I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class
クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった (Class de 2-banme ni Kawaii Onnanoko to Tomodachi ni Natta)
- Romance
- School
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Apr 7, 2026 to Jun 23, 2026
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
First-year student Maki Maehara plans to drift through high school unnoticed, keeping to himself as conversations pass him by and saving his free time for video games and B-movies. That changes on day one, when his self-introduction unexpectedly piques the interest of Umi Asanagi—widely labeled the “second prettiest girl in class,” just after her best friend, Yuu Amami.
Behind her polished image, Asanagi turns out to share Maehara’s low-key tastes, and the two quickly find an easy rapport. Even though she belongs to the class’s most popular group, Asanagi starts spending Fridays at Maehara’s house instead, where they play games, watch movies, read manga, and snack without worrying about appearances. Their quiet weekly hangout becomes a small refuge from the gap between their social worlds.
Otaku Consensus
Otaku Consensus: Connect's 12-episode adaptation of Takata's story wins through Hideki Tachibana's patient direction and Keiichirou Oochi's tidy series composition, turning a potentially gimmicky title into a romance praised for small-scale character growth. Fan response landed solidly positive, with a 7.82 MAL score, an 80/100 AniList score, and an 8.0 IMDb rating; the recurring criticism is that the class-beauty-ranking hook and secret-friendship wish fulfillment require more tolerance for rom-com self-indulgence than some viewers will have.
Why You Should Watch
Watch this if you want a school romance built on private rituals, not confession fireworks: games, B-movies, manga, snacks, and the quiet stress of choosing who gets to see your real self. It scratches a similar itch to Horimiya's after-school intimacy, but with a narrower focus and more otaku-culture texture; it also offers the social-gap appeal of My Dress-Up Darling without making hobby spectacle the whole engine. The appeal is Maehara's carefulness: reviewers repeatedly praised how his first real friendship makes him considerate rather than possessive. If you like romances where progress is measured in trust, routine, and awkward emotional honesty, this is calibrated for you.
Key Characters
- YYuu Amami(VA: Sayumi Suzushiro)
Yuu functions as more than the class's top-ranked beauty: she is the social reference point that makes the show's discomfort with popularity metrics impossible to ignore.
- UUmi Asanagi(VA: Manaka Iwami)
Umi's appeal comes from the gap between her polished public placement and the unguarded tastes she is allowed to have in private.
- MMaki Maehara(VA: Haruki Ishiya)
Fans tend to respond to Maki because his loneliness is not treated as a cool loner pose, but as something that makes him unusually careful with the first bond he values.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
The series was animated by Connect and ran as a completed 12-episode spring 2026 cour from April 7 to June 23, giving it a compact seasonal structure rather than an open-ended long-form romance build.
- 2
Hideki Tachibana directed the anime, with Takumi Shibata as assistant director and Keiichirou Oochi on series composition, a staffing setup that points to a controlled, dialogue-forward adaptation rather than a gag-driven rom-com format.
- 3
AniList's tag profile is unusually balanced for a school romance: Male Protagonist sits at 90%, Female Protagonist at 84%, and Primarily Female Cast at 79%, reflecting a show marketed through both leads' interiority rather than a one-sided crush fantasy.
- 4
Otaku Culture is one of its strongest AniList tags at 78%, and that is borne out by the recurring use of B-movies, video games, manga, and casual home hangouts as relationship language rather than background decoration.
- 5
The Love Triangle tag is only 26% on AniList, which signals that the series' identity is not built around aggressive romantic competition despite the title's explicit ranking of girls in the classroom.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- The anime credits Takata with the original story and Azuri Hyuuga with the original character designs, while Shouko Takimoto handled the anime character designs for the TV version.
- Fun fact 2
- The main technical art team includes Michiko Morokuma as art director, Erika Tsukino on color design, Takashi Yanagida as director of photography, and Takeshi Saitou as CG director.
- Fun fact 3
- A manga-volume review titled around “B-Movies, Pizza & Secret Friendships” specifically called out the oddness of ranking classmates by attractiveness, a criticism that mirrors the title's most divisive hook.
- Fun fact 4
- Its reception metrics are consistent across major anime-tracking spaces: MAL lists it at 7.82 from 57,218 votes with rank #1104 and popularity #1813, while AniList records an 80/100 score and 3,079 favourites.
- Fun fact 5
- The Japanese title, Class de 2-banme ni Kawaii Onnanoko to Tomodachi ni Natta, is unusually literal, preserving the social-ranking premise directly in the name rather than hiding it behind a softer romantic title.
Studios
- Connect
