Slow Start is a bit more serious than Wakaba*Girl, but it’s no less charming. Hana Ichinose appears to be a normal freshman in high school, but she’s actually sixteen. She’s starting school a year late after missing her high school entrance exams. She keeps her situation a secret from her classmates in hopes of leading a normal high school life.

Much like Wakaba, Hana aspires to be a normal high school girl. She doesn’t want to be considered different from her friends. Hana is also surrounded by a supportive entourage of girls who support her and introduce her to new experiences. In fact, Hana is almost a cookie-cutter reflection of Wakaba. They’re both naïve, good-natured girls who undergo similar arcs of character development.

Characters aren’t the only similarities that both Slow Start and Wakaba*Girl have. Both anime feature similar animations, storylines, and music as well. However, the most striking similarity between the two shows is their type of humor. Both anime feature an innocent main character who is friends with a pure-hearted shortie, a serious and straight-laced big sister type, and an eccentric pervert, so both use the exact same jokes throughout.

Hanayamata and Wakaba*Girl have slightly different set-ups, but both anime follow similar narrative beats. Naru Sekiya, the protagonist of Hanayamata, is just like Wakaba. Both are young girls with big dreams. Naru, however, is not the transfer student. Her new friend, Hana Fountainstand, is. As you might have surmised from her name, Hana is American. She came to Japan to learn yosakoi, a type of dance, and start a club around it. Naru mistakenly believes Hana is a fairy the first time she sees Hana dancing. Wanting to be a princess in her own fairy tale, Naru decides to learn yosakoi too. Together, Hana and Naru start a club, begin collecting members, and learning the nuances of yosakoi from a gangster-looking dance shop owner.

From there, Hanayamata follows the same format as the other shows on this list. Naru is entering a world she knows little about, but the friends she meets help her get through the hard times. The anime makes room for male characters, but is predominantly full of girls. Hanayamata is a hilarious show. Much like Wakaba*Girl, the show has a playful soul that comes through the catchy OP and soundtrack. Better yet, since Hanayamata’s plot focuses on the formation of a dance club, the music is more prominent.

Though the set-up is a little different, Yuru Yuri is practically Wakaba*Girl. Akari Akaza joins her two senpai in the Amusement Club when she gets into middle school. The trio is soon joined by Chinatsu Yoshikawa, Akira’s fellow classmate, who mistakenly thinks she’s joining the Tea Club. Chinatsu decides to stick around and the four girls engage in numerous slice-of-life shenanigans. They are all shenanigans that closely resemble each of the plot points in Wakaba*Girl.

Yuru Yuri adds a little bit more spice to Wakaba*Girl’s formula by dipping its toes into the yuri subgenre. However, the lesbian undertones aren’t large enough to cause noticeable changes to what’s seen in Wakaba*Girl. Yuru Yuri also does something interesting by not focusing on its main character. Although Akari is the new girl who closely resembles Wakaba, Yuru Yuri goes out of its way to remove Akari’s relevance. Whole episodes will go by, only to end with Akari complaining that no one noticed she was absent. It’s absolutely hilarious and helps keep Yuru Yuri from being a complete cutter copy of Wakaba*Girl.

Amanchu! begins with city girl Futaba Ooki moving to a sea-side town where she doesn’t know anyone. She’s not the boisterous, energetic type though, so she struggles to connect with the people she meets. When she attracts the attention of town native Hikari Kohinata, she doesn’t know how to react. However, Hikari decides the two of them are going to be friends, nicknames Futaba “Teko,” and makes it her mission to convince her new bestie to love scuba diving as much as her. Teko struggles to keep up with her new friend, but she desperately wants to love diving too so she and Hikari can remain friends. Eventually, her desire to please Hikari evolves into a genuine passion for the hobby.

Amanchu! is such a wholesome show. The plotlines differ a bit in comparison to Wakaba*Girl since Wakaba is struggling to be a student and Teko wants to learn how to dive. However, both shows do a phenomenal job at capturing the simplistic joy of a young girl learning to accept herself as she’s learning to do something new.

Hinako Note…is a little strange. The main character, Hinako, is a country girl who’s shy around people. Whenever she tries to speak in public, she freezes up and takes the stance of a scarecrow. She’s had this habit her entire life, and has used it to strike up friendships with every species in the animal kingdom. In an attempt to overcome her shyness and fulfill her dream of becoming an actor, she decides to attend a school in the city. To save money on rent, she moves into a boarding house near the campus. As it happens, the girls she lives with are also her future classmates. That being said, their backstories are just as strange as Hinako’s. Their personalities range from a girl who eats books that she likes to a young maiden who always dresses in frilly clothes but hates being treated like a little girl.

It’s a ridiculous cast of characters who waltz through equally bizarre slice of life moments. So it’s just like Wakaba*Girl! The main difference between the two shows is that Hinako Note has a few more characters. One of them is a tsundere and rival to Hinako, which opens up a slew of jokes that Wakaba*Girl could never tell. It makes Hinako Note stronger, though, and opens up the comedy to some well-written character development for several characters.

A-Channel is a pure comedy through and through. The anime stars Tooru, a protagonist who doesn’t fit the mold of the other main characters in this list. She’s not a new student who needs help from her friends to fulfill a dream. However, like Wakaba, she does find herself in a position she doesn’t recognize. After discovering her best friend Run in a compromising position, she realizes her best friend might meet, befriend, and become interested in other girls. So Tooru takes the only logical course of action: she works every day to make sure no one can steal Run away.

As you might imagine, Tooru’s antics cause trouble for Run and their other girl friends. It’s all in good fun, though, and every episode will leave you rolling around with laughter. No one is trying to become normal, but the ridiculously simple antics of Tooru, Run, and their friends will remind you of Wakaba*Girl’s roster of equally lovable characters.