WataNare

Short Synopsis: Two high school girls test out a potential romantic relationship by alternating between friend and girlfriend days.

Wooper: A few posts back, I said that attraction overcoming the language barrier was one of the romance genre’s best tropes. Well, for every good fictional trope out there, there’s an equally terrible one, and WataNare is built around one of the worst of them all: the pretend relationship. Usually these sham couples are formed to win a bet, or get pesky suitors off one or both parties’ backs, but here the motivation is slightly more novel. High school madonna Mai falls in love with her awkward friend Renako, but Renako isn’t receptive to her confession, so Mai proposes that they spend half of their time as friends and the other half as Friends of Ellen. I could see that setup appealing to younger yuri fans, for whom the margin between platonic and romantic relationships may feel slim, but personally, I couldn’t get into it. Just five minutes into the episode, these two characters who I barely knew were sitting in a tree and spilling their insecurities to each other, and the very next day one had fallen in love with the other? It was all very hasty – but then, quickness is part of the show’s presentational style, with panicked inner thoughts and occasional outbursts on top of already swift dialogue. WataNare isn’t for me, but it has a clear identity, and its hair-swapped cast members are always on model, so I’d imagine that fans of the source material are pretty happy right now.
Potential: 20%

Gachiakuta

Short Synopsis: In a world where everyone is trash, people always find a way to push someone else even lower to feel better about themselves, and Rudo has been shoved all the way to the bottom.

Lenlo: Gotta say, as many edgy revenge shounen as we get each year, Gachiakuta has piqued my interest. Its setting of supposedly floating islands with a ruined, trash filled Earth below, and a tiered caste system combined with a weird obsession with trash, probably getting used as a metaphor for fitting into society and the traits people see as acceptable or something, was nice. The visuals weren’t half bad either, unafraid to use some thick line work at times, as well as some nice colors. My only real complaint so far is that the writing seems very… Blunt. Gachiakuta covers a lot of ground in this first episode, introducing us to the world, the MC, his family and general life situation, and then ripping it all away and plunging us headfirst into the plot as if it doesn’t think we don’t have the patience to sit through more than a single episode of setup. That’s all well and good if the rest of the show slows down and gives the world room to breathe a little bit, after all it’s hard to care about characters I’ve only known for 20 minutes. Still, if it can do that, if it can take its time now that it’s thrown us head first into this world, I think Gachiakuta could be some good fun, something akin to the over the top edge of Ragna Crimson. If that strikes your fancy and you just want a fun edgy romp, I’d say this is worth watching at least a few more episodes to see where it goes.
Potential: 50%

See You Tomorrow at the Food Court

Short Synopsis: Two teenage girls from different high schools meet at a food court to chat aimlessly.

Wooper: I like the idea behind Food Court de, Mata Ashita: two friends shooting the breeze with no overarching story to direct their conversations. Of course, such a plotless show will live and die by the content of those conversations, and that’s where Food Court stumbles. Its main characters, the grumbling Wada and the easygoing Yamamoto, don’t have much going on in their lives, so they (mostly Wada) have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for things to talk (mostly complain) about. Their very first topic is a prime example: the netizens insulting Wada for her textboard posts criticizing a character from a gacha game. I can’t think of many subjects that interest me less, and while their choice of discussion fodder improved from there, it remained superficial enough that I had to wonder why the Food Court manga was selected for an anime adaptation. Even a professional voice actor would be hard pressed to dimensionalize Wada’s shallow gripes about error-prone cashiers or airheaded NPCs. Maybe Yamamoto, whose interest in the supernatural generated some of the episode’s better moments, will steer a higher percentage of future conversations – even if she does, though, I won’t be around to find out.
Potential: 5%

My Dress-Up Darling S2

Short Synopsis: Season 2 of Dress Up Darling, where a cosplay babe and an introverted tailor work together to make cute outfits and flirt with each other.

