Wrapping up 2025 with a 2025 Fall review, 2025 AOTY, and 2026 Winter preview:

Fall 2025 Review:

Very busy with holiday stuff, but bits of anime filled in my spare time really nicely this year, so I actually watched quite a lot! Not a ton in the current season I was excited about, but I caught up on a lot of previous season content.

Watched current season:

• None!

Watched past seasons:

• Clevatess - Wow, this went hard! I loved this dark fantasy that took itself and its characters seriously! Power scaling felt appropriate, with strengths and weaknesses for many of the characters, and believable stakes. It did have some content I think could have been avoided easily and not mar the tone, but it at least tried not to dwell on it. Enjoyed this way more than I thought I would: 8/10
• More Than A Married Couple, But Not Lovers- I’m a sucker for light rom-coms like these. It’s not great, it’s predictable, but man they’re cute as hell and I still enjoy them a lot: 7/10.
• Witch Watch - Little mixed on this one. Very creative world and magic system, fun characters, really cool animation sequences. But I found the humor missed a bit more often for me, and I found the mini-sode nature of much of the content less engaging. I ended up pretty positive on it overall, but for a while I almost dropped it: 7/10.
• Dan Da Dan (S2) - Loved S1 and I loved S2 just a bit less. I really like the believable choices of the characters and how everybody is trying their best, in often bad situations. The wiiiild unexpected events and ridiculous animation sequences are just perfect. Also, a little bit of progress in relationship?? Yessss. 9/10.
• Campfire Cooking In Another World (S1) - I’ve heard for a while I should try this one, and yea, it really is so, so much better than you’d expect from the premise. I’m not an isekai-hater, but I certainly go in to this type of premise expecting a certain 6/10-at-best ceiling. This blasted through it and got me engaged with the characters, world, cooking, and semi-slow-life-charms unbelievably. Still, I found it at times a little unengaging and need a bit more of an overall plot to keep engaged longer term. Hoping S2 expands on this some. 8/10.
• Our Dating Story: The Experienced You And The Inexperienced Me - Wow. I was expecting a pretty titilating and low-thought experience from this… and it brought out feelings and insecurities I haven’t thought about in literally decades. I’ve been on both sides of this type of relationship in the past, so it felt familiar and uncomfortable and rough all at the same time. There are themes and thoughts this anime tackles that I’ve never seen another anime even try, and does so with a surprising amount of insight and grace. It’s far from perfect, with just adequate animation, and some relatively simple side/background characters. But it’s got moments that are easily moment-of-the-year territory for me, because they got me thinking and bringing up stuff that I was wrestling with for literally weeks after. Shockingly good for the premise, with “fan service” that feels actually appropriate for the content: 9/10.
• The Water Magician - What if they tried to make a non-problematic Mushoku Tensei? That’s how I felt for the first half of this show, and it did a great job. It felt like it was so interested in a slow story, building a believeable power fantasy, with none-or-very-little fan service, that had solid animation and no cop-out “anime reaction faces” throughout. I was absolutely loving it, then unfortunately it slowed a bit as it tried to pan out to the broader world. It felt a bit too rushed to get on board all the new characters introduced to rush to an ending for the season. I still liked it, but it dropped a bit, and worries me about the potential future for it. Still a good show: 7/10.
• Secrets of the Silent Witch - I’m a little exhausted by overly anxious girls that feel unbelievably impossibly shy. Bocchi The Rock was enjoyable but hard to relate to, and the beginning of this one was rough. After a few episodes, it at least mellowed enough that I could follow along, and in the end, I did actually enjoy it a good amount. There’s a fun world here and the animation and art was quite engaging. I’d be very interested in a S2: 7/10.
• Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (S1, rewatch) - I loved this season previously a few years ago, but tried to watch the first of the Rascal movies and realized I couldn’t remember at all who everybody was. So I re-watched S1 to catch up and remembered why I love this one so much. Fantastic characters, believable magical-realism drama, gorgeous art, great dialogue. One of my favorites, and now I can move on to the new movies and S2 to prep for I think the ending later in 2026: 10/10.
• Spy X Family Code White - I’ve cooled a bit on Spy X Family in S2, so wasn’t super hyped for the the movie and S3. I did end up watching it and enjoyed it more than most of S2. I’m still not sure why I’m a bit iffy on SXF. I think the secrets they keep holding from each other is getting a bit excessively unbelievable, and that tension is getting irritating. Still, this was a fun movie, with great action, a lot of silly moments, and some sequences that were unbelievabley wild: 8/10.

Ongoing:

• Dragonball - A couple episodes here and there. Still enjoying slowly. I think I’m about 1/3 through the series?
• 7th Prince… S2 - Only watched a few episodes. Haven’t felt like going back in a while, might drop.

