Autumn 2025 Preview
Has Crunchyroll bitten off more than it can chew? Has the strain begun to show? The first Saturday for simulcasting most of the ‘big’ new series was a disaster with no-shows, late arrivals, wrong subtitles etc. which was very disappointing for viewers, especially given all the pre-season hype. Meanwhile Amazon Prime is quietly getting on with showing some excellent new Autumn series including SANDA and A Star Brighter than the Sun and returning favourite Umamusume: Cinderella Gray – Cour 2. Having trouble choosing what to watch out of so many titles and platforms? The writers at Anime UK News are here with some suggestions and recommendations!
Demelza
Hotly Anticipated
Those of you who follow shojo manga may recognise mangaka Kazune Kawahara for being the mind behind High School Debut and one half of the My Love Story!! team (which received an anime adaptation by Madhouse in 2015). Now her latest work, A Star Brighter Than the Sun, has also been turned into an anime, and what a delight it has proven so far!
The series follows Sae, who has always been taller and stronger than the other girls around her. Her childhood friend Koki used to be the exact opposite, a boy who was much smaller and weaker than his friends and classmates. However, now the two are in high school, and although Sae still has a complex about her height, Koki has become a tall and handsome young man who draws everyone’s attention! Although the two drifted apart somewhat during middle school, now they’re in the same class for high school, and Sae has realised she’s fallen for him. But will she ever be able to tell him her feelings?
This is so far a relatively slow-burning romance, not helped by Sae’s mistaken belief that Koki is in love with someone else (who we viewers quickly understand is in fact just Sae rather than a mystery woman). Still, even if it doesn’t seem like they’ll get together anytime soon, there’s still plenty of charm here.
The romance is being approached in a sensitive but cute manner, with plenty of development for the duo even if that’s so far at the expense of any of the side characters they’ve introduced. Animation is being handled by Studio Kai (7th Time Loop, Shine Post) and it looks great with a bright palette that portrays the vibe of a youthful romance story like this. I think if you’ve enjoyed any of Kawahara’s manga or the My Love Story!! anime, you’ll certainly want to give this one a look.
Returning Champion
This season is considerably lighter on sequel series than Summer was, particularly for shows I’ve been following over the years. However, the one show that is back for its third season is Isekai Quartet!. This is the series that brought together the main cast of Rising of the Shield Hero, Tanya the Evil, Overlord, Konosuba and Re:Zero and placed them into a school setting. With no way home, they’ve been forced to mingle and spend their lives the way ordinary high school students would (mostly).
As you might expect from a comedy series like this, Season 3 is continuing similarly so far. The big event this time around is the addition of The Eminence in Shadow cast, who are sure to be hilarious in this setting. There’s some additional side cast added from the existing franchises such as Otto and Garfiel from Re:Zero.
Generally Isekai Quartet has always been at its best when just showing us the characters interacting with one another, but this season seems to have an end goal in mind now that we have some newcomers. Perhaps we’ll finally find out how and why everyone ended up stuck in this world? If you’ve been enjoying this so far then you’ll certainly have no complaints with what we’ve seen of Season 3. It’s more of the same, while having been given enough of a refresh to not feel like its stagnated. The fact it’s only 15 minutes per episode does also help a lot.
Unexpected Diamond (sort of)
Those of you who read my reviews regularly may remember when I first read Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle. It’s a series where I rather disliked Volume 1 due to the protagonist’s attitude. I’ve carried on reading the light novels since and my feelings have changed, but when they announced the anime adaptation, I still wasn’t looking forward to revisiting this first book.
However, the anime has a lot of things working in its favour. It’s being adapted by studio Feel who have worked on similar series like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, and they cast Shogo Sakata (Usato in The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, Aki in Chainsaw Man) to play Chitose, whom I am quite fond of. The PVs also looked excellent, so slowly but surely, my expectations began to grow despite my bad past experience.