Lenlo: I have such a complicated relationship with Dress Up Darling. Normally I hate such overtly ecchi, pandering, fanservice focused shows. And don’t get me wrong, Dress Up Darling is exactly that, slapping Marin into a bunny suit and flashing her ass right away. It’s the way the show does it that makes it work for me though, with the leads introducing each other to their interests, using cosplay and tailoring as the vehicle for their mutual interest in each other. Not to mention how they find this place of belonging after being spurned for said interests in the wider world, I love that Gojo’s past regarding makeup/dolls is making a return. It also helps that Dress Up Darling is beautifully, expressively animated. In fact it’s easily the best animated thing I’ve watched so far, which admittedly isn’t a huge number since I’ve been out, but it’s still true. CloverWorks is knocking it out of the park, and I really hope they’re able to keep it up for the full season. So yeah, Dress Up Darling has plenty of ecchi fanservice, and if that’s a deal breaker then you should avoid it like the plague. But if you’re looking for a cute romance and are ok with some skin, especially when she’s doing it on purpose to tease/entice her love interest, Dress Up Darling should be perfect for you. I know I had fun. Plus we even got a cute couples cosplay! Sort of.
Potential: 60%

With You and the Rain

Short Synopsis: A reserved novelist bonds with an intelligent tanuki after adopting it off the street.

Wooper: The best thing about this show so far is its OP, which boasts both a toe-tapping bossa nova groove and attractive pop art color design. Its simplicity might not blow anyone away, but its assured direction is admirable – a sentiment that could apply to the rest of the show, as well. With You and the Rain (Ame to Kimi to) has modest ambitions, but its atmosphere is soothing, and what little animation it requires for its slice of life story looks nice. The main human character, a quietly beautiful novelist, has a little bit of intrigue surrounding her, too. Near the beginning of the episode, she gives her umbrella to a stranger in the middle of a rain shower, claiming that she “won’t be needing it now” (a reaction to a personal setback, perhaps), and at one point she accidentally calls her father, then ignores his cheerful greeting and hangs up without an explanation. Far more mysterious is her new pet tanuki, which frequently pulls a notebook out of thin air and writes in Japanese, allowing it to flawlessly communicate with anyone it meets. It knows enough about human society to inquire after its new owner’s occupation, so I’m wondering whether we’ll ever see it shapeshift into humanoid form (as tanuki are wont to do). Whether or not the show plans to make that transformation, its easy interspecies partnership is off to a good start.
Potential: 50%

Nyaight of the Living Cat

Short Synopsis: A pair of former cat cafe employees try to outlast a pandemic that turns humans into cats.

Wooper: It seems I overestimated Nyaight of the Living Cat based on the strength of its trailers, which had the luxury of rapidly cutting between all the show’s weirdest moments. It’s a parody, sure, but the genre it’s parodying is horror, which means that when you sit down to watch a full episode, there’s still a requirement that it slowly build tension to a moment where its human protagonists seem doomed to transform into cats. Unfortunately, Nyaight isn’t adept at generating that sort of suspense. Its environments are unimaginative, and the characters don’t look great while navigating them, acting out run cycles that hardly indicate their fear. That might not be an issue for some viewers (it might even be a plus if their favorite horror films are the shlocky B-movie kind), but it was for me. The second half of the episode explores the backstory of its main character, a hulking mystery box of a man whose brain has been drained of everything except cat facts. Despite its stupidity, the script plays this concept straight, which I think was the right call – I just wish that the siblings who took him hadn’t been so normal, since it was hard to relate to Mr. Amnesia by comparison. I might take a look at Nyaight’s second episode, but if I do, it’ll just be my way of coping for having misread the show so thoroughly.
Potential: 15%

Dandadan S2

Short Synopsis: Season 2 of Dandadan, where a young man cursed by a demon and his classmate with psychic powers go on a quest to recover his balls.