Dropped:

• Ranma 1/2 (S2) - Lots of nostalgia for OG Ranma 1/2, but I thought S1 was just fine. I guess I was looking for something a bit more creative and updated, and this remake doesn’t seem to be it. I tried the first episode of S2 and realized I just wasn’t excited about it. Perhaps I’ll return some day.

Eventually watch from this season:

• Spy X Family (S3) - Ready to try it, now that I caught up with Code White, which was pretty good.
• Campfire Cooking S2 - Finally watched the first season and it’s great! I’ll mix this in when I need something positive (which seems to be all the time lately…).
• MHA Final Season - Apparently it really did finish! I’m a few seasons behind, but might try to get back on and slowly work through it.
• One Punch Man S3 - I’m probably going to finally bounce from the series, but I’d like to give it a shot.

Sasu’s 2025 AOTY: Lots of excellent titles this year, and a bunch more I haven’t gotten to watching! For now, this is my top 5 of 2025:

1. Zenshu
2. Dan Da Dan S2
3. My Dress-Up Darling S2
4. The Apothecary Diaries S2
5. Solo Leveling S2

Plan to watch/try for Winter 2026 season (in decreasing order of excitement):

• Frieren (S2) - Loved S1, must watch.
• Oshi No Ko (S3) - Loved S1, thought S2 was quite good, definitely looking forward to more.
• Medalist (S2) -  Haven’t watched S1 yet because Hulu-jail, but I’d like to catch up and try this since it’s gotten so much buzz.
• Jujutsu Kaisen (S3) - I’m quite behind and not sure I’ll catch up anymore.
• Hell’s Paradise (S2) - I ended up appreciating S1 by the end, but it isn’t my favorite. It’s a low priority.

2025 Wrap-Up

• My AOTY: Zenshu
• Best continuing series: Shoshimin Season 2
• Best movie: 100 Meters
• Best adaptation: The Summer Hikaru Died
• Best original: Apocalypse Hotel
• Best animation: City The Animation
• Best romance: Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days
• Most underrated: Maebashi Witches

Honorable mentions: Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, Medalist, Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc and Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga (both had one of their best arcs)

Score

• The Summer Hikaru Died (Tarou Umebayashi)
• Orb: On the Movements of the Earth (Kensuke Ushio)
• Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga (Kohta Yamamoto)

Voice Acting Performance

• Sawashiro Miyuki as Anko Uguisu
• Umeda Shuuichirou as Hikaru
• Shinichiro Miki as Environment Checker Robot

OP

• “Kaseijin” by Yorushika
• “Saikai” by Vaundy

ED

• “Tada, Kimi no Mama de” by Sou
• “WALTZ” by Ryugujo

Best Episode

• Zenshu #4 (having an oshi saves lives)
• Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary Season 2 #6 (Osanai destroys Urino)
• Apocalypse Hotel #11 (Yachiyo takes a stroll)

Best Character

• Yuki Osanai from Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary Season 2
• Hikaru from The Summer Hikaru Died
• Yachiyo from Apocalypse Hotel
• Natsuko Hirose from Zenshu

Best Boy

• Tsukasa Akeuraji from Medalist
• Togashi from 100 Meters
• Luke Braveheart from Zenshu

Best Girl

• Memmeln from Zenshu
• Mio from Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex
• Kiyoko Yoshida from Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days

I was about to make my own of these, but I left it rattling around in my head for too long.

Fall 2025 only, final impressions. All spoilers! No specific order.

To Your Eternity S3

I enjoyed the story for what it was. I think Fushi’s flailing around and Mizuha’s attempted redemption (while she was trying to manipulate him) was to set us up for yet another tragedy. While it was a disappointing arc, my guess is that the end is to have a resolution between Hayase’s line, nokkers, and Fushi’s understanding of love. This is most likely going to be an echo of Mimori’s plot. I don’t recall love emotion being felt in the past, and this ties into the Man in Black bailing out on the world.

It is interesting to me that the Man in Black lied to Fushi, and I wonder how many lies he told Fushi this season about bailing out and not being able to do anything.

Watari-Kun’s ******** is about to Collapse

I was genuinely happy to see Watari end up with Satsuki.

I was glad that he was able to take a step back from Ishihara. He had put Ishihara up on a pedestal so much that he could never see her as an equal. She, by contrast, had a poor self image. While the show never addressed it, I felt that she was unconsciously picking him because of his similar low self worth. Props to mom for her sixth sense. I think that he would not have been able to tear himself away if they consummated their relationship.

The best character here was Satsuki. She started broken, and had no understanding of her own motivations. Her character growth was off the charts.

Let’s Play

I couldn’t help but see Marshall as DanTDM, which is funny because I only know of him because of my children watching hours of his playthrough videos. His fan’s reactions are not unreasonable.

I really wanted to know more about how Ruminate works. Is there a story path for each item you purchase? Are there multiple win conditions and multiple ways to proceed? It sounds novel, but reminds me of the old-school point-and-click games.

