50 Best Yuri Anime Worth Watching

While girl-on-girl action might be one of the most popular searches on the standard adult-time fun site, for most people who watch yuri anime, they watch it for the complex emotional relationships between women.

Same-sex relationships are still somewhat taboo in Japan, but it is not just the taboo nature alone used for drama in girl’s love anime.

Even in areas where same-sex relationships are accepted, coming to terms with your sexuality is a difficult time, especially when you develop feelings for close friends, which is often a big plot point in girl’s love anime.

Unlike boy’s love anime that often focuses on a more physical relationship, girl’s love anime is often of a more emotional nature. As such, yaoi is often faulted for leaning very heavily on sexual assault whereas yuri anime often has a problem of tragic endings or a “well, this is just a phase she’ll grow out of” syndrome.

A lot of girl’s love anime likes to dismiss lesbianism as a phase between school girls or a doomed lover sort of affair, but there is a newer wave of girl’s love anime fully embracing lesbian women. Whether you enjoy the old tropes or want to sample some of that new wave, give these girl’s love anime recommendations a try.

Best Yuri Anime

What is the Difference Between Shoujo Ai and Yuri?

You may hear the terms “yuri,” shoujo ai,” and “girl’s love (GL)” used interchangeably here and throughout the internet, but there is some important distinctions between them.

It is easiest explained, for those who don’t know, that shoujo ai, literally translated from Japanese to English as “girl’s Love,” is more your standard romance anime. You get a few kisses if you are lucky and the lewdest thing that happens is ungloved hand-holding.

Meanwhile, yuri will also feature romance, but they show a lot more flesh. They can drift into the NSFW areas, sometimes very graphically.

As some people enjoy the romance, but not so often the distinctly ecchi element that comes from explicit yuri, particularly yuri laser-aimed at young men, I have marked each series as either “yuri” or “shoujo ai.” If there is any kind of sexual content at all, even if it is just two silhouettes clumsily thrusting in the darkness, I counted it as yuri.

Girl’s Love Anime Series

The girl’s love genre lives in the realms of TV anime. While you can find a few ecchi girl’s love anime, typically TV anime will be pretty tame. In fact, an unfair amount of girl’s love anime is really just more baiting than actual romance, and when you are master baiting, there is no room for steamy scenes.

Sakura Trick

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Like with our yaoi list, it is best to start off with the most popular and well-known girl’s love anime. Unlike yaoi anime, the clear “most popular” winner isn’t so obvious with yuri, but this one has been a staple for a long while.

Sakura Trick tells the story of two girls who were best friends in middle school. When they get to high school, they are in the same class, but sit way across the room from each other. As one begins to make friends on her side of the room, the other gets jealous. In order to deepen their friendship, they decide to do something they would never do with another girl – kiss. However, that one kiss awakens new feelings in them both.

The journey in Sakura Kiss is a slow one of two girls realizing their real feelings towards each other. Of course, with that innocent new romance comes ten tons of drama. However, it is packed to the gills with sweet kisses.

Revolutionary Girl Utena

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 39 Episodes + 1 Movie

Revolutionary Girl Utena is, in every sense, a revolutionary anime for its time and even still now in some ways.

Not only is it one of the first girl’s love anime series to be very obvious with its relationship, but it is the type of anime that you can watch over and over again while still discovering something new to analyze.

Utena is also a difficult anime to summarize without spoiling things. It follow Utena, who, after being saved by a prince as a child, eschews the usually girlish dream of marrying one, and wants to become one instead. At her new elite academy, gentlemen duel over a Rose Bride to claim her hand, Utena steps in an consistently bests other suitors, claiming the beleaguered and oppressed Rose Bride as her own. From there in, it becomes a complicated story of academy politics with huge subtext on gender and sexual identity.

Being an early LGBT anime champion, Revolutionary Girl Utena stumbles over some topics, seemingly losing its nerve at certain points, but for its time it truly had a revolutionary message.

Sweet Blue Flowers

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 11 Episodes

There are a wide variety of different types of yuri anime plots on this list, but if you are looking for a sweet and touching story of the blossoming love between two girls, Sweet Blue Flowers is for you.

Sweet Blue Flowers tells the tale of two childhood friends that separate when one moves away, but reunite as freshmen in high school. The story is about them conquering all the troubles of high school life while also slowly trying to reconnect with each other.

Although tender and touching in terms of plot, the animation is kind of more “meh” than this subtle girl’s love anime deserves.

