Best Anime Like Classroom Of The Elite

Key Takeaways

• Explore the journey from zero to hero with Ayanokoji in CotE.
• Dive into psychological drama with “Scum’s Wish” for a complex romance.
• Engage in thrilling suspense with “Talentless Nana” for a murder mystery twist.

Classroom of the Elite was originally a series of light novels by Shōgo Kinugasa before it became a manga and anime series. On the surface, it looks like an ordinary high school series about the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing School. Instead, it’s a place where students are divided by class, and the lead character Kiyotaka Ayanokōji finds himself in D-class, the school’s lowest rank.

Things just get more complicated once he gets involved with fellow students Suzune Horikata and Kikyō Kushida. But it’s not the only anime set in a school to offer chills, thrills, and spills. Here are a few more shows for fans to check out once they’ve finished beating the Elite.

Updated on November 9th, 2024, by David Heath: Timing is a funny thing sometimes. In this article’s last update in August, there was no news about Classroom of the Elite getting a 4th season. Then, one month later at the start of September, that 4th season was confirmed with a new visual, and news that it would adapt the first year of CotE’s Year 2 light novels. That was great news for fans, though it was a little too soon to give this article yet another update to celebrate that fact.

Still, it’ll be a while before that season is ready to pop up on Crunchyroll and other streaming services. So, if anyone’s managed to power through this list’s older entries, it’s now been updated with a few more top series that take on CotE’s school setting and pull it in different directions. Whether they stick to its sly cynicism, get darker with the subject, or lighten it up for laughs, there’s something for every fan of CotE.

1 Scum’s Wish

Romance Becomes A Game Where Everyone Loses

All the series on this list are good and all, though Mengo Yokoyari’s Scum’s Wish is closer to CotE’s psychological drama. It brings romance and then makes things more complicated than just a simple meet-cute. In it, Hanabi Yasuraoka is in love with her childhood friend Narumi, but he’s in love with Akane, their music teacher. Hanabi then bonds with another student called Mugi, who has a similarly unrequited love for Akane.

To stave off their loneliness, Hanabi and Mugi agree to maintain a fake relationship until their crushes fall for them. But one falsehood turns into a web of lies that catches other, unsuspecting love rivals. It started life as a manga published by Square-Enix before making the jump to animation. The series even got a live-action TV adaptation, though it’s easier to find the anime via HiDive and Amazon Prime.

2 Flowers Of Evil

Darkness Takes Root In One Of Anime’s Grimmest Throuples

Hanabi and Mugi may feel like scum for their desires, but they’re practically angels compared to the leads in Flowers of Evil. The series is an acquired taste as, instead of animating the original Shuzo Oshimi manga, Zexcs rotoscoped live-action actors instead. As such, it gives the show an uncanny valley look that puts some viewers off, though it fits the series’ themes.

Named after Baudelaire’s compendium of poetry about decadence and erotic abandon, it sees Takao succumb to his urges by stealing the gymwear of his crush, Nanako, unaware he was caught by his school’s outcast, Sawa. She blackmails him into doing her bidding, even when he becomes Nanako’s boyfriend. The three go to an ordinary high school, yet their game of psychological and emotional manipulation offers a darker take on CotE‘s trio of lead characters.

3 Talentless Nana

Superpowered School Students Face Off Against A Murderer In Their Midst

At first, Talentless Nana sounds more like an action show. It’s about superpowered teenagers called ‘Talents’ being taught at an academy on a desert island to fight off monsters. The world has been doing this for 50 years, and Nanao Nakajima and his class are the most recent generation of Talented students being trained to take them on. He has no powers himself, but he does his best with his training.

It stops sounding like My Hero Academia and more like CotE when two new students join the class: Kyōya and Nana. As soon as they arrive, the academy’s other students start turning up dead on the island. It becomes a tense murder mystery as the surviving classmates have to work together and learn who’s taking them out before they’re all dead. Superpowers can’t save them, but maybe honed human talents can.

4 Danganronpa: The Animation

Elite School Students Try To Kill Their Way To Freedom

Danganronpa blew up pretty quickly. It began as a Japan-only visual novel that caught attention when orenronen did a translated Let’s Play for SomethingAwful.com’s forums, leading to it getting a worldwide release with multiple spin-offs and tie-ins. It then got its own manga, Danganronpa: The Academy of Hope and High Schoolers of Despair, which tells some of the story from the other students’ perspectives, and its own anime adaptation, Danganronpa: The Animation.

