The Spring 2026 season of anime was really amazing. I kept up with sixteen new shows, all of which I enjoyed. Allow me to tell you my thoughts on those and some extra ones too.
While I’m posting this near the end of Summer season, with some Fall anime having already begun, this post was largely drafted over three months ago at the end of Spring. Rather than rewrite parts of it to fit the publication date, I decided to keep the original framing as-is. Please enjoy this post as a kind of time capsule from July 2026.
Table of Contents
Akane-banashi ● Daemons of the Shadow Realm ● A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA ● Nippon Sangoku ● The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt ● Re:Zero Season 4 ● MARRIAGETOXIN ● The Ramparts of Ice ● Witch Hat Atelier ● Wistoria Season 2 ● Dorohedoro Season 2 ● Agents of the Four Seasons ● Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly ● I Want to End this Love Game ● Yowayowa Sensei ● Liar Game ● anime ja nai!? ● Long running anime ● Paused, Dropped, Planned ● End
Please note some of this post may contain spoilers. I tried to speak vaguely whenever it was enough but sometimes I got specific to make my thoughts clear.
Akane-banashi
My favorite Weekly Shonen Jump manga received its long-awaited anime adaptation and it was fantastic!
Akane-banashi is a series about the traditional performance art of rakugo that uses the trappings of sports and battle shonen manga for its story. I really enjoy rakugo and I also like to see genre tropes applied to something unconventional, so it was a perfect match. Not only that, but this is a series that is extremely competent at using those conventions, more than many normal sports or battle manga. The format also makes it a very decent introduction to rakugo even if you know nothing about it.
With episodes of the anime coming out on Saturdays and new chapters of the manga coming out on Sundays, it was fun feeling how much Akane has grown since the beginning of the story.
The original manga put a lot of thought into how to present rakugo performances visually in a medium without movement or sound. The anime, directed by Ayumu Watanabe, rethinks some of the presentation now that the same limitations no longer exist. It often opts to let the character animation and voice acting carry the performance. Sometimes, it also comes up with its own visual techniques more suitable for anime, like with Karashi’s performance.
Speaking of voice acting, Anna Nagase does a phenomenal job as Akane, perfectly portraying her spirited personality. She also nailed the rakugo performances, which were recorded authentically on a real zabuton cushion and everything. She also her spirited personality across in the rest of the show. Rie Takahashi and Takuya Eguchi do great as Hikaru and Karashi as well, as do the whole cast.
They understandably had to speed up some chapters to fit within their plans. They were also able to expand some chapters with really great anime-original material, though. Overall, the anime was a great version of the story.
The highlight of the adaptation was Akane’s final Jugemu performance, where episode director Chihsia Wang adjusted the script to allow for a more uninterrupted rakugo performance. While I’m sure that’s a more difficult method of adapting, hopefully Season 2 is able to follow this approach more often, as it works better in an audiovisual medium.
The extra “Akane Small Talk” segments at the end were a very nice addition to divulge more rakugo knowledge in a fun way. At times, they borrowed gags from the 4koma in the volume releases but expanded them. The chibis are simply too cute.
It’s really cool that they got a Japanese music legend, Keisuke Kuwata, who’s never written an anime song in his very long career, to handle both the opening and the ending themes. They’re awesome songs that really embody the show, but I especially love the energetic opening. The visuals for the OP are also totally amazing and I couldn’t stop watching it when it dropped. The kappore dancing! Several references packed into imaginative sequences, including some the anime hasn’t even gotten to yet! It’s just so fun.
Akane-banashi is a manga that only ever gets better, so I can say to anyone who’s watched this first season: look forward to season 2 and beyond!
Daemons of the Shadow Realm (1st cour)
When I picked up the Yomi no Tsugai manga, it felt like I was witnessing the beginning of the next Fullmetal Alchemist. When it was announced to be getting an anime by Bones, directed by none other than Masahiro Ando, I couldn’t contain my excitement.
