You can absolutely joke around about gender, drag, and attraction without stepping into awkward transphobic (or transphobic-adjacent) tropes, and if it can do that, honestly, All-Guys Mixer could be cute. At this early stage, I have no idea how it’s going to navigate all the ideas it’s playing with.
Dragons are awesome! This show, starring a reincarnated dragon, makes paste look exciting.
I’ll give this to Trillion Game: it holds fast to the cosmic truth that no one ethically gets that much money. But I think it’s expecting me to side with the protagonists.
Kinokoinu is an unexpectedly raw and hard-hitting depiction of grieving a pet.
365 Days is a cute, classic fake dating caper with room for some deeper social commentary.
This is a lovely little premiere about two nice kids who’re passionate about sports, but it’s a little overly polished.
Dan Da Dan is a mess. But it is my mess.
Acro Trip is “a magical girl fangirl is better suited to playing the villain” as filtered through a shoujo lens, and it’s a shot of joy straight to the arm.
We have Love Hina at home.
It’s fun to see a reincarnated villainess who isn’t afraid to play dirty and actively plot the downfall of the people who wronged her in her previous timeline.
The premise is a nice change of pace with some good joke potential, but then you get to the treatment of its female characters.
A pretty okay premiere that skirts a lot of the troublesome bits of the genre and sets up a potentially interesting story as things progress.
Stunningly animated, with the kind of avant-garde soundtrack you almost never hear in anime, and genuinely stomach churning, if you are any fan of Ito’s style of horror you would do yourself a favor by pausing reading this and watching the show right now.
Kick start your teen boy loner life with the frustratingly chatty Haruka as he gets summoned to another world and gets nothing but hard knocks for his trouble.
The core premise of a teacher/student romance will ward off some, and the dire production values will probably take care of the rest.
Let’s take a trip back into the 2010s and highlight some of our favorite fantastic(al) speculative fiction with lady leads.
‘Tis the season of mess, whether from characters or writing.
Do YOU want to see hot anime men in nurturing roles? Does it sweeten the pot if I tell you they’re also wearing vaguely Victorian fantasy clothing? How about if it happened to name its antagonist after one of the notable despots of our time without much apparent self-awareness?
Vibe with some great fantasy, check out some winning third seasons, and put your middle fingers up to the licensors who buried the season’s brightest new gem.
It’s a summer of love, ranging from sweet to very, very messy.
