Seasonal

Spring 2026 Anime in Review

Spring 2026: Akane-banashi, AWAJIMA, Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Nippon Sangoku, Liar Game, Re:Zero, Yowayowa Sensei, The Ramparts of Ice, MARRIAGETOXIN, Star Detective Precure, Dorohedoro, Agents of the Four Seasons, Spider-Noir, Pokémon Horizons, Digimon Beatbreak, PonSuka, I Want to End this Love Game, LuluttoLily, Wistoria, Witch Hat Atelier

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.

Rakugo and Undead Girl Murder Farce

Two episodes of this season’s Undead Girl Murder Farce have aired, and one aspect of the show has been largely overlooked in English discussion: the show’s connection to rakugo and Japanese theater in general.

You may know that the anime is directed by Shinichi Omata, who previously helmed Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. It’s clear that his experience there must have been one of the reasons he was chosen here, and is helping elevate this element of the show.

As an experiment, I searched Twitter for the show’s title or hashtags + “rakugo”. In English, I could only find mentions of Rakugo Shinju. In Japanese, however, that only accounts for a small fraction of the results since airing – the great majority of the comments are about lowercase ‘r’ rakugo. Here is why that is.