Her boss’s advances bothered me. He needed to transfer her to someone else and put some distance there. While I appreciate his efforts at building her up, there is an obvious power conflict here.

This Monster Wants to Eat Me

I went into this hearing that it had weird yuri vibes. I GUESS, but that wasn’t really the point. I struggled with the first few episodes because of the animation. Episodes 4+ did pick up significantly. This wasn’t supposed to be a feel-good anime, and the moral of the story seemed to be that you can’t only hold out for the best outcome when compromises are available. I’m glad that the answer to her clinical depression was not to stare at the flowers and feel better (Rurouni Kenshin). That girl needs therapy.

The Banished Court Magician Aims to become the Strongest

I watched this with low expectations, and I don’t think I would have been disappointed either way. Friendship is magic, magic is magic, magic is everywhere. I think they opened more plot lines than closed. My one disappointment is how the swordmaster’s whole motivation appeared to be that he was sad.

Gachiakuta

This did not disappoint. So many great beats to this show, and unexpected moments. I appreciated the new takes on the shounen misfit group with powers trope. It appears that a power creep is on the way. Also, Regto was totally in on something about the watchmen series. I’m not sure if Rudo took his name, if Regto took him in because of his name, or if he was actually a raider in hiding. Further examination is necessary.

My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s

I watched this expecting another Eminence in Shadow or Sword Art. Lucky for them they knew that my weakness is white-haired elven princesses with generational powers named Amilia. Or Emilia. Whatever. The coincidence was too close. There’s no way they didn’t know.

For being the quiet kid that nothing happens to, he sure got the best picks in this new world. I’m not even sure what the rest of his class is doing here other than to show HOW AWESOME he really is. I feel like this is like Loner Life in Another world, where they will just move around from continent to continent while he progresses the plot.

Okay, I really did enjoy it, even if the MC didn’t really seem to have to do much more than a couple training sessions before he bulked up.

Finally, who else cringed at the cliffside wedding?

Touring After the Apocalypse

I kept waiting for this to go somewhere about who the main characters really were, how did THEY end up here. Why is she still a young woman? Are all these memories fake? Was the disaster natural, war, or what? Ok, I figured the whole thing was a spot for promoting tourism (and Honda??) at some point, but I wanted a little more exposition. Peeking at comments about the source material, it seems that you will be constantly strung along.

Campfire Cooking (S1+S2)

I wasn’t going to watch this, but if there is a season two, it can’t be all that bad right? It wasn’t! I enjoyed the byplay of the characters, especially how the MC really didn’t care about the plight of the kingdom and could have probably been the deciding point in the whole thing with his monster buffs. He’s just going to hie off into the distance, escaping both the kingdom and the plot.

You know what you can’t escape? The gods. Too bad, you are now their play toy. I figured he probably should have just made an offering with each meal, but having the gods complain to him was fun.

Pass the Monster Meat Milady

To have an adult conversation about your feelings, and then commit was pretty wholesome. In fact, the whole thing was wholesome! They absolutely telegraphed the magical nuke from 5 episodes away.

Mechanical Marie

I felt that the ending was cheating, but that wasn’t the point. It was a light romcom where the female lead could do no wrong. I typically waited to watch this until I had watched everything else

A Wild Last Boss Appeared

I snoozed on this and then watched the whole thing in a few nights. It had been on my list, but I kept getting distracted by other shiny things.

A Gatherer’s Adventure in Isekai

I could have skipped this and been okay. I felt more like this was a bundle of tropes meant to sell airtime than anything new. It wasn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t recommend it over anything else.

Let this Grieving Soul Retire (Both Cour)

I decided that this main character must have a have a hidden max charisma stat or something. It reminds me of the Sir Bearington story about the bear who bluffed his way into being a human, except less capable. It was funny, but cringe humor is lost on me.

My Hero Acadamia

I loved My Hero, and have been watching it as it came out for years. I appreciated how the story wound down here. I heard a lot of complaints about the ending, but I felt that this was appropriate.

Gnosia

This is a refreshing take on how a game with multiple play-throughs might actually happen. They steadily increased the number of players as well as the rules. NOTHING has been taken for granted, and I appreciate it. The music was fantastic, and the characters each have their own story.

1 Punch Man, S2 + S3

I know a lot of people were upset about the use of AI on season 3, but I didn’t even see it when I was looking for it. I actually started season 3, and then realized I hadn’t watched season 2. I do have to say that Saitama’s strength gets old, but the story is more about the supporting characters.

Side-thought: Saitama and Krai from Let this Grieving Soul Retire are polar opposites, and the stories are polar opposites, but somehow the same.

Dusk Beyond the End of the Earth

As someone else mentioned, this started out as the two of them against this dystopian world, and then morphed into a weird love triangle, and then basically said that the world needs to be this way, sorry!