The story follows the Saku Chitose, who is the most popular guy at his high school. Due to being surrounded by pretty girls and other admired students, Chitose is envied by all around him but despite that, he’s the class president and soon finds himself lumped with the job of bringing a shut-in student back to class. The student in question is the exact opposite of Chitose and has been hurt by the ‘popular kids’ before, so he’s none too thrilled to be visited day after day by our protagonist who just wants to get his task over with.
Now we’re two episodes in and I find myself quite surprised by the work the team have done. You can’t smooth out all of the rough edges of Chitose’s personality, which comes off as very fake and two-faced, but they’ve removed a lot of his inner monologues which helps a great deal. And I just can’t hate him now that Shogo Sakata is the one playing him with so much care and attention to detail. The ending animation for the series also makes it clear that there is a lot more to Chitose than we’re currently aware of, something that the books didn’t do a good job of depicting at this stage. This is scheduled to run for 26 episodes which should allow it to reach the better content that it’s most known for, and so far it has been a very high quality production even while we’re here in Volume 1 content.
If you like these types of series and this is your first experience with this particular story, I think you’ll quickly find yourself enjoying it. You may need to give it some time to properly bed in, but Chitose at least is proving a more likable lead in this version.
A Star Brighter Than the Sun is available on Amazon, while Isekai Quartet Season 3 and Chitose Is In the Ramune Bottle are on Crunchyroll.
HWR
As the Autumn Season rolls in, I’ve found myself mostly gravitating towards continuations this time around, with a few old favourites coming back including Kingdom for its sixth season and second parts for Uma Musume Cinderella Gray and My Hero Academia Final Season; Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits has also gotten a sequel after some time which is nice to see. I do have a few newcomers in the roster, but I think I’ll need to wait until the end of the season to see if any of these originals turn out to be Unexpected Diamonds, that and October is busy enough with the spooky season and yearly horror marathon. I also think it’s a missed opportunity that we don’t have any real horror titles this season in general!
Hotly Anticipated/Returning Champions
Both Kingdom and Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray were by far my most anticipated for the season, mainly because it’s been a while for the former, whilst the latter was a seasonal highlight for the Spring 2025 Season.
Kingdom’s Sixth Season picks up more or less where the previous season left off, as Xin (Masakazu Morita) and his men work to improve their forces via both their headcount but also more skilled firepower, with some tough try-outs quickly weeding out those who are unable to keep to Xin’s pace, as he and his allies work towards the grander goal, seemingly, to unify China. However, plans are not going smoothly, and the Qin Army are required to rethink their strategy to seize new territory after encountering the brilliant strategist Li Mu, whose strength and skill force our protagonists to make more risky decisions to fulfil their aims.
The premise of this season is very solid and the initial episodes are in-line with what came before – I continue to be intrigued with the overarching story, whilst also appreciating the character moments like Xin finally getting his hands on the Pole Axe from his youth. I look forward to seeing how this season progresses, though at this stage I’m not sure if this will be another 12/13 episode season or two-cour.
Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Part 2 does exactly what it says in the title and continues from where we left off from a tense finale episode where main protagonist Oguri Cap (Tomoyo Takayanagi) raced in the G1 Fall Tenno Sho, pitted against some of the biggest rivals of her generation and meeting her match in Tamamo Cross (Naomi Oozora), who in turn now sees Oguri as a rival and the only other racer to push her beyond their limit.
The first episode focuses more on the supporting cast, with the relationship between Fujimasa March (Maroya Ise) and Yamano Southern (Mutsumi Tamura) taking more of the spotlight – this was fine by me as I enjoy getting to know the other characters in these storylines, as opposed to them simply being rivals or obstacles to overcome. Likewise, the second episode focuses more on Belno Light (Momoko Seto) donning a reporter disguise to suss out the competition, with Super Creek (Kana Yuuki) and her trainers’ relationship also getting some spotlight in the process. The third episode was also a lot of fun as it explores the international competitors with Obey Your Master (Shizuka Ishigami) being a particular standout. There will reportedly be some breaks between the episodes this season, possibly due to it being ten episodes instead of thirteen, but in any case, I look forward to seeing how this progresses, though hopefully Oguri gets credit where it’s due as the next series of competitions and tournaments emerge.
