The 5 Anime Involving Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are horrible and are capable of ruining a person’s life. We specify before we start: we are in no way trying to romanticize or normalize them, and indeed we urge you, if you suffer from them, to seek help.

Rather, we are here to collect those anime that use them as a narrative device, and as is only right, treating them with due respect, often and often sending messages of hope.

The rankings are based on our experience and personal taste.

5. Say I Love You

A scholastic romantic comedy that would melt the hearts of the toughest fans with its twists and tender moments.

Mei Tachibana has spent her 16 years without having a boyfriend or friends. One day she ends up getting into a fight with Yamato Kurosawa, a very popular boy, who begins at that moment to take a liking to the girl.

Their romance soon begins in a very unexpected way, when one night Yamato, to save Mei from a stalker, kisses her to pretend to be engaged.

Aiko Muto, one of the secondary characters in the anime, presents an eating disorder, earning the anime a nomination in this list.

The girl, given her obsession with striving for a perfect, slender physique, has in the past followed an overly strict, almost destructive diet.

Indeed, this has led her to have an athletic and slender physique, but also to have obvious stretch marks on her stomach, given her excessive dieting.

4. Masamune-kun’s Revenge

When he was little Masamune was a chubby boy due to eating disorders, and he was bullied by a girl called Aki Adagaki, who kept calling him piggy.

This took a toll on young Masamune, who decided to act and get revenge on the girl.

He planned to lose weight and seduce the girl to have the possibility to reject her and break her heart.

This backfires spectacularly as the boy ends up falling in love with Aki. It turns out that she liked him even back then but was unable to express her feelings properly.

This show is entertaining due to the plot devices and the fun vibes, and is one decent choice if you are looking for anime where enemies become lovers.

3. Kiss Him Not Me

The protagonist is a girl called Kae Serinuma, a fujoshi.

At the beginning of the show, she is overweight due to eating disorders, and she can’t help but fantasize about her male classmates falling in love.

After falling into a depression she loses a lot of weight, causing her classmates to start noticing her.

They all want to seduce her but she tries to make them fall for each other. A fun reverse harem that is ideal if you want to watch a special anime.

2. Yuri!! on Ice

Highly acclaimed and award-winning sports anime that has ice skating as its central theme, with added comic and sentimental elements.

The story has as its centerpiece Yuuri Katsuki, a 23-year-old hope of Japanese ice skating who has, however, suffered a bitter defeat in a major competition that destroys him psychologically. This lead him to develop emotional eating, in plain English, finding comfort in food.

Undecided whether to continue in the sport or not, he will be shaken by Victor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky, two Russian talents.

If you are a fan of skating, we shouldn’t be the ones to tell you: don’t miss it. But another great reason to see it is its breathtaking animations, done by MAPPA studio, the more in-vogue studio of the moment.

1. Toradora!

Toradora is an anime focused on the two main characters. Ryuuji Takasu is a high school student who’s kind and pretty chill but his face is very intimidating and rubs people the wrong way, Taiga Aisaka is instead a small girl with a feisty personality.

The two of them will help each other during the show and they will start to know each other better. Ryuuji discovers the sweet side of Taiga and she will also find out that behind Ruuji’s face is not a delinquent.

They will help each other with their respective crushes but they will inevitably start to develop feelings for each other that they will have to handle.

Toradora! has many secondary characters, and among them we have Ami, a girl who will often get in the way of the protagonists to create discomfort and who seems full of herself.

We later discover that the girl hides behind her brash behavior a very fragile and insecure character. This leads her to suffer from bulimia, given her obsession with having a perfect physique.