I think I had a little whiplash watching Akira suddenly change his tune, and I very much understand Yugure’s frustration. I feel that the ending was messy, trying to tie everything up neatly. That being said, I enjoyed the ride, even if I had no idea where we were really going.

Ranma 1/2 Season 2

As someone who watched Ranma 25 years ago, I’m happy to rewatch it. People who never watched it in the past don’t seem to enjoy it like I am, and I think the nostalgia is a huge factor. This means that I can’t give an objective opinion. I do have to say that the cleaned-up animation was pretty good. I feel like they censored much of the nudity, as the original just loved to show the women naked.

I’m stoked to see season 3, as that is when the story starts moving away from being so episodic to having a more clear path.

Sanda

I loved the stark art style and the world building. I’m here for all the weirdness this brings. Bonus points for not having everything work out. I hope to see a season 2.

Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha!

This was revenge porn, but only in the sense that revenge happens. If you went into this looking for real porn, there are other recommendations. I’m not sure if the lack of porn made this better or worse, and the edginess of the main character caused me to roll my eyes so often. Also, the supporting character’s cheerfulness and worship of the MC just bothered me.

I feel like that the racism against humanity was meant to justify that the MC can do whatever he wants. The only way this would make me happy would be if it became a self-fulfilling prophecy where his revenge meant the beginning of a truly evil empire. I think this will disappoint me, and he will be a better person once he killed everyone in his way. Guess I’ll have to find out.

Death March to the Parallel World

I forgot I watched this, and was confused as to how it ended up in my history. It took 5 minutes to remember anything. Truly forgettable.

Before writing about anime, in case you weren’t aware, this is actually the first week of 2026, even though it is currently still 2025 as I write this. Week numbers can be weird sometimes!

Fall 2025 Wrap-Up

I managed to finish up the Fall shows I was watching this past week. Some thoughts:

• Campfire Cooking Season 2 - If you liked the first season, you probably liked this season. It delivered the same high-quality cooking animation with low-stakes fun.
• Dusk Beyond the End of the World - A baffling series. Episode 0 had me absolutely hooked. But then it transformed into some kind of post-apocalyptic love triangle thing, and was never really able to right the ship. The ending could have been worse though all things considered. I have definitely seen originals with an interesting premise turn out worse (looking at you Metallic Rouge).
• Touring After the Apocalypse - Probably my favorite series I watched this season, but it was a low bar. It had a chill vibe and some interesting plot hooks…but definitely felt more like a manga advertisement than like it was trying to tell a story of its own.
• Star Wars Visions Volume 3 - I didn’t really vibe with this season as much as I did season 1. There were some direct sequels to Season 1 episodes, but they didn’t really live up to their predecessors for me. If you are looking for some episode recommendations, here are my favorites from the season:
  • Episode 4 - A storyline that is incredibly predictable, but I still enjoyed a lot. Had a pretty compelling MC.
  • Episode 6 - My favorite of the season. A former jedi on the run from the empire comes face to face with her past.
  • Episode 8 - A CG episode that has some beautiful visuals (though the animation on the character models is a bit uncanny). A padawan is blinded in combat and has to confront her own cave of trials as she learns to see the world around her without her eyes.
  • Episode 9 - I can’t say that I liked this episode, but it was fascinating. An aggressively hand-drawn style and basically zero dialogue for the whole episode. It isn’t so much a story as it is an experience. Partake in your drug of choice ahead of time and zone out.

2025 Year in Review

Some good stuff this past year. Some highlights (in rough order of enjoyment):

• Apocalypse Hotel - my AOTY. Just an incredibly well told story that had all the emotions in it. Definitely deserves more attention than it got.
• CITY the Animation - A worthy successor of Nichijou, even if it felt more chaotic in its narrative. An incredible feat of animation production and KyoAni at its absolute best.
• Apothecary Diaries Season 2 - Somehow just as good if not better than season 1.
• Ninja and Assassin Under One Roof - The best dark comedy I remember seeing in a long time and an adaptation that truly elevates the manga source to a whole new level.
• 100 Girlfriends Season 2 - More girls! More Rentaro! More fun!
• Silent Witch - Surprisingly well-adapted story that has a lot of meat on the narrative bone. I hope there is more to come.
• Dan Da Dan Season 2 - This show was as beautiful as season 1. The musical number was really the standout sequence for me.

Honorable mentions:

• Rock is a Lady’s Modesty - A heck of a lot of fun with a great soundtrack (and mo-cap performances) provided by Band-Maid.
• Welcome to Japan Miss Elf - This was such a good adaptation it got me reading this manga again. I really enjoyed this one.
• From Bureaucrat to Villainess - Loved all the old anime references in this one. Hoping for more to come with this one.