The anime starts kind of like the inverse to CotE, as an unremarkable student named Makoto manages to get a spot at Hope’s Peak Private Academy, a school that only takes in the best of the best. Things take a turn when he wakes up in an abandoned classroom with the other first-year students. The principal, a robot teddy bear named Monokuma, offers them two choices: live in the school for the rest of their lives, or earn their way out by killing a classmate without being caught. As such, students are still plotting to get ahead, only the stakes are much higher.

5 Kakegurui

A School Where Success Is Determined By Luck

If CotE’s students were separated by class, Kakegurui’s cast is determined by the luck of the draw. Only the children of the country’s wealthiest and most influential figures make it into Hyakkaō Private Academy, with its graduates guaranteed to join their ranks. The hierarchy of the school isn’t determined by grades but by gambling. Those who bet big and win big earn the esteem of their peers, while the losers become their debt slaves.

Luckily for new student Yumeko Jabami, while she looks like the average high schooler, she’s a compulsive gambler addicted to the thrill of high stakes. She takes sheer joy in betting based on sheer intuition, which shakes up the school and draws the attention of the Student Council. How far can she go before her luck runs out? Check out the series and its sequel Kakegurui xx to find out.

6 The Daily Life Of The Immortal King

The Ultimate Hero Tries To Act Normal To Keep The World Safe

• Genre: Fantasy adventure comedy
• Studio: Haoliners Animation League
• Episodes: 4 Seasons, 51 Episodes
• Streaming: Available on Crunchyroll

Technically, The Daily Life of the Immortal King isn’t an anime, but a “donghua,” an animated show, movie, etc, made in China. It might be a pedantic point to make, but like Korea’s manhwa and aeni, donghua may become more familiar as it expands beyond Asia and goes global. Particularly with the popularity of Haoliners Animation League (HAL) and their projects like Heaven’s Official Blessing and Psychic Princess.

However, Immortal King is closer to CotE with its school setting, and a lead character who’s more special than his lower class suggests. The difference is that Wang Ling is deliberately acting average to disguise the fact he’s strong enough to destroy the whole planet. He tries to suppress his volatile power with an amulet his parents gave him, but as his emotions get stronger, and more threats turn up, it threatens to break out and overwhelm him.

7 The Fruit Of Grisaia

Heading back to Japan, The Fruits of Grisaia is an adaptation of a visual novel that’s kind of like CotE if it were a harem series. Transfer student Yūji manages to get into Mihama Academy, where he hopes to live the life of an ordinary high school student. However, he soon discovers the school is anything but ordinary, as it only has one principal and five students, all of whom are (of course) girls.

As he gets to know them, he learns the girls essentially live in the school, which serves as a sanctuary from their traumatic memories. But it also keeps them from coming to terms with their trauma, leaving them to rot like fruit fallen from a tree (hence the title). So, it’s down to Yūji to help them move on from their past. This is a tall order as Yūji, despite wanting to be ordinary, has his own closet full of skeletons.

8 The Irregular At Magic High School

A Kid Without Powers Managed To Succeed At A Magic School

There are quite a lot of series, be they drawn or animated, that follow apparent no-hopers who hold more potential than anyone thinks. It’s enough for Immortal King to flip that on its head and for CotE to make it a psychological drama rather than some shōnen series of challenges. But there’s nothing wrong with playing a trope straight, as The Irregular at Magic High School shows.

At the start of the 21st century, magic was proven to be real and turned into systemized technology that people could learn about and master. Magical genius Miyuki ends up on First High School’s elite First Course, while her brother Tatsuya is stuck on its Second Course for low-scoring “Weeds.” However, he has a knack for combat, technical knowledge, and some lesser-known magical abilities. Tatsuya may prove his worth by being irregular rather than regular.

9 Baka And Test: Summon The Beasts

If Classroom Of The Elite Was A Pokemon-Inspired Comedy

• Genre: Comedy
• Studio: Silver Link
• Episodes: 2 Seasons, 26 Episodes
• Streaming: Available on Crunchyroll

Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts could almost be a comedy spin-off of CotE, as they have very similar premises. Fumizuki Academy divides its students and budget into classes, with the best students & supplies going to Class A and the worst to Class F. The only way students can move up the ranks is to pass tests with bestial-looking spirits called “Avatars.” The more hits their Avatar receives, the more points they lose until they get a zero and face demotion.

This happens to Mizuki Himeji, who ends up in Class F despite being highly intelligent. Alongside the other misfits in her class, notably Akihisa “Baka” Yoshii, they declare war on Class A and vow to take their classroom for themselves. The series started as a light novel series by Kenji Inoue; then it got a 2-season anime series and a two-episode OVA that can be seen in full on Crunchyroll.

