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thomasxtoni · 4 years

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Romance Anime recs (Pt. 1)

(This is totally just my opinion on things, please don’t get offended if I say anything ‘bad’ about something you like, I don’t mean any harm!!)

I. Code: Realize ~ Guardians of Rebirth ~

C:R is an anime based off of an Otome game. It’s a steam-punk, romance/comedy/action/drama series with one season that consists of 12 episodes and 1 OVA.

The show is alright in appearance, the animation is sloppy and lazy during a lot of scenes, but it’s not too bad to be not bearable. The voice acting is actually quite good, definitely better than the animation. The storyline is most-definitely better than both of those combined.

Warnings - fighting/blood/violence/talk of death/mentions of suicide/light gore.

There is no manga for Code: Realize, but there is an Otome game by the same name as well as one sequel game and another on the way. It’s available for PS Vita and PS4.

The show is about a girl by the name of Cardia Beckford and it is set in the mid 1800’s in a steam-punk reality. Cardia is a girl who doesn’t have a heart and instead has poisonous gems embedded in her chest called the ‘Horlogium’, which also makes her entire being other than her hair poisonous that will melt anything that it comes in contact with, forcing her to use only things that are poison proofed. In comes the dashing gentleman theif, Arsène Lupin that steals her from the royal guard and brings her to live with him and three other men, Impey Barbicane - the genius engineer, Victor Frankenstein - the wanted, former royal alchemist and Saint-Germain - the rich French man shrouded in mystery. Along the way they are joined by Abraham Van Helsing - the war hero and Delacroix II. This band of criminals start out on a mission to save Cardia and stop London from being destroyed by terrorists that are far too close to the poisonous girl, Cardia.

This is a fantastic show and I would recommend it a million and one times! I would watch the anime before playing the game also. The show has elements from each route in the game as well as the true ending. It’s totally worth watching it! (I binged the whole thing in one night and cried over it at like 1am)

Also, most of the characters (other than Cardia, Finis and Issac) are people from historic books!!

II. Amnesia

This is one hell of a confusing anime! It’s a romance/thriller/drama/fantasy series with only one season with 12 episodes and 1 OVA.

The show is like C:R with the somewhat poor animation style at times. It’s definitely bearable, but obviously half-assed in some scenes. The voice acting is fantastic, as most shows on this list will be.

Warnings - abuse/violence/blood/death/multiple personalities/mild gore??

There is a manga, but it’s kind of lost in the abyss and only one English version can be found online of a random chapter in the middle of the series. At this time, there is no known English version of the manga.

The show is based on the Otome game, Amnesia: Memories that has 3 sequels, only one of which has been translated so far. The game is available for PC through Steam as well as PS4 and PS Vita.

The show is centered around an unnamed girl that is called Heroine (the game never named her, so neither did the anime). She collapses during her shift at her work in a maid/butler café and when she wakes a spirit by the name of Orion greets her. She’s the only one able to communicate with him and she also finds that she has no memories. She is picked up by two of her friends that are later revealed to be Shin and Toma, childhood friends of hers. That’s all that can be said without spoiling too much, other than there are 5 boys that you will get to know through the show, there’s Shin and Toma as well as Ikki, Kent and Ukyo.

I highly recommend the show, but you have to watch the series fully through as it is incredibly confusing and doesn’t make any sense until the very end. Most people give up on it without even thinking about it because it’s too confusing. The point of the show is for you to be as confused as the MC.

If you’re up for some mind fuckary, I highly recommend the show as well as the game!

III. Maid-Sama

This is a typical romance anime as well as a drama/shoujo/slice-of-life series that has sadly, only one season with 25 episodes in total.

It is a well animated show, they do have their moments where it’s obvious they weren’t really into it while drawing a scene. The voice acting is very well done and the emotion in the voices is great!

Warnings - boys kissing (in one ep)

The manga is complete and has 18 volumes!

The show is about the female class president, Misaki Ayuzawa of a former all-boys school, Seka high school who hates men. Her father walked out on the family and left them with mountains of debt and no money, fueling her hatred and turning her into what most of the boys saw as a monster. Her least favorite boy happened to be Takumi Usui, the most popular guy in the school who had a habit of breaking girls hearts. When Usui accidentally happens upon her as she takes out the trash at her job at a maid café, her hatred of him only deepens. From then on, he seems to be everywhere she is at just the right moment and he stops into the café just about every day to see her as well, obviously developing feelings for her along the way. The story is of them getting closer and Usui showing her that not every guy in the world sucks like her father.

