Yamato Naoe is a student at the Kawakami Academy. The school has samurai roots and allows its students to solve conflicts with combat. In some cases the battles are one-on-one; in others it’s a full-on battle involving hundreds of students. The school has some amazing martial artists in residence, but Yamato isn’t one of them. He is, however, a brilliant strategist. Yamato isn’t a loner; he has a close group of friends (mainly girls) including his senpai crush.

The story is similar to Medaka Box in its pacing of challenges and battle scenes. The cast is also full of super-powered warriors, many of whom are attractive girls, each with their own special skills. Yamato is different than Zenkichi in Medaka Box in that he has confessed to his childhood friend and been rejected and told they should be just friends. Zenkichi may not even know that he is in love with Medaka himself. The two stories also have a great similarity in that the groups are trying to doing something helpful and uncover overarching, sinister plots. The power of the ecchi is strong in this anime, especially in the uncensored version. You don’t just get nudity, either, the translation of the dialogue is a lot naughtier.

We often think of a school’s literature club as a quiet club with plenty of reading and tea drinking. The lit club at this school is a bit different; all the members have acquired supernatural powers. You have a diverse cast of characters with Jurai Andou, who can wield black fire, though it hurts his hands a lot. His fellow club member Tomoyo Kanzaki, the tsundere, can stop time. Hatoko Kushikawa, his childhood friend, can control the five elements. The club president Sayumi Takanashi, the cool commanding sempai, can heal living things and repair inanimate objects with her Root Origin power. The club advisor’s niece, Chifuyu Himeki, a younger girl for the required loli prescience, has the ability to create objects out of thin air. Literature club members have no idea where their powers came from and for the most part attempt to live normal lives, with the occasional battle.

The similarities to Medaka Box lie in the supernatural powers. We get several friendly and some not-so-friendly battles in this anime, like in Medaka. We see the characters in each who have powers of unknown origin. We also are eventually clued in, like in Medaka Box, that these students aren’t the only ones with powers and there is a lot more going on than they understand. The story does have its ecchi moments, but is rather tame compared to some of the others on this list.

Freezing takes place in a world under siege by a colossal alien race called the Novas. The large, otherworldly creatures might remind you of the Angels from Evangellion in their size and destructive nature. The world discovers that some young women, dubbed Pandoras, can develop superhuman powers and are then trained at military academies where they are paired with partners called Limiters to use their powers to fight the Novas. The story of Freezing focuses on Kazuya Aoi, a male limiter, and Pandora Satellizer el Bridget and their difficult relationship as they navigate training and life-threatening situations.

Freezing is like Medaka Box with similar cute and overpowered female leads. Medaka and Satellizer do have different personalities, though. Medaka is extroverted, willing to help anyone; Satellizer a complete introvert, timid and cautious in everything except fighting. The school is a backdrop, like in Medaka, but it appears that little education is actually done since all the characters seem like they are fighting for their lives most of the time. The two stories also have classic overpowered fight scenes with crumpling buildings and finishing blows that can level a city block.

Hachiman is a bit antisocial and could even be described as a nihilist. But some see him as a realist who sees through all of the superficial crap that is a happy high school existence. Hachiman even goes so far as to mock it in an essay. His sexy sensei Hiratsuka devises a punishment to counter his nihilistic tendencies. He has to join the service club, a club dedicated to solving any and all student problems. He is joined by club president, Yukino, who is intelligent yet introverted, and Yui, a bubbly outgoing girl who has a crush on Hachiman and genuinely wants to help people. We follow the trio as they answer the requests of other students and solve their problems, with often unorthodox means.

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, despite not having any supernatural battles, has one or two things in common with Medaka Box. The Student Council in Medaka Box acts a lot like the Service Club in SANFU, looking into even the most mundane request by the students that seek them out for help. You do have some ecchi moments, but nothing approaching the level of Medaka. Some of the best ecchi scenes are verbal ones. The conversations between Hachiman and the student council president, Iroha Isshiki, are brilliant. You can even draw a couple of comparisons between Hachiman and Zenkichi, though Zenkichi may be a bit of more of an optimist, he is willing to do the dirty work in order to get the job done.

Juugo Yama has left his family and moved out on his own, enrolling in a school on Nanae Island, a manmade island that exists to help students achieve their educational dreams. He makes this possible by getting a room at a cheap price. The only problem in settling into his new life is he signed an unbreakable lease and it appears that he must have a roommate. His roommate is a girl (lucky boy), she’s even cute (even luckier), she’s a genius (okay), she’s a gamer (who doesn’t like that?). But there’s a catch. She’s dead, a ghost, and can’t leave his room. The ghost’s name is Nanana and she is the one who created the island. Juugo is convinced that he can help Nanana’s spirit rest if he collects all of the rather odd treasures she hid all over the island in elaborately constructed and dangerous labyrinths.

Nanana’s Buried Treasure has some great similarities with Medaka Box. The dungeon crawling for example. Juugo has to defeat challenge after absurd challenge, much like the daily super-powered battles between Medaka and some of the students who don’t exactly contribute to the peaceful harmony of the school. The ecchi quotient is pretty good, too. Tensai, a blonde of age loli-esque detective, Yukihime Fugi an older and sexy master thief, and then Nanana herself who often just floats around in her night gown eating pudding and playing online games in Juugo’s bedroom. You will have plenty of eye candy each time you tune into this anime.

Ryuuko Matoi is a girl on a mission. She is searching for the person who killed her father and she isn’t worried about busting a few heads together. Her main lead in the case is half of a scissor blade long enough to be a sword. She arrives at Honnouji Academy, whose student body is ruled with the iron fist of its student council. Ryuuko, armed with a sentient uniform that in exchange for her blood grants her incredible power, combats the student council in her quest to find her father’s killer.

You will find a lot of similarities between Kill la Kill and Medaka Box. The artistic style is very similar in the character design, especially the exaggerated facial expressions and action shots. The school setting and the idea of a strict school hierarchy that puts one student above another is also a recurring theme. When it comes to battle, destruction is the name of the game, with buildings getting demolished and craters being formed just by a foot stomping on the ground. You get a lot of battle cries, too. You get plenty of fan service in both titles, though Medaka’s three sizes are substantially bigger than Ryuuko, though Ryuuko shows a lot of skin when she gets into battle mode.