20 Romance Anime About Interspecies Relationships

The heart wants what the heart wants – and we all know that when the heart wants something, it won’t shut up about it. Love can transcend not just cultural and social barriers, but in the wonderful fantasy worlds of anime, it can also transcend species.

Romance anime about interspecies relationships take us on a journey where love blossoms between humans and fantasy beings—be they yokai, aliens, or mythical creatures. These stories explore the beauty and challenges of loving someone who is different in the most heartwarming ways.

If you are looking for romance anime recommendations were love can bridge the gap between worlds, head on down below.

Romance Anime About Interspecies Relationships

Sankarea

Technically, the titular Sanka Rea used to be human, but through circumstance she died and came back as a zombie.

Are zombies sexy and deserving of love? In this case, maybe. However, Sankarea also focuses on how risky romance is with someone who craves flesh.

You never know when those kisses will turn into eating your lips, and the series often lets some of that sinister possibility seep through the veneer of cute romance.

Kamisama Kiss

After becoming homeless, Nanami accidentally ends up a land god of a shrine. She discovers that her familiar as a land god is an ancient fox demon that is less than pleased that she is taking over the shrine.

Of course, you know how these things go in shoujo romance anime.

They spend more time with each other, they grow to understand each other, and then love blossoms from those roots as they overcome various trials in the supernatural world.

Inuyasha

Melding shounen-style action with shoujo-style romantic comedy, Inuyasha appealed to a large audience and became a favorite anime of many.

Inuyasha follows a girl transported to Feudal Japan after falling down the old well at the shrine by her house. She discovers that demons run rampant in Feudal Japan and she is the reincarnation of a priestess reborn with a powerful jewel in her body. After freeing the titular half-demon Inuyasha from a tree and shattering the sacred jewel that was in her body, the pair have to journey to collect the shards from powerful enemies.

While the female main character and her half-demon protector start off as a contentious pair, the most charming part of Inuyasha is watching the distance slowly close between them over its long, action-packed run.

Monster Musume

While not the first ecchi harem anime to feature a harem of entirely monster girls, Monster Musume does have the distinct advantage of actually making its “monster girls” look like actual creature.

Although, they are still creatures… with ample mammalian cleavage. This is ecchi harem anime, not a horror romance.

In Monster Musume, a man becomes the unwilling interspecies exchange coordinator for fantasy species hoping to become part of society. He starts living with a lamia and that gradually expands his affectionate female housemate roster as time goes on.

Chobits

While an older anime, Chobit still tells a sci-fi romance story about the building romance between a human and the android he found in the trash.

In Chobits, humanity now has widespread access to human-like androids known as Persocoms. However, as broke college student, the main character simply can’t afford one. After finding a malfunctioning one in the trash, he takes it home, repairs it, and they start to live together.

However, over time, you watch this malfunctioning android become more and more like a human, giving credence to the urban legend in the series that there are some models capable of real human thought and emotion.

My Wife Has No Emotion

Similar to Chobits, My Wife Has no Emotion is also about the romantic relationship between an android and a human.

In My Wife Has No Emotion, an office worker gets a cheap model android to cook for him and ends up falling love with his limited emotion house helper. Falling hard enough that he gives her a ring and makes her his wife.

While an interspecies romance, My Wife Has No Emotion more often feels like a cute married couple slice of life romance instead.

Waiting in the Summer

At a glance, Waiting in Summer looks like your standard coming-of-age type romance between a group of friends in the country with the main character falling in love with the new transfer student.

However, Waiting is Summer is indeed a romance between a teen boy and an alien who has disguised herself after a crash landing.

While still a coming-of-age romance, as Waiting in Summer goes on, it becomes increasingly sci-fi as people come looking for this runaway.

Kemonozume

There are no shortage of demons in anime, and you also occasionally see them in romance too. However, few romance anime knowledge that dating with a demon comes with some risks.

Kemonozume is all about the risky nature of falling in love with a demon.

In Kemonozume, flesh-eating demons live secretly alongside humans and human demon hunters work to keep humanity safe. However, when one demon hunter falls in love with his prey, he risks bodily harm to follow his heart.

Seven Deadly Sins

While Seven Deadly Sins is very much a shounen action anime, it is also one with an above-average amount of shippable pairings with romantic progression going on. Furthermore, many of the romantic pairings in Seven Deadly Sins are interspecies pairings.

While detailing many of the interspecies pairings is a spoiler at worst and ruins the fun for shippers at best, let’s just say that all the fantasy creatures be dating outside of their races. Nothing gets in the way of love in Seven Deadly Sins, not origins, moral alignments, size, age – there are no boundaries.

Devils’ Line

You could fill a whole list with vampire romance anime about love between humans and vampires, but few vampire romances tend to focus on the problematic sides of being vampire or loving one. Devils’ Line, however, break the mold by presenting vampires as legitimately dangerous to love and be around.

In Devils’ Line, vampires do not need to drink blood to live. However, blood is presented to be similar to a drug that leads to euphoric mania. To deal with vampires who cannot resist the allure, the police established a secret police force of vampires they use to contain vampires in the throes of blood lust.

The series follows one self-hating half-vampire officer who becomes close with a college girl that he saved from her would-be attacker.

Engaged to the Unidentified

Engaged to the Unidentified is a “just barely” entry on this list. It is both just barely an interspecies romance and just barely a romance at all.

