If you use anime in order to set the standard for your real life relationships, you are going to be disappointed at the best of times and horribly abused at worst. Unlike many television shows that occasionally show relationships that are at least somewhat normal, anime tends to take romance to the extremes. Either it is so unrealistically perfect that every one of your significant others will never live up to your standards or it is so bad that you will think abuse is somehow normal.
Why can’t anime just show a normal, healthy relationship?
The same reason your friends don’t want to take basket-weaving with you. It is so damn boring to watch. Romance anime junkies want drama, and nothing breeds more drama than bad relationships. And boy, are there plenty of bad relationships to be found throughout anime.
Most Disturbing Anime Relationships
Mischievous Kiss
Mischievous Kiss features a bad romance that goes both ways. You have Kotoko, who after getting flat out rejected during her confession of love by her crush, proceeds to still stalk and hold a major obsession over him. Her crush, Naoki, is no prince either. If he isn’t being completely cold to her, he is stringing his obsessive stalker along.
Through circumstance, they end up living together and feelings begin to develop, but even after they start dating, things get worse.
Noaki ends up getting jealous and possessive even though he still, for the most part, continues his cold attitude. Kotoko, on the other hand, starts to come into her own, but continues to try and please a man that is so constantly hot and cold to her.
Midori Days
What isn’t wrong about falling in love with your right hand? I guess it is somehow less wrong when that hand turns out to be a girl like in Midori Days. Still, what is more unhealthy than developing feelings for a girl that is trapped as your hand?
It is not like she can get away. While Midori does eventually get unhanded and put back in her body, she has no memory of her time spent with Seiji.
This makes the fact that after a few days of being stalked by a guy she doesn’t remember even more strange when she suddenly admits that she loves him.
Nana
Nana is the go-to anime for romance fans that like a ton of drama. However, while Nana Osaki is actually relatively well-adjusted in the realms of love, Nana Komatsu is a train wreck.
Throughout the series she not only goes through multiple bad relationships, but one of her key character traits is falling in love with someone at first sight.
“Falling in love” with someone within moments of meeting them is not love, it is infatuation, and something that doesn’t pan out for Hachi very well.
My Little Monster
The relationship in My Little Monster between Shizuku and Haru is akin to two ships passing on the water. Very briefly are they aligned, but for the most part, they spend their time on two opposite sides in terms of feelings.
At first, Haru likes Shizuku, and then her snippiness pushes him away. Shizuku then realizes that she actually likes Haru, and that is how the rest of the series goes. Basically their whole relationship becomes one trying to push the other away.
Toradora
As cute as Toradora is, you can’t deny that there are a few things wrong with the relationship between Taiga and Ryuuji, at least at first. Ryuuji is fine, but it is Taiga that is the problem. Her verbal and physical abuse tends to go too far and happens too often.
But that’s just tsunderes, right?
A tsundere outside of anime is almost always a recipe for domestic abuse. The good news is that Taiga does seem to come to terms with her temper by the end.
Hana Yori Dango
Hana Yori Dango’s popularity is baffling considering how terrible the actual relationship is. It is the poster child for the (thankfully dying out) trope that rich men can basically do whatever to you and you’ll love them all the same. T
hroughout the series, Domyoji continues to try to dominate Makino either physically or through his money. He blackmails her family, kidnaps her, and basically tries to buy her love.
And it works!
They fall in love. Sure, she loves him for him, but you can’t argue that she isn’t at least a little pleased by the money too? What’s worse is that without the money, Domyoji is actually a pretty unlikable sort of person.
Class President is a Maid
While the relationship between Usui and Misaki has a lot of swoon-worthy moments, it basically began as some pretty hardcore stalking.
His initial behavior is pretty much harassment, which continues on through the relationship. Do girls like a relationship with a lot of challenges to keep things interesting? Because that is pretty much what his personality offers.
Nothing says love like telling someone to go away only to have them become more aggressive in their attentions.
School Days
Ah, School Days. There is no relationship in School Days that even comes close to being normal because it is a horror parody on school romance anime. Makoto is a serious man-slut who not only cheats on Kotonoha constantly, but cheats on her with the girl that actually encouraged them to date.
While Makoto tries and fails to break up with Kotonoha, her feelings become even more desperate to keep him, her desperation eventually turning into obsession.
However, during this whole love triangle, Makoto also ends up kissing and having sex with several other girls. So naturally, it all ends with tears and severed heads, as you’d expect from a stint of serial cheating.
Wolf Girl and Black Prince
Wolf Girl and Black Prince begins with Erika lying to her friends about who she is dating in order to impress them. When asked to prove it, she ends up snapping a picture of a random guy, only to have them recognize him.