Simoun

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 26 Episodes

Simoun is a very curious yuri anime. It takes place in a world where gender and sexual identity doesn’t work the same way as it does in the real world.

In Simoun, everyone is a form of gender-neutral until they turn 17, in which they must choose their permanent gender. If they undergo this procedure, they can no long pilot the machines used to defend their society.

So it follows the tale of these young pilots who are gender-neutral, but mostly feminine in nature and have grown into female puberty to some extent during their neutral youth.

While Simoun poses some interesting food for thought on transgenderism, many of the relationships that happen within are of a shoujo ai nature since, though considered neutral, they have the physical aspects of women.

Whispered Words

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

If you’re not into “heavily implied” or “strong subtext” when it comes to the rampant queerbaiting of shoujo ai relationships in anime, then Whispered Words should be one of your first choices of unabashed girl’s love.

Whispered Words tells the tale of Ushio who isn’t shy about announcing her interest in girls. She says she prefers the cute, shy, and feminine type. The problem is that her best friend secretly has a crush on her, but she is definitely not cute, shy, or very feminine.

While, yes, it is a (mostly unrequited) love story, it is also a story about how the shared experiences can help strengthen each person. Being gay in a Japanese high school (or otherwise, life) is isolating, and this story depicts that as they discover other gay students and form a club to help strengthen each other.

Kiniro Mosaic

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 24 Episodes + 2 Movies

Kiniro Mosaic is one of those “no plot” anime series in which you just follow cute girls doing cute things. In this case, cute girls doing strong implied shoujo ai things.

Of course Kiniro Mosaic has the comedy that goes with that distinct sub-genre, but they also threw some girl’s love in. The shoujo ai is much more substantial in the second season where it explores more of the relationships and a big dollop of jealousy is thrown into the mix.

That said, if you want something that is romance and not subtext, this is not for you.

Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes + 1 Special

You know those cute animal videos people love where a dog and a cat end up as cuddle buddies? Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san is like that in girl’s love anime form.

Nekoyama is a shy tsudere that loves dogs. Inugami is a friendly, albeit masochistic girl that loves cats. They meet and develop feelings, but while Inugami is overwhelming with affection, Nekoyama is always bashful.

As a short-form episode anime, the episodes are only 3 minutes long, but it it gives you a big wholesome dose of girl’s love in a small package.

Kanamemo

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

After her grandmother dies and she is left alone in the world, Kana moves into a newspaper carrier as a live-in delivery girl. However, her room has a hole in it that her co-workers use frequently to let themselves in.

Kanememo is one of those shoujo ai stories where the heroine isn’t full-on into it, but every girl around her just kind of tosses themselves at her thirstily.

She’s a harem queen, for sure, but Kanamemo is aimed more at comedy than girl’s love relationships. Kanamemo teeters between being wholesome and fun with a bit of an odd passion for for sexual, non-ecchi comedy.

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 12 Episode + 6 Specials, 2 minutes per special

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid is one of those yuri anime that was clearly made for male audiences.

While yuri anime is for everyone, and everyone can enjoy a nice pair of boobs, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid takes itself so seriously that it makes its rediculious ecchi plot actually amazing.

In Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, only women are infected with a virus that causes them to either turn into weapons when they climax or wield those weapons. The women are all sent to islands to keep them out of society. There, they form societies built on battling each other to keep order.

As it is built on battle, this means women make other women climax in front of their foes to turn them into weapons.

Valkyrie Drive is so ecchi, and so silly. The romance of it is alright, but you definitely watch this yuri anime for other reasons.

Netsuzou Trap

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes, 9 minutes per episode

There is some debate as to whether this yuri anime is trash, a masterpiece, or wonderful trash. Though often people fault it for the NTR, or netorare, which details cheating in a relationship, rather than it being a yuri anime.

In Netsuzou Trap, one girl has recently gotten her first boyfriend. New to love, she asks for tips from her friend who also has a boyfriend and much more experience. Those “tips” very quickly become practice while their boyfriends remain unaware.

One side of this relationship has suffered emotional and physical abuse, and as such, abuse begets abuse throughout the series. I think the cuckolding makes people violently against this anime, but underneath there is a surprisingly emotionally complex story.