The world Hiromu Arakawa has created feels deep and the writing meticulous. No character ever feels two-dimensional as they all have their own baggage and motivations. From the great twist in the very beginning to each passing episode, the show continues to challenge your biases as no faction is the clear-cut good or bad guys, presenting you a conflict as-is. The story trusts the viewer to be patient and rewards us in kind.
Masahiro Ando’s bread and butter as a director is incredible fight choreography. The fights in the show are extremely good and animated with a wonderful sense of realism and weight. This focus on clarity is a very nostalgic approach to action that doesn’t follow modern trends and feels refreshing nowadays.
One aspect that immediately sets it apart from a myriad of other yokai-taming battle series is the concept that all daemons come in pairs (‘tsugai’ literally meaning ‘pair’). It’s a small twist to the formula that gives it such a unique angle through which to approach the creature designs, their powers, and fights. This theme of duality is also explored nicely through the twin protagonists.
Yuru is a great protagonist whose fighting abilities with traditional weapons and strategic skills makes him stand out nicely in a cast that’s generally more dependent on guns or the supernatural. Asa is a badass molded by a traumatic past, and her brocon tendencies are very cute.
Right & Left, Yuru’s daemons, are both really fun characters with strong individuality too, rather than simple fighting stands or summons. The running gag of the three of them being fish-out-of-water in modern day Japan never gets old.
Vaundy did a great job composing the opening, which he performed, and the ending, performed by yama. The ED’s visuals were handled by the legendary Suzuki Norimitsu, evoking his first ED for FMA 2003. Vaundy and yama did a pretty fun thing where they both sang each song for the single releases too, though they weren’t used in the show. I also liked the homage to “Again” by Yui in the full version of the opening, “Fly Away”.
The first cour covered roughly up to how far I’d read the manga beforehand. I’m really excited to follow a part of the story that’s brand new to me for the second cour.
A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA
Undoubtedly one of the highlights of this already incredibly stacked season. Awajima Hyakkei has one unique advantage over everything else I know of this Spring: it’s a complete adaptation of its source material, a five-volume manga by Takako Shimura.
Exploring multiple generations of students from an all-girls acting school, this is a show that demands your full attention. It jumps back and forth in time to tell stories with little interest in holding your hand, leaving chronology mostly to context clues. There’s a deep character web connecting its extensive ensemble cast of fantastic characters whose relationships require effort to keep track of. If you do give this show the attention it deserves, however, you’ll be greatly rewarded.
As the title implies, each episode depicts small stories surrounding the Awajima Revue School. These stories explore the most varied of themes including admiration, jealousy, love, bullying, trauma, family, guilt, vocation, gender, religion, legacy, talent, dreams, failure, grief, and much more. Some episodes will make you depressed, others will cheer you up. While each story can be enjoyed separately on its own, it’s the overarching influence they have on each other that really elevates the show. Especially as it draws to a close, it feels like everything is somehow coming together in a really satisfying way.
This is an anime that can just suddenly take your breath away. It’s the last work of veteran animator Kunihiko Hamada as character designer at Madhouse, as he’s now left the studio after 35 years. Together with director Morio Asaka, his frequent collaborator, and great episode directors, they’ve crafted a show that looks very beautiful.
The opening by Hana Hope was quite great and used very effectively in the finale as well. I liked how the OP sequence always started with the title card over a unique establishing shot of a beautiful background for the start of the episode.
Nippon Sangoku
Visually stunning from the sharp character designs with their varied line weight to the extremely creative directing that constantly played with framing, color, typography, lighting, texture and so on to make all the dialogue-heavy scenes a complete delight to watch. The dialogue itself was no less impressive. As far as shows about political maneuvering and war tactics go, Nippon Sangoku was one of the most gripping that I’ve seen. Add a Kevin Penkin soundtrack on top and yeah, this is one hell of an anime.
The first episode, featuring a unique color palette that made it stand out right away, pulls on your heartstrings, and does a great job introducing the silver-tongued protagonist Aoteru Misumi whose exploits always captivate whenever he appears, as well as the entertainingly despicable antagonist Denki Taira.