Naturally, to protect herself from embarrassment, Erika asks the guy, Kyouya, to pretend to be her boyfriend. Unlike any actual nice person, he agrees, but only if she agrees to become his “dog”.
That is not how fairy tale, or even mundanely average, relationships should start. Eventually the two fall in love, but not really because Kyouya changes, it is more because Erika develops a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome in the form of “understanding him better” because he is so “wounded.”
Kodomo No Jikan
The entire plot of Kodomo no Jikan surrounds Rin, a 3rd grade girl, and her tireless efforts to seduce Daisuke, her 25-year-old teacher.
There is little more to say as to why this wildly inappropriate relationship is unhealthy.
Of course, there is also the added drama in the series where Rin’s cousin, who raises her, gets jealous of Daisuke because he wants to sleep with Rin too. So, there’s that.
B Gata H Kei
Where to even start? Yamada wants to have casual sex with 100 different men while she is in high school, but first she must lose her virginity. Being self conscious about her lady bits, she chooses Kosuda to be her first, a complete nerd.
However, Yamada is inept at seduction and Kosuda is an actual honestly nice guy. Yes, the anime is full of laughs, but they end up together in the end.
Does this mean Yamada will give up her slutty quest? Should Kosuda be concerned that he was literally a stepping stone? We will likely never know, but it doesn’t make for a strong foundation for a relationship.
Pet Girl of Sakura Hall
Sorata likes to take in abandoned and helpless things, like his growing collection of cats. Mashiro is literally barely able to take care of herself. Eventually they begin to have feelings for each other, feelings that the infantile Mashiro barely understands.
When you are responsible for taking care of a girl “like she was a pet” (which is the plot of the series), it is not healthy. I think at one point he even bathes her, if I recall.
Dragonball Z
People don’t watch Dragonball Z for the romance, but if you examine the romantic relationships within, they are really kind of disturbing.
First, you have Chichi that basically stalked Goku and forced him to marry her, only for her husband to die for great lengths of time, possibly to escape her long-term abuse (but mostly to save the world).
Next, you have Vegeta and Bulma, which the anime neglects to address how they even got together during a time skip, but if you believe the doujinshi, it is very rape-y. While both Bulma and Vegeta have strong personalities, the amount of yelling they do in their relationship is not healthy. Vegeta also beats his son, so there’s that. Who knows who else he his beating, but one thing is for sure, it is definitely not Goku.
Finally, there is Krillin and Android 18, a couple that yet again fits with the trend of a strong woman completely dominating a man. For the first years of their marriage, it is clear that she is not fond of living with Roshi and she is never seen showing Krillin much affection. However, because she has literally nothing to go back to or somehow feels indebted to him, she stays and verbally berates her husband.
Future Diary
As Future Diary is an anime about a killing game, you can expect it to be a bit messed up. You probably didn’t expect it’s messed up romance, though.
Having a partner that is willing to kill for you is one thing. Having a partner that does kill for you and literally feels nothing about the act is a completely different thing.
Whether it is killing your enemies or killing your friends because they might take him away from her, the blossoming relationship displayed in Future Diary is one of the most disturbing in anime.
Kiss x Sis
Unlike other series like Myself;Yourself or Oreimo where romantic feelings between siblings remain in the realms of the less creepy “Implied Only,” Kiss x Sis takes it to the next level. However, the relationship between Keita and his older twin sisters is somewhat better as they are not related by blood, but no less unhealthy.
Not only is it really quite strange to fall in love with someone you have treated as a sibling, but two women vying for one man will never end well. Twins may be the dream, but polyamory typically ends in hurt feelings.
Junjo Romantica
Junjo Romantica tells the tale of a budding romance between young college student Masaki Takahashi and his brother’s erotica author friend, Akihiko Usami, whom he moves in with. The show also goes on to tell the side story romances of two other couples, but it is the main one that is the problem.
Let’s be perfectly clear here first, though. Their relationship isn’t unhealthy because they are two men, but because Akihiko is basically a molester.
Upon first moving in, Masaki is quite noticeably uncomfortable, not just because Akihiko writes erotica about homosexual relationships, but because he is very touchy.
As things go on, his unwanted touching keeps getting rejected, but gets worse until the point that it is basically molestation. Even though Masaki initially tells him to stop, Akihiko also starts in with the rape-y phrases like “You know you like it”.
Super Lovers
Again, another anime series featuring a relationship with two men, but that’s not what makes it unhealthy.
Super Lovers tells the love story between Haru and his much younger adoptive brother, Ren. The love that grows between them is mutual, but at no point is Ren, a previously abused child and one not even out of school, an appropriate partner for a man some 10 years his senior.
It would be better if Haru were somehow reluctant to the relationship, but he initiates it with his downright predatory behavior.