While not comical ecchi or straight-up hentai, Netsuzou Trap is a yuri anime that isn’t afraid to explore the physical side of a relationship.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Isekai crawls its its way into all genres eventually, and it is shoujo ai’s turn now.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life takes place in a world where the people that keep randomly manifesting from our world in their fantasy land have devastating powers that often cause chaos. As such, the church of the fantasy world started training executioners to kill them.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life follows one such executioner who meets a girl from our world who appears to be immortal. As such, they end up traveling together so she can find a way to kill her. The immortal girl in question is nothing short of thrilled about it, since she has rather mysterious feelings for the executioner.

This anime can be rather brutal for a girl’s love anime, but it does have a lot of great looking fights. It also has a bit of a yandere-level of attachment going on between the characters.

Strawberry Panic

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 26 Episodes

Strawberry Panic is a classic yuri anime that revels in the old school yuri tropes.

It follows a new transfer student to an all-girls Catholic school. There she catches the attention of the girl at the very top of the school’s intricate hierarchy. While the main character tries to quietly live out school life, she and this school queen get to know each other, and with her help, confront their troubled pasts.

Strawberry Panic has a somewhat cliché plot, not just for yuri anime, but for romance anime in general. However, because it maintains a distinctly alluring balance between being adorable and strangely sexy, it is still considered a gem.

Destiny of the Shrine Maidens

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Destiny of the Shrine Maidens is a fickle show. It starts off kind of bland, but actually gets better the more you watch of it. It also tries to confuse you by creating a love triangle between a boy and the two girls, but it wouldn’t be a yuri anime if he won!

The premise of Destiny of the Shrine Maidens is that two normal schoolmates have to become shrine maidens of the sun and moon to fight the evil orochi. However, the orochi keeps corrupting the people closest to them.

Interestingly enough, this yuri anime portrays some physical relationships in the same way old school yaoi enjoyed showing physical relationships. It has a lot of forced physical contact.

Akuma no Riddle

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

In Akuma no Riddle, the name of the game is for a group of assassins to kill their singular, non-assassin classmate for a big payout. However, they only get one shot at it.

While this seems pretty easy, the problem is one of the assassins has developed feelings for the girl, and thus begins to protect her instead of try to kill her.

Girl’s love assassins? Yes, please. More please, even.

Most time, there is very little fighting in girl’s love anime, but this one is packed full of some pretty cool fights even if it is a little light on the gooey emotional side of romance.

Yamibou

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

Yamibou is another tale about the forbidden girl’s love between two sisters.

Hazuki is a tall, dark, and brooding girl that has always been infatuated with her sister, Hasumi. However, Hasumi disappears. Hazuki meets a talking bird that is also looking for her sister and together they search for her by entering the different worlds through books.

It is an interesting concept in and of itself with a huge fun cast of characters. However, the girl’s love is kind of creepy. You know your love has become obsessive when you start listening to your sister doing her business in the bathroom.

It starts off seemingly sweet, but it gets kind of weird, to be honest.

Kashimashi

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes +1 OVA

Kashimashi doesn’t start off as a shoujo ai anime. In fact, people could debate if it counts.

Kashimashi tells the age-old tale of a guy liking a girl, the girl not liking men, and the guy getting rejected. However, the twist is that the guy goes up the mountain where they first met, gets crushed by aliens, and they bring him back as a girl. You know, usual anime plot things.

The unfortunate thing about this anime is that while he may be a girl, he is still very much of a guy on the inside and does guy things, which kind of takes away from the girl’s love romance of it all.

As I said, it can be debated as to if gender-bending romance anime counts as same-sex romance anime, but I often leave the decision in the hands of potential watchers.

The Virgin Mary is Watching You

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 44 Episodes + Numerous Specials

The Virgin Mary is Watching You is a classic romance anime about yearning.

It focuses on the multiple different relationships between several girls at an elite Tokyo catholic school. There isn’t much overall plot besides relationship drama, but the way it approaches it is nothing short of masterful.

These girls yearn for each other, be it openly or in secret, and of course their relationships seem destined to be curtailed in one way or another by adulthood. Some see all those feelings as a phase some girls experience while young, after all, and this is an anime that depicts the real complexity of that notion.

Noir

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 26 Episodes

This series is not pure girl’s love. The relationship between the female main characters in Noir is more heavily implied than anything, particularly more so in the spin-off. Noir is one of those female-centric series where the subtext is very obvious, but it never takes that real first step.

Despite that, if you don’t need fully-realized shoujo ai, Noir has a damn intriguing plot.