Misumi and his fun deuteragonist Tsune-chan-san do take a step back through the middle of the show, but to me it stayed consistently entertaining regardless. It helps that their enemy nation’s charismatic dictator Ohga “Tora-chan” Wajima who was featured heavily during that time has a design so alluring that some of Yamato’s military officers were ready to defect to Seii. I get it.
I’m very glad a second season is being made. This season found a natural stopping point, but it would’ve been cruel not to continue with some of what happens at the end.
The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt
Takuma Yokota has deserved an anime adaptation of one of his manga for a long time, and it’s finally happened! I was needlessly afraid of whether the PonSuka anime would do the manga justice: the adaptation was phenomenal!
Having started in 2019, The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length was a manga that helped define the “reiwa era romcom” focused on establishing and developing the main couple rather than a drawn out will-they-won’t-they. It very quickly became one of my favorites at the time.
This anime adaptation is exemplary. The directing and animation are used to enhance the comedy in very clever ways, without just using the manga as a storyboard. The director, Daiji Iwanaga, didn’t have a very extensive resumé, so I didn’t know what to expect, but now I know he’s someone to keep an eye out for. He took great material and really explored how to make it even better in animation.
I think some of the simplest examples surround Tsukishima, the gremlin who transforms into a bishounen in the library or whenever he’s in the proximity of his beloved books. The anime goes as far as to give him a whole mahou shoujo-style transformation when his secret is revealed and later goes on to come up with a ton of other fun ways to have him morph back and forth.
The cast of PonSuka are all extremely lovable dorks. You’ll even fall in love with their parents. If extremely quirky student council members sounds like a fun time, you’ve come to the right place. Poemu and Sakuradaimon are amazing but the supporting cast and side ships are all super good too.
One fun thing the ED did was get a real high school art club’s students to contribute with a chalkboard drawing!
Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Season 4 (Loss Arc)
The new Re:Zero season is great. Water is wet.
Shaula already feels like yet another iconic role for Fairouz Ai’s impressive resume. Her energetic bouncy self is a great addition to the cast. It’s so fun seeing a character with Subaru’s energy multiplied and thrown back at him and Subaru not knowing how to deal with that. Also, I just love girls who say “-ssu” by default.
Every new season feels like it has an agenda to make me kneel and admit Emilia is the absolute coolest and the best to ever do it. So far this season she really shined in her fight against Reid and was obviously the MVP of the mid-season finale.
The OP and ED are really great and play a surprising amount for a show famous for cutting them for time. Having Giga & TeddyLoid compose the opening and TK from ling tosite sigure participate in the ending was a great way to give this season’s themes their own feeling while keeping Konomi Suzuki and MYTH & ROID so that it stays recognizably Re:Zero. I like to call it “mixing a little Gnosia into Re:Zero”.
The big twist in the middle of the arc was really surprising and done so well. I liked how it enabled so many parallels to Subaru’s past experiences. Then, the last episode before the break, moved me to tears. Episode 77 is definitely in the “Best Re:Zero Episodes” Hall of Fame.
MARRIAGETOXIN
The second Bones anime of this season, adapting another good manga I read just a little past where season 1 covered. This one’s philosophy to action is the direct opposite to Yomi no Tsugai’s grounded choreography but executed just as well. Everything in MARRIAGETOXIN is rule of cool, splashy, bombastic.
This show feels like a redemption arc of director Motonobu Hori to me, as his previous two works, Metallic Rouge and Super Crooks, were fairly disappointing and looked kinda drab. Meanwhile, MARRIAGETOXIN was great and looks incredibly colorful in such a unique way, with a really vivid color palette.
One thing you absolutely had to hand Metallic Rouge though was the quality of its music, and Taisei Iwasaki, who also did amazing work on that, Blood Blockade Battlefront and Dragon Pilot is back with yet another incredible soundtrack for a Bones anime.
