Best movies & TV Shows like Life

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Life Starring Kie Kitano, Saki Fukuda, Yoshihiko Hosoda, Megumi Seki, and more. If you liked Life then you may also like: One Week Friends, Orange, Demon Covered in Scars, Blue Spring, Love Me, Love Me Not and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

TV show

Adapted from Keiko Suenobu's manga "LIFE," this drama delves into the dark side of high school life. The story focuses mainly on bullying, but the manga also touches on subjects such as self-mutilation, suicide, and rape. Kitano Kii stars as Ayumu Shiiba, one of the students bullied by a group of classmates led by Ayumu's former friend, Manami Anzai (Fukuda Saki).

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One Week Friends

High school student Yuki Hase wants to become close with classmate Kaori Fujimiya who is alway by herself. Kaori Fujimiya refuses to become close with Yuki Hase, because she forgets her friends every new Monday. Even though Kaori tells Yuki why she doesn't want to become friends, Yuki still wants to become close to her.

Orange

A girl mysteriously receives advice from her future self and as a result her group of friends, along with a newly arrived, troubled classmate, learn how to be better friends and a better community.

Demon Covered in Scars

Mai (Rika Adachi) is a high school student. She attends a new school and there she meets her classmate Shino (Manami Enosawa). Shino was bullied by Mai's friends back in their middle school days. Table have now turned.

Blue Spring

Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.

Love Me, Love Me Not

Akari is a first grade high school student. She is positive, realistic and outgoing with romance. Akari though is not good at expressing her feelings. She become friends with Yuna, who attends the same high school. Yuna has a hard time talking with strangers and she is passive with romance. She has never been in love, but she dreams of having a romance like those drawn in manga. Even though Akari and Yuna have totally different personalities, they are now good friends. Yuna gets attracted to Rio who is Akari’s stepbrother and attends the same high school. Akari becomes attracted to Kazuomi, who is Yuna’s childhood friend and attends the same high school.

My Love Story!!

Takeo Goda is a high school student 2 m tall and weighting more than 100 kg. He has a righteous character. The male students adore him, but female students do not like him. All of the girls Takeo likes prefer his handsome friend Makoto Sunakawa. One day, Takeo saves female high school student Rinko Yamato from a pervert on train. Takeo falls in love with her at first sight. He feels Rinko likes Makoto, but Makoto isn't the one she likes. Takeo struggles to liaise between Rinko and Makoto.

Saki

Story follows high school student Saki Miyanaga and her classmates as they become absorbed in the game of mahjong. They target an upcoming national competition.

Insomniacs After School

Two sleepless teenagers find kinship as they escape to their school's astronomy observatory. Unable to sleep at night, Ganta Nakami is cranky in class and unpopular with his classmates. He discovers that the school observatory, once used by the now-defunct astronomy club, may be the perfect place for a nap—but he's not alone. Fellow insomniac Isaki Magari is willing to share the observatory with Nakami, and a friendship between the two begins as they bond over the most unlikely of things. Dark rumors about what befell the members of the astronomy club keep people away from the school observatory, and that's what makes it the perfect sanctuary for Nakami and Magari to get some much-needed rest. Unfortunately, the school faculty can't allow its unsanctioned use. But if there were a new astronomy club, maybe these two insomniacs could have a place to call home!

Touch

Twin brothers, Tatsuya and Kazuya, grew up with their next door neighbor Minami like siblings. Minami's dream is that her school's baseball team will participate in the national Koshien High School Baseball Tournament. The twin brothers make a pact that they will take Minami to the tournament.

High School Teacher

The Story of Untouchable Passion In a rugby match, disaster strikes as player kazuki causes serious injury to his friend Takeshi, and as a result he is left as a vegetable. Kazuki is so plugged with guilt that he quits the team and settles in a remote kamakura Girl's high School as a sport teacher. During a hot summer holiday, Kazuki has fallen into a love relationship, albeit unacceptable to the outsiders, with one of his student Moe. Later, he realizes that his attraction to her comes from nothing other than her loneliness and a crime labelled as grossly unforgivable.

The Cherry Orchard: Blossoming

Remake of a hit film from 1990, "The Cherry Orchard" which Nakahara himself directed, based on a popular comic book from Akimi Yoshida. The story takes place at a prestigious girls high school where everyone is oppressed with rules. One girl who just transferred to this school finds a long lost script of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" which was banned from school 11 years ago. Breaking strict school rules and boundaries, she and her friends decide to perform the play. With sentiment, love and passion, the girls cherish the moment of their life before taking the next step towards adulthood.

Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends

Second year high school student Kodaka Hasegawa has transferred to his new school about a month ago, but he still hasn't made any friends. Kodaka Hasegawa was born from a Japanese father and a British mother. Because of his appearance, people think Kodaka Hasegawa is a troubled kid. One day, Kodaka Hasegawa sees classmate Yozora Mikazuki pleasantly talking to herself. Kodaka Hasegawa talks with her about how to make friends. To make friends, Yozora Mikazuki decides to form the Neighbor's Club and forces Kodaka to enroll in the club.

Signal 100

A group of high school students are forced into a game where they are hypnotized to commit suicide on an unknown command. Where no one is safe from a sudden death, how can they avoid their fates?

Life

Yu confronts a number of events and encounters: Reunion with a high school classmates, a close friend who suffers from serious illness and a former lover, among others.By feeling the severity of the flow of time, Yu will know one truth of "Life".

No Dropping Out: Back to School at 35

The drama will center around how a 35 year old changes the school and influences her fellow classmates’ lives while dealing with the dark reality of today’s high schools, including bullying and skipping school.

One Week Friends

High school sophomore Yūki Hase noticed that Kaori Fujimiya, his classmate, was always alone. He tried to start a conversation with her but was turned down: "My memories of friendship can last only a week," she said. Despite of knowing this shocking truth, Yūki keeps trying to be Kaori's "new" friend every week.

GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka

Eikichi Onizuka, former gang leader, becomes a teacher of a class of students who torment their teachers and fellow students. Of course they do not do this out of whim, they have their reasons. Onizuka is charged by the chairlady to help these troubled students into a more healthy adulthood, and help rehabilitate the teachers in the process as well.

Kashimashi - Girl Meets Girl

Hazumu confessed his love to Yasuna, but she turned him down. To ease his heartbreak, he went to Mt. Kashimayama where he had met her for the first time. He loses his way in the mountains, and it starts to get dark. Seeing a big shooting star in the sky, he begins to formulate a wish, but quickly notes that something is very wrong. For the shooting star is actually a space ship about to crash into him. And then he died. Only with the help of the aliens could his live be saved. However, he became a girl, due to an accident during the reconstruction of his body.

Saki

Saki tells the story of a girl's mental and emotional growth as she and her fellow teammates battle fearsome rivals, all gunning for the national high school mahjong tournament, and is a cross between sports action and high school drama.

You and Me

The story revolves around four teens - the good-looking twins Asaba Yuuta and Yuuki, the effeminate Matsuoka Shun, and the class head Tsukahara Kaname - who have known each other since early childhood. While they are not necessarily good or bad friends, they continue to hang out well into high school. The half-Japanese transfer student Tachibana Chizuru joins the circle of friends in this comedy about the everyday life of adolescence.

IS: Not a Boy and Not a Girl

“IS” stands for “intersexual,” a term referring to people who cannot clearly be classified as male or female, and who may biologically possess characteristics of both sexes. Rokuhana's manga primarily deals with the troubles faced by the young Hoshino Haru (played by Fukuda), an intersexual who was registered as a girl at birth but has been raised as a boy. Goriki plays Aihara Miwako, a mysterious classmate who tries to get close to Haru. Inoue Masahiro has been cast as Ibuki Kenji, a member of the soccer club whom Haru begins having feelings for. Nishida Naomi and Minami Kaho play Miwako's and Haru's mothers, respectively.

My Little Monster

Mizutani Shizuku finds peace in her studies.  Working hard to stay at the top of the class, alone but focused.  When she is tasked with delivering class materials to Yoshida Haru, her world starts to rapidly expand.  With some new friends and feelings, will she be able to stay focused on her studies?

Close Range Love

In high school, Sakurai Haruka, Mirei and Kanata are good friends whom everyone envies. The three of them believed their relationship would remain like this forever. Then Haruka’s stepsister Ririko suddenly returns from overseas. After several years away, she has become beautiful to the extent that classmates call her “goddess”. Although Haruka has often built walls around other people, Ririko deliberately gets close to him. One night, she barges in all of a sudden and starts to cry against his chest. “I have no where to go. You’ll let me stay here, right?” Haruka is baffled by his pushy stepsister, Mirei secretly loves Haruka and Kanata has become aware of Mirei. The distance between Haruka, Mirei and Kanata who had taken it for granted that they would always be close, starts to change little by little

The Kabocha Wine

Shunsuke Aoba has just transferred to a new school and can’t wait to attend. Excitedly, he sprints to the school but, upon arrival, finds that no one is there. Unfortunately, Shunsuke didn’t know that his first day was a holiday, of all things. However, it seems that he is not the only one on campus. As he is about to eat his lunch, he meets a student named Natsumi. Shunsuke gives her some of his food, and the two strike up a conversation. Natsumi was born as a so-called SL girl, a particularly tall girl. She herself accepts her specialness but is rejected by many of her classmates. How will Shunsuke react to this? Will their initial friendship continue?