It follows two seemingly unrelated female assassins that are both pursued by the same Illuminati group. They meet and begin to learn more about each other and their connection to each other.

Noir has an interesting plot and plenty of awesome action scenes if that is more important to you than tender romantic moments.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 26 Episodes

You might not get the kissing and the holding you crave, but that doesn’t change the fact that Ms. Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is features the shoujo ai relationship you crave and often queerbaits the hell out of you.

The basic premise of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is programmer Kobayashi gets drunk after work one night, wanders into the forest, and saves a dragon by pulling a sword out of it. In order to repay her, the dragon decides to transform into a human form and work as her busty Victorian-style maid.

While that is normal levels of anime strange, it is not such an obvious shoujo ai set-up. However, the shoujo ai becomes strong when a younger, child-like dragon comes to live with them. Suddenly the master and maid relationship they had transforms into a more family-like dynamic. That dynamic grows even stronger in the second season as Kobayashi really becomes similar to a father-like figure.

Yuri Bear Storm

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Yuri Bear Storm is equal parts weird and fun. It is also nothing like what you would expect from a girl’s love anime.

In Yuri Bear Storm, bears and humans can no longer coexists after bears suddenly crave human flesh. So thus, they build a wall between them. However, two bears sneak across it and infiltrate a school disguised as humans, where they kill one girl’s lover, then fall in love with her.

Citrus

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Citrus quickly climbed through the ranks to become one of the most popular yuri anime out there. Perhaps because it took the old school yaoi approach of displaying love as frequent and forceful sexual advances.

Citrus follows the relationship between two new stepsisters. One is kind, innocent, and fashionable, the other is cold, serious, and seductive.

As it is both a girl’s love anime and one following stepsisters, Citrus is rife with drama. That is only exacerbated as one sister sees a physical relationship and something where feelings of love are not necessarily required.

Adachi and Shimamura

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Adachi and Shimamura is one of the better representations of girl’s love in modern anime because it feels like a very realistic, perfectly normal romance.

The girls meet when they are both ditching class in the same spot, become friends, starting hanging out more, and over the course of the series you watch them slowly realize that their feelings of friendship might actually be more than that.

Yuru Yuri

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 36 Episodes, 4 OVAs

If you enjoy your comedies with shoujo ai overtones, of which there are many, Yuru Yuri is a must-have addition to your stable. Yuru Yuri takes girl’s love and makes it into an absurdist comedy.

Yuru Yuri is certainly not for those looking for romance, but more so for those that want some shoujo ai-flavored laughs.

Bloom Into You

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

Like too few other girl’s love anime on this list, Bloom Into You rose to the top echelon of girl’s love anime by treating romance between girls in a realistic way.

While the series keeps the trope of two girls developing a tingle of feelings at first sight, this school life girl’s love romance between two girls realizing their romantic feelings for each other as they were exploring youthful romance keeps things nice and grounded in reality.

Furthermore, Bloom Into You also doesn’t allow the girl’s love romance to feel like something that the school girls will simply grow out of like other shoujo ai anime likes to suggest. It is treated more like an awakening than a phase, as it really should be.

Tachibanakan Triangle

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes, 3 minutes per episode

It is a rule of anime that if you put people in close proximity, they must fall in love.

Tachibanakan Triangle works on under that rule by moving the main character into a girls’ dormitory. There, she has to endure the constant barrage for flirtiness from those that live near her.

As this series is a short-form episode anime, it uses its 3-minute episodes to beat you about the ears with ecchi.

Mai-Hime

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 26 Episdes, 1 Special

Mai-hime is an older action anime that hid girl’s love in plain sight as it went about its plot.

Mai-Hime has a cookie-cutter action plot about special girls that are the only ones capable of summoning special metallic guardians called Childs. They use these to fight Orphans that threaten humanity. Over the course of this girl-laden show, you realize that there is very real romances forming between them.

Considering the age of Mai-Hime, it was pretty progressive for its time.

Mikagura School Suite

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

What would happen if you had a girl’s love anime, but the protagonist acted like your standard male ecchi anime protagonist? There are virtually no girl’s love anime where the female protagonists acts like a degenerate pervert, but Mikagura School Suite takes a stab at it.

In Mikagura School Suite. the main character is obsessed with girls, joins her high school because the girl uniforms were sexy, joins a club because she follows a cute girl, and then it turns into a competition anime where she represents her club in various competitions.

What’s most fun, I think, is she joins in with your standard girl-crazy high school boys. Other than that, however, the romance isn’t particularly existent here, she just pervs on girls.