Hype fights aside, the romcom side of the show is also really great, with a really positive and earnest approach to romance. Gero is a really good protagonist who’s trying to improve himself. Kinosaki is a good mentor with genuine advice on socializing and love despite being a con artist. All the girls are great characters who you’d be plenty happy to see end up with Gero. Still, the best endgame would probably be for him to dismantle his obligations to his clan and find love with Kinosaki.
That said, Arashiyama’s standing in my heart is particularly strong right now. She and her hamsters are way too cute and cool! Gahahaha!
“Shake Na Baby” by AKASAKI was my favorite ending theme of the whole Spring season, a catchy song that kept playing nonstop in my head these past few months. The ED sequence did some neat things too, with variations at the end of each girl’s arc, but even more interestingly, a segment in the middle showing off the raw key animation of sakuga moments in the episode.
I’m very much looking forward to Season 2 next year. It’d also be nice if they got to adapt Hyper Hard Special Mission, the original one-shot in the same universe featuring Piichi, as an OVA one day.
The Ramparts of Ice
2026 is the year of Agasawa Koucha, we’re just living in it.
Following up last season’s You and I Are Polar Opposites by the same author, The Ramparts of Ice, or Koori no Jouheki, is another incredible romcom but this time leaning more strongly towards drama.
That’s not to say it’s not also full of great goofy fun, even the familiar chibis from her other show are still here, as well as the English lines. But while the mantra of Polar Opposites was cheering you up every week with its established pairings, Ramparts is not afraid of giving you a few gut punches and leaving you with uncertainty. There’s joyfulness but also lingering misunderstandings and painful developments. It’s all written very skillfully, with none of the drama ever feeling cheap or stupid.
Fans of the Taira and Azuma pairing in the former anime are especially sure to enjoy this one as they feel like they echo Ramparts. Both shows also take place in the same universe, so there’s occasional cameos in both of them.
In fact, what the two shows have in common as their strongest suit is their amazing, deep characters. The characters in Ramparts are trying to navigate youth and overcome scars from their slowly revealed past. The longer it continues, the clearer it is just how multifaceted its cast is, and it’s awesome watching their relationships develop.
All the voice actors do a great job but I gotta give a special shout out to Anna Nagase. She was already killing it as Akane in Akana-banashi this season. Perfectly nailing another protagonist in Koyuki, whose personality is totally different, in the same season shows her range.
I love it whenever a show has the ending theme start as an insert before transitioning into the credits, but even among other anime that do that, The Ramparts of Ice does it exceptionally well with Polkadot Stingray’s ED theme. It features a minute-long build up that always elevates a dramatic moment at the end of the episode. The song sneaks in with a slow and ominous piano rendition before the bass and drums come in speeding the song up, then the show delivers a cliffhanger, and the awesome ending sequence begins together with the vocals. It’s simply so freaking good.
The show thankfully ended with the announcement of a second season to air already this Fall as it passed the baton back to You and I Are Polar Opposites Season 2 airing this Summer. That means this whole year will feature back-to-back seasons of Agasawa Koucha anime and by the end, both of her works should have full adaptations. Well deserved!
Fun english
Witch Hat Atelier
Witch Hat Atelier is a show with beautiful animation giving volume to its fantastical spells and setting. The magic system is very interesting and unique with its focus on artistry. It makes the show at times feel like it’s about art, which goes well with how well drawn the anime itself is. I think magic works as a great analogy for art so I quite liked that aspect. Little Witch Academia, one of my favorite shows, similarly used magic to symbolize and comment on animation itself.
The world of Witch Hat Atelier is intriguing with the gatekeeping of the craft and the conflict between the Pointed Caps and Brimmed Caps which is apparently less black-and-white than it may seem at first. I did like Coco as a protagonist, with the contrast of her dream coming true being so closely tied to a personal tragedy. Episode 3, when she takes her apprenticeship test at its highest difficulty, was probably my favorite one. Qifrey also has my curiosity ever since he showed how willing he is to stray from his morals for the sake of his goals. The rest of the cast I’m more lukewarm on right now.
