These anime about grown-up love get under your skin

polygon.com:

I love romance and I love anime, but romantic anime that becomes popular in the United States tends to mostly focus on high school students falling in love, which means it focuses on a set of problems and hurdles that a lot of us anime fans have grown out of.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good high school romance as much as the next person who grew up on She’s the Man and 10 Things I Hate About You. Kaguya-sama: Love Is Warand Fruits Basket are among my top favorite anime of all time. But sometimes watching first-love jitters juxtaposed with the anxiety of exams and planning for post-graduation life doesn’t resonate with someone who’s past that stage of life. Those themes can be satisfying when done well, but I’m older now, I’ve watched a ton of anime dealing with that one specific flavor of romance, and I’m really ready to see on-screen couples dealing with different romantic problems.

Finding romantic anime centered around slightly older or more mature characters hasn’t been easy, but the few I’ve found sparked so strongly to me. They have a sense of relatability that just hits in a totally different way. While I can reminisce about my high school days and how every single interaction with my crush felt like the most intensely important thing in the world, movies and TV series like the favorites I’ve listed below resonate with me because they focus on problems I’m dealing with right now.

In thisone-season TV series from 2018, the four main characters are all work friends who are also secret nerds. The series primarily centers on Narumi, a 24-year-old office worker and yaoi fangirl who has a hard time dating because she feels like has to hide her fandoms from potential boyfriends. But when she starts a new job and