Anime Like The Ramparts of Ice

Due to her quiet nature, Koyuki Hikawa seems like an unapproachable ice queen to most others. However, Koyuki is prone to overthinking and uncomfortable in some social situations after various bad experiences in middle school.

One day, two sociable boys—Minato Amamiya and Youta Hino—break through her barriers. Alongside Koyuki’s friend Miki, the four start to form a friendship. While Koyuki slowly breaks out of her shell, her friends all have their own problems they are secretly dealing with.

Miyu Suzuki is a bubbly, fashionable high school girl who sits next to the quiet and frank Yuusuke Tani. While their interactions are brief and they couldn’t seem like more different people, Miyu has a secret—she has a huge crush on Tani!

Concerned about what people would think, Miyu keeps her crush a secret until a slight misunderstanding forces her hand. Miyu blurts out that she likes him, runs off, and confesses her feelings. To her delight, he feels the same, and so, with frenetic excitement, the relationship between these two opposites formed.

Shizuku Mizutani cares little of others and only about scoring top marks. However, when she is tasked with taking something to her desk neighbor, Haru Yoshida, her world begins to change.

Haru, too, knows little of human nature and hasn’t been to school for awhile due to fighting. Yet, it is the lack of friends that they both have that soon forms a friendship between them.

Oota is fiery, none too bright, and how he feels can be gleaned right from his face. Kashiwada is his expressionless, quiet classmate who has trouble expressing any emotion. One day, Oota decides to devote his life to cracking through Kashiwada’s emotionless shell through a series of mischievous pranks and scares, which often fail.

Despite his antics seeming like bullying to others, a unique relationship starts to build between these two opposites.

Futaba Yoshioka was an attractive middle schooler, popular with boys, but not with girls. It left her feeling lonely, but none of that mattered as long as her crush, Kou Tanaka, liked her.

However, when Kou moved away, Futaba decided to change herself, purposely adopting unattractive traits to be popular with the girls, but one day, Kou comes back as different of a person as she is.

Chidori Public School and the all-girls Kikyo Private Academy are two schools right next door to each other. However, while Kikyo is a prestigious school for noble young women, Chidori is seen as the dumping ground for simple-minded delinquents, producing a rivalry between the schools and their students.

Tall and mean-looking, Chidori student Rintarou Tsumugi has a gentle heart and is always helping out at his mother’s bakery. It is there that he runs into Kaoruko Waguri, a Kikyo student who has apparently taken an interest in Rintarou.

In order to pursue a career in politics to make a positive change for Japan, Mitsumi leaves her rural town to go to high school in Tokyo. While she has a clear life plan for herself, she is still a country girl in a big city and ends up late and lost on her first day.

Luckily, Mitsumi is noticed by a fellow new student, Sousuke Shima, and he guides her to school. This laid-back guy is charmed by her motivated personality and strikes up a friendship with her, supporting her as she tries to make meaningful friendships with her classmates.

Quiet and relatively timid, Sawako Kuronuma is misunderstood by her classmates. Due to her long black hair and shyness, they have taken to calling her Sadako, the ghost girl from The Ring.

Longing to make friends, she is drawn to Kazehaya Shouta, the most popular boy in school and his refreshing personality. However, when Kazehaya starts talking to her, Sawako’s lonely world begins to open up.

Although lauded for being likable and intelligent, Kyouko Hori hides the fact that she has to take care of her brother and the housework because her parents are always working.

Izumi Miyamura, on the other hand, is seen as a brooding, bespectacled otaku. Outside of school, he sports tattoos and nine piercings.

By happenstance, the two outside school personalities of these two classmates meet and they get to know a side of each other they don’t show their peers.

Due to his father’s work, Eita Izumi is used to moving around. In the final semester of high school, he moves back to his hometown.

There, Eita reconnects with his old best friend Haruto who is obsessed with baseball for an unknown reason. He also reconnects with Mio, a girl he once had unrequited feelings for.

As their high school years rapidly approach a close, Eita’s arrival seems to spur on a series of anxieties and buried emotions in everyone around him.