There were a few things that exceeded my expectations:

• CITY THE ANIMATION was the only anime to ever overwhelm my ADHD to the point where I felt like I was looking at too much stuff rather than not enough
• DAN DA DAN Season 2 elevated one of my least favorite fights in the manga (the one in the music room) to the same incredibly high level as all the others in that wild show
• SANDA delivered the highest “what the fuck” to runtime ratio out of anything I’ve ever seen
• Takopi’s Original Sin made me sad
• The Summer Hikaru Died proved to me that it is possible to make a good horror anime
• Apocalypse Hotel solidified Cygames as one of my favorite studios of all time
• bâan: The Boundary of Adulthood gained my respect as a project that was made with the goal of making something cool even if they lost money doing it
• Medalist only had a good adaptation (as opposed to some of the incredible ones above), but it had such a fun story and characters I found myself loving it anyways
• Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux redesigned the guncannon to not look dopey (before/after)
• Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express made the banter in every other show feel stiff and unnatural by comparison
• Umamusume: Cinderella Gray delivered a horse girl idol performance that actually had me laughing and enjoying myself rather than wondering why they bothered

Honestly there was a lot to love this year. I’ll be delighted if next year is just as good.

I only watched three new shows this year but loved all of them. Got a lot more to catch up on (especially Spy x Family S3 and Apothecary Diaries S2).

• CITY: The Animation - The only thing I like more than Keiichi Arawi’s artwork is the production values putting it into motion. TBH though, I thought the writing was decent but mostly just carried by the artwork. And I’m fine with that, the animation carried hard.
• Takopi’s Original Sin - Binged it and had to go lie down. What really made this show so compelling was having it be told through the eyes of an alien that doesn’t realize what’s wrong, leaving the viewer to scream “Takopi no, stop, you’re not helping, Takopi please stop!” Is it bad though that I kinda wanted the ending to twist the knife a little more?
• Apocalypse Hotel - I want to say that it’s hard to choose a favorite this year because both CITY and Takopi were fantastic, but on further reflection it absolutely has to go to Apocalypse Hotel. What an incredible ride this was from start to finish. If you somehow have missed this one, I urge you to look nothing up and go in blind.

Year end impressions:

Objectively good IMO:

Milky Subway was refreshingly original - especially in the natural way it presented dialogue - and consistently laugh out loud funny. Even at only four minutes per episode, I think I got more pure enjoyment out of it than about anything else this year.

Apocalypse Hotel was probably my overall favorite of the year. Over the course of its run, it hit on lots of different genres, but mostly because Yachiyo (later on with the admirable assistance of Ponko) is so conscientious and so determined, it’s ultimately more iyashikei than anything else.

The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity was charming from start to finish, and not just the best and most rewarding rom-com of the year, but arguably one of the best ever.

May I Ask For One Final Thing? was a rollicking adventure, and Scarlet is a much-needed breath of fresh air.

Silent Witch was a wonderful combination of fluff, intrigue and action, as Monica showed that being sweet and shy doesn’t mean you can’t also be a terrifying badass when necessary.

Personal favorites:

I’ve watched Honey Lemon Soda all the way through four times now, and have enjoyed it every time. I recognize its flaws, but I love it anyway.

Maebashi Witches was a pleasant surprise - on the surface it’s just fluff about magical girl/idols who grant wishes, but it ends up being an intriguing exploration of hope, desire, fulfillment and disappointment, and especially of the possible gap between what you might think you want and what will actually make you happy.

Taken by itself, I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time was only so-so, but that was mostly because it spent too much time telling too little story. I suspect that if it can get another season or two or three, it’s going to turn out to be excellent.

Disappointments:

Food Court de Mata Ashita is one of my all-time favorite manga, but the adaptation didn’t even begin to do it justice. It still boggles my mind that the manga did a better job at comedic timing than the anime did - how is it even possible, when you have direct control over the timing of line delivery, to get it so wrong?

After standing out in season 1 by nicely fleshing out its relatively tropish characters and making them interesting and distinctive, Sono Bisque Doll season 2 unfortunately reduced them to dull, one dimensional caricatures of themselves.

Time for this season’s silly awards!

• Most thorough product placement: Shuumatsu Touring. I really hope Honda paid them well for that episode.
• Most disappointing: To Your Eternity. Not that it was bad, exactly, but it wasn’t up to the standards of the previous seasons. I’ve come to the conclusion that much of the problem is Mizuha and the heavy focus on her. While her situation is interesting, she is not an appealing character, and I really don’t want to spend any more time with her. Hopefully the second cours will return the primary focus to Fushi. (I also could have done without the rope bondage bit, which seemed to come out of left field in a manner more appropriate to Golden Kamuy.)
• Stupidest smart person award: Towasa from Towa no Yuugure. Apparently she not only knew nothing about human nature, she also lacked fundamental knowledge about computer programming. All non-trivial software has bugs, and directly hooking up a human brain to the Internet with no method to block it again afterwards is so stupidly risky that I can’t even.
• Biggest bait-and-switch: Towa no Yuugure again. The first couple of episodes are set up to look like plucky-band-of-misfits-against-SF-dystopia, but instead we end up getting SF relationship drama. If that was what they wanted to do, they should have toned down the evil-dystopia scenes.
• Where-can-I-get-some-of-what-they-were-smoking award: Sanda. The last thing I saw that managed to be both this batshit and this thoughtful was maybe Sarazanmai (and that was from Kunihiko Ikuhara, who’s always that way). Come for the bizarre premise, stay for the fact that this thing is surprisingly good.
• Best dragon award: May I Ask for One Final Thing? narrowly beat out the dragon from Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! begging for royal moodle. (Sorry, Bee, you’re just not dragonlike enough, and they tried too hard to make you cute. Gap moe works better with dragons.)
• Most unexpectedly entertaining: Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! for a narrow win over a quite large field of candidates. (A Wild Last Boss Appears! might have won if I hadn’t given it a higher evaluation than the other based on pre-airing summaries.) Having the central plot be a romance is a tough sell for me in general, but this time it worked.