10 World Trigger

School Kids Caught In A Conflict Between Dimensions

World Trigger goes for a more overt sci-fi theme than CotE‘s dystopian school. It revolves around Mikado City, where a portal called a ‘gate’ appears, revealing monsters called ‘Neighbors’ that threaten to overwhelm humanity. Luckily for them, a mysterious organization called Border comes in to use the Neighbor’s Trigger technology against them, evening the score between the two sides.

Four years later, life in Mikado largely went back to normal. But there’s still no peace between humans and Neighbors. So, when a humanoid Neighbor called Yūma starts living among humans, he needs help blending in. He befriends Osamu, a student and Border trainee who teaches him about human customs while keeping his identity secret. But why is Yūma playing human? Catch the series in full to find out.

11 Prison School

Co-Ed School Shows Its Male Students How Strict It Can Be

Like CotE, Prison School is about a band of friends seeking to achieve a goal by defying the odds and overcoming their school’s strict bureaucracy. The difference is that CotE‘s fanservice distracts some viewers from the drama, while Prison School‘s drama distracts them from the fanservice. It’s not an adult show, but it’s a more titillating take on a CotE-adjacent premise.

The prestigious but strict all-girls Hachimitsu Academy decides to go co-ed and admit male students, but they only take in five, and they’re isolated from the 1,000 female students. Nonetheless, the five boys try to integrate themselves with the others, from Kiyoshi trying to contact his crush Chiyo, to all five peeping into the girls’ bathroom. As punishment, the Underground Student Council sentences them to a month’s stay in the school’s prison, where they have to learn to survive or enjoy the torment their captors give them.

12 The Quintessential Quintuplets

Student Learns How Difficult Teaching Can Be

What will make viewers feel more dirty: Prison School‘s ecchi antics, or a harem anime like The Quintessential Quintuplets? It still offers an educational drama at its heart, where Uesugi must get Itsuki and her five identical sisters to graduate with his extracurricular tutoring or continue struggling to pay off his father’s debts. Nonetheless, it’s played for romcom chuckles rather than suspense.

So, it’s more for CotE fans who fancy light-hearted tales as well. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no intriguing character development. For example, Uesugi’s poor upbringing left him aloof and standoffish, which led to him making a bad first impression on Itsuki at school. Once he finds out she and her sisters are going to be his pupils, he has to work on his attitude to break the ice wall he set up alongside their dislike of education.

13 Tomodachi Game

Friends Are Forced To Prove Their Loyalty To Each Other

CotE sees its students testing their school’s ranking system by proving their worth. Tomodachi Game makes them test their friendship. Yūichi grew up poor but never felt he lacked anything thanks to his close friends. He even saved up what little he got to join them on their school trip. But then his savings went missing. Two of his friends, Shiho and Makoto, took responsibility, but they couldn’t have done it.

Things take a turn when Yūichi and his friends get abducted and trapped in a room by “Manabu-kun,” a canceled TV show mascot. He reveals they’re being made to participate in his “friendship game” to settle a large debt on behalf of one of their former friends. On top of trying to figure out who the wronged friend is, Yūichi and co. now have to learn who they can truly trust, or suffer the consequences, as their relationships aren’t as rosy as they think they are.

14 Sonny Boy

Students Adjust To Dimensional Phenomenon To Survive

Sonny Boy doesn’t separate its students by academic data but by superpowers. Akin to Talentless Nana, it sees a whole school building’s worth of students getting sucked into a void-like dimension where some of them gradually gain superpowers. The student council tries to instill order, but they can do nothing against their souped-up charges.

Just as Ayanokōji and co had to learn how to live under the Advanced Nurturing School’s rules to get ahead, Sonny Boy‘s students had to learn about their new world’s rules to survive, whether they have superpowers or not. Even then, at least the Advanced Nurturing School’s students can go home on school breaks. If the cast of Sonny Boy can’t figure out what mysterious phenomenon sent them there in the first place, they’ll be stuck there forever.

15 Blue Period

Student Finds Meaning In Life Through Art

• Genre: Coming-of-age drama
• Studio: Seven Arts
• Episodes: 1 Season, 12 Episodes
• Streaming: Available on Netflix

Tsubasa Yamaguchi’s Blue Period gave Netflix a show about the joy of painting without being The Joy of Painting. Instead of a curly-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross-type, it gives viewers Yatora Yaguchi. He’s a fairly popular high schooler who does well in class but is left feeling unfulfilled and frustrated. That’s until he discovers the school’s art club. Through this newfound passion, he gains a new goal in life: to get into the Tokyo University of the Arts.