Ramen Loving Girl

Koizumi is a mysterious and attractive high school student. But what most people don't know about her is that she's a ramen master who is always on the lookout for great ramen restaurants. Everyday, she goes hunting for real-life places serving the best ramen dishes and delightfully eats the delicious noodles. The way Koizumi downs a giant bowl of ramen–more adeptly than any large man—will amaze and delight you!

Attack on Titan: Junior High

Your favorite characters from Attack on Titan are back in…junior high school? Adapted from the hit spinoff manga series—Attack on Titan: Junior High (written by Saki Nakagawa), this parody reimagines Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and other characters from the original manga as students and teachers at Titan Junior High School.

MARS

The story revolves around Kira and Rei, two high school students. Kira is an extremely introverted artist, and Rei is an outgoing playboy with a frightening violent side. The two start a friendship and eventually a romance after Rei sees a drawing that Kira drew on the back of a map she gave him. However, both Kira and Rei are hiding troubled pasts, and through their relationship they confront their past demons. Masao, a student at Kira and Rei's school, has a connection to Rei's violent past. He enters Kira and Rei's lives to try to force Rei to return to the person he used to be.

Sukeban Deka

A juvenile delinquent code-named Saki Asamiya is taken in by the government and forced to fight crime to redeem her actions. She is sent to various high schools to infiltrate and neutralize gangs and other forms of crime as a police officer using her metal yo-yo badge as a weapon.

I'm Inside Mari

Isao Komori is a college dropout who spends his days cooped up in his apartment playing video games. The highlight of his day is visiting a convenience store where an angel-like high-school girl called Mari visits every night. One morning Komori wakes up in Mari's body. Another "Komori" inhabits his old body, and Mari has disappeared. Komori struggles to maintain Mari's ordinary life and starts to investigate Mari's disappearance.

Slow Start

Hana Ichinose is a normal 16-year-old high school student. However, there is something different about her: She enrolled in high school one year late! Her classmates are unaware of this, and Hana will have to work hard to catch up with everyone else.

Kakegurui

Children from influential families in politics and businesses attend the Hyakkaou Private Academy. There, the hierarchy of the students are classified by a series of games. Students that win the games are on the ruling side and the students who lose become slaves. One day, a mysterious girl, Yumeko Jabami (Minami Hamabe), is transferred to Hyakkaou Private Academy. She looks pure and pretty, but she is actually a compulsive gambler and seeks out the thrill of taking calculated risks.

High School Girls

Who needs dialog when you're this cute? The beautiful (but unlucky) Momoko, the cool, collected Shibumi, and the refreshingly innocent Mayumi star in a "silent manga." No speeches, no dialog! Just pictures, sound effects, and three high school girls living their daily lives.

O Maidens in Your Savage Season

The girls in a high school literature club do a little icebreaker to get to know each other: answering the question, "What's one thing you want to do before you die?" One of the girls blurts out, "Sex." Little do they know, the whirlwind unleashed by that word pushes each of these girls, with different backgrounds and personalities, onto their own clumsy, funny, painful, and emotional paths toward adulthood.

Wasteful Days of High School Girls

One day out of boredom, Tanaka decided to give her classmates nicknames based on their quirks. Her friend Kikuchi became "Ota" for her nerdy interests, and her other friend Saginomiya became "Robo" because of her expressionless personality. In retaliation, her friends decided to name Tanaka "Baka." These are the ridiculous days of three high school friends claiming (or not) the height of their youth.

Saki

Miyanaga Saki, a first-year student at Kiyosumi High School, lacks enthusiasm for mahjong and plays it so that it will end with neither a win nor a loss. One day, she is influenced by Haramura Nodoka’s genius mahjong tactics and decides to join the mahjong club. Nodoka is the titleholder of the national junior high school mahjong tournament. Together with Nodoka and the other club members, Saki contends for the title against formidable opponents.

