Everyone loves a good dating sim. The games are such a fun way to participate in storytelling, and getting to choose who your character is going to end up with by manipulating the situation is such a good time.
Plus, there’s all the potential drama of things not going quite right or of attracting the wrong person on accident. But when we’re done with our game, where do we go next? We start to mine the vast amounts of romance anime available to us, of course! Here are our 10 favorite anime that give us those dating sim feelings.
10 NANA
NANA is one of the best selling shojo manga of all time, and it has definitely lived up to its hype over the years. The best thing about the series is that, while it’s a romance anime, both Nanas, but especially Nana Komatsu, have a million love interests. There are so many options for who you can root for her to end up with, and as far as we’re concerned, only one of them is the wrong choice (looking at you, Takumi). The series ends abruptly as the manga went on an indefinite hiatus in 2009, but it’s so much fun up to that point, you won’t even mind.
9 Golden Time
Golden Time is the story of a young man just starting law school, who meets a woman in his class that has what some might call serious issues.
The love story between these two characters, one of whom is pretty annoying for much of the series, is marred by misunderstandings, other love interests on both sides, and a plot twist that makes it unlike any other romance anime. It’s definitely a wild ride watching them try to figure things out, and there are a lot of times when we thought they might not make it.
8 Ouran High School Host Club
This is almost cheating because Ouran High School Host Club was actually made into a video game! While the game borrows from dating sim format and tropes, it’s ultimately an adventure game, just with a romantic bent. The story of the series is that a girl in high school stumbles upon a group of boys who are working as a host club for female students in an abandoned room. She’s mistaken for a boy and ultimately ends up working as a host there herself, amongst lots of cute boys worthy of romantic attention, which is just the thing for a dating sim.
7 Neighborhood Story
So this is our second entry based on a manga by Ai Yazawa, but romance manga is her bread and butter. Neighborhood Story follows a group of students attending a prestigious art school in Tokyo, where they can study anything from fashion to graphic design.
The story focuses on Mikako and her neighbor and childhood best friend (and love interest of course) Tsutomu as they interact with friends, do school projects and get into awkward social situations, all while dancing around their burgeoning feelings for each other.
6 Kids On The Slope
The ideal romance anime, and also the ideal dating sim, has a bunch of different characters to interact with and play through scenarios with. Kids on the Slope definitely hits all of these levels. The story follows a boy who has moved to a new island in Japan to live with relatives and, instead of remaining the quiet, isolated honor roll student he has been in the past, he makes new friends who show him how much fun it can be to misbehave and put himself out there. Not quite a romance anime on its own, the series has all the right elements to set a love story in motion nonetheless.
5 Princess Jellyfish
Princess Jellyfish seems like the perfect stop on this list. A story about a meek young woman, Tsukimi, who lives in a tenant house where no men are allowed, and where each woman who lives there is an otaku about a different obscure subject, Princess Jellyfish is sweet and funny, with a focus on learning to be comfortable with who you are and with understanding others.
When Tsukimi meets a young man who enjoys cross-dressing, she has to come to terms with the intimacy of secreting a man away in her room, the fact that she might have feelings for him and that they might be reciprocated.
4 Toradora!
Based on a light novel by the same author as Golden Time, Toradora! is a perfect romantic comedy. It stars a teenage boy who, despite being nice and good-natured, is considered a delinquent by his classmates due to his slightly yakuza demeanor. When he discovers a girl in his class, who’s best friends who the girl he has a crush on, has a crush on his best friend, the two decide to work together to try to get each other together with their friends. Of course, those things never work out quite as planned.
3 Tenchi Muyo!
Tenchi Muyo! is a classic harem anime, in which Tenchi, the grandson of a shinto priest, discovers a space pirate in a cave, where she’s been trapped in stasis for 700 years.
As the series goes on, Tenchi slowly ends up becoming involved with and surrounded by more and more of these alien women, which makes him distressed and perplexed pretty much all the time. It’s a great set-up for lots of shenanigans. Plus, the series has an overarching plot that isn’t about romance, which makes it a unique addition to the list.
2 Clannad
Technically, this one began as a game, though it was more of a visual novel than an actual dating sim. The story follows six main characters, all of whom have their own storylines that we can play through in order to get a full story of the world that they live in. The main character, Tomoya, becomes involved with starting a drama club to help out a fellow student and ends up becoming friends with several other girls, all of whom come to him with their individual problems. The storyline takes a pretty bleak turn after this point, but much of the anime revolves around this sweeter, earlier plotline.
1 The World God Only Knows
The World God Only Knows is an obvious choice for this list, as it actually stars a main character, Keima, who is really good at online dating sims. He’s not at all interested in dating real-life girls, and since he’s considered a gamer geek and has no real experience with doing so, he doesn’t have any romantic experience. He accidentally signs a contract with a demon in which he is forced to help her capture spirits hiding inside the hearts of young girls, which requires him to actually win their affection. It’s a funny series that pokes fun at dating sims and pop culture tropes, as well as anime character cliches.