Kingdom 6th Season is streaming on Crunchyroll, whilst Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Part 2 is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Cold Cobra
Returning Champions
In a funny coincidence, the two shows I’ll definitely be looking at this season are returning series based around superheroes, a topic more frequently associated with us here in the West.
The first one is the “biggie” as it’s the final season of My Hero Academia, one of Shonen Jump’s biggest recent hits and a very popular show outside of Japan as well. Not only is this the final season but it’s in the middle of the final arc from the manga and mid-final fight in general, meaning this is as far from a “jumping on point” as you can get. An all-out assault from a large group of villains has put much of Japan on high alert and while the minor threats have been taken care of by the side characters in the previous season, the main threat, a villain known as “All For One” and his protégé/spare body Tomura Shigaraki, are being fought by famed hero All Might and our main protagonist Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, respectively. The key focus on the first few episodes is the battle between All For One and All Might, with the latter relying on an Iron Man-like suit to do battle after transferring his powers to Deku right at the start of the series.
The battle is quite fierce and has the odd fact that due to All For One’s ability to regenerate himself at the cost of getting younger we see him do just that each time he takes a big hit. Sadly for him, his plan to possess the body of Shigaraki isn’t working either as the young man has begun to force his own will and suppress AFO’s power to take him over. There are some other wrinkles too, including the return of former hero killer Stain, who actually sides with All Might due to his twisted ideology, and another young hero and main cast member then joins the fight at the end of Episode 2/into Episode 3, which is good fun but I won’t spoil on the off-chance.
Kind of hard to talk about much else – like I said, we’re in the middle of the final fight of the entire series so there isn’t much in the way of plot to kick us off, because the plot is reaching its end! The animation from Bones is still impressive as always and the soundtrack and voicework are all on point, as you’d imagine by now. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series ends, and hope that future Shonen Jump! adaptations continue to follow the seasonal format going forward, seeing My Hero Academia adapted in full with very little filler has been quite the revelation after decades of filler arcs and scene stretching…
The other returning superhero show is the third season of One Punch Man, a series that started off so well that it became something everyone in – and a lot of people out – of anime circles were talking about, and then a change of animation studio for Season 2 and the bog-standard law of diminishing returns led to the show dropping out of favour and in fact causing quite a bit of fan backlash due to cost-cutting measures leading to some poor animation. Season 2 aired back in 2019 and this third season was confirmed in August 2022, so it’s been a long time coming and a complete change of staff at the director level has led to some hope that the reason the new season has taken this long to appear is that they’ve taken the feedback on board to create a third season that might be closer to the original. Well, as it turns out, it’s much the same as Season 2. A lot of still shots with just mouths moving, some movement that’s actually a still frame with lines behind it moving to try and get across movement without actually animating a character, that sort of cost-cutting thing. There are a few fight scenes that are much better and are clearly where most of the money of that particular episode went, but if Season 2 put you off, you’re not going to find joy here. Sadly, some people have taken this as a personal assault and driven the show’s director off of social media, but sadly that kind over over-reaction is just the norm nowadays…
The actual story is still fun and the voicework top notch, so I’m happy for this to be a “bit on the side” to watch every week, even if I won’t necessarily be eagerly anticipating it. If you’re not in the know, the show focuses on Saitama, a hero trying to climb the ranks despite the fact that he’s already “maxed out his stats” to the point where he can put away any threat with a single punch. Manga creator ONE said he got the idea of taking a shonen protagonist at the end of their series and placing him at the start and how boring it would be for them, and wrote the gag manga based on that, and it works… or at least, it did to start. I’ll admit as the series has gone on trying to come up with reasons as to why Saitama isn’t around to fight a big bad so other heroes can get a fight scene or two before our protagonist lives up the series’ name has gotten a little old. They seem to be trying to get around this by having Japan being assaulted by a large group of monsters and villains called “The Monster Association”, meaning Saitama can’t be everywhere at once (and in fact is often just chilling out at his apartment or panicking about not being able to pay for his meal on a night out) and thus allowing the other heroes a bit of spotlight.
