Three Upcoming Romance Anime Series You Need to Watch

Just days before Valentine’s Day, when romance was in the air, Rotten Tomatoes was invited to The Delphi Downtown LA in Los Angeles. Crunchyroll, the hub for all things anime, invited RT to a special Valentine’s Day event focused on its latest Winter 2026 lineup, Hana-Kimi, You and I Are Polar Opposites, and Hell’s Paradise: Season 2. The entire venue was decorated to celebrate love, filled with cardboard cutouts of several popular characters from the romance-centered anime listed above. As the day began, guests were invited to watch the special screenings of Episode 7 of Hana-Kimi and Episode 5 of Hell’s Paradise: Season 2, with a sneak peek into Episode 6 of You and I Are Polar Opposites.

They were then treated to speed-date style interviews with several of the English voice actors from the series shown. While waiting for the interviews, many guests were offered love-filled activities throughout the day, including stations for bouquet-making, candle-making, manga reading, and candy grams with themed Valentine’s cards from the three series, as well as a photo booth for everyone to capture this moment. Lucky guests were also given Crunchroll Exclusives of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End products, promoting the fantasy adventure drama, now in its second season.

It made sense to include these anime in the Valentine’s Day lineup, as each centers on love. In Hana-Kimi, Japanese-American teen Mizuki Ashiya falls in love with Jump athlete Izumi Sano after watching him on TV. Wanting to be closer to him, she convinces her parents to transfer her to Japan to go to school there. What they don’t know is that she moved to Japan and pretends to be a boy — same name, but short hair — just to attend the same school Sano goes to. Her intentions are not malicious or nefarious, but she wants to feel closer to him, even if he doesn’t acknowledge her.

“My interpretation of Mizuki is that she is disguised as a boy, but she’s not a pro at it,” says Katelyn Barr, the English voice actor for Mizuki Ashiya. “She’s not perfect at it. She has moments where she slips up, or she’s in mixed company, and she’s not sure if she’s a boy right now or if she’s a girl right now. She operates in that middle ground, that gray area, a lot. So that’s really fun. It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge.”

Wyatt Baker, who voices the English dub of Izumi Sano, respects Mizuki’s hustle and the “sheer yearning in that kind of experience” to be closer to Sano — though in the story, she does become his friend and roommate. Sano does discover Mizuki is a girl, but he says nothing to her (she doesn’t know he knows) and keeps up the ruse. He laughs, “It’s sort of an unexpected answer. I would simply say that it is sheer commitment, and I respect it. I’m trying to bring this sense of being a protector to the role a little bit. There are a couple of people like that in the show who [want to] keep Mizuki’s identity safe. It’s a very earnest and very kind way to approach the situation.”

Meanwhile, Shuichi Nakatsu is a boy at school who is friends with both Mizuki and Sano, and he finds himself falling for Mizuki. Because he doesn’t know she’s really a girl, he’s torn, questioning whether he’s gay.

Dallas Reid, who voices the English dub for Shuichi Nakatsu, says it’s common sense that, as the characters attend an all-boys school, there’s no chance of any women being there. “I have a deep, emotional question to answer that’s very logical,” Reid explains. “That’s the vibe that I get from him. One thing I find interesting about him is that he seems to experience everything that happens to him extremely, without context. I can’t really speculate because I’m no further ahead than anybody else, but I imagine he’ll take it however he will. He will take it as it comes.”

You and I Are Polar Opposites tells the story of a trendy, bubbly, popular girl named Miyu Suzuki and her relationship with her “polar opposite,” Yuusuke Tani, the quiet, direct, and stoic boy in class. After she confesses her love for him, he reciprocates, and the two begin dating, with their mutual friends getting involved.

Voice actress Celeste Perez, who voices Suzuki’s English dub, resonates with her character and recalls her own teenage years. She laughs, “I have to be honest, I was such a Suzuki as a teenager. I know we’re not supposed to pick our character [for favorites], but I was such a Suzuki. I was a very loud theater kid, but I really wanted to fit in.”