Wataten! An Angel Flew Down to Me

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes + 1 Special

Wataten follows a college girl that develops an obsession with an elementary school girl that her elementary school-aged sister brings home, a situation that is kind of ….ehhhh, you know?

Luckily, it is mostly used for comedy, but if you are creeped out already, it does have some moments that compound that feeling at times because she is very obviously interested in a romantic way.

Otherside Picnic

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Otherside Picnic is labeled as shoujo ai, its light novel is shoujo ai, but I watched it all the way through and it seems they forgot a lot of the shoujo ai in this anime, to be honest.

Otherside Picnic does tell a uniquely interesting story about being able to access a dangerous – but lucrative – other world. A pair of girls meet up inside, team up to make money and also to look for someone, and they just sort of adventure from there.

The exploration of the world is what makes this anime quite nice to watch. There are clearly feelings at play in a number of ways in this series, but they play it extremely coy with them.

Happy Sugar Life

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

I feel like I should preface this by saying that Happy Sugar Life is a horror anime, despite the title.

Happy Sugar Life follows a high school girl known for being permissive with men. However, one day she meets an elementary school girl and feels love for the first time. She then kidnaps this girl, and they live out their happy life in an apartment together.

The ages in this relationship are disturbing, and the main character violently tries to protect the “happy sugar life” she has built. So, this is perhaps not the happy wholesome girl’s love anime you were looking for, but still apt.

Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

This is one of those series that is very cute, but maybe meets the very minimal definition of girl’s love. The characters are close and flirty, but it is still very much just cute girls doing cute things.

In Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood, a girl that loves dolls hears about a girl that only comes out at night and is rumored to be a living doll. Going out into the forest to see, she discovers a perfectly normal vampire. This girl ends up moving into her mansion and forcing her friendship upon her.

Again, this anime subsists on queerbaiting, but girl’s love anime is rather rare these days and some fans will take what they can get.

Kampfer

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 14 Episodes

Kampfer is a big, brazen, gender-bending anime stuffed full of some of the most notorious ecchi that anime has to offer.

The bare-bones plot of Kampfer follows a boy who gets changed into a girl who is also a kampfer. These kampfers are expected to fight other kampfers for poorly explained reasons in a battle royale.

The main character being a kampfer is more just a reason to insert action into this otherwise ecchi school anime. The girl’s love comes into it when it turns out the main character’s childhood friend is into women, and thus, really into his new form.

The long and short of it is – If you like ecchi, you’ll love Kampfer.

Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 6 Episodes, 45 minutes per episode

When you read the synopsis about Rin being about someone hunting down immortals and an immortal detective unraveling it, you wouldn’t think it would be filled with so much lesbian sex, but here we are.

Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne follows the titular Rin, an immortal detective. In this world, people are occasionally infected by the world tree. If they are female, they become immortal. If the are male, they become angels. When an angel meets an immortal, the immortal is filled with such a lust that she must mate with an angel as he eats her alive.

As such, the many female characters don’t want to meet up with angels. Instead, they often enjoy the flesh of other females.

Konohana Kitan

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Konohana Kitan is what you would call “soft girl’s love,” because it is overall a pretty soft anime.

The plot follows a young kitsune who works at a Japanese hot springs in for spirits. She is not great at her job at first, but slowly gets better over time.

Any connoisseur of this type of slice of life anime will know that while she is getting better, there is a co-worker that was hard on her at first, but they grow to be very close. However, unlike some other slice of life anime, the subtext is much stronger than usual.

There are also multiple female couples at play in this kemonomimi-loving anime.

Uzamaid

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes + 1 OVA

Like a small handful of other anime on this list, Uzamaid is an uncomfortable girl’s love anime due to the age of some of the characters.

Uzamaid follows a young wealthy girl whose father hires an ex-military woman to be her housekeeper and caretaker. He clearly did not vet her very well because she is a loudly proclaimed lolicon that is very attached to the elementary school-aged mistress.

It’s not gross about it, it often tries to be a comedy, but it’s just kind of creepy.

Aria the Scarlet Ammo AA

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Aria the Scarlet Ammo, the first season, was a standard action anime with a hetero romance. So, you can imagine the surprise when its sequel turned out to be an “unrelated to the original” spin-off with a girl’s love relationship.

