Harem anime, like any other genre, is built upon certain pillars, and it seems that nestled between the shapely columns of tits and ass that hold up the harem genre is a main character completely oblivious to it all. Yes, it seems one of those common principles that define harem anime is a dense main character that completely ignores even the most blatant feelings from his lady stable. It’s frustrating, particularly if you come to harem anime hoping for a little romantic progression eventually. However, if you are looking for those beautiful little trope breakers, we’ve rounded up every harem anime we could find where the main character isn’t as dense as the bosom probably resting atop their head.
Best Harem Anime Without a Dense Main Character
Trinity Seven
Trinity Seven has the harem standard plot of a guy is forced to go to a special school to hone his unique power where all his peers just happen to be cute girls. However, it breathes a breath of fresh air into stale paralyzed lungs by having him be both competent and blatantly a pervert. As such, any lewd situations aren’t met with frenzied apology, but rather eagerness and humor.
Student Council’s Discretion
The entire goal of the main character in Student Council’s Discretion is to join the all-female student council so he can have himself a harem. You can’t be that honest AND dense. Unfortunately for him, the all-female student council is uninterested in his maleness and more interested in doing things like event planning and club management. The honesty and subversion make this an excellent comedy harem series.
The Fruit of Grisaia
As this series is an adaptation of a visual novel, you will find most visual novel harem tropes abound as the main character solves each problem of his sparse few female classmates in their separate arcs. However, the girls aren’t tossing themselves at him, and he is reacting to situations by thinking first and acting second. He’s not dense, displaying he knows full well what situations he is getting into, and he is perhaps one of the most down-to-earth protagonists on this list.
The World God Only Knows
Keima in The World God Only Knows is a harem protagonist of a different breed. He is a misanthrope, a person who dislikes other people, but an excellent dating sim player. The series follows him as he basically woos real life women under a challenge from a deity using his dating sim knowledge. While these women all fall for him as his basically uses the Konami Code of right dating sim moves, and he knows they fell hard for him, but he simply just doesn’t care. It is genuinely a strange main character for a romance, but absolutely innovative for harem fans.
Quintessential Quintuplets
Of all the less dense protagonists on this list, I’d say that Fuutarou is probably the most dense on here. However, the thing is that often he isn’t ignoring affection from the five identical twin sisters that he is tutoring, but initially is just uninterested in romance. Over the course of the series, you watch him develop an interest in each of them and does begin to notice and take stock of their feelings for him.
Monster Musume
In Monster Musume, the main character is a test subject of a new law that would allow human and monster cohabitation. While they are testing how the social relationship would work, the sexual side of a relationship is still quite illegal. As this is an ecchi harem, much of the comedy comes from him having to resist the constant seduction of the monster girls that live with him. Fighting off thirsty monster girls requires a character with the mental and testicular fortitude to realize they are about to be assaulted.
Testament of Devil New Sister
This particular harem is infamous for skipping rope with the line between “ecchi harem” and “just straight up hentai” in its content. For some, you are sold on it already, and that’s fine. However, because it plays with that line so much, it means the main character needs to have a certain realization as to what is going on between he and his two sisters. You can’t push the boundaries of what you can show on TV with a character too dense to know what is going on, though High School DXD did manage to pull it off, so I guess maybe it is possible.
Girlfriend, Girlfriend
Can you call two girls a harem? Perhaps not, but this main character is living harem dreams in a manageable way. He gets a girlfriend that he loves, gets confessed to by another girl, asks both girls if they will both be his girlfriends at the same time, and then moves them all into his home. It’s the kind of an anime Chad move you don’t really see that often.
How Not to Summon a Demon Lord
In this isekai harem, the main character is summoned into a fantasy world much like the MMO he plays where the two women who summoned him attempt to enslave him in order to harness his character’s immense power. However, he plays that Uno reverse card and enslaves them instead. While that doesn’t initially buy their affection, when you enslave a person, you can kind of do what you want regardless of your own poor social skills. This series has a fair bit of fan service, as you can expect.
Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero
I don’t know if you can call this a harem anime. Sure, there are tons of girls in it, but many of them are more frenemies with the main character than a loyal member of his lady stable. However, it merits mentioning because of how much of an absolute alpha the main character is. He is wildly powerful, and wildly straightforward with his horniness. If nothing else, enjoy him making everyday an ecchi day at his school.
Shomin Sample
I went back and forth on including this one. It is, for certain, a harem comedy that is low on the ecchi side and high on actual good jokes. However, the main character is forced to pretend he is gay in order to avoid castration at this all-girls’ school. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t recognize the feelings of the girls in the harem that was kind of forced on him, though. If nothing else, Shomin Sample is a harem series where the main character is not dense, but rather is a massive troll to sheltered, world-ignorant rich girls.
Do you have more harem anime series where the protagonist isn’t as dense as bread dough? Let fans know in the comments section below.
