Best Romance Anime Like Okitsura

Summary

• Romance anime like “My Senpai Is Annoying” and “Say I Love You” explore communication challenges in relationships.
• “Komi Can’t Communicate” and “Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible” delve into social anxiety and feeling overlooked, emphasizing the importance of communication.

The saving grace of increasingly lengthy titles is that they can have catchy shorthand names. Like how Okinawa de Suki ni Natta Ko ga Hōgen Sugite Tsurasugiru (localized as “I Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Knew What She’s Saying”) got trimmed down to the catchier Okitsura, which is all about trouble in communication.

Teruaki transfers schools to sunkissed, laid-back Okinawa, where he falls for local girl Kyan. The problem is she speaks in a thick Okinawan dialect. Even with Kyan’s friend Higa translating, Teruaki still has trouble expressing himself to her. If fans like Okitsura’s setting, its premise about verbal difficulties, or romcoms about differences in general, they’re sure to like these anime shows too.

1

My Senpai Is Annoying

How Tender Care And Teasing Can Lead To Complications

• Studio: Doga Kobo
• 1 Season, 12 Episodes
• Streaming on: Crunchyroll

My Senpai is Annoying takes things out of the school setting and into the workplace, where Futaba has managed to hold her own as a saleswoman at a trading company. Her problem is that her senior, Harumi, teases her and treats her like a kid because she’s shorter and looks young for her age.

Yet he’s also always willing to help, whether it’s sorting something out in the office, or getting her out of sticky situations. The most annoying thing about him might not be his brash, outgoing attitude or teasing, but how she finds him attractive despite all that. It’s a tricky tale about emotional communication, with some workplace jokes and jibes along the way.

2

Say I Love You

Reluctant Recommunication

• Studio: Zexcs
• 1 Season, 13 Episodes
• Streaming on: Hulu

Love isn’t any more straightforward in Say I Love You. After being constantly bullied as a child, and betrayed by her so-called friends, Mei decided to close herself off from others. She can’t suffer any more heartbreak if she doesn’t have any friends, lovers, or anyone close to her. As a result, she’s become a gloomy, antisocial figure.

Yet despite that, she gets the attention of Yamato, the most popular boy in school. He falls for her because she’s so different from everyone else and does everything he can to get her to open her heart again. At first, Mei thinks Yamato’s just doing it for his own needs, but soon learns he’s genuine to a fault, and that she can trust him and others.

3

Komi Can’t Communicate

When Someone Can’t Get The Words Out To Begin With

Okitsura’s Teruaki at least has Higa, who’s willing to interpret for him when he talks to Kyan (even if she has feelings for him too). But interpreters need something to translate to pass on a message. In Komi Can’t Communicate, the titular beauty has a sea of admirers, but few if any friends because she can’t express herself properly.

She has severe social anxiety that keeps her from connecting with others. Tadano becomes the first person to reach out to her, as he finds a way around her condition by writing messages on the blackboard. Her goal is to overcome her condition by making 100 friends, which Tadano is happy to help with as friend #1. But getting the other 99 friends will be easier said than done.

4

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible

Keeping The Background Character In The Forefront

Teruaki and Kyan don’t have any trouble noticing each other in Okitsura, since the former is a fish out of water, and the latter’s a loud, tanned girl with a thick accent. But like in Say I Love You and Komi Can’t Communicate, the first step in communication is letting oneself be open to receive another’s message.

In Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible, Shiraishi began to accept he’d be considered a background character in his own life, as his classmates and teachers barely notice him. But Kubo always seems to find him, and she does her best to make others notice him too. He finds it annoying at first but soon finds she might be the spark his life needs to make it more thrilling.

5

The Stranger By The Shore

Boys’ Love In Okinawa Runs Into Trouble

Love isn’t just for the straights in Okinawa, though if it’s like The Stranger by the Shore (aka Umibe no Étranger), it can be more tense. It’s about Shun, an openly gay novelist who makes his living in Okinawa, who meets Mio, an orphaned high schooler living with relatives. Shun falls in love with him, but fears Mio will abandon him like his parents did if he reveals his feelings.

Mio doesn’t understand him and ends up moving back to the mainland. Three years later, he returns to Okinawa, hoping to carry on where he left off with Shun, but it’ll take more than his advances to get around Shun’s abandonment issues. After Shun tries to connect with Mio in the first half of the film, the second sees Mio try to prove his feelings are just as genuine to Shun.

6

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable

Love Up North Gets Just As Tricky

• Studio: SILVER LINK, Blade
• 1 Season, 12 Episodes
• Streaming On: Crunchyroll

If people like Okitsura’s fish-out-of-water premise, they might like to pair it up with Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable. It’s basically Okitsura if its lead went north to Hokkaido instead of south to Okinawa, and didn’t have a language barrier to deal with. Tokyo boy Tsubasa has enough to deal with in the form of harsh winds and subzero temperatures.

He’s helped by Fuyuki, a very chatty local girl who’s nearly as overwhelming to him as the weather. Just when Tsubasa thinks this might be a one-off meeting, he discovers she’s both in his class and in the seat right next to his. Between her direct advances and the other girls in his new school, Tsubasa has a lot to learn about Hokkaido girls.

7

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

How Fame Can Be Just As Disruptive As Dialects

Characters don’t need to speak different languages or dialects to have communication problems. In Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, it’s fame that gets in the way. High schooler Chiyo has a crush on her classmate, Nozaki, and tries to confess to him. But he responds by giving her an autograph and offers to give her a tour of his home studio.

It turns out Nozaki is a famous shojo manga artist working under an alias, and he mistakes Chiyo’s affections for fan worship. So, she tries to get closer to him by working as his assistant, as they both take inspiration from their classmates to produce stories for his strip. Though whether Nozaki will eventually read the room and get the hint from her is another matter.

8

Lovely Complex

Runs Through The Ups And Downs Of Romance

Height is an odd thing to get hung up on, but it’s hard to ignore its effect on people, where being 5ft 11′ is considered ridiculously short and tall depending on a person’s sex. It’s a global issue too, if Lovely Complex is anything to go by, as a 5ft 8′ girl called Risa and a 5ft 1′ boy called Atsushi butt heads over their size difference.

But things change when Risa comes across an even taller boy called Ryouji, and Atsushi develops feelings for Risa’s friend, Chiharu. The two decide to help each other with charming their crushes, which doesn’t work out too well. But in their mixed messages and crossed wires, they learn more about each other and discover love doesn’t come with a height requirement.