Summer Anime Season Preview Discussion and Thread Requests [2026, Week 25]
Summer season is rapidly approaching! It's time to start looking ahead to the next season and thinking about what is worth watching vs. what isn't. This is also the official thread where I will watch for shows that you mention and will enable threads for those shows to be made by our resident bot, @[email protected].
Please feel free to use this thread as a normal weekly discussion thread as well! Anything that would normally be in the weekly discussion thread any other week is welcome here.
As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).
Summer Season
Definitely watching:
The Elusive Samurai Season 2 - The first season was the highlight of Summer 2024 for me, so I'm very much looking forward to the sequel.
The World Is Dancing - The first time I saw the announcement I went, "Tokiyuki-dono, is that you?" Lucky me getting both this and Nigewaka in the same season. Pretty sure it will be my AOTS contender.
Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia - Science Saru, Naoko Yamada, interesting visuals. Historical setting dominates my top-3 most anticipated anime of this summer.
You and I Are Polar Opposites Season 2 - Azuma-Taira development?
The Ghost in the Shell - The first GITS adaptation I'll enjoy? Crossing my fingers.
Sparks of Tomorrow - Kyoani makes it a must-watch for me. That silver-hair antagonist annoys me already, though (in a bad way).
Goodbye, Lara - An original based on The Little Mermaid. I like its art style.
100 Girlfriends Season 3 - Let's go, the only harem anime.
Behind the Supermarket, Smoking with You - I liked what I saw in those pre-released short episodes.
Interested in:
Grow Up Show: Sunflower Circus - An original about girls chasing their dreams.
Red River - On the one hand, yay, old shoujo fantasy, and the one I haven't read at that. On the other hand, I know of the industry's disrespect for this particular demographic, so I'm kind of torn. I like shoujo but it's better experienced as manga mostly.
Yani Neko - PV was grossly hilarious, so I'm giving it a shot.
My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked - Expecting a wholesome comedy.
I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day - I prefer my yuri to focus on grown-up women but I'll still check this one out since it's always about teens with anime.
Will watch the premiere to decide if I want to stick with it:
Draw This, Then Die!
Recommendation from Mr. Iwamoto
Let's Go Kaikigumi
The Ogre's Bride
The Oblivious Saint Can't Contain Her Power
The Duke’s Son Claims He Won’t Love Me Yet Showers Me with Adoration
Victoria of Many Faces
Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky
Please Excuse My Younger Brothers
In addition to continuing stuff from this season (Re:ZERO and Daemons of the Shadow Realm), I'll be watching:
It'll be busy but I'm happy to have so much to look forward to!
I'll watch Mushoku Tensei S3 most likely (not sure if I'll follow as it airs or wait and just binge at the end; I usually prefer the latter). Would like to try the new GITS but I have no enthusiasm for dealing with Amazon's streaming.
Summer? See you guys in December… okay, sorry for the dumb joke. Here's what I'm planning to pick up, roughly by order of how much I want to see it:
::: spoiler Further impressions on the first six series I mentioned (note: no actual spoilers here, I'm only trying to reduce clutter) Mushoku Tensei III — Once you go past the fact Rudeus (the MC) was scum in Earth, and that he's still shitty after reincarnated (but less than before, so... yay?), you're presented with a solid fantasy series. IMO Mushoku Tensei has the perfect mix of romance, adventure, and worldbuilding, all of them tied by a nice theme (TL;DR: "try to be a better person, one step at a time"). And it diverges from a lot of later isekais in small aspects, that makes it feel refreshing and exciting.
Youjo Senki II — in totally-not-WW1-Earth-with-magic, a man reincarnates as a little girl, misunderstood by everyone, as they assume she's more thoughtful than she is. War is still cruel, but at least it's fun to see Tanya's plans of a peaceful life being ruined by God.
Otomege Sekai wa Mob [...] 2 — Almost everybody has a loose screw or two, and that's bloody hilarious! Specially the
goldfish poop gang"capture targets" of the game, chasing after Marie. Plus Leon does show some character growth, even behind his arsehole façade.Black Torch — I read some of the manga a long, looooong time ago. I remember it was about some kid who loses his (literal) heart fighting against a mononoke, and then merges with another who decides to save his life. The story was fun, but IIRC it was cancelled, so I'm glad to see it being animated.
