D.N.Angel

At first glance, Daisuke Niwa seems like a pretty average 14-year-old, clumsy, not exactly cool, the kind of kid who trips over his own shoelaces. So when he finally works up the nerve to confess to his crush Risa Harada and gets turned down flat, you'd expect that to be the worst part of his day. Except the rejection triggers a family curse, and now every time Daisuke thinks about Risa, he physically transforms into Dark Mousy, a suave legendary phantom thief. His mom and grandpa? They've been training him for this his whole life and just never mentioned it. Thanks, family. Now Daisuke has to juggle school, steal and seal dangerous magical artworks as Dark, and deal with the fact that Risa, the girl who rejected him, is falling hard for his alter ego. Meanwhile, Risa's twin sister Riku starts catching feelings for the real Daisuke, and a mysterious classmate named Satoshi Hiwatari is secretly a police commander hunting Dark down while hiding his own dark secret. The love geometry here gets genuinely tangled, and the show leans into it without feeling cheap. It's a 26-episode TV series from Xebec with a tone that shifts between goofy school comedy and moody fantasy heists, held together by one of the catchiest openings of its era in "Byakuya ~True Light~." If you grew up with Cardcaptor Sakura or Kaitou Saint Tail, this hits a similar sweet spot: magical identity crises wrapped in teen romance and just enough action to keep things moving.