10 best anime like ‘High School DXD’
If you’re looking for anime of a *ahem* prurient nature, I fear you’ve come to the right place.
There are many anime that are enjoyed for pure, plot-based reasons. High School DXD is not one of them. The appeal of the anime on this list doesn’t stem from their narrative assets but rather the assets of their characters. If you’re looking for a subtle series centered around delicate relationships grounded with real, emotional weight, allow me to be the first to show you to the door.
Now that only the … spicy members of the anime community remain, here are the 10 best anime like High School DXD.
Heaven’s Lost Property
In Heaven’s Lost Property, milquetoast high schooler Tomoki Sakurai dreams of living a life of peace and has a fantasy of meeting a beautiful angel from Heaven above. The kid’s prayers are answered when he witnesses a mysterious object come crashing out of the night sky. Upon inspecting the landing zone, he discovers a robotic young woman named Ikaros, who says that she is an “angeloid” and declares herself his servant. While initially thrilled at the prospect of having a heavenly handmaid, Tomoki soon becomes a victim of divine intervention when he realizes that not all of heaven’s denizens are as nice as organized religion makes them out to be. Thankfully, Ikaros is there to defend him from more aggressive angeloids because heaven knows he can’t do it himself.
To LOVE-Ru
In To LOVE-Ru, High-schooler Rito Yuki was taking a bath when, all of a sudden, the beautiful devil-tailed alien princess Lala appeared alongside him in the tub. To escape the machinations of her father, Lala declares that Rito is her husband-to-be. Some of Lala’s former suitors from her home planet don’t take kindly to the idea, and now Rito and Lala are forced to fend off alien assassins and juggle the complex realities of high school life. While the first two seasons take a minute to get off the ground, the third season, titled To LOVE-Ru Darkness, is easily the series’ best.
The Qwaser of Stigmata
The Qwaser of Stigmata is High School DXD on pervert-steroids. A so-bad-its-good supernatural action harem romp, the series centers around higher-schoolers who are qwasers—beings blessed with a bevy of magical abilities. While being a qwaser has its perks, there’s one big drawback: they can only replenish their magical powers by breastfeeding. That doesn’t pose a problem for its protagonist, Sasha. In fact, he’s pretty into it. While not raunchier than DXD, the series is also way more violent. If you get hot and bothered by blood and guts (no judgment here), this series demands your attention.
Rosario + Vampire
A genre classic from the ’00s, Rosario + Vampire is a quintessential harem anime. Eternally horny high schooler Tsukune is down bad—but so are his grades. His poor academic performance causes him to be rejected from nearly every private school in his area, save for one. Lucky him! Except it’s full of killer monsters. Unlucky him! To survive his new school, he’ll have to try to blend in with blood-drinking classmates. Thankfully, his vampire classmate, Moka Akashiya, is there to help. Unthankfully, the closer he gets to Moko, the more his classmates seem to want to unzip his skin and wear him like a little coat, and not in a pleasant way.
Seitokai Yakuindomo
It’s the classic ecchi anime plot: a historically all-girls school opens itself up to male students as an experiment, and our protagonist is the guinea pig. Slacker Takatoshi Tsuda decides to attend a former all-girls high school because it’s close to home, and soon finds himself forced into becoming a member of the student council as its solitary male liaison. He’s shocked to find that his classmates are total pervs, and each has a soft spot for raunchy humor. Seitokai Yakuindomo is fun because it eschews the main protagonist’s motivations to focus on his eccentric cast of classmates, the best of which is the prim Shino Amakusa. She’s a model student who dresses up teddy bears with ball gags during her off hours. Long live the kink.
So I Can’t Play H?
If High School DXD’s “deal with the devil-girl” plot is what hooked you, So I Can’t Play H will be right up your back alley. High schooler Ryosuke Kaga is on a rainy day walk when he finds a mysterious girl standing alone in the downpour. Except Lisara is not a girl—she’s a god of death. Lisara tells our hero that he’s going to die in three months, but she’ll try to stay his fate if he lets her leech off of his life energy. As a horny teenage boy, Ryosuke’s lecherousness is his life energy, and his perversion sustains Lisara while she searches for a mysterious entity known as the “The Singular Man.” It’s kind of like Death Note if Light Yagami wanted to bone Ryuk (the jury’s still out on that one, considering Light’s love of murder). While most male ecchi anime protagonists are nebbish closet pervs, Ryosuke lets his freak flag fly openly and is somehow more lovable because of it.
Prison School
If you’re looking for an anime whose male protagonists experience character growth, become more mature, or realize that maybe there are more noble pursuits than slavering over their classmates, you’ve tuned to the wrong channel. Prison School sees five filthy teenage boys let into an all-girls school, and they celebrate their admittance by instantly trying to sneak a peak into the girls’ locker room. They are dealt with harshly. The student council sentences them to serve a prison sentence on school grounds, where the school’s disciplinarian lays into them with a riding crop day and night.
Spoiler: they’re into it. Well, sort of. The boys get tired of confinement and spend the rest of the show trying to spring the coup, only to be caught and caned within an inch of their miserable lives every episode. These boys are heinous, selfish, perverse, and surprisingly hysterical. You don’t want them to break free—it’s more fun to watch them learn their lesson again and again, though they never really do.
Highschool of the Dead
If sex and violence is your thing, Highschool of the Dead is perhaps the most outlandish orgy on this list. Episode 1 begins with the end of the world in the form of a zombie apocalypse. After their high school is infected with the flesh-eating plague, two high school boys and their three buxom classmates find themselves to be the only survivors. To make it to a government-designated safe zone, they have to cross through a zombie-infested city first. The series features some phenomenally ridiculous action sequences, including one where a character has to thread a sniper rifle bullet through his classmate’s cleavage. John Wick could never.
Shinometa
Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist is exactly what’s written on the tin. To crack down on perversion, the Japanese government has declared all lewdness to be illegal. Mild-mannered high-schooler Tanukichi is doing his best to distance himself from his dirty joke activist father’s legacy, which was going great until a girl wearing underwear on her face tried to recruit him into a perverted resistance movement. Meanwhile, he has to stave off the advances of his childhood friend Anna, who develops a yandere-level obsession with him after an accidental kiss. Unlike the more plot-barren entries on this list, Shinometa serves as a delightful, hilarious, and surprisingly thought-provoking examination of purity culture and why it is always, always doomed to fail.
Kill la Kill
Kill la Kill is not only the pinnacle of the ecchi genre but also one of the greatest anime ever made. The plot centers around high schooler Ryuki Matoi, who intends to avenge her father’s murder by killing the president of a totalitarian high school with one-half of a giant pair of scissors. Following so far?
To take her combat abilities to the next level, Ryuki dons a sentient, blood-sucking sailor suit that grants her more power the more skin she shows. Though on the surface, Kill la Kill appears to be nothing more than scantily clad girls swinging swords at each other (and what’s wrong with that?), it hides a deep and complex narrative based around sexuality, shame, and the power that comes from owning one’s body at all costs. It also happens to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors and declares itself independent from sexual norms by thirsting for everyone equally—the dudes are naked just as often as the gals, after all. It’s also rife with queer characters, and don’t even get me STARTED on the fight-scene animation, the laugh-out-loud comedy, and the BANGIN soundtrack. Kill la Kill is a must-watch for the pervy, the kinky, and anyone who proudly lets their freak flag fly.
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