My Awkward Senpai

Short Synopsis: A clumsy office worker is assigned as a mentor for an enthusiastic new hire.

Wooper: Bukiyou na Senpai represents Japan’s quarterly attempt to convince anime fans that an ideal domestic partner awaits them so long as they join the corporate world like good boys and girls. As usual, we have a beautiful, busty office lady character in the cast, but this time the twist is that she’s… kind of awkward! Of course, that just makes her all the more endearing and approachable, which is a bonus for the earnest new recruit she’s been charged with training. Maybe I’m laying on the sarcasm a little too thick – this episode was too straightforward by half, but it wasn’t bad. The animation is far from first rate, but an effort was made to depict characters walking down stairs and along city blocks without taking shortcuts, which I appreciated. Kannawa-senpai’s monosyllabic utterances have a curt appeal to them, as contrasted with her self-critical inner thoughts, and her rosy memories of her own senpai’s helpfulness provide both a goal for Kannawa and built-in context for the latter character’s inevitable appearance. There are a few positives, then, but as far as the workplace aspect goes, I’m not expecting this series to distinguish itself in the slightest.
Potential: 20%

A Star Brighter Than the Sun

Short Synopsis: An awkward high school girl recalls her history with the guy she’s been crushing on for nearly a decade.

Wooper: Taiyou yori mo Mabushii Hoshi (TamaHoshi for short) is about as average a shoujo romance as you could imagine, with two childhood friends, an insecure girl and a popular boy, landing in the same class upon reaching high school. The on-screen text, the sparkly backgrounds, the lengthy inner monologues, the contrast between the Plain Jane female lead and her more glamorous peers – it’s all here. I don’t mind the familiarity, since the tried and true shoujo template appeals to me on a personal level, but I do have some criticisms here. This episode used way too much panning and fading, especially during its first half, which traveled all the way back to the main characters’ elementary school days. Engineering smooth transitions between the past and present is important, but those techniques were popping up even when the story was locked in flashback mode for multiple scenes in a row. Also, the fuzzy filter applied to the frame during said flashbacks wasn’t my favorite choice – hopefully it’ll be kept to a minimum now that we’ve gotten the main girl’s life story. TamaHoshi is cute, which is enough for me to give it another look in a slim anime season, but that won’t be sufficient for most fans.
Potential: 40%

Ranma ½ (2024) S2

Short Synopsis: Akane’s admirers search for Ranma’s secret weakness in an effort to break up their engagement.

Wooper: Its title may read 2024, but the Ranma reboot is still going strong in ‘25, and will likely continue to do so on an annual basis, given Rumiko Takahashi’s multigenerational reputation as the Queen of Romcoms. This episode served as a fine comeback, if not a particularly disruptive one for the show’s status quo, introducing a (very) minor romantic rival in Gosunkugi, voiced with a nice blend of harmless creepiness by Akira Ishida. The whole plot about his quest to discover Ranma’s Achilles heel, which turned out to be a debilitating fear of cats, was mildly amusing – the bits I liked the best were art and animation-related, as is often the case for me with this series. More than the content of this episode, I was fixated on the OP to see which new faces we might expect to make their debut this cour. Two of them jumped out at me, and one of them I knew by sight even without being a fan of the source material: Happosai, one of manga’s preeminent perverted sage characters, reviled by many a Ranma fan (English-speaking ones, at any rate). The other was Ukyo, apparently a crowd favorite, so perhaps the two will balance each other out; if not, I’ll finally get to experience the scene-ruining essence that Happosai apparently brings to the table.
Potential: ½

Cat’s Eye (2025)

Short Synopsis: Three moonlighting art thieves repeatedly steal priceless treasures out from under the nose of a clueless cop.

Wooper: I’ve seen the first few episodes of the original Cat’s Eye adaptation, and I have to say, this one suffers by comparison. The animation is better here (especially during the opening paraglider scene), but for character and color design, and even storyboarding, you’re going to want the 80s version. I was surprised by the remake’s poor performance in that last category, but perform poorly it did, botching an early “dodge the motion-detecting lasers” scene and occasionally placing the Cat’s Eye girls way too close to the cops for them to plausibly elude detection. Not that plausibility should be a major factor when deciding whether to watch this show, since it features the dumbest detective in animanga history, Toshio Utsumi. This poor schmuck somehow can’t make the connection between the three sisters running his favorite cafe (Cat’s Eye) and the identically named trio of art thieves responsible for his professional humiliation. On the plus side, modern touches like Toshio and Hitomi going on a rock climbing date or Ai’s use of her smartphone fit neatly within the context of the episode; if anything, the premise of Cat’s Eye makes more sense in our internet-enabled future than it ever did four decades ago.
Potential: 20%

Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days

Short Synopsis: A girl who loves to take care of people meets a boy who is accident-prone.