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My Christmas rewatch for this year was Suisei no Gargantia (Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet). It still holds up pretty well for the most part—the Gundam + Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind + Waterworld setting comes together (even though from that description, it really shouldn’t), and the character arcs, including the mecha’s, work. The thing that doesn’t hold up is the visuals. There is way too much 3D water that does not blend with the rest of the artwork at all, proving that sometimes trying to be more realistic causes problems rather than solving them.

I always forget to use these🧵

⚠️⚠️⚠️
for those new to my style of posting: if you don’t want spoilers, select the first link. If the donghua interest you, binge watch first. Then select the second link that excerpts the episode context that I spoiler free reacted to.
e.g. [1st🔗](synopsis of sorts), [2nd🔗⚠️](The reference)
⚠️⚠️⚠️

1. 仙逆’s ender⚠️, I nearly cried. Perfect ending, perfect song. They encapsulated what it means to walk againsts the heavens itself, and still maintain yourself.
2. Grampa Mute! I missed you! 😘😘😘😘😘😘⚠️

Fall 2025

I kept hearing that this is one of the worst anime seasons, but at this stage in my life, this is perfect: a few quality shows to follow, with plenty of breathing room to catch-up on past GOATs.

Spy x Family - season 3

I find that this season to be a huge improvement over the past seasons / cour. A lot less fillers than before, but even then the fillers could have been left out of the mainline series altogether IMO; perhaps include them in OVAs instead.

Umamusume: Cinderella Gray - part 2

I still enjoy it like part 1, but IMO the drama can be upped even more. Also, I am starting to notice powerpoint slides; not a good sign. Doesn’t matter as I am in it for the story though, and Oguri’s is cap - as in peak.

I still like Pretty Derby season 2 the most from the Umamusume franchise, but I heard that Cinderella Gray’s story becomes even better later in the manga. Definitely looking forward to future seasons.

Gnosia

The worldbuilding and set-up has been going on for quite a while, and we are now seeing hints of a climax. If they pull off the ending well, I can see it contending with the other popular shows next season in terms of personal enjoyment.

Wandance

Barring the animation and computer graphics, I heard that this anime (read: its story) is good. I ended up binging it last week and it turned out to be my dark horse of the season. (Gnosia doesn’t count because I’ve been enjoying it from the start.)

I love Wanda and Kabo’s relationship. I love the maturity of the characters and the way the story developed. I wasn’t bothered by the 3D models being used in dance sequences, plus I find CG with animation infinitely better than slideshows. If you enjoy anime mainly for the plot, consider giving Wandance a chance.

Also, thanks to Wandance, there is finally a song from this season that made it into my playlist: Stare In Wonder (Wandance OP)

2025 Overall

In a nutshell, 2025 is the year of sports anime for me, with the likes of:

• Medalist
• Umamusume: Cinderella Gray
• Wandance

being among my top picks. (Also caught up on Haikyuu!!, Sound! Euphonium and the rest of Umamusume.)

Even my favourite episode from 100 Girlfriends is a sports episode.

Also, Cygames has been killing it lately. Everyone has heard of Umamusume, but The Summer Hikaru Died and Apocalypse Hotel have been fantastic as well.

Quick shoutout to a few more anime that haven’t been mentioned:

• Ave Mujica - The most melodramatic anime I enjoyed. It gets quite edgy, but that’s what makes it stands out from the rest.
• The Apothecary Diaries - season 2 - It is now less suspense and more ancient Chinese courtroom drama, which is something you don’t often see it anime. This made it even more unique in my mind.
• There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… - The spiciest anime of 2025 for me. Say what you will of this anime; I’m in it for the yuri.

If I must pick one anime to represent this year, it has to be Umamusume: Cinderella Gray. It’s thanks to Cinderella Gray that I now find myself deep inside the Umamusume rabbithole.

Gonna get my week’s watches out of the way first, and do my end-of-year impressions separately:

So first off last week, I bounced off of Nisekoi.