This doesn’t mean Engaged to the Unidentified isn’t worth your time, however. It is just that the series is often a better comedy than it is a romance. Furthermore, it likes to keep you guessing as to if the male lead is a human or something else.

Regardless, Engaged to the Unidentified follows a girl who discovers on her 16th birthday that her grandfather betrothed to her to the son of a family friend from the countryside. Her betrothed and his sister quickly move in and throw the house into chaos.

Spice and Wolf

When a naked wolf god ends up in your cart and asks you for a ride, you don’t just say no. Mostly because she probably won’t let you say no. That is how the unique pair of Holo and Lawrence were thrust together on the long journey told in Spice and Wolf.

Spice and Wolf follows a wolf goddess hitching a ride home with a merchant. Together, the pair talk economics, get into trouble wherever they visit, and grow closer over time.

While romance is rarely the sole focus in Spice and Wolf, the series does present a slowly building romance between the pair as they travel.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

As The Ancient Magus’ Bride starts with a skull-faced mage buying a girl who sold herself into slavery to make his apprentice and eventual bride, the series has a somewhat dubious start.

However, its dubious initial start hides a whimsical, surprisingly dark fantasy story and a increasing touching and respectful romance despite its centuries-wide age-gap pairing and interspecies difficulties.

In truth, The Ancient Magus’ Bride is often less about romance and more about the main character learning to cherish herself as she gets entangled in a magical world.

My Bride is a Mermaid

If you are in the mood for something that is a little more on the comedy side of the romantic comedy spectrum, My Bride is a Mermaid offers jokes in spades with a cute relationship on the side.

In My Bride is a Mermaid, the male main character starts drowning while out swimming. He is saved by a beautiful mermaid, but according to mermaid law, once discovered, either the mermaid or the human has to die.

To side-step this, he offers to marry into her family to save both their lives. Unfortunately for him, while his new bride is kind, her yakuza clan family of sea life is a little less accepting.

Maoyu – Archenemy and Hero

In a world where the human and demon kingdoms are locked in a forever war, the Hero of humanity rushes into the Demon Lord’s castle to slay him and bring peace. However, instead of a fiercesome king, he finds a Demon Queen who wants to – not fight – but to start dating and get his help to bring an end to the war.

While the romance between a Hero and the Demon Queen brings you in, Maoyu is actually more about making economic, agricultural, and political improvements to various nations that have been propped up by long-time warfare.

However, Maoyu never forgets to add in particular cute nuggets of romance just when you think it forgot its romantic origins.

Plastic Memories

In the not so far future presented in Plastic Memories, humans are now able to get androids known as Giftias. They are durable and nearly indistinguishable from humans in their actions, speech, and personality. However, they only have a lifespan of nine years and must be deactivated before they become unstable and possibly violent.

Plastic Memories tells the tale of a human-android duo that are in charge of retrieving Gifitas who are near their max lifespan.

Get ready for a series of heart-breaking tales all told with the backdrop of the building romantic relationship between the male main character and his female Gifita partner that is near her own max lifespan.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

At first Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is about a female ghost who haunts a school trying to solve her own murder with the help of the paranormal club. However, the series takes an unexpected turn when it turns into a romance.

The ghost and the helpful male main character grow closer and eventually grow to love each other. However, loving a ghost is ill-fated at best. Yet, as is common with interspecies romance anime, love knows no boundaries and he can’t stop how he feels.

The Sacrificial Bride and The King of Beasts

When it comes to romancing a beastperson, usually they don’t look much like beastperson. Usually, you get a handsome person with animal ears and maybe a tail if they feel daring. However, The Sacrificial Bride and the King of Beasts goes full beast mode with its male love interest.

The charming romance that is The Sacrificial Bride and The King of Beasts follows the new relationship between the king of beasts and the human girl that the human kingdoms sent as a yearly sacrifice to the beast kingdom to maintain peace. He is taken by her lack of fear and makes her his bride.

Of course, the beast kingdom takes offense to having a “filthy human” as their next queen. While the romance in this series is quite drama-free, much of the drama comes from our plucky shoujo lead having to endear herself to the rest of her new nation as queen.

To Love Ru

If Waiting in Summer wet your appetite for romance with alien girls, then To Love Ru is a feast for you. Although, I hope you were craving ecchi.

In To Love Ru, a boy has an alien princess fleeing political marriage crash land right into his bathroom while he is in the bath.

While he shelters her, it isn’t long before more aliens from her planet come looking to bring her home. To shake off pursuers, she decides to marry the male main character.

While initially just an ecchi romantic comedy, To Love Ru does grow more into an ecchi harem anime as it goes on. By it sequel series, To Love Ru Darkness, it has fully become about ecchi harem shenanigans with alien girls.

Beastars

While featuring no actual humans, Beastars is still all about interspecies relationships.

Beastars follows a mild-mannered wolf who falls in love with a young rabbit with a dubious reputation. However, while every beast acts and dresses like a human, every character is still at the mercy of their animal instincts in Beastars.

This means that predatory animals occasionally slip up and eat their more peaceful herbivore peers. This adds a distinct layer of menace to Beastars and is often the sinister plot outside of the romance.

Do you have more romance anime recommendations about interspecies relationships? Let fans know in the comments section below.