10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

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Soap operas are famed for their messy love triangles, outlandish plot twists, and cathartic endings. These anime series have all that and more.

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10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

The term “soap opera” is often used as shorthand for the kinds of shows that are melodramatic or overly reliant on histrionics and outlandish plot twists. Anime has its fair share of primetime soaps, and this isn’t a bad thing.

While some of these love stories can be a bit overdramatic, they still keep viewers engaged from episode to episode. That being said, there’s also a number of anime soaps that relish in melodramatic excess – for better and worse.

10 School Days Is Anime’s Bloodiest Love Triangle

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

School Days is only really remembered these days for its abundance of gore and the nice boat that censored the finale’s original broadcast. That being said, there was a lot more going on with this anime than what meets the eye. In truth, the love triangle between Makoto, Sekai, and Kotonoha was a grim deconstruction of the harem formula.

Like any good melodrama, School Days started unassumingly with Makoto courting Sekai and Kotonoha. However, Makoto’s manipulative side slowly creeped in, and his lies pushed both women off the deep, murderous end. Anyone who wants to see a typical soap opera pushed to its darkest extremes should give this polarizing cult favorite a shot.

9 Citrus’ Risqué Story About Stepsisters Caused Controversy

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

When the fun-loving Yuzu transfers to an all-girls school, she struggles adjusting to the campus’ culture and quickly butts heads with the student council president, Mei. However, things take an unexpected turn when Yuzu discovers that Mei is her stepsister. Now living under one roof, the two begin to develop feelings for the other.

This is Citrus in a nutshell, and it caused a stir. Besides its incestuous themes, the anime was criticized for Yuzu and Mei’s clearly toxic relationship. While polarizing, Citrus was not without its fans, who defended the anime’s more controversial aspects since they believed it spiced up an already risqué soap opera even more.

8 Domestic Girlfriend Is A Spicy Telenovela For The Stepfamily

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

Domestic Girlfriend has often been compared to a trashy telenovela, and it certainly earned this reputation. As if Natsuo’s love triangle between his friend, Rui, and his teacher, Hina, wasn’t enough, all three of them end up becoming family. This was thanks to Natsuo’s father remarrying the mother of the sisters Hina and Rui.

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While everything about its premise is contrived and some of the lewd scenarios are laughably transparent, Domestic Girlfriend treated its romantic conflict seriously. What started out as a comically raunchy soap opera slowly became a serious look at a very taboo relationship, and the anime’s resolution will surely polarize viewers.

7 Given Has Two Simultaneous Love Stories

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

Given is one of the newer titles, but it still left an impact on BL (boys’ love) anime fans. Split into two parts that each star a different couple, the anime focuses on the bonds that formed between a high school band’s members. The first arc starred the guitarist Ritsuka and the newcomer Mafuyu, while the second featured drummer Akihiko and bassist Haruki.

Things start nicely, but then everyone’s insecurities resurface at the worst times. Serious melodrama in the form dark backstories and even some reprehensible actions transpires, forcing the band to confront themselves before finding love in others. Rounding everything up perfectly is the music, which compliments an already great romance.

6 White Album 2 Is An Old-Fashioned Love Triangle

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

Though White Album 2 is clearly a sequel, newcomers don’t need to seek out its predecessor. That being said, this underrated visual novel adaptation maintains a strong following even today because of its painfully realistic depiction of a love triangle. Specifically, the one between Haruki and his new bandmates, Kazusa and Setsuna.

After they played the perfect set at the school festival and saved the Light Music Club from dissolution, their emotions take hold. Haruki is torn between Kazusa and Setsuna’s affections for him, and lies and heartbreaks ensue. White Album 2 only adapted its game’s first arc, but that’s more than enough for it to be a good anime soap opera.

5 Rumbling Hearts Featured The Classic Coma-Induced Premise

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

Besides amnesia, one of the most popular soap opera clichés is the coma. This is the story of Rumbling Hearts, where Takayuki and Haruka’s relationship is abruptly stopped when Haruka falls into a coma following a car accident. Haruka wakes up three years later, only to discover that her boyfriend moved on with her best friend, Mitsuki.

Over the course of 14 episodes, Takayuki had to choose between the love of his past or the one in the present. Whatever his choice was would change everyone’s lives forever. Rumbling Hearts treated its drama and tension seriously, which made it stand out among the countless upbeat romantic anime that dominated the 2000s.

4 Scum’s Wish Had A Complicated Love Flow Chart At Its Core

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

At most, soap operas would focus on a love triangle made up of three characters. Meanwhile, Scum’s Wish upped the ante by giving the main couple, Hanabi and Mugi, multiple romantic prospects. Worse, everyone was clawing for Hanabi and Mugi’s love and affection, despite their unresolved issues and past traumas.

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Making matters more complicated was that Hanabi and Mugi weren’t even officially together. At most, they were friends with benefits who began to love the other but denied it. To say that the romantic conflicts of Scum’s Wish were complex would be an understatement, but everything wrapped up neatly by the show’s bittersweet end.

3 Nana Is An Irreplaceable Drama Classic

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

When Nana the city girl meets Nana the punk rocker, the two quickly hit it off and become roommates. However, their friendship’s evolution into a possible romance is obstructed by melodrama like infidelity and even death. This is all played out seriously, which makes Nana’s notably realistic drama all the more iconic.

Nana isn’t just one of the most popular josei romances of all time, but one of the most important ones as well. While not the first yuri anime, Nana paved the way for others to follow its example. The manga is sadly still on hiatus but, thankfully, the anime gave fans and the two Nanas the closest thing to closure they could get.

2 Orange’s Drama Transcended Space & Time

10 Anime That Feel Just Like Soap Operas

Everyone regrets things they did or, worse, things they didn’t do. In the decade after high school, Naho had so many regrets that she wrote a letter to her past self, listing heartaches and tragedies that can be avoided. Orange’s twist, though, is that Naho’s letter actually found its way to her younger self, and she does what she can to save the future.

Orange fulfilled the kind of power fantasy that’s unique to the soap opera, namely one of emotional closure. Through Naho, viewers got to relive the best moments of their adolescence while also undoing mistakes that would weigh heavily for years to come. Orange’s premise and twists may be a bit fantastical, but its drama is very relatable.

1 CLANNAD’s Love Story Defied Fate & Reality

When it comes to perfectly melodramatic anime, nothing comes close to CLANNAD. Not only is CLANNAD considered to be a great visual novel adaptation, but it’s widely regarded as one of the best anime ever made, period. Here, Tomoya finds a newfound interest in life when he befriends Nagisa and helps her form a drama club.

What followed next wasn’t just Tomoya and Nagisa’s developing feelings, but Tomoya opening himself up in ways he never thought he could. Besides its (in)famously confusing yet emotionally fulfilling ending, what really makes CLANNAD so beloved is its unforgettable story of friends becoming family and, in Tomoya and Nagisa’s case, lovers.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/anime-felt-like-soap-opera-melodrama/

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