Brandon Acosta, who voices the English dub for Yuusuke Tani, was actually a fan of the manga before the anime was even announced; he read all eight volumes. Though he is proud to voice Tani, he considers himself more a Shuji Taira type of guy. Taira is Tani’s always-cynical friend and a self-described “chud” with a downer demeanor.

“I remember reading [the manga] back then, and [thinking] Taira is spinning,” Acosta recalls. “I’m not like him now, but when I was that age, I could relate to a lot of things that [he does]. He’s just constantly in his mind, spinning his wheels over things that are not happening. He does it to himself, and I can relate to that.”

As opposite as the characters may be, together, Suzuki and Tani seem to really work well, and make each other into a better version of themselves. Perez reveals, “Following her arc, in the beginning, she’s very much still in that space of trying to fit in, being as loud and bubbly as possible so she can be liked. We see a little bit of a change in her voice, a bit less of her switching accents and going everywhere from high to low on the register. She’s really speaking from within.”

Acosta notices changes in the character as Tani becomes closer to Suzuki, altering his vocal inflections throughout the season.
“Something that I noticed that I spoke about with the director [Emily Fajardo] is that as the episodes have gone on, Tani’s initial voice sat very low, reserved, and quiet,” Brandon observes. “With every passing episode, once he gets with Suzuki, you hear a little bit more expressiveness that builds and builds and builds and progresses, especially anytime he’s alone with Suzuki on their dates. I wasn’t planning to do that, it just felt like this is what his character is feeling at this moment, and it comes through.”

In what may not appear to be a love story, the dark fantasy, action-thriller Hell’s Paradise is driven by love in its main character, Gabimaru the Hollow. In the anime, which is currently in its second season, Gabimaru is an invulnerable ninja who is offered a pardon if he can retrieve an elixir of life from a dangerous, mythical island inhabited by monstrous, immortal creatures. While there are lots of social and class disparities and death, Gabimaru is determined to survive and obtain this elixir all in order to return to his beloved wife, Yui. That is his whole purpose in life, and that is why he wants to survive.

Alejandro Saab, who voices Gabimaru’s English dub, can relate to this story — not so much the murdering ninja or mythical creatures aspect, but more so to the love to return to his wife. The married actor lives in Texas but often has to be in Los Angeles for work. After every completed project, he rushes home to his wife.

“When I started the show, I had recently gotten married, and the whole point of Gabimaru was wanting to get back to his wife,” says Saab. “Whenever I’m traveling, I just want to get back to my spouse. I resonate with that a lot. Yes, he’s a murderer, but he has a heart of gold, and he wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for Yui.”

During the second season, Gabimaru uses too much of his power and temporarily gets amnesia, forgetting that Yui exists, which changes everything for him. Saab says that changed everything for the character, making him more like his namesake, “The Hollow.”

“I did change it up ever so slightly in the English dub,” Saab admits. “What I wanted to do is make him sound more threatening, more like he was back to being hollow, more monotone and less bright. We were able to do that a little bit more in Season Two.”

With love in the air and Valentine’s Day coming up, the cast did reveal their favorite romantic and love animes — other than their own — with several naming Fruits Basket, Horimiya (Hori san to Miyamura kun), Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, A Galaxy Next Door, One Piece, and even Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Acosta understands how long One Piece is (as of December 2025, the series boasts 1,155 episodes), and understands it’s not so much romantic love, but more about familial love: “It’s about finding [familial love] and building it.”

And while Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure isn’t typically considered a romance, Baker explains, “I am [just] a huge fan of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I think that’s a pretty foundational show, and would love for there to be more JoJo fans in the world.”

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You and I Are Polar Opposites, and Hell’s Paradise, and Hana Kimi are streaming now on Crunchyroll.

Images Courtesy of Crunchyroll
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