This is definitely a show for people who like headstrong women that can stand up for themselves and aren’t some damsel in distress. I personally hate shows with intense feminism in them, but this has the perfect balance of feminism that isn’t obnoxious of over the top. I also recommend reading the manga after finishing the anime because the story gets better! And maybe a bit more crazy haha.

IV. Kamisama Hajimemashita

(Also called Kamisama Kiss)

Kamisama is a strange type of romance anime where it never really gets to the point of the romance. It’s mostly a fantasy/drama/comedy series with two seasons and 25 episodes with 3 OVAs.

The animation is quite good, but medium quality, which is understandable as it is from 2012. The voice actors in the show were perfectly chosen and the dub has my personal favorite voice actor for the main character!

The manga is fully complete as of last October! It has 25 Volumes and it may have more in the future just from how the author left off.

The show is about a human girl by the name of Nanami Momozono who’s mother passed away when she was a child and her father disappeared into the night, leaving her homeless with not even a penny to her name. It starts with her being evicted and ending up in a park later that evening, only to find a man in a tree crying for help as a dog barked at him from the ground below. Once he is safe after Nanami saves him, they sit together and talk on a park bench and she tells her story of how she is now homeless, only for the man to understand her troubles, telling her he’s running away from home and a person named Tomoe was angry with him and offers her his home. She accepts and he sends her off with a kiss on the forehead. When she reaches the place the man had told her about, she finds that it is a shrine and that this ‘Tomoe’ was the land-god Mikage’s former familiar. She is also shocked to find that she was given the mark of a land-god, leaving her in charge of the shrine and Tomoe. The story is of her adapting to the life of a god while balancing school and her massive feelings for the Fox-Yokai, Tomoe who happens to be her familiar.

I’ve literally watched this anime so many times I could recite every line of every episode to you a million times over. It’s definitely worth watching, though it is totally incomplete and they left off just before it all got good! I highly recommend reading the manga after watching the show because it’s missing all the good stuff!!! Still a great show though!

V. Kakuriyo - Bed and Breakfast for Spirits

This is a new anime from just this year! It’s a romance/drama/comedy/slice-of-life series with one season so far and 26 episodes. It is most likely going to get a second season with how the first ended.

The animation is okay, not the best I’ve seen but better than some others. The details are actually quite nice as well. The voice acting is definitely great and the people they chose were perfect for the characters.

Warnings - ?? Possibly none ??

There is an ongoing manga series for the show, but it has yet to be translated, the first volume is set to release February 9th of 2019!

This show is about Aoi Tsubaki, the granddaughter of a highly respected man in the hidden realm who had an immense amount of spiritual power and was able to pass between the world of the yokai and the regular world. Aoi also had the same gift as her grandfather and was able to see and speak to ayakashi from the hidden realm. After he dies, she meets a strange yokai and gives him her lunch, only to be kidnapped and taken to the hidden realm to become the yokai’s bride, who just so happened to be the ‘ogre god’ Ōdanna, the master of a very important bed and breakfast for Spirits called Tinjin Ya. She is told that she was her grandfather’s collateral in his very large debt to Tenjin Ya and she shall marry the ogre god to repay that debt. Aoi refuses and decides to use her incredible cooking skills to repay the debt herself. The story develops and shows her cooking skills and her finding out more about her past, all while Ōdanna hopelessly persists in making her his bride as he falls in love with her the more he sees of her, as she unknowingly is falling for him as well.

This is a show that I would recommend to any fan of romance animes. It’s a wonderful story and it shows a girl who decides her own fate and won’t let anybody tell her what to do, being independent and changing everybody’s views on humans and women in general.

VI. Inu x Boku SS

Inu x Boku has a very misleading title (if you find it in English). It is an action/romance/fantasy series with one season and 12 episodes with 1 OVA. It’s very unlikely that it will be continued.

The quality is very poor and the animation is, at times, bad. I only watched the dubbed version and the voices were well done, but the background music was far too high most times and you could barely hear the characters talking and they also didn’t bother to sync the audio with the mouths.

Warnings - obsessive behaviors/light violence - not really anything major

The manga is completed (some sources say ongoing, but it hasn’t been updated since 2016) and goes by the name of Youko x Boku SS and it has 11 volumes. I’ve read some of it and have yet to finish, but it is incredibly confusing.

