Behold the territorial and aggressive tsundere anime girl. She pretends to be a solitary thing, keeping would-be companionship at bay with a harsh word and a firm fist, but frequent attempts at contact are rewarded with flushed cheeks and compliments that get progressively less backhanded.
While tsunderes are a little less popular than the used to be, tsundere and romance will always go together like wine and cheese. In fact, you could say that tsundere romance anime is often the easiest to make since you can build a whole show around a girl’s complicated defrosting heart with not extra plot necessary.
If you like watching girls whose love language is violence fall in love, then you better go check out these great tsundere romance anime recommendations.
Tsundere Romance Anime
Toradora
When you think of tsunderes in love, you think of Toradora. Taiga is so infamous as a tsundere that it has cemented Toradora’s spot as the quintessential tsundere romance anime.
Toradora is all about people who aren’t quite what their appearances make them seem. You have a boy with a thuggish face who actually has all the menace of a housewife and a girl who looks sweet like an angel, but has the temper of a pissed off tiger.
These two come together in a strange alliance to help their respective crushes notice them, but when you spend enough time together, new feelings tend to grow.
Class President is a Maid
If there is any series that could rival Toradora as a quintessential tusndere romance, it would be Class President is a Maid.
This straightforward romance anime features a no-nonsense female student council president at what is recently a mixed co-ed school. She dominates the boys at school, but works in a girly maid cafe after school to support her family in secret. One charmingly chevalier boy discovers her secret and makes that maid cafe is new favorite hang out as he enjoys toying with his easily enraged new tsundere friend.
Please Don’t Bully Me, Miss Nagatoro
The age of the violent tsundere is dusking, but Nagatoro provides a gasping last breath, not in the form of violence, but in the form of near-criminal bullying.
Please Don’t Bully Me, Miss Nagatoro is part of a brief phenomenon of teasing romances where a main character was sort of bullied and messed with by someone who clearly likes them romantically. That’s pretty much the plot of Nagatoro as well.
She finds a guy that likes drawing manga in the library and, after what started with just messing with him for fun, grows real feelings. While Nagatoro’s behavior is questionable at first, this series does temper itself as it goes on into a quite nice romance with a maturing tsundere.
The Dreaming Boy is a Realist
One does not simply just give up on a tsundere. You have to keep wearing down the protective spicy shell in order to get to the sweet center. However, The Dreaming Boy is a Realist is about a boy who quits a tsundere right before he got to the gooey center.
The whole plot of giving up on a tsundere is an interesting take on tsundere romance, but The Dreaming Boy is a Realist does tend to get caught up in harem baiting for too long. Regardless, stick with it long enough and you are rewarded with seeing a main character land a tsundere who was pretty clearly in love with him the whole time.
Nisekoi
Nisekoi shook up the harem genre by creating a love triangle between a boy, a dandere, and a tsundere. What really threw everyone for a loop was that it spent some arcs making the dandere seem like the main girl, but would subtly shifty in the next arc to making the tsundere seem like the main girl. To keep a harem audience guessing the main love interest is an art form, and Nisekoi perfected it.
Like any romance anime with a love triangle, the plot in Nisekoi is sparse. It follows an heir-apparent to a yakuza family being forced into an arranged relationship with the daughter of a rival gang. They pretend to be in a relationship to keep the peace, but he really has feelings for a mystery girl he met as a child and gave a key to the locket her wears around his neck. Get ready, because there are a lot of girls with random keys in this city.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War
It is crazy how the anime/manga/light novel industries never thought to play with the concept before, but Kaguya-sama: Love is War bravely asks the question – What happens when both parties are the tsundere in a romance?
Kaguya-sama: Love is War takes place at an elite school for elite people. At the pinnacle are the student council president and his vice president. Everyone thinks these two flawless people are dating, but what they don’t know is that there is a war in the student council room. Both Kaguya and Miyuki view the confession of love akin to an admittance of weakness. Therefore, even if they do each have feelings for the other, their goal is to get the other person to admit them first.
Love Hina
While a long-beloved harem anime, there was never any question of who the main girl was in Love Hina. Naru captured the attention and heart of Keitaro with a fist that could send him flying across the city, and the possibility that she was the girl he made a promise to as a child.
Love Hina follows Keitaro, a guy still trying to pass his college exams with hopes to get into Tokyo University in order to keep a childhood promise he made to a girl he can’t remember. In an effort to keep trying, he takes up a job as manager of his grandmother’s hot springs inn only to discover that it has been transformed into an all-girls’ dorm.
Inuyasha
While most tsundere romance anime follows a romance between a guy and a female tsundere, there are a few that put the male love interest in the tsundere slot. Inuyasha is easily the most popular of them all.
