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The romance genre often combines various anime tropes and clichés. However, a fan favorite seems to be the popular girl falling for an unpopular guy. This trope is so deeply ingrained in the genre that audiences can quickly identify it across a wide variety of relationships and demographics. It’s typically more common in shonen, which is targeted at men and caters to the fantasy of the most beautiful girl going for the most unlikely of guys. Still, even shojo doesn’t completely escape this trend.
Despite the inherent nature of this trope as a fantasy, these types of relationships have many sweet moments and qualities that make the audience want to root for the characters involved. Everybody loves an underdog, and watching two people come together despite their differences is always rewarding when it pays off in the end.
Updated on July 5, 2025, by Lauren Younkin: Given how many anime series take place in a school setting, it’s no wonder that some of the most popular romance tropes come from school dynamics. Labels of popularity are the most common among these, especially the idea of an unpopular guy as a love interest. This list was updated to include even more examples and to reflect CBR’s current publication standards.
25 Taiga Changes Her Mind About Ryuji
Toradora! Is Streaming on Prime Video
Initially, Toradora! is a rom-com series that serves to subvert this trope. Taiga, one of the most well-known figures at her school, is not a fan of the protagonist, Ryuji, when they first meet. The person she likes is Ryuji’s friend Yusaku, who is very popular among their class, while Ryuji happens to like Taiga’s friend Minori. After the two of them realize that this is the case, they try their best to help each other get together with their friends.
However, with the amount of time Taiga and Ryuji spend on these escapades, their feelings slowly change as their affection turns towards one another. Taiga isn’t the only girl who ends up falling for Ryuji, either; Taiga’s other friend, Ami, and even Minori herself eventually take an interest in him. This romantic attraction is very outside the norm for Ryuji, who his peers ostracize because he gives off the impression of someone threatening, but these girls have had the chance to get to know him as the kind person he truly is.
24 Akari Gets Into Her Fake Relationship With Jiro
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
For most people who find themselves on the fringes of school life, it would take quite the circumstance to get them out of their shell, which is precisely what happens to Jiro Yakuin. His class has mandatory couples training, and his teacher matches him with the outgoing Akari Watanabe. Neither is thrilled to be forced together with someone they would usually never talk to.
Similar to Toradora!, Jiro and Akari both initially have other people they like and plan to excel on the project so that they can request to switch partners. But feelings get complicated the further they get into their fake relationship, and become even more so when Jiro’s first crush starts to reciprocate his interest. To top it all off, Jiro’s issues with self-esteem from his introverted nature only exacerbate these problems.
23 Runa Says Yes to Ryuji's Unexpected Confession
Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
As a boy who has never been in a relationship and doesn’t even have many friends, Ryuto does not expect the most popular girl in school, Runa, to say yes when he asks her out. The only reason he even does so in the first place is due to losing a bet. But she does accept him, and so the two attempt to navigate a relationship while coming from very different levels of experience.
Ryuto’s insecurities lead him to ask Runa if they can keep their relationship a secret. While their contrasting personality types often make this situation even more challenging for them, they both remain committed to their decision to be together and consequently grow alongside one another. Though many, including themselves, believed that their relationship would likely fail, their openness to learning from each other allows this opposites-attract pairing to work.
22 Yukino and Yui Both Fall for Hachiman
My Teen Romanic Comedy SNAFU Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
Hachiman Hikigaya is a character who has developed a great deal of wariness towards others after being isolated from his classmates for so long. Still, he is also very good at reading them and puts these skills to the test in the Service Club, which Hachiman joined at his teacher’s behest. This new club means he ends up spending a lot of time with Yukino and Yui, fellow club members who develop feelings for him.
The three of them all have their own problems with social interaction and self-expression, which often results in them painfully holding onto their emotions as they fail to communicate what they truly want. While the intelligent and wealthy president Yukino ultimately ends up with Hachiman, both she and Yui break through his isolation to form genuine connections with him.
21 Kuroyukihime Sees Potential in Haruyuki
Accel World Is Streaming on Hulu
Haruyuki is intimately familiar with being unpopular in school, as his classmates constantly pick on him for his appearance. As a result, he prefers spending time in the world of video games rather than the real one. This virtual obsession is ultimately what catches the attention of Kuroyukihime, who is also into gaming, and they become a formidable team as they reach new heights together in Brain Burst.
Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime perfectly embody the trope of the most popular girl in school falling for the most unpopular guy, given that Kuroyukihime’s status as the student council vice-president places her in a social circle leagues away from Haruyuki. However, her love for Haruyuki and encouragement of his potential are what allow him to start coming into his own and growing as a person.
20 Tohru Honda Befriends the Shunned Member of the Sohma Family
Fruits Basket Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
Tohru Honda’s life takes an unexpected turn when she gets wrapped up with the Sohma family, whose members have been cursed to take on the spirits of the Chinese zodiac. Despite not being able to be physically close to some of them due to the risk of transforming them into animals, Tohru embraces the pain of the family wholeheartedly and starts to heal them one by one with her overflowing kindness.
Though Tohru is set up to be in a love triangle with two members of the Sohma family, Yuki and Kyo, for the majority of the series, it becomes clear early on that the one she is forming a romantic connection with is Kyo. Yuki might be popular enough in school to have his own fan club, but Kyo is the person that captures Tohru’s heart. He is used to being ostracized and unloved due to the nature of his particular zodiac spirit, and Tohru is able to finally bring love and acceptance into his life.
19 Alya Unwittingly Reveals Her Thoughts to Masachika
Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
As a transfer student, Alya is the talk of the school, garnering attention because of her beauty. Though she’s now in Japan for school, Alya is half-Russian and previously lived there. In fact, she sometimes switches to speaking in Russian when she’s around Masachika Kuze, the regular boy who sits next to her in class that, on the surface, she seems to dislike.
However, the comments she makes in Russian are actually to express her interest in Masachika, and unbeknownst to Alya, he can understand what she’s saying. The two of them have contrasting personalities, with Alya valuing hard work, while Masachika prefers to be laid back, but they have more in common to bond over than they might think given their complex family situations and a shared connection with the Russian language.
18 Yuki Has a Long-Lasting Relationship With Daru
Steins;Gate 0 Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
Though Itaru «Daru» Hashida and Yuki Amane aren’t the main characters of Steins;Gate 0 (or even the original Steins;Gate, for that matter), their relationship still stands out within the series due to their «opposites attract» type romance. As a hacker, Daru is an almost stereotypical «guy in the chair» with otaku tendencies to boot, whereas Yuki is a beautiful and outgoing cosplayer that seems like she would never match with him.
Due to the nature of time travel in the series, however, it is known that Daru and Yuki get married in the future and even have a daughter together. As improbable as it may seem, this proves that their relationship goes beyond what one might expect based solely on their appearances. They might not get the most screen time together, but their relationship is still heartwarming nonetheless.
17 Victorique Finds a Companion in the School Outcast
Gosick Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
Set in the 1920s in the fictional country of Sauville, Gosick‘s St. Marguerite Academy is far from the typical school setting seen in anime. Regardless, given the fundamental nature of teenagers, many of the regular high school dynamics still apply. Kazuya Kujo, a transfer student from Japan, is an outcast among his peers from the start given the urban legends surrounding his appearance that dub him the «Black Reaper.»
However, he soon enters an unlikely partnership with Victorique, the school’s «Golden Fairy.» She is almost mythical to the rest of the student body since she spends all her time at the top of the towering library, but Kazuya is able to get to know her as a real person throughout their adventures solving mysteries together. Their friendship, and eventual romance, saves both Kazuya and Victorique from the loneliness that has been imposed upon them by the impressions of others.
16 Amu Is Drawn Towards a Black Cat of Misfortune
Shugo Chara! Is Streaming on Crunchyroll
At the beginning of Shugo Chara!, Amu has a crush on Tadase Hotori, the most popular boy at her school who embodies the «prince» archetype. However, the more she gets to know him beyond his outward persona over the course of the series, the more Amu starts to value Tadase as simply a friend. Instead, she finds herself pulled into the orbit of the one person she shouldn’t be associating with: Ikuto Tsukiyomi.
With Ikuto working for their enemy, he is deeply disliked by the rest of Amu’s Guardian friends — especially Tadase, given that he shares a tumultuous past with Ikuto. Yet, despite Ikuto being an unpopular option in the eyes of others, he is one of the only people Amu can be her true self around. Since Amu and Ikuto both often have to put on a «character» for the sake of the people around them, they begin to take solace in the time they can spend being open with one another.
