The Winter 2026 anime season has started, and as usual, I’m trying to decide which shows to recommend to J-List customers. One that stood out immediately was Osananajimi to wa Love Comedy ni Naranai, aka You Can’t Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! Let’s see if it’s worth your valuable time!
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Should You Watch Osananajimi to wa Love Comedy ni Naranai? Yes!
High schooler Eiyuu loves reading “love comedy” novels about characters who hook up with their childhood friends. But he firmly believes that these kinds of stories are limited to fiction. In real life, no one would ever date a childhood friend. This is a problem because he has two childhood friends named Shio and Akari, and he’s starting to develop romantic feelings about both of them. But love stories like that never happen in real life, right? Little does he know, both girls are madly in love with him!
If you’ve ever wondered why anime and manga/light novel titles keep getting longer and longer, it’s because publishers have come to understand that the more information they can impart to customers right away, the better their sales will be. The moment fans hear You Can’t Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends!, they pretty much know what to expect: a romantic comedy that makes fun of stories about childhood friends dating. This allows viewers to decide quickly if this kind of title will be worth watching.
The First Heroine: Shio Minamo, the Literal Girl Next Door
Shio is his next-door neighbor. She’s a lovey-dovey girl who sneaks into his bed every morning and insists on holding hands while they walk to school “so she doesn’t slip and fall.” She’s madly in love with Eiyuu and is frustrated that he doesn’t notice her obvious affection. After all, she read his favorite light novels, taking notes on how a childhood friend can create the right conditions for love to blossom. Why won’t he fall in love with her?
So far, Shio is the standout of the series. Her cute design, coupled with how aggressively she’s pursuing love with Eiyuu, will keep me coming back in the future.
Akari Hiodoshi, and Do We Really Need Another Tsundere?
Second childhood friend Akari is basically a parody of every tsundere you’ve ever seen. She’s deeply in love with Eiyuu but unable to be honest with her feelings. She wants to be nice to him so he’ll think of her romantically. But every encounter with him goes in the opposite direction. She gets angry, acts haughty, and pushes Eiyuu away from her… though she’s so cute that Eiyuu forgives her every time.
I know from experience that some anime fans dislike the tsundere trope because no one would want to be verbally abused in real life. It’s important for any anime to get the balance of sharp-tongued tsun with lovey-dovey dere right. I definitely think You Can’t Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! pulls it off well with Akari, which makes her a great character.
Two More Heroines: Runa and Haru
How does this guy have so many friends? I don’t even have four friends, let alone four beautiful female childhood friends who want to date me. Anyway, there are two more childhood friends to round out the series.
Runa Tsukimi is the youngest of the four childhood friends and fills the “little sister” role. She loves cute things and soft colors… but is secretly a devil, waiting to make her next attack as she tries to win Eiyuu for herself. What interesting twists and turns will Runa’s route hold?
Hina Hinata is your standard “genki girl” who plays sports and has an athletic build. Her short hair, tanned skin, and boyish personality set her apart from the other heroines, and I’m sure her story will be great. Will her dark character design make her the top “seasonal waifu” of the anime season, which worked so well for Lemon from Too Many Losing Heroines? We’ll have to wait and find out!
Will You Can’t Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! Have Story Progression? I’m Not Sure.
Normally, I’d be critical of the trope of a main character who’s too dumb to realize he’s surrounded by beautiful girls who love him. And I hate series built around misunderstandings so much that I dropped the Gamers! anime the minute I saw what was going on.
So why am I okay with these themes in OsaRabu? Here are some reasons:
- The setup of having four childhood friends in love with the main character is absolutely ridiculous, with lots of fourth wall-breaking and winking at the audience. This makes me want to take the story less seriously.
- Judging only from episode 1, the execution has been excellent, with each segment very entertaining. Hopefully, the show won’t fall off a cliff in future episodes.
- OsaRabu is based on a manga, a word coined by the genius ukiyoe artist Hokusai, who’s also the father of tentacle hentai. The word manga literally means “whimsical pictures.” For once, I’m allowing a story to unfold whimsically, without expecting lots of character development and story progression. If I wanted that, I’d watch Can A Boy-Girl Relationship Survive? instead.
Thanks for reading this blog post about the You Can’t Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! harem anime. Are you going to tune in, or does the admittedly cliched setup turn you off? Tell us in the comments below!
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