They also seem to be focusing on a monster called Garou, who is trying to prove that he can take over the Monster Association but has found himself beaten by Saitama a couple of times and saved a few human lives, the praise from which might be starting to affect his behaviour. Basically, he’s got room to actually grow and develop, which our main hero, by his very design, can’t. While I don’t want to sound like I’m downplaying the importance of good animation in, well, animation, I will still be watching every week, even if I may not rate the show too highly by its end.
Both My Hero Academia and One Punch Man are streaming on Crunchyroll.
Onosume
Hotly Anticipated
I wouldn’t say this necessarily fits into the ‘Hotly Anticipated’ category, but after getting attached to the studio’s work from its main Aikatsu! days, I’m always interested in whatever Bandai Namco Pictures puts out.
This season it’s Shabake, an adaptation of the historical fantasy novels and manga penned by Megami Hatakenaka. Set in the Edo period, the series focuses on Ichitaro, the son of a wealthy trading family who, being quite sickly and frail, has found himself confined to his room for most of his life. However, thanks to his ability to see spirits, he has grown up with a variety of spooky friends and guardians, who in their human forms, offer guidance and protection.
That said, they can’t half nag and the rebellious Ichitaro, yearning for freedom, begins sneaking out of the estate at night. After a run-in and a very close call with a marauding murderer, Ichitaro becomes involved in a series of different murder cases where it falls on him and his spirit friends to uncover the culprit behind them all.
So far this has grabbed my attention because it’s something different, even if a lot of historical tales can be a bit of a hard sell due to the way these stories are typically told. Shabake itself falls into this category as it seems like a slow burn until you get to the first murder scene and things start getting kicked into motion. Meanwhile the sickly but rebellious protagonist is a thing that has been done to death, so that on its own isn’t that interesting.
Look deeper though and there is a lot more going on. There are a lot of white paper notes floating around between people and hidden messages that make you question what people are plotting. What’s the motivation for the murders and what’s going on in the city? Something just feels off and I can’t quite place it yet, but mysteries abound and I think unravelling those will be the main thing that continually draws people back for the next episode.
It’s a murder mystery with the mix of the supernatural and the sensibility of a Japanese period tale which I think make for a very interesting and unique combination. It looks like it’s going to take time to get going, but I have high hopes for the latter half of the show when everything falls into place to be really engaging. So, this is definitely one to watch out for!
Returning Champion
Anya is back! Yep, it’s time for Season 3 of Spy x Family and more absurd antics with the Forgers.
I’ve really grown to love Spy x Family as a wacky comedy with absurdly fun characters and so far in the first couple of episodes it is still delivering exactly that. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it as they say!
The first episode here acts as more of a re-introduction to the plot and characters to make up for the time that the show has been away and you get two quite zany stories, one focusing on the Forger family as they try to save a fairground from a disgruntled construction worker, while Nightfall has to protect a deal to secure the country’s supply of strawberries.
The thing with a show like this is that acting as more of a typical comic in the western sense, you have a pretty free rein about the situations and stories to tell as it could literally go on forever. So as long as things are kept fresh and the jokes are still funny, it’s hard to see this running out of good material any time soon.
Yet it is still pushing the plot along and doing a good range of character development at the same time. Here we’re seeing some of Loid’s backstory which becomes quite surprisingly dark for what is a silly comedy. Yet it helps you understand a bit more what Loid’s values are and really how he got pushed into being a spy rather than a soldier.
At this point I don’t think there’s much more to be said other than it being a solid continuation. We’ll have to see how things pan out over the rest of this season!
Unexpected Diamond
It’s hard to deny that social deduction games are all the rage right now, with things like Among Us and The Traitors having become exceedingly popular over the last few years. While I never had the friends around to get into Among Us, I’ve definitely been captured by the psychological thrill of The Traitors ever since we played a variant of it at a work team building event, so having Gnosia come along in this anime season just seems perfect timing for me.