This disturbing relationship, much like the one in Junjo Romoantica, is pretty much par for the course in the shounen ai/yaoi genre though. The genre loves its manipulative, dominating, or older/younger tropes and they pretty much stick to their guns.
Flowers of Evil
Flowers of Evil is a masterpiece of highlighting the ugliness in every human. The main character gets caught with the gym cloths of the girl that he has a crush on by another unpopular girl. He ends up forming a “contract” (dating, essentially) with her via blackmail. However, he also starts dating the girl whose gym clothes he stole as well.
It ends up a love triangle where each option is just as crazy and problematic in different ways. It is not even dating two girls that is the problem with the relationship, both girls are horribly toxic as well.
Domestic Girlfriend
Domestic Girlfriend is an absolute dumpster fire romantically, but is it such glorious trash to watch. The entire plot surrounds the world’s most average guy who is in love with his female teacher. Rejected because she doesn’t date her students, he ends up sleeping with a random high school girl.
When he goes home, he finds that his parent has remarried and his new stepsisters as both the high school girl he slept with and his teacher.
Both girls, of course, have feelings for him. To his credit, he maintains his feelings for his teacher, but he doesn’t exactly deny his similarly aged stepsister when she makes moves on him.
Rumbling Hearts
Rumbling Hearts is a notorious melodrama romance anime filled with comas and love triangles. Essentially, a guy dates a girl who falls into a coma. While she is comatose, he starts dating her friend. Of course she wakes up eventually, and his decision is to continue to date both girls.
Girlfriend, Girlfriend
Girlfriend, Girlfriend is not the first anime about two-timing with multiple girls, but it is the latest, and honestly kind of the most insulting.
Yes, yes, Girlfriend, Girlfriend is just funny ecchi comedy, but someone somewhere will think this is how girls should act, and that person will swell the incel ranks.
Regardless, the premise of Girlfriend, Girlfriend is that the main character starts dating his long-time crush and childhood friend. He then gets confessed to by a different cute girl who materialized out of the ether. Instead of just turning her down, he proposes that he dates both.
They also immediately move in together, all three of them. The childhood friend is understandably upset, but the main character and his new side bitch manage to convince her that she’s wrong to be upset.
At least the other two-timing anime have the decency to make their anime into dramas rather than let it remain an ecchi romantic comedy.
Scum’s Wish
Scum’s Wish, in short, is about two people who love other people that they cannot be with for one reason or another. As such, they find solace in each other’s bodies.
That, in itself, isn’t the problematic part. It is the games they play with each other and the other people they like/who like them. Scum’s Wish is filled with the most toxic people essentially terrorizing each other romantically.
Loveless
Hey, look! Another yaoi!
Hey… Look… It’s about a grown man and a straight-up little boy.
This time he’s a cat boy, so it’s fine, though, right? On top of that, the love affair itself in Loveless is on the sado-masochistic side which would be bad if both parties were of age and one side was similarly not into it.
NTR: Netsuzou Trap
The girl’s love genre of yuri is not immune to disturbing relationships, but usually they have other sort of problems. The fun thing about this series is it managed to appeal to a small sect of people while generally pushing away both the female and male fans that usually enjoy yuri.
For those not in the know, “NTR” is used in the lewder circles of anime and manga to describe a cuckold relationship in which one participant is unwilling at first until they are essentially banged until they like it.
As such, the series focuses on two girls that are friends who recently each started dating two different boys. Over the course of the series, one girl starts seducing the other girl while still dating both boys.
Love and Lies
The premise of Love and Lies is built around the concept in the world that when you reach a certain age, you are assigned a marriage partner. The main character confessed his love to a crush before receiving his arranged marriage notification. His to-be wife insists he continue dating this girl so she can learn what love is.
Any knowledge of anime will tell you that this is going in a direction filled with hurt feelings.
Happy Sugar Life
This anime series is built on a foundation of problematic relationships and has them all over the place.
Essentially, it is a “love” story about a girl who develops an obsession with a child. She kidnaps the little girl and keeps her locked in her apartment, carrying on an obsessive affair with her and trying to keep it a secret.
It is obsession taken to every disturbing extreme, including eventual murder. If disturbing relationships are kind of your thing, this anime is a trip.
Eromanga-Sensei
Eromanga Sensei tells the story of a stepbrother who is in love with and the sole caretaker of his shut-in little stepsister after their parent’s death. The whole step-sibling thing is bad. The fact that she is still pretty young is also bad.
However, the fact that he is the only person that takes care of her is by far the most problematic part. She doesn’t go out, and if the anime wanted to, this could have easily turned into a horror story akin to Happy Sugar Life.