Lenlo: What is it with this author and trying to rape his female leads? Seriously, this obsession with lewd humor and sexual situations is dragging down an otherwise competent shounen. When Dandadan isn’t trying to sexually assault Momo, it actually does body horror and action really well, with interesting environments, situations and power usage, and it knows how to pace the mystery of whatever monster we’re about to fight. But then, without fail, it always interrupts it with some random testicle joke, or some old guy trying to feel up Momo for no reason at all, dragging all of the good parts of the show down. As is, I’m going to watch it, if only because last season has given me unrealistic expectations as to Dandadans production. And so long as the pretty lights continue to go brr, I’ll continue to stick with it. But if it can’t move past all this weird sex stuff? Then it’s never going to be anything more than a YouTube fight compilation generator, at least not to me.
Potential: 40%

Mario: After a 6-month break, Dandadan picks up exactly where it left, for better or for worse. It has stellar animation, great production all round, the plot that makes little sense and the characters are as plain as paper. The mystery regarding Jiji’s situation gets resolved quickly, and here we have a special kind of villain this show has to offer: the Kito Family who are not monsters but act and behave like one anyway. If you enjoyed the first season you’ll be right at home (well, not Jiji’s rent home) with this second season. It’s a real treat to look at, and it’s weird but never afraid to be a weirdo.
Potential: 40%

Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex

Short Synopsis: A neglected daughter is forcibly engaged to a handsome count after the passing of her sister, his previous fiance.

Wooper: Before watching this episode, I figured that it was merely this show’s localized title that made it sound like bargain bin teen lit. Then I watched the episode and realized that’s exactly what it was. The author of Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex must be the gorillionth writer in history to use Cinderella as a jumping off point for her own work, tweaking a bunch of the details but ultimately crafting a story of an abused young woman with whom a gallant prince (here a count) falls in love. The way that “Betrothed” heaps misfortune on its heroine Marie’s head is more blatant than any Cinderella adaptation – here it’s both her father and her biological mother who call her ugly and force her to do manual labor, rather than just an evil stepmother. Only Marie’s sister shows her any kindness, so naturally, she has to die midway through the premiere. The entire setup is quite clumsy, but perhaps there’s a bright spot to this avalanche of tragedy – with so much of it out of the way so early, the show can move on to less derivative material. As far as the production goes, I’m tempted to call it threadbare, but the show does nail its close-ups, and the moment when a beautified Marie descends the stairs of the count’s estate really sells her transformation, however cliched. This show won’t land on my summer watchlist, but it’ll be a couple thousand fans’ first shoujo anime ever, and honestly, they could do worse.
Potential: 10%

Cultural Exchange with a Game Center Girl

Short Synopsis: A Japanese-speaking arcade employee and an English-speaking customer strike up a flirty friendship.

Wooper: From a production standpoint, Game Center Girl (GaCen Shoujo to Ibunka Kouryuu) has quite a few bugs. The animation is hiccupy, the imprecise editing causes some shots to linger without purpose, and while its use of mostly diegetic music suits its arcade setting, it could have used a more robust soundtrack to smooth over some of its more awkward moments. For decades, though, the anime machine has been overcoming these kinds of limitations through sheer cuteness, and I’d say this show continues that tradition. Contrary to how it might look, its cutest asset isn’t the vertically challenged blonde girl (Lily) on the poster, but the triumph of attraction over the language barrier, which is one of the romance genre’s all time greatest tropes. All of Lily’s dialogue is in British English, while arcade employee Renji can hardly put three words together in her native tongue. Still, he tries his darndest to communicate out of a mixture of kindness and curiosity, which comes across with clarity, especially during the scene where he presents Lily with a notebook where they can exchange messages in written English. Sure, the chase scene that precedes the notebook reveal is embarrassing to watch, and all the misunderstandings that will arise from this premise already have my head spinning, but this was still a fun first episode. That counts for something, even if I’m unlikely to watch any more.
Potential: 25%

Tsuyokute New Saga

Short Synopsis: A swordsman is given a second chance to save his homeland from demons after being sent back in time by a magic gemstone.