This show is about a girl from a wealthy family, Ririchiyo Shirakiin who happens to have the blood of a Yokai in her. It begins with her moving into a building called the ‘Ayakashi Manision’, which is for people like her with the blood of Yokai in them. All of these people are rich and quite famous, which leads them to have body guards with the same amount of Yokai power in them. Ririchiyo refuses the service and is planning to be alone to work on her poor attitude. She gets an SS (bodyguard) anyway, by the name of Sōshi Miketsukami, a nine-tailed fox yokai. He refuses to leave her side and tells her that his soul purpose in life is to serve her and if she won’t take him, she has to kill him. That is the beginning of Ririchiyo learning how to be kind to others and how she opens up and makes friends and slowly falls in love with her bodyguard, Miketsukami.

Though, I have said the anime is quite poor, the story definitely makes up for it. If you plan to read the manga I would suggest watching the show first as it’s much clearer than the manga. The plot is wonderful and it gives off a message that is quite powerful. I definitely recommend it.

VII. Recovery of an MMO Junkie

This anime is one with rave reviews. It is a fantasy/romance/slice-of-life/drama/comedy series with currently one season of 10 episodes with currently 1 OVA. There is a high possibility of a season two due to how wonderfully received the show is, the OVA also hinted at a second one as well!

The quality and animation of this show is fantastic, the amount of detail put into every frame is amazing. The voice acting is just as perfect as the rest of the show.

Warnings - None!!!

The manga is currently ongoing, but is on an indefinite hiatus due to the creators failing health. It currently has two volumes with a total of 18 chapters.

The show is about Moriko Morioka, a 30-year-old who recently quit her awful office job and used her savings to become a NEET, playing MMO games on her computer. When she goes to log onto an old favorite of hers, she finds that it had shut down, so she finds a game called Fruits De Mer and begins making her avatar, a boy with short, blue hair that she names Hayashi (and she instantly regrets it because she had a list of way ‘cooler’ names). After dying over and over again, she meets Lily, a beautiful girl with pink hair and clothes to match and she shows ‘Hayashi’ the way around the game. While the life she has in game progresses and she makes a group of friend and joins a team, her real life is flipped upside down when she is elbowed in the face and knocked out by handsome 28-year-old Yuta Sakurai.

This is one show that I can say is most definitely worth the watch, whether you like romance or not! Everything about this show is very well done, they tried incredibly hard and the more views and good ratings it gets, the more likely a season two is!

VIII. Ouran High School Host Club

(I know that almost everybody and their mom has already seen this one and even if you haven’t you’ve at least seen or heard the theme song in memes. But, imma do it anyway because I love it.)

Ouran is a pretty unique show, it’s a romance without any actual romance as well as a comedy/slice-of-life series with one season and 26 episodes.

The show is okay quality, but that’s understandable from a show from 2006, it’s definitely way better than mos of the animes that came out at the time quality wise. The animation is actually, surprisingly well done and isn’t sloppy in the slightest. The voice acting is incredibly well done as well.

Warnings - None!

There is a manga with 18 volumes that is fully completed. I personally don’t like the style of it, but the story is definitely worth reading for.

The end of the anime actually never happens in the manga, they just didn’t want to have to continue the show I assume.

The show is about Haruhi Fujioka, a girl that looks an awful lot like a boy, going to the expensive, rich-kid school, Ouran High, on a scholarship. In her search for a quiet room to study, she stumbles along Music Room number 3, finding a group of boys that call themselves a ‘host club’. They all immediately assume that she is in fact a he that likes boys. The head of the group, Tamaki Suoh, parades the room, not listening to her pleas to let her leave and that she entered the wrong room, resulting in her accidentally knocking over an 8 million yen vase. That mistake gets her pulled into the host club as their ‘dog’ at first, but when Tamaki notices her potential he pulls her along to become a host, all the while believing that she was a boy, while the other members picked up on it quite quickly. Once Tamaki realizes his mistake, it’s too late and Haruhi is now a new member of their club, and he’s head over heels for her all while she’s masquerading as a male and winning the hearts of their customers.

This is one show that is a must watch for any fan of comedy, romance or anything of the sort. If you do, by any chance, watch the anime, the manga is a must read to get to the good shit.