It maintains itself as a pretty middling action anime where the “romantic” dynamic is one girl being super cool and good at fighting and the other girl chasing her around with a massive crush. It isn’t the best action anime, it isn’t the best girl’s love romance, but it isn’t the worst of either.

Symphogear

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 65 Episodes + 14 Specials

Over its five seasons, Symphogears gathered an extremely passionate fan base who came for the high energy, big action song-based battles. However, Symphogears is also a series that is, without a doubt, very gay without ever being clearly labeled as girl’s love.

The amount of male characters in Symphogears can be counted on one hand, and the admiration and just plain love interwoven into the main female cast are often major plot points in the series.

However, even at the end, despite all the many shippers and the clear feelings, Symphogears would never let a female character say the dreaded “l-word” to another female character. It would then be able to be clearly labeled as girl’s love and somehow less marketable.

Flip Flappers

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

Like Symphogears, Flip Flappers likes to be girl’s love in subtext, but that subtext is so frequently obvious, that they mind as well just acknowledge it.

Flip Flappers specializes in a weird, wonderful, and colorful world as two girls explore a strange alternate reality, collect crystals, and turn into magical girls in a very Alice in Wonderland-esque adventure.

Not only are the two main character progressively growing closer, but one of them shows “more than friends” interest in several other girls throughout the series.

Dear Brother

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 39 Episodes

I’ll be frank, Dear Brother is girl’s love anime in its worst form.

That is not to say the Dear Brother is a bad anime. It is a great older anime, but it shines a bright light on the worst tropes of girl’s love anime history.

In Dear Brother, you follow a girl at a prestigious all-girls school where she gets bullied by a hierarchy of upperclassman, brutally. Over the course of the first half, the girl’s love is strong within many of the characters.

Then the series shifts, painting over all previous gayness with a big message that suggests it was all just a phase that they are growing out of when they leave school.

The melodrama and early girl’s love in Dear Brother is fantastic, and always will be. However, it remains an example of the worst phase in GL anime.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Idol anime is certainly a genre for only a specific type of anime fan, but to the credit of this series, I’ve never seen one so obviously GL before. Usually, idol anime enjoys subtext as it shamelessly markets itself (mostly) boys who enjoy waifus.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die follows a girl who is a hardcore fan of a specific idol. She supports her with everything she has. The idol in question is shy and her actions towards this fan often come off as cold, yet the fan is still devoted.

This is pure GL idol worship, not GL romance. It is an interesting look into “wota” (hardcore Japanese Idol fan) culture, though.

Blue Drop

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

Blue Drop follows a girl that is the sole survivor of an incident, but without memories of it. She is forced into an all-girls’ school against her will and secretly watched for her memories to come back. A mysterious classmate begins to get closer to her as her memories return and forces start to conspire.

If you like your girl’s love to be less romantic and more plot-oriented, Blue Drop certainly is that. It gives you the girl’s love moments you crave, but also unravels a rather interesting plot.

It also happens to be one of those anime series where you need to watch closely sometimes to pick up the little details that help make its occasionally confusing plot make sense.

My Life After I Became a Dummy Head Mic One Morning

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes, 3 minutes per episode

As if it wasn’t enough to just have a silly enough hook. I ardently believe that a creator in this series was just like, “throw some girl’s love in there too, that’ll bring more viewers.” When dealing with something niche like ASMR, best to make it more sexual, I guess?

Well, the anime is short-form episodes so there is neither much ASMR nor girl’s love, sadly. As for the plot, it is helpfully summed up in the title.

Gokujyo

• Yuri
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes, 3 minutes per episode

If you want serious yuri romance, this is not it.

If you want 6-minute episodes full of sex jokes and ecchi, then you have arrived at the right series! Gokujyo follows a girl that likes to outdo her classmates, and in doing so, often pretends she has more sexual experience than she does. It leads to lewd misadventures.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Isekai may be a rampant cash-grab disease infecting modern anime at the moment, but not all isekai anime is bad.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, lengthy titled series that it is, shakes things up for not just isekai, but anime in general by having an open and unashamed gay heroine.

She was reborn into the body of a princess in a magical world, but had no magical capabilities. However, she dedicated herself to the invention of magic-infused items. While doing this, she recruits a noble’s daughter who had been brutally dumped by her brother, the crown prince. Now the pair work together and are forming a slowly building love affair.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady is refreshing in a lot of ways, but most importantly of all, it is very cute.