Wooper: They should have called this adaptation Tsuyokute New Shortcut in honor of its cheap production. The identical fire.gifs slapped on top of its world map during the opening narration, the 3DCG feathers that filled the frame after Kyle defeated the demon king (yes, the protagonist’s name is actually Kyle), the way the animation cratered after he was sent back in time and there were no more effects-laden fights to be had. Perhaps I should be glad that Tsuyokute’s production is so poor – its time travel premise is such boilerplate fantasy fodder that even world class animation wouldn’t push it past mediocrity, so why make the attempt? Guy goes back in time and writes a journal of everything he remembers so he can change the future, wowee. He’ll likely pick up a bunch of anime babes along the way using his foreknowledge of their personalities and preferences – he’s already gotten to work on his childhood friend Liese (at least she has a suitable name for a fantasy series), whose butt he gropes just one minute after being transported into the past. And oh god, the OP’s vocaloid-esque vocal treatment makes for some of the worst music I’ve heard so far this year – give it a listen if you’re ever in the mood to punish your temporal lobe.
Potential: 0%

Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth

Short Synopsis: A delinquent is isekai’d to an alternate reality version of Tokyo filled with demons, as well as gains the ability to return from death.

Lenlo: Look, this is just a budget Re:Zero, and that’s saying something because Re:Zero is just budget Re:Zero at this point. But where Re:Zero uses Subaru’s ability to return from death to highlight his weaknesses and generally terrible personality, forcing him to try to accomplish impossible tasks again and again, here Takeru is just an OP Shounen MC gifted super powers, an incredible body, and now can’t even pretend to lose, because he comes back to life to try it all over again. It’s obvious that Onmyo Kaiten is just cashing in on whatever’s popular at the moment, trying to combine Re:Zero’s success with the recent outbreak of delinquent anime like Bucchigiri, Wind Breaker, and Tokyo Revengers. But where all of those have some degree of heart, something the author clearly wanted to make even if the results were questionable, Onmyo Kaiten is bland, uninteresting, and boring to watch. Do you want return by death or isekai shenanigans? Just go watch Re:Zero again. Do you want delinquents? Just go watch anything else I listed. Because this is not it.
Potential: 0%

The Water Magician

Short Synopsis: A reincarnated teenager uses his water manipulation powers to settle into his new life in a fantasy world.

Wooper: For a “slow life” isekai anime, The Water Magician (Mizu Zokusei no Mahoutsukai) sure is interested in combat – and sure is bad at depicting it. Not only is its animation frequently amateurish, but the protagonist’s running commentary sometimes makes it seem as though he’s reading a novelization of his own life. At one point he was forced to flee from a monster called an assassin hawk, and rather than concentrate all of his energy into running, he dedicated half of it to reciting what sounded like the creature’s Pokedex entry. I can’t blame the guy for talking to himself, since he lives in total isolation, but both the content and the timing of his monologues had me raising my eyebrows at multiple points. Visually, there were more lowlights than highlights here: off model character animation (for the episode’s one principal character), several PNG trees falling at 90 degree angles, a canvas filter selectively applied to the least attractive bits of background art. The red dragon who appeared to the protagonist in the last few minutes looked derpy as hell, too. This show isn’t all bad, as it seems poised to avoid the worst of its subgenre’s cliches, and the Dullahan who granted the main character his water sword is a point of interest. There’s a lot of room for improvement, though – so much room, in fact, that I doubt much of it will be utilized.
Potential: 10%

Lenlo: The OP is kinda pretty though, sometimes.

Takopi’s Original Sin

Short Synopsis: An octopus-like alien searches for a way to save the life of the miserable human child he has befriended.

Wooper: I typically omit major spoilers when writing these impressions, but since this episode was prefaced with a content warning concerning its most traumatic scene, I’ll address it here. This series deals with themes of bullying and suicide, and not lightly. The moment when alien protagonist Takopi discovered his human friend hanging from the ceiling of her house was engineered for maximum impact: the girl’s disheveled appearance, the dangling animation, the marks around her neck. Worst of all, those marks had been left by a magical ribbon given to her by Takopi himself, transforming his cutesy ignorance of human nature into an inadvertently lethal blind spot. From there, the story progressed into Takopi’s time-traveling campaign to rescue his new friend from despair, balancing humor, sadness and cruelty with a deft touch. There were moments where the show shifted into simulated cutout or diorama animation to highlight its main character’s naivete, and moments where he was assaulted by hatred and violence – a frightening and entirely foreign experience for him, given his origins on Planet Happy. I found this premiere’s psychological approach to be very effective, but if I have one criticism, it would be how often music can be heard throughout its 37 minutes. The soundtrack was fitting, but it occasionally played during scenes where I’d have preferred the cry of cicadas to the sound of musical instruments. That quibble aside, I’m very happy with what we got here, and I look forward to cheering on Takopi as he harnesses his inherent goodness in order to save an innocent life.
Potential: 85%