To do that, he has to simultaneously work with, and compete against, his club members, taking in their different approaches to art, and their criticisms. Some are more valuable than others, like his mentor-like senior Mayu’s advice. Others open his eyes to deeper issues, like the non-binary Yuka, the religious Maru, and the imposter syndrome suffering Maki. The show is more grounded than CotE, though no less dramatic.

16 The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

Students Have To Keep Manic Pixie Dream Girl Happy To Keep Reality Intact

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya isn’t the most similar show to CotE, yet it might’ve been one of the most obvious suggestions. Haruhi and her friends were all over the internet back in the mid-2000s, from their light novels and manga to their anime series and movie adaptations. The original series saw its lead Kyon get pulled into an after-school club by the titular Haruhi, where its members investigate mysterious events.

Except they learn Haruhi is the one behind them, as she unknowingly has the power to change reality. It’s up to Kyon and co to keep her occupied to prevent her from inadvertently destroying the world. It leads to some mind-bending plot developments like time loops and alternate realities leading into spin-offs like The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which itself got its spin-off in The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan.

17 Komi Can’t Communicate

Socially Awkward School Beauty Learns To Overcome Her Issues

Komi Can’t Communicate is a cuddlier school adventure than CotE. Based on Tomohito Oda’s manga, the series is about Komi, who’s the most popular girl in school thanks to her looks and poise. However, she also suffers from severe social anxiety and has a communication disorder that only her classmate, Hitohito Tadano, knows about. With his help, she aims to overcome her problems and make 100 friends before graduation.

It’s more of a slice-of-life romcom, but one with some self-awareness, as Komi’s pretty anime features become more cartoony when her disorder gets the better of her. Likewise, the supporting cast is essentially named after trope-based roles, with their names often meaning “Ordinary Guy,” “Childhood Friend,” “Country Bumpkin,” etc. But through the laughs, it clicked with readers who could relate to Komi’s condition.

18 ReLIFE

Man Gets a Second Chance At High School Through An Unusual Experiment

Getting back into more dramatic territory, ReLIFE has a curious premise. Arata Kaizaki is a 27-year-old with a dead-end job and no prospects. That all changes when a mysterious man called Ryō Yoake offers him a new opportunity. He just has to take part in the ReLife experiment, a process that’ll make him look 10 years younger. Once he does this, he then has to head back to high school to see if he blends in.

The idea is that the experiment could help him fix his lingering problems and “live his ReLife to the fullest”. While he fits in surprisingly well, it brings up some other issues. Some are understandable, like him being acutely aware he’s much older than his classmates. Others arise when he meets other ReLife subjects at the same school. Why was he chosen for the experiment? And just who is behind ReLife? People will have to watch the show to find out.

19 My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU

A Cynic, Ice Queen, And Peppy Preppy Help Kids With Their Problems

Better known as OreGaIru, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU doesn’t have CotE‘s segregation drama. Though with its male lead getting pulled into all sorts of mishaps by his female friends, it has a similar spirit. Starting life as a light novel, it received a bundle of different manga adaptations ranging from those that stuck to the source material, to 4koma gag comedies.

It followed the cynical Hachiman as he ended up joining his school’s Service Club. Consisting of just himself, the beautiful but cold Yukino, and the overly friendly Yui, they help other students with their personal problems before making progress with their own. People weren’t able to watch the full anime as, due to legal issues, SNAFU‘s second season couldn’t be streamed anywhere. But that missing season finally got added to HiDive back in October 2023.

20 Angel Beats!

A Factional War Between Angels And The Dead Breaks Out In Limbo

Imagine if, when people died, they went back to school instead of other forms of the afterlife. For many, it might as well be Hell, including most of the cast in Angel Beats!. Waking up without his memories, Otonashi ends up in a dimension between life and death where people go when they’ve suffered wrongful deaths, which just happens to be in the form of a high school. Many of its inhabitants feel hard done by, being sent to a school-shaped purgatory instead of Heaven for having their lives cut short.

They form a rebel faction, the Afterlife Battlefront, to go against the school’s president, Kanade “Angel” Tachibana. Conflicted, Otonashi decides to investigate what’s going on with the other “students” to figure out fully why they’re all sent here rather than anywhere else. It has CotE‘s morality-testing, though Otonashi is more curious and innocent compared to Ayanokōji’s more scheming personality. But it adds to Angel Beats‘ story as he gradually recovers his memories, and figures out the secret behind the educational limbo.