Triangle Heart: Sazanami Joshi Ryo

When his aunt travels abroad, Makihara Kousuke lands a temporary gig as the janitor of an all-female dormitory, a setup that sounds simple enough until you realize the job comes with a whole cast of residents he has to cook for, clean up after, and somehow earn the trust of. The wrinkle is Jinnai Mio, a quiet, guarded girl who refuses to touch anything he makes and keeps her distance no matter how approachable he tries to be. That tension, one guy genuinely trying to connect with someone who won't let him in. drives the early episodes and gives the whole thing more interpersonal texture than you might expect from a 5-episode OVA from 2000. Food becomes a surprisingly effective throughline here; the way Kousuke approaches cooking as a form of communication says more about his character than a lot of dialogue would. It's a slice-of-life setup with adult content layered in, adapted from an ivory visual novel by Mook Animation. If you've watched something like Discipline: The Record of a Crusade or Bible Black and wanted the character dynamics to breathe a little more, this scratches that itch. It's not reinventing anything, but the dormitory setting and the slow build around Mio give it a warmer, more grounded feel than most entries in the genre. Worth a watch if you appreciate character-driven setups even in shorter formats.