In this long-beloved action romance, a modern Japanese girl falls down a well at her home and ends up in Feudal Japan, which is also overrun with demons. She discovers she is a reincarnated priestess who has just brought a powerful jewel back into existence. After accidentally freeing a half-demon boy who shatters the jewel, they are forced together on a quest to go gather the powerful shards.
While the female main character is as normal as any school girl, her half-demon companion and imminent love interest has all the charm and grump that comes from being a tsundere with a wounded heart and deep trust issues.
Kamisama Kiss
Like Inuyasha, Kamisama Kiss is a romance where the man is definitely the tsundere compared to the friendlier, more cheerful heroine. Unlike Inuyasha, Kamisama Kiss is a lot more dedicated to romance than it is action.
This series follows a recently homeless girl who ends up staying at a shrine and becoming the temporary land god. She is assisted in her new duties by the grumpy kitsune that lives at the shrine as her familiar. While things start of typically contentious, their relationship definitely warms up over time.
Bakemonogatari
While Bakemonogatari hides in in a sea of dense dialogue and surreal – occasionally bizarre – imagery, stripped down to the bare bones, Bakemonogatari was always just a supernatural harem romance.
While Araragi gets pulled into the various supernatural problems of many girls in the series, his love interest becomes the girl that kicks everything off. Hitagi Senjougahara pulls him into her supernatural curse and after helping her break it, a relationship forms and deepens – despite her occasionally coming after his life with office supplies in brief, yet torrential rages.
Love of Kill
While Love of Kill is essentially an action romance between two assassins, they definitely don’t get as dramatic with it as you would have thought. In fact, they make being an assassin/contract mercenary look practically day-to-day with their presentation.
However, this is a tsundere romance where the tsundere is actively disinterested until worn down by very persistent love, which is a nice way of saying he stalked her until she started to like it.
Although not the most healthy start to a relationship, little can be wholesome in a romance between two killers – especially when they’ve mysteriously met before.
My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex
While essentially saying the same thing, I suppose My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex does somehow sound less dirty than the more concise My Stepsister is My Ex.
Regardless, true to light novel-adapted form, the plot of this romance is in the title. He has a new stepmother and stepsister, and the stepsister is his ex-girlfriend from middle school. You can also probably easily leap to the fact that they both still clearly have feelings for each other. Surprisingly, they are both a little tsundere about admitting those feelings to each other as well.
Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte
Being sent into an otome game and ending up a villainess is so hot right now. However, while this absurdly long-titled series is about a villainess in an otome game, the actual anime is about the players being able to communicate with a prince and informing him what a tsundere is and why it is cute.
Essentially, the anime is about playing a dating sim, but as a wing man rather than controlling a main character.
Alongside being an interesting concept in general, Endo and Kobayashi Live does provide all the tsundere cuteness you can possibly stomach.
Chivalry of a Failed Knight
Chivalry of a Failed Knight is what I would call a “just fine” action romance set in a magic school. It is the sort of action anime you watch, enjoy, and never really think about again because it blends into the rest of them.
However, one way Chivalry of a Failed Knight dares to be different is to be a magic school action romance anime with – not a harem – but one main romance with a tsundere that actually progresses.
If you are sick of a tsundere freezing out feelings for 3/4ths of a series, Chivalry of a Failed Knight provides a satisfying little romance with a big dose of flashy magic action.
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers turned a few heads with its thought-provoking title and turned even more heads with its premise of a school mandating marriage practice between students.
The series follows a guy in love with a girl, and of course he is instead paired up with a different girl for marriage practice. While he and this aggressive popular gyaru-form of tsundere eventually decide to pretend to be the perfect married couple so they can get an opportunity to switch to their preferred partners, it turns out pretending to be in love can spawn real feelings.
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers is a love triangle romance anime where the main character is caught between a rock and a hard place – or, more accurately, a tsundere and a dandere place.
The Familiar of Zero
The Familiar of Zero is an isekai back before the days when isekai was prevalent enough to be its own genre. Back then, we just called shows like The Familiar of Zero good old action romance anime, and like any good action romance anime, it had a tsundere there to withhold their feelings and prolong romantic tension for the whole adventure.
The Familiar of Zero follows Louise, a student at a magic school with a poor reputation for messing up most spells. When she goes to summon a familiar, true to form, she messes it up and summons what appears to be an average Japanese teen boy. However, while he bears the mark of a legendarily powerful familiar and helps Louise as much as he can, she still likes to keep his face between the heel of her shoe and the ground.
Do you have more romance anime about the love lives of tsunderes? Let fans know in the comments section below.