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I went into it knowing that it was an essentially automatically cheesy fake romance between two people who initially hate each other, and that it was a Shaft, which meant lots of oddly unpopulated geometric abstract liminal spaces and insipid conversations pretending to be profound, and even that the already cheesy set-up went the extra cheese mile by making the fake romance a mechanism to prevent a rival gang family war. And even prepared as I was, it overwhelmed my suspension of disbelief. Mostly it was the ensemble scenes of groups of scarfaced gangsters all simultaneously cheering on this make-believe high school romance, as if it was the single most important thing in the universe, but in the end it was that one guy with scary shiny glasses who decided that the actual most important thing in the universe was proving that the romance was a fake. It’s anime, so I have a very low bar for suspension of disbelief, and this one couldn’t even manage to meet that. Now that said, I can’t imagine that they’ll go 20 episodes with gangsters constantly popping up like Broadway choruses to squee with delight over the fake romance of two high-schoolers while scary shiny glasses stands off to the side and fumes, so I might give it another shot sometime, since the three main characters were actually relatively appealing. We’ll see…

So then, wanting something a bit meatier, I watched a movie I happened to stumble across the other day - Ame wo Tsugeru Hyouryuu Danchi aka Drifting Home.

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It’s a sort of contrived drama (certainly not coincidentally) in the spirit of Drifting Classroom, but aside from a few broad strokes and basic concepts, it’s very much its own thing. The thing that’s drifting in this case is the scheduled-to-be-demolished apartment building in which the two main characters, currently estranged from each other, grew up happily together, and it’s literally drifting - floating - out to sea, trapping those two and a handful of their mutual friends. And to reach back a bit, that’s certainly an even less believable scenario than Nisekoi, but they handled it well enough that my suspension of disbelief was never even challenged. It was quite good all in all - it’s a difficult but ultimately rewarding watch. The only real issue I had with it was a personal one - the male lead was the Japanese character archetype I hate the most - the angry coward. He was one of those prideful assholes who’s desperately insecure and self-doubting and unhappy, and tries to make up for it by scowling and being angry essentially full time, and they’re just like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. But it was fairly obvious he was on a redemption arc, so I stuck with it, and eventually he pulled his head out of his ass. And it was all worth it in the long run.

Next was an OVA - Kowarekake no Orgel - which was impressive.

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It’s about a depressed and very down-on-his-luck musician when ends up adopting a sweetly naive but barely functional and unrepairable robot he finds abandoned on a scrap heap. It could’ve easily tipped over into being devastatingly sad, since it’s made clear from early on that she really is unrepairable, so the ending is pretty much preordained, but it still managed to mix in enough hope and joy that it worked out to charmingly bittersweet and even a bit optimistic in the end. I liked it.

Then I knocked around for a bit, then ended up binging the just ended Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni dake Uzai, which I sort of unintentionally dropped mid-season just because it didn’t hold my attention. I wanted to see how it all worked out, and it was… strange.

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It was pretty poor all in all, but not because there was anything specific wrong with it. It was more as if someone took dozens of separate ingredients for a decent anime and mixed them all together and ended up with… dozens of separate ingredients for a decent anime arbitrarily mixed together. Taken by themselves, the characters were at least okay, the set-up was potentially interesting and the way the story unfolded was potentially satisfying. But nothing fit with anything else. It almost felt like it was done by a committee - as if one team built a framework and designated a bunch of slots in the framework for different characters and different story events while a different team designed a bunch of characters and events to spec, then a third team just wedged the characters and events they were given into the corresponding slots and called it good. And for all I know, that might be pretty much exactly how it did happen. In any event, it was pretty bad, though in an oddly interesting way.

After that, I wasn’t in the mood to gamble, so I just rewatched Joshiraku, and liked it even more the second time around.

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The characters are terrific (and, as they constantly remind us, cute) and the dialogue is bizarre and intriguing and stupidly funny, so it works as a sort of surreal SOL CGDCT iyashikei comedy - sort of a cross between Nichijou, K-On and Food Court de Mata Ashita - and I love it.

Next up was a movie I happened on a while back - On-Gaku: Our Sound, which was fascinating.

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At no point in that entire movie could I predict what was going to happen next, and I finally just gave up and let it wash over me. It seems like it should’ve ended up feeling arbitrary, since it all unfolded so unpredictably, but somehow it all made sense. Sort of. I think. In any event, I enjoyed it. And odd though it was, I loved the art style.

Then I was in the mood for something raw and brutal and dramatic, so watched a couple of episodes of an early 2000s gritty cyberpunk called Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi aka Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne.

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I intended to just watch the whole series, but it’s one of those series - more than anything else, it reminded me of the Kara no Kyoukai movie series, which is to say each of the six 45 minute episodes is an independent story from some point along the shared timeline of the main characters, and while there is an overarching plot of sorts, it’s being revealed in bits and pieces along the way rather than playing out straightforwardly. It’s quite good, but the individual episodes are a bit exhausting and the way it’s playing out means that I don’t necessarily have to watch it straight through, and after two episodes, I was ready for a break.