After School Dice Club

A story about girls playing board games after school! Kyoto in Spring. Aya is a high school girl who's just moved to a new town. Miki is her shy classmate, and her first friend. One day after school Aya and Miki follow the committee president Midori to a speciality board games store. The Dice Club!! Without thinking they try out a German board game together. These girls, who are searching for fun, soon fall into the exciting world of games!

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun

First year high school student and occultist, Nene Yashiro summons "Hanako-san of the Toilet" to grant her romantic wishes. She ends up Hanako's spiritual assistant, helping him destroy supernatural beings and change rumors to balance the spirit and human worlds. Along the way, Nene learns about her connection to the spirit world and the dark secrets regarding Hanako's past.

High-Rise Invasion

High-school girl Yuri suddenly finds herself on the rooftop of a high-rise building. She's trapped in a bizarre world surrounded by skyscrapers, where a masked man cracked open a man's head with an axe before her eyes. Finding a way to survive this bizarre world, find her beloved brother, and escape becomes her top priority, but she is beset by danger not just from the mysterious Masks, which possess both inhuman strength and cruelty, but other survivors turned cruel or desparate by the insanity of the high-rise world.

Skip and Loafer

Iwakura Mitsumi, a tenacious country girl, prepares for high school in the big city. She meets the handsome Shima Sousuke, whose easygoing ways help her adapt in the real world.

Insomniacs After School

Ganta Nakami is a high school student who suffers from insomnia. He meets Isaki Magari, a girl with the same condition. A relationship forms as they share a secret and catch up on their sleep in their school’s abandoned observatory.

Ippon Again!

After one last tournament and an embarrassing loss in the final round, Michi decides to call it quits on the sport of judo. Between high school social activities and entrance exams, she’ll have no time to compete in the martial art she loves most, but putting aside old hobbies is a normal part of growing up. Still, the love of judo lingers—and it comes back full force when she meets her new classmate Towa, the girl who bested Michi in her final match! Towa wants to form a judo club at their school, but she’ll need new members to get it up and running. United by their love of judo, they’ll throw in their passions into the ring together and score ippon again!

More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers

The story centers on third-year high school student Jiro Yakuin, who gets saddled with his gyaru classmate Akari Watanabe for the class's "marriage training" project about practicing to be a married couple. Jiro is the complete opposite of Akari, but the two know that if they do well they will be able to switch partners to end up with their respective crushes, and so they force themselves to act like the perfect married couple.

Boy's Abyss

Kurose Reiji is a 17-year-old high school boy whose family members are full of problems. Due to this circumstance, Reiji has no particular dream and wants to get a job instead of going to college to make his mother's life easier. Just as Reiji was spending his days vaguely, he had a fateful encounter with an idol called Aoe Nagi, who proposed to Reiji that they commit suicide together. Will Reiji be able to find the light in his life after all the problems occurring one after another around him?

Falling high school girl and Irresponsible teacher

Following a failed confession to her first love, female high school student Mikoto Ochiai contemplates jumping off the roof of the school building. However, her thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of Jin Haiba, the physics teacher known for being a slacker and the butt of students' jokes. Calmly, he lights a cigarette and asks for an explanation of the events that led her to this precipice. Rather than dissuade her from killing herself, he makes a request—will she enter into a romance with him before she dies? Together, the two gradually ponder why they should keep living and why they should not love each other in earnest.

Those were the Days

This TV series is the story of 5 japanese seniors and 1 night school student struggling with their future as they prepare for the grueling entrance exams and what lies ahead after graduation.

Ciguatera

Bullied by his classmates, Ogino Yusuke lives his life in hell. After becoming obsessed with motorbikes, Yusuke starts attending driving school in secret where he meets Nagumo Yumi, and the two begin dating.

Ao Haru Ride

At the end of the first year of high school, Futaba Yoshioka meets Kou Tanaka who was her first love. In their middle school days, they attended the same school, but he suddenly transferred to another school. Three years later, he appears in front of her again with the different last name of Kou Mabuchi. His personality also seems to have changed from warm to cold. He is like a totally different person from three years ago. Futaba Yoshioka slowly learns what happened to Kou Mabuchi for the past three years and she become to have feelings for him again.

Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater

Tsurugi Hina, a first-year high school student who moved from the city, is an indoor person who is not good at living things. While walking along the embankment, she met her senior Kuroiwa, and was forced to join the mysterious "Teibo Club" and she decides to start fishing. With the support of unique club members, she gradually discovers the joy of fishing.

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