What was frustrating was that the show just stopped right in the middle of an arc. There’s a second season in the works but it wasn’t given a release window. This isn’t a problem that will matter in a decade, unlike rushing material to fit arcs neatly into the cour system, or compromising on animation quality to release more episodes faster. However, it does mean there wasn’t really any satisfaction to it ending.
I’m sure if I was a fan of the material already, I’d have been as excited about this show as I was with the director’s other anime this season, Akane-banashi, but I’m a newcomer to Witch Hat Atelier. As beautiful as the animation and storyboarding was and as strong as the magic and the world were, I’m still waiting for something more out of the story and characters. A great anime but not my favorite in its genre or in the season.
Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2
Wistoria is an incredibly fun show that just sticks to the basics and does them well. It might not have anything you haven’t seen done before, but that hardly matters when it nails the execution. Every fight and plot development just gets your blood pumping. Will is a protagonist you can’t help but cheer for.
Tatsuya Yoshihara being busy with Chainsaw Man and stepping into a less hands-on Chief Director role does mean this season unfortunately lost some of the visual spectacle of the first season. The production is noticeably rougher. Even still, the show manages to step up during the most important moments. The fight in episode 23 in particular is jawdropping and does justice to how much the show hyped up the strength of the Magia Vanders.
A good transition between the episode and the opening is always memorable and episode 9 had one with the flashback where Elfie reaches her hand out to Will cutting to the first shot of the OP where they’re walking through the forest hand-in-hand.
The fourth episode of the season, episode 16, is the end of the first arc of the series and is given all appropriate fanfare of a finale, with a full ED celebrating the whole journey up until now. It was an extremely satisfying milestone for the story.
The heartwarming final episode of the season also feels like a nice stopping point. Although there’s frustrating aspects to it too, it should propel Will to grow even further in the season 3 I was very glad to see announced.
Dorohedoro Season 2
Dorohedoro was frankly a show I enjoyed just fine but didn’t care much for until about halfway into Season 2, when the story kicked into high gear and became absolutely awesome. Now I’m really looking forward to Season 3, and if it hadn’t been announced right at the end of Season 2, I probably would’ve already binged the whole manga by now.
The songs by (K)NoW_NAME are still as great as ever. The OP was very catchy. Though I was slightly sad this season had only one ED in comparison to Season 1’s six.
Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring
The concept of Agents of the Four Seasons is such a great hook. Four agents chosen by the gods, each given powers associated with their respective season, are tasked with manifesting the seasons across the country.
A large portion of the show is dedicated to uncovering the traumatic past of Hinagiku, the Agent of Spring, while building up to her reunion with the Agent of Winter. Spring had not been manifested since her kidnapping 10 years ago. I honestly quite enjoyed the emotional flashbacks interspersed with encounters as she moved northwards, like her meeting the sisters responsible for Summer.
When the actual plot kicked in during the final third of the show though, it lost me somewhat. I didn’t care for the villains or most of the twists. They also really struggled with choreographing believable action scenes. I don’t mind giving some leeway to how tricky it might be to adapt lengthy dialogue from a book in the middle of an animated fight scene, but the lack of urgency at times was very distracting. That aside, the animation by Studio Wit itself looked fantastic and it was otherwise well directed.
The real highlight here is probably Kensuko Ushio’s soundtrack. Not only the background music, but also the songs of each season. Each Agent sings to manifest their powers and they’re all incredibly beautiful and memorable songs.
Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly
A super chill magical girl show with no fights, just hijinks. It’s the first entry in nearly three decades in a lineage of Studio Pierrot mahou shoujo anime tracing back to the foundational Creamy Mami, but this is the first one of them I’ve watched.
Two sisters gain magical powers and start living double lives as idols. Neither of them know about each other’s secret identity even as they go on to become a unit. As they perform and interact, they inspire each other in their normal lives as well.