Based on the visual novel / adventure game of the same name, Gnosia takes place in the far-flung future where humanity finds itself in an existential battle with the Gnosia, an infestation that causes the humans it infects to kill each other. We join the story on a refugee ship fleeing the infested planet of Liu-An, where the series’ main character, Yuri, wakes with no memory of prior events.
As Yuri gets caught up on things, we discover that while they did manage to escape the planet, one of the infected has managed to board the ship. Normally this would mean the ship would self-destruct, but having done a deal with the ship’s computer, they have delayed the self-destruct sequence to allow the passengers to find which one of them is the Gnosia and place them into cold sleep.
‘Vote out’ the correct passenger in the round table-esque meetings and it’s happy days, but if you choose the wrong person and the number of Gnosia equal the number of humans left, then the Gnosia win and it’s game over.
The first three episodes here set up the basic concept and narratively explain the rules, taking you as the viewer on the same journey as Yuri. What’s surprising is how fast-paced the show is as it literally thrusts you and Yuri into the first vote, so you’re trying to get a read on all the different characters and there’s really not a lot to go off. It’s initially a small cast too, so you’re left wondering how the show is going to sustain itself when you’re going to be whittled down very quickly.
Of course, there is a twist which I think brings some brilliant variation to the standard game. After Yuri is given a mysterious device by Setsu, they are thrown into a time loop, but instead of repeating the same things over and over, every repetition is different so the knowledge from the previous loop actually places Yuri at a disadvantage as they form biases and opinions on the other passengers that may not be true.
The only bad thing about this is it’s pretty repetitive, so the show will have to keep shaking things up in major ways to keep you interested. But if it can do that, then I think this has the potential to be one of the strongest shows of the season if it can pull some psychological punches and descend into madness, because that’s what I love most about these sorts of games.
Finally, let me just shout out the non-binary inclusion here with both Setsu and Yuri being non-binary characters. SQ does mistake Setsu’s gender a lot but they’ve had to bat away both being called a girl and a guy so it’s pretty equal in that way. The character designs in general though are just really queer-coded, weird sci-fi stuff wearing fancy costumes that wouldn’t look out of place in Eurovision.
Overall though Gnosia has had a very interesting start and I’m looking forward to seeing how this one evolves and if it can give me the same thrill as other shows that are now basing themselves on the Werewolf game.
Shabake, Spy x Family Season 3, and Gnosia are all streaming on Crunchyroll.
Sarah
Is it me or has the use of constant background music, often intrusive and distracting, increased? (Have the composers been employing techniques used in games music?) Not to mention the choice of ‘wrong’ OPs – I’m thinking especially of Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! which has an OP worthy of a cutesy office harem romcom but singularly inappropriate for this tale of monsters and dragons.
Hotly Anticipated
SANDA is set in a dystopian world where the birth-rate has dramatically declined by 2080 and Christmas has almost been forgotten. Precious children’s lives are prioritised but each child has to live a life defined by strict societal parameters. It’s based on the shonen manga by Paru Itagaki (BEASTARS) and brought to dazzling animated life by Science Saru. Set in a school, Kazushige Sanda (14) discovers he’s descended from Santa Claus when his classmate Shiori Fuyumiya violently proves to him on December 25th that he has the ability to turn into his famous forebear (the clue is wearing something red, so she stabs him). She is desperate to find her best friend and classmate Ichie Ono who has gone missing. Unfortunately, setting Santa Claus ‘free’ brings other problems: the school’s creepy headmaster Hifumi Oshibu (92!) and Yagiuda of the St. Nick Pursuit Unit, for starters…
After the stunning visual fireworks of DAN DA DAN, Science Saru have pulled off another triumph with the amazing animation for SANDA. Coupled with Paru Itagaki’s gift for quirky, original storytelling, it has the potential to be one of the most compelling new titles this season. But, I suspect, it might not appeal to everyone; all the snazzy animation in the world won’t make up for a story in which it’s not so easy to root for the central characters who are all on the idiosyncratic side of unique and need some time to make their mark on the viewer. But as a piece of animation, it’s amazing and the striking animations for the OP and ED are some of the best this season. I haven’t read the manga, so I don’t know where the anime will take us next – young Kazushige has already discovered superpowers and is trying to come to terms with this new, muscled adult body he acquires, every time he wears anything red. We’re promised that as the search for Ichie Ono continues, the hidden magic of Christmas itself will be discovered. It’ll be a wild ride, that’s for sure!