IX. Brothers Conflict

Okay, so this fucking anime is something that normally I would never recommend. It’s a romance anime with little to no actual romance in it, it also tries w a y too hard to be a drama/slice-of-life series when it’s really just a comedy. It has two seasons and only one can be found everywhere I look, I know there’s a second season because many websites say there are. The one that can be found has a total of 12 episodes and 3 OVAs.

This anime is probably the most atrocious one that I have ever laid my eyes on, 98% of it is this sloppy, disgusting mess and it’s absolutely horrendous to look at, it appears as though there was approximately zero effort put into the characters after the intro, other than the fucking talking squirrel that is in it -I’ll rant about that later in this post-. The voice overs are actually okay other than a few characters that have grown men and women using baby voices to make them sound young. The sub is worse than the dub for some of that -especially the fucking squirrel.

Warnings - Uhhh there’s a talking fucking squirrel that would make any person over the age of maybe 7.5 suicidal and there’s an abusive 15-year-old???

There is a collection of mangas for this god-forsaken show, but you’ll never find the full sets, only various, random chapters strewn about the internet, lord knows I’ve tried to find them.

Sadly, this is an otome game and it looks just about as horrendous as the show, I think it allows you to romance the youngest brother and the fucking rat. - I will update once I’ve had the… honor of playing this hell-game.

The show is about this girl named Ema (they literally never say her name once, the rat and another character call her fucking Chi?????) and she moves in with 11 of her 13 new step-brothers from the woman that her father is marrying. All but 2 of these brothers manage to fall in love with her and most act as if this is the first woman they’ve ever laid their eyes on. It’s about this girl living with these pussy starved men that want to bang her all the while her fucking talking squirrel that only she can hear tries to fight them off and she’s completely unaware of like 90% of them wanting her.

Before I finish off this review, let me just get into that fucking rat/squirrel/rodent fucker for just on hot second. Literally from the moment we are introduced to this fucking thing, I’m already shaking with unbridled rage. Every time I have ever spoke about this show, I have ended up trembling in pure fury as I scream about this stupid fucking squirrel. There is absolutely no need for it. It fucking can only be understood by the girl and like, all it ever does is fucking talk about hating men and about how he’s ready to kill everybody except one of the fucking brothers that doesn’t wanna fuck her. It’s pointless and fucking obnoxious and I hate this rat to the point where I am shaking as I type this and my blood is boiling with pure spite. The kicker is (SPOILERS) The fucking RAT becomes a sentient human being for a solid five minutes in one of the fucking episodes and CONFESSES IT’S FUCKING LOVE FOR HER.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Okay, so after reading this you’re probably wondering ‘why in the actual fuck is this on a recommendation list if you hate it so much?’ Well, let me just say, I’ve never watched something so aggravatingly hilarious in all of my days. If you’re up for some laughs, check out this show, if not, still check it out anyway and we can bond over our mutual hatred of it.

X. Toradora!

Okay, so I haven’t watched this one in a while, but I remember loving this show. It’s a heartfelt romance anime with lots of drama and I guess it could be considered a slice-of-life as well as a comedy. The series has one season with 25 episodes and 1 OVA.

The animation, from what I remember, was quite wonderful. It’s wasn’t sloppy and lazy, it looked like they took their time with it. The voice acting was also pretty great, the passion in the voices - the dub - was incredible for such a show.

Warnings - heartbreak, you’ll need tissues.

The manga is complete with three volumes, though from what I’ve read online, it’s not the true manga, it’s like a spin-off series. I’ve yet to read it, I’ll update when I do!

This is a heartfelt show about a girl named Taiga Aisaka, who is small and full of fury. She could take down anybody in her way, they called her the Palm-Top Tiger. When she decides to confess to her crush, Yusaka Kitamura, through a letter, she slips it in the wrong bag, of a boy by the name of Ryuji Takasu. He’s a kid that is feared throughout their town because of his intimidating looks and his late father’s awful image. That’s what begins their partnership. When she finds out she tries to sneak into his house and beat him up in the middle of the night, only to find that he never even read the letter and he feeds her. Ryuji agrees to help her out and get Kitamura to date her, he also offers to cook her meals since she’s living alone and is an utter disaster on her own. She also just so happens to live in the room of the building right next to Ryuji’s. This sparks a friendship that slowly, but surely blossoms into feelings that neither ever asked for.

This is something I recommend highly. The story is beautiful and funny, but the end of the show will definitely leave you in tears. I can tell you right now, to this day, I still wonder why they had to end it the way they did, it makes no sense and it kind of sucks. It’s worth a watch for sure, though!

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