Tsuihou Sareta Tensei Juukishi wa Game [...] — the premise is bland: reincarnated in a game, strong but taken as weak, disowned by his father, yadda yadda. But even then, there's always some struggle behind the fights that most isekais miss, because having game knowledge doesn't magically make Elymas invincible. Also, I really like Ruche/Luce as a deuteragonist.
Ryoumin 0-Nin Start no Henkyou Ryoushu-sama — if I were to describe the manga, it feels a lot like "Spy x Family meets Isekai Nonbiri Nouka": wholesome slice-of-life with settlement building. There are bits of actions here and there, but I won't watching it for the action, I'll do it for the sheep. And the beastkin. And all that fluff. :::
I'll also keep watching: Re:Zero, Iruma-kun, TenSura, Ascendance of a Bookworm. Then there's the older stuff I'm only watching now, like Mahoutsukai no Yome and Highschool of the Dead.
So a total of 18 series, 12 being new ones. Two~three episodes per day.
As has happened before, I found myself picking up more and more series over the past half dozen or so seasons, until it reached the point that I was invested in too many of them, and disappointed by too many of them this past season, and ended up dropping most of them (though I'm still planning on binging some of those sooner or later).
So this coming season?
The only thing I plan on definitely watching from week 1 is You and I Are Polar Opposites S2. Season 1 was brilliant, and (I already read the manga) season 2 might just be even better.
I'm sorely tempted to follow S3 of Mushoku Tensei - I really enjoyed the first two seasons, in spite of Rudeus, and there have been enough broad hints of things to come that I'm looking forward to seeing it. But even if I wasn't facing burnout, that's the sort of thing I'd tend to prefer to binge, so probably not.
Ghost in the Shell. I mean - a GitS reboot by Science SARU? That's like a dream come true. But again, it's the sort of thing I likely would've preferred to binge anyway, so...
Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia - Science SARU historical epic equals absolute must watch - yet again, the only question is whether I'll try to follow it or wait and binge it, and yet again, it's the sort of thing I likely would've preferred to binge anyway.
Possibly Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You. I mostly enjoyed the mini-episodes (Sasaki's recurring blithering panic got a bit tedious), and it's relatively low key, so I'll undoubtedly try the first episode and see.
Things I'll at least sample:
I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day - I can't deny the appeal of what looks to basically be Gunslinger Girls plus mystery plus GL.
Sparks of Tomorrow - the broad plot outline only seems somewhat interesting, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a KyoAni historical epic set in the middle of the Meiji era.
World is Dancing - fictionalized 14th century history of the creation of Noh? I love that idea. Depends on the execution.
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. S2 - actually, I'll have to go back to season 1, since I didn't see it, but I'm intrigued. I might just do that this afternoon in fact.
And... that's about it. If this goes anything like past seasons, I'll stumble across things as the season goes on, or notice that something that didn't look promising is getting much more attention than it seems it should deserve, and at least watch the first episodes of those, but for now...
A lot of shows that are potentially interesting to me, but going by the last couple of seasons, I'm probably just going to finish a handful of them.
I'm especially happy to see Frontier Lord, which made it into my top 3 light novel series, and both of my favorite murder hobo protagonists this season. I just recently binge-read All-Works Maid, so this is going to be fresh in my memory when I watch the adaptation. I'm not sure if this will help or make me even more grumpy. And then there is finally more of Tanya. It's been too long after that speech at the end of the first season.
Just FYI, there was a movie after season 1 that is a direct continuation of the story
I am aware.
Definitely watching:
I'll try this out and see how it goes:
Plenty of anime for me to follow next season!
Sequels
Familiar with plot
Unfamiliar with plot
Maybe Jobless Reincarnation S3, but I doubt I'll be able to catch up to the latest season in time to follow it as it airs.
For Summer 2026, I will continue watching Ganso BanG Dream Chan, and my other seasonal may be Yumemita, so it's gonna be a Bandori season.
Wildcard choice would be Sparks of Tomorrow i.e. Twentieth Century Electricity Catalogue. I prefer using the latter even if it's the longer title, it just goes really hard.
Stuff I'll likely continue from previous seasons:
Stuck in MeetingsReincarnated as a SlimeI'll probably hold off on Tanya the Evil and Skeleton Knight until I can re-watch the first seasons, since I recall little about the first and nothing about the second.
New shows whose descriptions caught my attention:
If I have any space left in my schedule after all that, it'll probably be filled by random fantasy/isekai/villainess series. Possibly including Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects, because the source material is . . . okay. Not brilliant, but okay.
This season may end up . . . somewhat oversubscribed for me. 😅