Mario: While this slice-of-life romcom overall offers a pleasant enough time, in the long run I am unsure if this show has enough legs to expand on this simple premise. In fact, this premiere feels longer than it actually is, as it pads out Yano’s situation and Yoshida’s feelings for him too thin. The animation is a bit of a mixed bag too given it can be expressive at one moment but totally lacking at others. I do enjoy how it mixes its usual art with a cartoonish style to signal how Yoshida is thinking of Yano. Other than that, the episode goes where you expect it would go, and the lack of slapstick moments makes it less snappy and much more conventional than other anime in the genre. If you have a thing for romance shows, this one fits the bill. Others will find it watchable but boring.
Potential: 20%

This Monster Wants to Eat Me

Short Synopsis: A depressed teenage orphan pins her hopes for death on her class’s mermaid transfer student.

Wooper: What’s an author to do when the market for vampire fiction is fully saturated, yet they can’t help but throw their hat into the ring anyway? Why, write a vampire and call it a mermaid, of course! This Monster Wants to Eat Me (Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi) traffics in many of the tropes you’d expect from such a swap, including a sad girl protagonist and her mermaid protector who vows to eat her only once she’s reached maximum ripeness. Unlike the absurd Baban Baban Ban Vampire from earlier this year, This Monster plays its supernatural grooming aspect totally straight, which doesn’t offend me so much as it makes me doubt its story could offer anything novel. That’s fine, though, because based on the direction of this premiere, it’s going for atmosphere over plot. There are a couple long stretches of silence near the start to help us acclimate to the main character’s despondent aura, and the episode has a habit of transforming school scenes into underwater ones without cutting, showing fish swimming past previously sunny windows to represent Hinako’s mood. Those are just two facets of a consistent approach that I think will please audiences looking for a moodier-than-average supernatural anime (even if I’m not among them).
Potential: 35%

City the Animation

Short Synopsis: Silly people do silly things in a silly town (while looking amazing).

Amun: I have never seen Nichijou, nor do I really know anything about it, so I came into City blind. As Lenlo says below, this looks absolutely fantastic. Like wow, that opening shot through the rain is some of the nicest animation I’ve seen this season (and we have some seasonal heavy hitters with Tensei and Dandadan). The short form sketches work pretty well, with some common characters and themes being developed. I must say some humor is lost on me, but occasionally the slapstick (especially the slow mo of getting hit in the face with a cork) did make me belly laugh, so mission accomplished! This is definitely a “vibes” show, so as long as it stays lighthearted with a joke landing here and there, I’ll probably stick with it.
Potential: 65%

Lenlo: The most visually impressive thing this season probably, it looks incredible, but I actively detest both its and Nichijou’s style of comedy. There’s nothing funny in here for me. But if you enjoyed Nichijou, this will probably be an Anime of the Season contender for you. It looks that good.

Tougen Anki

Short Synopsis: A boy with oni blood seeks revenge for the Agency that killed his father.

Mario: And at the final run, we have one of the most action-packed anime (alongside Gachiakuta) of this season. That fact, along with the fact that it airs on Netflix, means that it could reach a mass audience out there and become a modest hit. But what about the actual show’s quality? Well, based on the first episode, it’s a narrow road. Tougen Anki aims to be another shounen with violence and an “edgy” protagonist, but the big issue is that the MC himself isn’t just edgy – he’s unlikable from start to finish. He gets expelled from school the first time we meet him, where he’s in the process of insulting everyone around him, his (non-blood related) father included. What happens afterward is just a poor excuse for him having a “goal” for himself and knowing who he really is. We can see the fate of his father coming from miles away, and everything else the show has done so far has been done before more effectively in other shounen series. For example, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that in the end he gets knocked out by a fellow oni and will be put into a group of oni teenagers his age. I’d take the randomness of City the Animation anytime over this predictable plot.
Potential: 20%

Solo Camping for Two

Short Synopsis: An aspiring camper harasses a more experienced outdoorsman until he agrees to accompany her on her next camping trip.

Wooper: I’m afraid we’re ending First Impressions season on a bit of a fart with Solo Camping for Two (Futari Solo Camp), but at least the stench won’t linger, since it’s a show about the outdoors. You’ll have to forgive the dad joke – I figured it was somewhat appropriate, given that the protagonist here is an adult man (Gen), which was the main reason I wanted to check out this show to begin with. Turns out his relative maturity was wasted on this premiere, since all he did was get nagged repeatedly by its only other character, an accident-prone young woman (Shizuku) with a knack for shedding her skirt. I didn’t exactly enjoy the way the episode opened, with Gen internally monologuing about his love for camping alone, but soon after Shizuku showed up and started begging to join his party of one, I began to long for those halcyon opening minutes. The visuals aren’t anything to write home about, either, which isn’t a good look for an anime meant to celebrate the great outdoors. Instead, the only celebration happening here is mine, at never having to write about this sub-middling show ever again.
Potential: 10%