Mobile Suit Gundam – The Witch From Mercury

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 24 Episodes + 1 Prequel OVA

The Witch From Mercury was labeled ‘the woke Gundam’ by the obnoxious portion of Gundam fans for its inclusion of ethnically diverse characters, plus size body types, and featuring a prominent romantic pairing between its two female main characters.

However while its diverse skin tones and body positive characters are great (though not necessarily a first for Gundam), it isn’t particularly bold with its lesbian romance in that it’s not really a romance.

They set it up so Suletta wins a duel and sort of accidentally becomes the groom for a major conglomerate CEO’s daughter in a very Revolutionary Girl Utena sort of way.

It then promptly undercuts that by showing her possible romantic feelings for a man.

While the pair do share a special bond and it is inferred that they remain close, if you are hoping for a kiss or indeed any romantically motivated affection, it is best to temper expectations.

Yuri is My Job!

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

You heard the title – Yuri is their job. This series follows girls that work in an all-girls school-themed cafe where the “more experienced” “students” (Read: employees) take on little sisters that they are mentoring for the roleplay.

Of course, by “mentoring” they really mean “carry out yuri-baiting relationships with for the audience of the cafe”.

Yuri is My Job has been faulted for using girl’s love as a performance, since it is almost all drama and much of any romantic attraction in the series seems to be used to feed drama rather than relationship progression.

If you enjoy your drama girl’s love anime, it is a decent new modern entry stuffed to the bursting with it.

I’m in Love with the Villainess

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

The various twisting of a series following a villainess in an otome game is very popular these days. I’m in Love with the Villainess twists things even further by not having a villainess as the main character, but rather a girl isekai’d into the game that is madly in love with the villainess.

While it starts off with comedy surrounding her obsessive lesbianism and the villainess not really being into it, the series actually focuses more and more on character growth as it goes on.

The bar in the relationship isn’t that the villainess is repulsed by being in a relationship with another woman, but instead, it is that the main character needs to grow and accept herself after a previous lifetime of being repressed and judged for her sexuality.

Gushing Over Magical Girls

• Shoujo Ai (barely)
• TV Anime
• 13 Episodes

There is plenty of yuri bait in magical girl anime, but Gushing Over Magical Girls is the first one that smacks you in the face with it and makes it ecchi as heck.

The series follows a magical girl enjoyer who is transformed into, not magical girl, but the villain who must fight them. Of course, her powers manifest her secret lewd desires to watch magical girls struggle in very sexy way.

Get ready for a lot of different fetishes.

Whisper Me a Love Song

• Shoujo Ai
• TV Anime
• 12 Episodes

Whisper Me a Love Song tells a familiar story. It follows a girl who confesses to her older senpai who is a musician in a band. While this senpai is shocked, she mulls it over and decides to return her feelings.

However, it turned out the younger girl just loved her… music.

Regardless, the pair decide to spend more time together, but their feelings aren’t the only ones swirling around.

The series provides a lot of really wholesome fluff that is then counteracted by some pretty thick drama coming in from the side characters.

Girl’s Love OVAs

The girl’s love OVAs are generally where the steamier series live. You can only get away with showing so much flesh in a TV anime, but OVAs are afforded a little more freedom to occasionally be just straight up hentai.

That said, sometimes OVAs are just little treats for manga fans. As girl’s love is a less beloved genre, sometimes the best a shoujo ai manga can do when it comes to being adapted is an OVA.

Kase-san and the Morning Glories

• Shoujo Ai
• OVA
• 1 OVA that is 6 minutes, 1 OVA that is 58 minutes (you want that one)

Although a short OVA, Kase-san and the Morning Glories is considered a must-see staple of the girl’s love genre.

The most notable thing about it is that Kase-san and the Morning Glories doesn’t play games. It starts off with a girl that enjoys gardening dating a girl who is the ace of her track team. No “will they, won’t they” in this OVA, there’s no time!

The rest of the anime follows the pair growing to appreciate the differences between them and dealing with their ever-growing feelings. Girl’s love anime is no stranger to thirst, but this OVA does a great job of capturing the growing thirst for physical affection that you often feel in new relationships.

Vampire in the Garden

• Shoujo Ai
• ONA
• 5 Episodes, 26 minutes per episode

Vampire in the Garden details an Earth where humanity is fighting a losing war with vampires. During an attack on a city, a female solider is saved and whisked away by the vampire queen who, after the death of her human wife, is looking to just kind of die. Eventually, not knowing peace, they embark on a journey to a place where human and vampire can be together.

