Top 5 Romance Anime, Ranked
Five love stories that understand a pause can be more romantic than a confession.
Anime romance at its best is about timing, distance and everything people do not say. These five go beyond crushes and blushing, into love that changes people.
Have tissues ready for at least two of them.
1. Your Name (2016)
2016 · Film · CoMix Wave Films
Two strangers swapping bodies across the country, searching for a name they cannot remember.
Taki and Mitsuha fall for each other without ever meeting, through notes left on phones and diaries, until the swaps suddenly stop. What he finds when he goes looking for her changes everything.
Few films capture that feeling of missing someone you cannot quite place. The staircase scene is romance anime at its peak.
2. Clannad: After Story (2008)
2008 · TV series · 24 episodes · Kyoto Animation
The romance does not end at the confession. That is where this one starts.
Tomoya and Nagisa are past the high school crush. After Story follows them into adulthood: jobs, marriage, family and loss. It is the rare anime about what love looks like after the happy ending.
Fans call it the saddest anime ever made, and the episodes in the second half explain why. Watch the first Clannad season first.
3. Fruits Basket (2019)
2019 · TV series · 25 episodes · TMS Entertainment
A girl living in a tent moves in with a family cursed to turn into the zodiac animals when hugged.
Tohru Honda loses her mother and ends up living with the Sohma cousins, Yuki and Kyo, whose family hides a terrible curse. Her kindness slowly reaches every one of them.
The 2019 adaptation tells the complete story, and it is about healing from family pain as much as falling in love. Kyo's arc will wreck you.
Shop the Fruits Basket collection
4. NANA (2006)
2006 · TV series · 47 episodes · MADHOUSE
Love, music and the friendship of two girls who could not be more different.
Two twenty-year-olds named Nana share an apartment in Tokyo. One chases a boyfriend, the other chases punk stardom, and both find out love and ambition do not always fit together.
It is honest about relationships in a way few anime dare to be, and the friendship between the two Nanas is the real love story.
5. Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018)
2018 · TV series · 13 episodes · CloverWorks
Ignore the title. This is one of the sweetest, smartest romances of its decade.
Sakuta meets Mai, a famous actress in a bunny suit in the library whom nobody else can see. Teen stress has started causing strange phenomena, and he helps one girl after another through hers.
Sakuta and Mai's banter is the most grown-up couple dialogue in modern anime, and the follow-up film is a must for anyone who finishes the series.
Shop the Bunny Girl Senpai collection
If you want one perfect evening, Your Name. If you want to fall in love slowly over a whole season, Fruits Basket. If you want the real thing, messy and grown up, NANA.
How we ranked: drawn from the romance anime fans name most often across the major community rankings, then ordered by Anime Crush on how much each one makes you feel.