is Cute Girls Doing Cute Things for the anime fan. This was the series that people cited when moe became too dominant and plotless slice of life became too numerous, saying it was ruining the medium. However, it an anime for anime fans.

Lucky Star follows a passionate otaku in her adventure to indulge her interests and drag her normie friend into those interests any way she can. It is about cute girls often doing nothing, but often among that nothing, it hides some great references for seasoned weebs.

Azumanga Daioh

While no one probably concerns themselves with the history of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime, it is worth knowing that Azumanga Daioh was one of the pioneers of the genre.

However, while this series is about cute girls doing often nothing, it adds a big dose of eccentricity for comedy. While not quite as intensely absurd and rapid pace as Nichijou, it lives in that same space.

Ichigo Mashimaro

Ichigo Mashimaro is one of those anime that can be summed up by the title of the genre itself. It is cute girls doing cute things in its purest form.

It follows two sisters and their friends as they just… live. However, it does it successfully enough to still be beloved after multiple seasons. Usually only one season is enough before people lose interest.

Non Non Biyori

Being from a rural area myself, I can attest to the assertion made by Non Non Biyori that there is really not much else to do outside of creating shenanigans with your friends.

Non Non Biyori follows a group of four girls in a very rural town who have to make their own entertainment. This series is as beloved for its cute girls as it is for its long, lingering, peaceful shots of the countryside.

The Demon Girl Next Door

While I have widely left magical girl anime off this list because it is often cute girls doing cute things without the extra needed label, The Demon Girl Next Door merits mention because it is more CGDCT than it is magical girl action.

The series follows a girl that wakes up with horns and a tail only to be told by her mother that they are descendants from a Dark Clan who were rendered powerless by the members of the Light Clan. If she wishes to lift the curse, she needs to find a magical girl and splatter her all over the Demon God statue of her ancestor.

After being saved by a magical girl that also happens to be her classmate, the magical girl takes pity on her being so all around weak that she trains her to harness her dormant demon powers. So begins a comical tale between frenemies.

Minami-ke

Like Ichigo Mashimaro, Minami-ke is the tale of three sisters just living and doing it adorably.

You get to meet their large group of friends and watch them go on adventures. However, because it switched studios so frequently with its different seasons, it wasn’t such a successful multi-season anime. Even in CGDCT, consistency is kind of key.

New Game

Like Lucky Star is the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime for anime fans, New Game is the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime for gamers.

This series follows a girl passionate about games. After she graduates, she goes to work for the studio that makes her favorite game. In typical CGDCT suspension of disbelief, the studio staff are all very cute adult women instead of grumpy male programmers.

Yuyushiki

I’d like to say that Yuyushiki is that last “girl joining a club of cute girls” anime on this list, but it’s not.

This time, it is about a cute girl joining the data processing club. Now, obviously the club isn’t the focus because no one is hyped for data processing. However, the girls meet the prerequisite amount of cuteness, eccentricity, and it is quintessential moe.

Onimai – I Am Now Your Sister

Like CGDCT and Iyashikei, genderbender anime and CGDCT anime are hand-holding cousins. Maybe not happily hand-holding cousins, but hand-holding cousins who awkwardly side-eye each other as their parents make them pose for a picture.

Anyway, Onimai is a genderbender anime about a shut-in whose prodigal younger sister turns him – an adult man – into a middle school girl in an experiment to socially rehabilitate him. The social rehabilitation comes from hanging out with his sisters’ friends, making his own young female friends, and going to school as girl.

While, like many a genderbender, Onimai can have a weird lewd lingering on the main characters’ new female bits, it is actually a surprisingly touching series and classically about cute girls doing nothing in particular, and doing it cutely.

Bocchi the Rock

You remember K-on from earlier on this list? Bocchi the Rock is K-on come again. However, this time instead of being about a girl band that is cute and learning to be a band, Bocchi the Rock is about cute girls learning to be a band with an extra large dose of social anxiety.

In truth, the anxiety is the focus here because, unlike K-on, the main character and most of the group are already decent musicians. The struggle comes from interacting with people, and yes, eventually having to get on stage when anxiety shivers under your skin at all times.

Encouragement of Climb

How do you really sell a CGDCT anime? You put cute girls doing something one does not specifically think of cute girls doing. In this case – Mountain Climbing.

Outside of the unique hook of being about a club dedicated to climbing mountains, Encouragement of Climb is everything standard about Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime. They don’t spend as much climbing as you may like, but similar to Laid-Back Camp, this is a series that loves the outdoors.

Kiniro Mosaic

Ayaya – Is it wrong to remember an anime purely because of old internet memes? I don’t thinks so. I can be hard to remember one individual from the mass of school life-based CGDCT anime anyway.

In this series, it features a girl bonding with another during her homestay visit to England. After returning to Japan, she is surprised that her English friend will now be coming for a homestay in Japan.

Comic Girls

For as much as a decent chunk of anime fans love anime about making anime or manga, you would think that it would be more popular.

Comic Girls combines the process of making manga with a scoopful of cute, cute girls. This time, they live in a dorm together and each one specializes in a genre of manga.

You have the shounen manga artist, the erotic manga for women artist, the shoujo artist, and, of course, the lovable newbie still trying to find her niche.

Do It Yourself

There is almost literally no shortage of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime about girls in school clubs. Many of them I have left off this list because they are good, but not really “the best” of the expansive CGDCT genre.

So what makes Do It Yourself, a CGDCT in a school club anime about crafting and fixing things, different? Well, the near-future setting is definitely something new to the genre, and actually contributes to the theme of the series. However, the most lovable part of the series is that it takes standard CGDCT character archetypes and fleshes them out. It builds the characters out with reasons for their behavior without being too bogged down in the drama that often comes from doing so.

Hitori Bocchi’s Lifestyle

Cute girls with social anxiety is the new “It girl” in slice of life anime.

Hiotori Bocchi’s Lifestyle is about a girl who, due to her social anxiety, struggles to make friends. Happy that she has one friend at least, she is gutted when that friend tells her she won’t talk to her unless she at least tries to make friends at her new school.

Asteroid in Love

While Asteroid in Love probably disappointed a lot of space anime fans by being about cute girls doing casual school club space things, it does provide your daily recommended dose of cute girls with strong yuri hints.

The series follows a girl who meets a boy stargazing as a child. Learning there is no star named after him like there is for her, she promises to discover an asteroid and name it after him. Years later in high school, she joins the school’s Astronomy Club which was fused with the Earth Sciences Club due to minimal interest and meets that “boy” again. Except she discovers that he was really a girl all along.

The discovery that she was misgendering her friend doesn’t really change anything, it just gives the series license to intensely yuri bait.

Asobi Asobase

The neat thing about Asobi Asobase is that it markets itself as a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime, but is actually an amazing comedy about middle school girls being degenerates.

Now, don’t be confused, Asobi Asobase is a CGDCT anime in every way. It has cute girls, it has that bright pastel art style that moe loves, it is about cute girls doing essentially nothing in a school club – but it is using all that to create a comedy anime. So if you were looking for an intensely funny parody of the CGDCT genre, this is it.

Do you have more Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime recommendations? Let fans know in the comments section below.