So I switched to one I sort of gently bounced off of a few weeks ago - Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru aka OreShura, which turned out to be a really strange harem.

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It started off with a childhood friend, then added a fake girlfriend, then a meek chuuni, then finally a particularly cute tsundere. It was mostly pretty standard, but with a couple of oddities. First, the protagonist is probably the most incredibly dense harem protag I’ve ever seen. That was actually okay though. I think the thing that made it okay was that it wasn’t just a gimmick that showed up as necessary to keep the harem intact - he really was just that dense, pretty much full time. The other oddity though was that the fake girlfriend was an entirely foul and loathsome bitch, and that’s not just my opinion - that was the stated reality in-universe. Even the protag thought she was awful. And as it went on, her continued presence in the harem just made less and less sense, particularly after the protag finally figured out what was going on with the other three and the other three figured out that she was a fake. But still, there she was, poisoning everything and everyone around her.

I think the author was trying to make a point about redemption or hidden value or tolerance or something like that, but since the basic arc was that she was utterly loathsome, but the protag was kind to her anyway, and… she continued to be utterly loathsome, there was never any pay-off, so whatever the point was supposed to be, it got lost. More than anything else, it struck me as a failed effort.

And at the moment, I have no idea what’s next. I watched one more episode of Mnemosyne, but I’m more in the mood for something else…

Just as a follow-up to last week’s thread. I have completed going through it and enabling all the shows mentioned with our bot, @[email protected]. So, barring AniList API weirdness that can happen at the beginning of a new season, those threads should be popping up when things premiere.

Copied from my notes I watched these shows in order this year:

• 懺・さよなら絶望先生 + 懺さよなら絶望先生 番外地 + さよなら絶望先生 ニャン京の基督
• 苺ましまろ OVA + 苺ましまろencore
• NEW GAME! + NEW GAME! 私、社員旅行って初めてなので…
• N・H・Kにようこそ！
• ARIA The ANIMATION
• NEW GAME!!
• ゆるめいつ + ゆるめいつ は? + ゆるめいつ 3でぃ + ゆるめいつ3でぃPLUS + ゆるめいつ (2012)
• スロウスタート
• 大室家 dear friends
• ARIA The NATURAL + ARIA The NATURAL「その 再び出逢える奇跡に…」+ ARIA The OVA _ARIETTA
• 田中くんは今日もけだるげ
• たまこまーけっと + たまこまーけっと ぺったんこアニメ
• たまこラブストーリー + 南の島のデラちゃん
• 瓶詰妖精
• ARIA The ORIGINATION
• CITY The Animation
• ARIA The ORIGINATION Picture Drama
• ARIA The ORIGINATION「そのちょっぴり秘密の場所に…」
• ARIA The AVVENIRE
• 侵略!イカ娘 + 侵略!イカ娘 ミニイカ娘の番外編
• 3年Z組銀八先生
• ARIA The CREPUSCOLO
• ARIA The BENEDIZIONE

In short: finished up zetsubou sensei, finished up ichigomashimaro, new game, nhk ni youkoso, aria, yurumeitsu, slow start, oomuroke dear friends, tanaka kun chibi version, tamako market/love story, bottle faries, city, ika musume, the new gintama.

I watched two current shows this year which is a lot for me. I really liked CITY of course. The highlight of the year has to be the whole series ARIA. It’s a top 5 anime for me. It does the really special thing where I end up crying without being sad. Suteki!

In terms of this season I watched the Gintama spinoff. It was definitely worth watching. However, I was watching Ika Musume in between and I did notice that I was more excited on days where I watched Ika-chan. I guess I’m a truly lost cause when it comes to moe.

Summer 2025 was a season for the ages. I doubt we’ll see something like this for a long time. The most recent prior to that was Winter 2018.

Takopi’s Original Sin: They maximized the heck out of the medium and delivered six episodes of a complex and emotional story. I may not watch it again, but this is my new #1 overall anime.

The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity: At the end of it all, this one delivered what I thought it could from the moment I saw the announcement poster (although the final episode carried it hard). This is where I also realized I like Kuroki Miyuki’s directional style. Cloverworks is one of the best studios out there, and within Cloverworks, Miuyki and her staff form the best team.

Other 10s in that season: Dandadan S2 (utterly consistent) and My Dress Up Darling S2 (a great step-up from S1)

The year as a whole? 15 animes watched, eight (!!) are rated a 10, five 9s, and two 8. An apples-to-apples comparison to 2024 gives me three 10/10s out of 16. It’s crazy that Summer 2025 alone has more masterpieces.

The numbers corroborated my hunch about Winter 2018. I had four 10/10s in that season and 2/3rds of all 2018, movies not counted.