Mario: Damn. At the moment, Takopi walks a very fine line between silliness and straight-out cruelty. The mismatch in tones, together with the extremity it’s willing to go (you’ve been warned) can turn some viewers off. But for now, the premise holds up as it deals with abuse and depression with nuance, and at the same time still provides a more optimistic outlook in the eyes of Takopi. He might be too oblivious to notice the trauma until he experiences it, but his fear of taking a step forward is totally real. The episode also ends on a hell of a reveal, as it shows how even the bully is just a victim of her own emotional abuse in her domestic life. The Doraemon-esque charm from Takopi works extremely well in that context as it displays just how out of touch he is. I’m certainly intrigued to see how the show goes from here.
Potential: 60%

Detectives These Days Are Crazy

Short Synopsis: An over-the-hill P.I. and a teenage wannabe detective harass each other until they reach a reluctant partnership.

Wooper: I was already mildly interested in this show before watching the premiere, since its original author also wrote Senryu Shoujo, a romcom whose short adaptation charmed me a few years back. Detectives These Days is a lot different from that series – for one thing, Senryu Shoujo’s female lead was mute, while Mashiro (Detectives’ teenage tagalong) is played with gusto by none other than Kana Hanazawa. Rather than fitting the sort of cute role for which her actress was once typecast, Mashiro veers from aggravated to cloying to badass throughout this episode, culminating in her takedown of a yakuza group in its closing minutes. Honestly, it’s a bit much. The show’s stony reaction faces and weird visual gags (including Mashiro stashing impossibly large objects down her shirt) clearly indicate its fondness for absurdity, but not much about it feels fresh. There are jokes about the older private eye being an out of touch Luddite, him perving on his younger partner, and both of them ignoring their clients in favor of doing whatever the hell they want – all a bit too familiar for my liking. The animation may be serviceable, and the performances may be ballsy, but I can’t see Detectives These Days surprising or amusing me week in and week out.
Potential: 20% (mostly for HanaKana’s rapping during the ED)

Clevatess

Short Synopsis: An all-powerful dark beast decides to raise a humanoid child in order to get a sense of its race’s potential.

Mario: I still do not think this episode deserved a double-length runtime, especially after the moment when it revealed what the show is actually about. In fact, I’m leaning more towards the first half than the second half, where the story is more serious and where you start to learn Clevatess’ point of reflection. After reaching the point where the new baby arrives, however, the show’s tone shifts into more silliness, some of which I could very well do without (Alicia!). To the show’s credit, I’m fine with the worldbuilding it displays and I figure that eventually this gang of three will have to cross the border to see the other kingdoms. Not sure that alone would guarantee a second watch for me, though.
Potential: 30%

Wooper: Do my eyes deceive me? Have we been blessed with a competent dark fantasy anime in the year 2025? Even though there’s a particular element of Clevatess’ story that ought to be banished to the shadow realm, I’d say the answer to that second question is yes. The animation was a fair sight better than I expected for a LINE manga adaptation, especially during an early scene where 13 heroes (each wielding a different weapon) staged an attack against the titular dark beast, whose restless horn-capped tails must have posed a real challenge for the animators. There wasn’t that much additional combat during this double length premiere, but with multiple fantasy races occupying a single continent, further conflict is inevitable, and I’m interested to see how it will arise. For now, the show’s primary concern is Clevatess’ goal of raising a Hidenean baby, whose maturation he’ll use to answer the question of whether the continent’s humanoid races should be spared. There are parts of this plot that wink too obviously at the audience, especially the sexualization of the woman that Clevatess recruits to raise the child. I’m not wild about the character designs, either, or the low resolution and chromatic distortion used for flashbacks and dreams, respectively. But there was certainly some care put into the creation of this show, so I’ll give its story a couple more episodes to evolve.
Potential: 45%