I’m very fond of all the soft colors and shapes in the show’s look. It’s adorned in pastel pinks, purples, blues and greens. The character designs are all very cute and round. LuluttoLilly for me was very much a show carried by the nice vibes it has. It was a very chill anime to just relax to.
This season did the most it could out of the concept of the sisters not knowing each other are magical girls (even stressing believability to a degree), so I’m hoping to see the next season, which will air this Fall, potentially doing plots where this is a shared secret between the two of them.
I Want to End this Love Game
They’ll be married with kids and still insist to each other they haven’t lost the Love Game.
Aishiteru Game wo Owarasetai was a fun little romcom where the two protagonists just flirted the whole time. They’re dating while somehow completely unaware of it. This dynamic makes it so the obliviousness that would’ve been frustrating in a different series ends up not mattering as much, since all they’re missing is the official label. It’s still a tad bit frustrating, but the experience is mostly just cute.
The one thing that needs to be said about this show is it has the best Pocky Game in anime. In fact, it clears that bar with such ease that just saying it’s the best might not do the pocky game scene justice. Maybe that scene alone already made it worth watching.
Yowayowa Sensei
You just gotta watch a nice ecchi anime every once in a while.
Yowayowa Sensei is centered around the wholesome premise of trying to bring Hiwamura, a weak and wimpy teacher, closer to her students who mistakenly think she’s spooky and scary. The episodes are largely just excuses for lewd situations to happen, which is fine. Some of those contrivances are actually pretty funny. The show features likeable characters who’re all supportive of each other.
Hiwamura-sensei is very cute with all her clumsy and feeble antics and her determination to improve as a teacher. Marika Kouno’s distinctive voice acting elevates her to even higher levels of cuteness.
Brain’s Base ensured the whole show looked nice. It stayed consistently on-model and all the fanservice was well-drawn. That’s often not a given nowadays.
DAOKO opening theme is a bop as always. I haven’t heard her music in anything since Dragalia Lost, so I’m very glad to hear her again. The ending theme is sung by the cast, which is something I always enjoy, and it’s catchy too.
Liar Game (1st cour)
Before sites like AniChart existed, anime fans made and maintained seasonal charts as PNGs to be shared. Alongside that, there was a tradition of troll fake charts full of the most anticipated adaptations and sequels everyone wished for. Back when I used to read it, around 2013, Liar Game was a popular pick for those fake anime charts.
The manga ended in 2015 after running for 10 years, and I can tell you now that I never expected that over 10 years later, it’d finally get an anime adaptation.
Liar Game is a comfortably nostalgic watch. As an adaptation, it’s very by-the-books and doesn’t really do anything to elevate the material. I feel like this is the kind of show that would be more enjoyable binged than week-to-week, but I’ve kept up with it weekly.
This was the first high stakes gambling manga I picked up. I don’t fully remember it so I can enjoy a lot of it like it’s the first time again. I do know it should get more interesting in the second cour, though.
The opening theme, Abuku (Bubble) by Yorushika, is to me easily the best song of the whole Spring 2026 season. It also got a viral music video of its own that is very worth watching. No matter how good OP2 will be, I’ll definitely miss this song.
Spider-Noir
Okay, yeah, this isn’t an anime, but it did release in May and I did watch it. I’m not gonna be writing a blog post just for it so I figured I’d talk briefly about it here because it’s really good!
Nicolas Cage plays an excellent Spider, giving Ben Reilly some very cool spider-like mannerisms. The show has a really unique sense of comedy that I enjoyed a lot. I’ll never stop thinking of “that’s a used pickle.” The 1930’s period setting and engrossing noir storyline set it apart from other Spider-Man projects.
They released the show in two formats: “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color”. I watched it in B&W, which felt like the obvious intended experience, and I couldn’t recommend it more. The lights and shadows look totally stunning, the contrasts in each shot were clearly meticulously planned.
This isn’t a color project that was turned monochrome for a vibe, it’s an incredible black & white project that’s being offered with hues to reach a broader audience. I do think they seem to have done a great job with the full color version as well, with a very unique oldschool palette. I might rewatch it that way one day, but I feel certain the authentic one will stay my favorite.