It was very refreshing to see that Fine had a female wife before meeting Momo instead of being just “suddenly into women” as you get with some shoujo ai anime. It was also great to see a girl’s love anime put real effort into building an interesting world that also doesn’t revolve around lesbianism.

Candy Boy

• Yuri
• ONA
• 7 Episodes, 14 minutes per episode

Who says that imouto love needs to be straight? Technically, Candy Boy isn’t about loving your little sister though, because the sisters are actually twins who are real gay for each other.

There’s not much plot in Candy Boy other than two sisters being very close in a yuri way who often get interrupted by their clingy school friend because she has a crush on one of the sisters.

However, it is one of those romance anime where there is ten tons of teasing and you just want to reach into the screen and pop those two heads together so they would actually kiss already.

Kuttsukiboshi

• Yuri
• OVA
• 2 Episodes, 22 minutes per episode

What would you do if you had psychic powers? Run around having sex with your best friend all over school?

Yes?

Okay, this probably for you!

Kuttsukiboshi is pretty much that. Two friends can no longer resist each other, and one discovers the other had developed psychic powers after a car accident. Of course, after some fun, it dives face first into pretty typical yuri drama.

Shoujo Sect

• Yuri
• OVA
• 3 Episodes, 27 minutes per episode

This saucy little yuri OVA follows two girls that met on the playground. They share a kiss and swear they will see each other again.

They do indeed see each other again in high school, but only one remembers the promise. As such, she has decided to flirt and seduce her way back into the other’s heart.

Re: Cutie Honey

• Yuri
• OVA
• 3 Episodes 46 minutes per episode

This OVA is a speedy retelling of the original 70’s anime Cutie Honey, one of the progenitors of magical girl anime. You need not watch the original to enjoy the OVA. It follows the story of a girl who father is killed and she learns she is an android, she uses a device to turn into a warrior and fight for peace and love – standard magical girl fare.

What the OVA has that the anime does not is a lot of fan service. And yet, a surprisingly great story in between all that.

Like most magical girl anime, there are strong elements of yuri elements in it. As this OVA is also stuffed full of fan service, it gets quite graphic with it.

Miyuki-chan in Wonderland

• Shoujo Ai
• OVA
• 2 Episodes, 14 minutes per episode

Miyuki in Wonderland tells a story very similar to Alice in Wonderland, if all the inhabitants in that other world were female and really in love with Alice.

While it gets graphic at points, mostly it is just a lot of scantily clad women and panty shots.

Regardless, this is one of those anime OVAs you watch just because it is kind of weird in the best way.

G-Taste

• Yuri
• OVA
• 7 Episodes, 24 minutes per episode

As I said above, OVA are where the steamy yuri entries often dwell. However, even the steamy ones have an “okay if not ridiculous” plot. G-Taste is really just sex and fetish, so much so that I had to think, “is this too hentai to include?”

G-Taste features several different stories like one about an overly sensitive office worker who gets nothing done, or one about a maid and her domineering boss, or the the one about the really horny teacher.

All of them are yuri, and all of them are terribly boring if you are looking for plot.

Girl’s Love Movies

Woe is you, person looking looking for yuri anime movies. There is pretty slim pickings. Girl’s love is always the shunned side of the two genres detailing same-sex relationships in anime…

Fragtime

• Shoujo Ai
• Movie
• 60 Minutes

Fragtime tells the story of a girl who can stop time for three minutes and usually uses it to leave uncomfortable social situations. One day while doing that, she meets a classmate who can still move around in that temporal space like her.

Now, this is where you tell a sweet girl’s love story about two girls bonding and deepening their feelings. Fragtime has that, but it is often really dragged down by fan service.

It’s not the super ecchi fan service you might think, but it distracts from the sweet story it is trying to tell.

Happy-Go-Lucky Days

• Shoujo Ai
• Movie
• 54 Minutes

Happy-Go-Lucky Days is a movie that tells three love stories. One is girl’s love, one is boy’s love, and the two-parter at the end is a heterosexual romance.

The girl’s love story focuses on two girls who had dated the same girl, being invited out by their ex-girlfriend who is marrying a man. They meet and end up developing feelings for each other.

This is one of those movies that invites you to make a lot of your own speculation. The stories often end up unsatisfying in order to be ponderous.

Do you have more good yuri or shoujo ai anime that fans would enjoy? Let them know in the comments section below.