Agree? Disagree? Are there other really unhealthy relationships that we have missed? Let fans know in the comments section below.
Yeah I totally agree with these anime the things which attracts is hs love story
Yeah, these are bad. Why do people ship these again? But there’s also Sakura and Sasuke. Sasuke tried to kill Sakura multiple times and hated her until the end of the series, when he suddenly loved Sakura and had a child with her, only to leave Sakura alone most of the time to care for the child. The relationship was extremely forced. Sakura also had Stockholm Syndrome. That’s the only way to describe why she loves Sasuke.
i think you guys left out Baka and Test, there are plenty of abusive relationships in that series,
some of the things are not good but some are good
I dont know how the ship from maid latte could go wrong because he is a perv but also really nice….
Don’t forget Juvia and Grey from Fairy Tail. That relationship is just….wrong on sooo many levels
I think a lot of these opinions come from the idea that anime is any bit normal of any scenario in general- it’s quite rare in any anime you’ll see that “normal” things will occur.
I always see anime as “how it is in another world, with different rules and structures” if you take our rules and apply it to their world it makes things creepy as heck, but a lot of the anime are pretty soft/never really pushing the boundary to make things truly as creepy as you and some others may feel.
Personally I don’t see how you can enjoy any anime if you pushed the rules of reality onto them, it just doesn’t work. Imagine trying to even push reality onto Dragon Ball Z for instance; there’s so many things that are physically and more or less impossible in that show. Such as flying, energy blasts, etc.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong with what you personally believe/see as unhealthy relationships if they were to happen in real life, but these relationships are doubtful to happen in real life, and if you take the anime with more than a grain of salt in most situations you’re going to be left disappointed anyways.
nice
LOL some of these couples aren’t disturbing at all. Have you even watched the Shounen Ai ones? I have never heard a single person complain about that. You seem very inexperienced and this article is bull. I agree with some of these anime being disturbing like School Days for example. My Little Monster, Wolf Girl and Black Prince, Junjou Romantica, Class President is a Maid, Hana Yori Dango, and Super Lovers have no problem whatsoever. I don’t know if you are intelligent enough to know this, but there are many masochists in real life that enjoy guys and girls that are, you know, a freaking sadist. Most of the people in the comment section haven’t even watched most of these anime, only to have them ruined by your stupidity. If you examine real life relationships, I have seen countless ones that are worse than most of the ones listed here. Sorry but if you want to find something “normal” in anime, just give up.
THANKS!
I knew Goku and Chi Chi in dragon ball were incompatible because of how Chi Chi treats Goku badly and to find true love is not to force anyone into a relationship and it takes time to see if that person is compatible with you for example their zodiac and how they treat their partner to see if it toxic but this relationship is a big no.
One of the relationships that comes to mind is Riki and Iason from Ai no Kusabi. It handles some deep topics concerning pride, intimacy, and discovering love. But, it is handled in a terrifying way. Though, I do think that it is intentionally written like this. But, anyway. Iason is the highest tier, most elite man in his cyberpunk universe and he owns the
mongrel” black-haired Riki as his pet. Now, keeping people as pets is part of the lore of the series, but apparently he takes to a whole other level. It’s basically soft porn though… so I guess relationships tend to be odd in those sometimes.
The other relationship that I think is really, really messed up is in Aki Sora, where Aki and her little brother Sora are in love and form a sexual relationship. I have read that series because I really did find the idea fascinating rather than arousing I guess. But in the manga, Sora is sleeping with many partners at the time. And his beloved sister has no idea. Their unhealthy relationship is double-layered dysfunctional. It actually is deeply concerning how he lives his life in the manga, almost like he has a sex addiction, though at the same time, rarely is any of it consensual.
And I know this pairing does not end up together, but I’d just like to say that Toji and Momo from Peach Girl are NOT a healthy pairing. His level of violence towards others and the fact that he forces himself on her near the end is very disturbing. But her relationship with Kairi is really, really messed up. I wrote a huge essay on this once, haha. Her sweet, albeit obsessive and sleazy, boyfriend Kairi openly tells her that an older woman (his tutor) made sexual advances on him when he was a teenager and that he was even more betrayed when this woman also slept with his older brother. He describes being used sexually by women. He also says that he tried to kill himself, which he does again in the series. She barely bats an eye but instead willfully hangs out with his creepy brother to make him mad and ignores the inner turmoil he experiences. It really grosses me out. And they end up together! Kairi is by no means perfect and in fact has a lot of flaws, but he needs a lot of help too. But, she offers none of that to him .
yeah you forgot one….
mikan and junko from danganronpa….
surely my little monster is the fucking rape anime to rape her by haru!! HARU: i am disgraced for her to threaten to her. (haru taichi ttes series)