If you like Spider-Man at all, don’t skip out on this show!
Long running anime
Here’s a few quick thoughts I had by July on shows that didn’t start or end this season.
Digimon Beatbreak (ongoing)
As a huge fan of Ghost Game, I feel so lucky that its follow up, Beatbreak, has been such a fantastic season of Digimon as well. Potentially another one of the best. It’s taken very interesting swings for which traditions to keep or let go of. The plot is some of the tightest written in the franchise. The designs and visual direction of the show are both really great. Ya know?
Star Detective Precure! (ongoing)
This season’s detective theme and timeslip to 1999 setting both appeal to me very much and so far the show has lived up to the promise. Love the art style, love the characters, love the transformations. The Detective Conan crossover was pretty fun too, as someone who hasn’t gotten into that series yet. Out of the few I’ve seen, Star Detective is building up be one of my favorite Precure seasons if it keeps it up.
Pokémon Horizons (ongoing)
Horizons was a very enjoyable season of Pokémon that was more focused on telling a story. I really liked Liko, Roy, Dot, their Pokémon, the whole crew of the Rising Volteccers, as well as the Explorers, especially Sango. With the beginning of the Wonder Voyage Arc, it missed the chance to end on a higher note. The original plot is fully concluded and now episodes feel aimless or like random tie-ins. Hopefully it can regain some of its luster before it ends.
Paused, Dropped, Planned
While I kept up with almost everything I picked up this season, some shows fell through the gap.
The big one was Ghost Concert: missing Songs, which I watched about half. It was alright, I might have finished it in a weaker season. Needy Girl Overdose felt weird in a way that didn’t quite hook me even though I wanted to keep watching, I only got two episodes in. I might try going back to both of those one day.
Eren the Southpaw (which has an awesome ALI theme song!) was one I picked for its story about a graphic designer. However, it lost me early with its structure and timeskips.
While I love yuri, cute girls, and sakuga, Kamiina Botan was one I could tell from the first episode wasn’t gonna be for me. And while I love mecha, I thought Snowball Earth’s first episode was pretty bad. So, I didn’t continue watching those after the premiere.
There’s quite a few shows I wanted to watch that I never got around to. Maybe I’ll get to some of them in the future.
I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class has an offputting title but several friends vouched for it halfway through the season. Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? seems like a fun romcom and a friend likes the manga a lot. I’ve seen a lot of screenshots for My Ribdiculous Reincarnation that made me want to pick it up. I always like giving Manga Time Kirara series a go, so Ichijyoma Mankitsu Gurashi! is still a potential thing to see.
The Classroom of the Black Cat and a Witch is a manga I read the beginning of and enjoyed, so I planned on watching the anime, but just didn’t. Mission: Yozakura Family is a manga I love but I still haven’t finished watching the first season of the anime adaptation, so I didn’t get to Season 2 yet. Patlabor EZY is probably something I’ll watch once I’m caught up with the franchise. Prism Rondo looks interesting and I want to give it a try one day but Netflix dropped all of it in a moment I couldn’t stop to watch.
In conclusion…
If you’ve read this whole post, thank you! If you’ve just read the parts that interested you, thank you as well. As you might be able to tell from it being three months late, it wasn’t an easy one to write. If I do this again, I’ll probably limit myself to writing a single paragraph for each show.
I ended up scrapping an “awards” section, but I’d still like to nominate Jun Fukuyama as the Voice Actor of the Season. He did a really fantastic job as Shinta Arakawa, Akane’s father, a pivotal role in the first episode of Akane-banashi. Not to mention as Tsune-chan-san in Nippon Sangoku, as Seiichi Tsukishima in PonSuka, as Wiseman in Wistoria, as Nearco in Liar Game, and he even had more roles in shows I didn’t watch.
Did you agree or disagree with any of my takes? Was there anything good that totally escaped my radar? Let me know what your favorite anime from Spring 2026 were!