Unexpected Diamond
May I Ask for One Final Thing? feels like something of a guilty pleasure because its main character, silver-haired Scarlet El Vandimion, is introduced behaving like a villainess from the very first episode where Prince Kyle repudiates her as his fiancée at a ball in front of the whole court and she responds by punching the lights out of everyone present, including Terenezza, his new fiancée. (Haven’t we all felt like that at one time or another? But such an offence would be swiftly followed by charges of GBH in the Real World and this is the fantasy world of isekai.)
Isekai?! Well yes, as we later learn… and the ED hints… although our villainous (or much put-upon) heroine Scarlet is not the one who has arrived in fantasy-land from present-day Japan.
Based on a webnovel by Nana Ootori (the manga version is currently available in translation from Alpha Comics) this refreshingly different take on the old stereotypes of isekai/villainess romantasy is full of ingenious twists and turns. Aided and abetted by First Prince Julius (does he fancy her? Or just see her as a novel plaything?) Scarlet pits herself against the nobles who are running illegal slave auctions when she rescues Nanaka, a beastkin boy who is being maltreated by his owner, the odious Minister Godwin. Scarlet has been granted a special gift by Chronoa, the goddess of time, which helps her when fighting her enemies – but this gift has drawbacks that soon become apparent when she overuses her powers.
Pleasing to look at and crisply animated by Liden Films Kyoto Studio, this series stands out from the others (even Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! which is also pleasingly different from the standard run of villainess stories). It’s violent – and we really shouldn’t be cheering a woman who decides to settle her problems and deliver justice with her fists (‘clobbering’ is the term of choice in the subtitles)– but once you start watching, it’s strangely addictive.
Returning Champion
Kakuriyo – Bed & Breakfast for Spirits returns! The first season of this gently quirky but appealing supernatural shojo series aired in 2018, so it’s been a long wait to find out how the ogre’s bride-to-be, human Aoi Tsubaki, is getting on at Tenjin-ya, the guesthouse her horned fiancé runs in the hidden realm. And, much as I liked the original series, the new series has been very slow to get underway – perhaps because the creative team felt viewers had to be reminded what the set-up is at Tenjin-ya?
However, just when I was wondering if they’d completely lost their way in adapting Midori Yuma’s fantasy light novels (the manga version is available from VIZ), the third episode suddenly upped the ante and in the last five minutes gave us first an intimate moment alone for the Master and Aoi, which was swiftly followed by a highly dramatic turn of events! By Episode 4, Aoi’s fiancé has disappeared, only to be replaced by the unpleasant Raiju (who had evil designs on Aoi in Season 1). It turns out that the Master has committed some kind of offence against the Ayakashi king and has been locked away. The supernatural staff of Tenjin-ya are still much in evidence from nine-tailed fox Ginji to Chibi, Aoi’s little kappa companion who adores cucumbers and rounds off each episode with an afterword/preview – and the emphasis is very much still on Aoi’s skills as a chef. Her cookery and food choices often sway the outcomes of tricky situations just like Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, another welcome returning series where human cuisine has the power to sway supernatural beings!
Aoi sets out to try to find out how to set the Master free, with echoes of traditional fairy tales in which it’s the young woman who has to face all the dangers to free the man she loves. It’s still likable fare and enjoyable to watch but it feels a little dated now in terms of animation (probably not a big budget) and story-telling. In the intervening years since 2018, we’ve had supernatural anime that have felt far edgier and more, well, supernatural. I’m hoping that now the main plot is underway, Aoi’s adventures will become more engaging as the series progresses.
SANDA is available on Amazon Prime Video; May I Ask for One Final Thing? and Kakuriyo – Bed & Breakfast with Spirits Season 2 are available on Crunchyroll.
