Ahhh… Summer! That means Summer Break, beaches, fireworks… And a whole new slate of anime to consider. Hit the jump and let’s talk about what’s coming our way in the next few weeks.
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As is my usual habit here at the Lounge, these aren’t necessarily in any particular order. It’s pretty easy to sort by broad bands, but mostly pointless to sort in details.
The shows that I am anticipating are in bold, shows my wife and I are anticipating together are in bold italics.
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Renmei Kuugun Koukuu Mahou Ongakutai Luminous Witches
League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches
That’s a real mouthful of a title… and possibly the most redonkulous concept ever. Strike Witches – but they’re idols.
The war against invading aliens can’t be won by missiles alone! Team morale matters just as much as launching a counterassault, and that’s where Ginny and her friends come in. Instead of standing on the front lines with the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, the Luminous Witches of the League of Nations Air Force bring smiles to civilians displaced in the human-Neuroi war world with thrilling song and dance — not to mention aerial displays the likes of which the music world has never seen! While they might be non-combatants, these performers know the value of preserving the people’s smiles, and they’ll fight in their unique way to make sure those smiles never fade.
Source: Sentai
I mean seriously, the World Witches franchise has never taken itself too seriously… But this is just crazy.
I enjoyed the OG and it’s sequel, but I haven’t been pleased with subsequent outings. But it is an idol show, and everyone knows Derek can’t avoid at least taking a peek at those.
Love Live! Superstar!! 2nd Season
Love Live! Superstar!! Season 2
On the topic of idol shows, this one needs no introduction…
I loved the heck out of the first season because (unlike Sunshine!) it really rocked with the same chaotic energy of the original series. But… They’re introducing four characters to bring the roster to the franchise’s standard nine. (The same as a baseball team – coincidence?) I have mixed feelings on that, because I loved how much concentration there was with a smaller cast. But I shouldn’t have expected it to fall too far from the tree, that’s not Love Live‘s style.
SHINEPOST
Though there’s a couple more… I’ll round out my coverage idol series with what appears to be the first idol show in a couple of seasons without some kind of “gimmick”.
Although the idol group TiNgS is chasing after big dreams, so far their accomplishments have only been small — and now, suddenly, they’re facing a potential break up! Hope seems lost, but when a new manager with a special skillset takes them under his wing, the members of TiNgS find themselves shooting for the stars all over again.
Source: Sentai
There’s a catch though, there’s always a catch. While there’s not a gimmick in the plot, there’s a meta-gimmick. The series is part of multi-media franchise. That generally means plenty of waifu bait and a fairly lightweight plot.
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With that, let’s move on from idol shows and take a look at the sequels. While not as sequel heavy as some season, there’s enough of them – and that includes one of my most anticipated sequels ever (that’s not Chihiyafuru).
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MADE IN ABYSS: Retsujitsu no Ougonkyo
MADE IN ABYSS: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun
This is it folks, the day we’ve been looking forward to and dreading – a return to the world of the Abyss. I’d like to say a continuation of Riko and Reg’s adventures, but that seems entirely too damm lighthearted.
This is very emphatically not a lighthearted show.
In Summer 2017, we usually paired our weekly watch with something mindless, light, or funny to try and take our mind off what we had just watched…
Kanojo, Okarishimasu 2nd Season
Rent-a-Girlfriend Season 2
When first season ended, back in Summer 2020, I was ambivalent about watching a sequel. I’m still ambivalent. I’m going to check it out, but I wouldn’t be surprised at an early drop… especially if it’s on a busy evening or the season ends up being packed.
Hataraku Maou-sama!!
The Devil is a Part-Timer!!
From the trailer it looks like it’s going in a different direction from S1… (Kinda has to since it reached a more-or-less definitive end.) But parts also look awfully familiar. Which is good.
We loved the first season, so when the sequel was announced it went straight onto our anticipation list. And we rewatched S1!
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Done with the sequels and rounding into the home stretch…
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Isekai Ojisan
Uncle from Another World
Hit by a truck when he was 17 years old, Takafumi’s uncle suddenly awakens from a coma that lasted 17 years. When Takafumi visits him in the hospital, he sees his uncle muttering nonsense, declaring that he has returned from another world named “GRAN-BAHAMAL.”
…Clearly, his uncle has lost his marbles.
Just when you think they’ve run out out of isekai ideas. Something drops that looks like it could actually be good. Or… so bad it’s good?
Is it bad that I kinda hope it’s the latter? There are some pretty weird bits in the various trailers.
Tokyo Mew Mew New~♡
TOKYO MEW MEW NEW
The scientists of the μ(Mew) Project use DNA of endangered species to create a team of heroines imbued with amazing super-human abilities. One of them, Ichigo Momomiya, awakens to discover she is armed with all the skills of a Iriomote cat. Ichigo must band together with other Mew Mew girls to repel an alien incursion, all the while hiding their thrilling double lives from friends and family.
Reboot of a classic majo shoujo series. And thus I feel duty bound to check it out… <crossing fingers> Even though I’m not normally big on the genre.
Hope CLV, a regular commenter on my Facebook posts and expert on majo shoujo, will join us us here on the blog for this series. I often lean heavily on commenters to help me out.
Kumichou Musume to Sewagakari
The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
Kirishima Toru was accustomed to solving all problems through violence and was called “the Demon of Sakuragi” by the underbelly of society. One day, the boss of the Sakuragi family suddenly summons Kirishima and appoints him caretaker of his only daughter, Yaeka!
This is a heartwarming comedy about a yakuza crime family’s right-hand man and the boss’ only daughter. The two of them are about to begin their new daily lives together!
Found family? If so, definitely in my wheelhouse. Unfortunately, the trailers aren’t very informative – so, crossing my fingers.
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OK, so that brings us to the end of stuff I’ve got marked as anticipated. There’s several more I’m also planning to check out, but they don’t really rise to the level of “anticipated”. And, as usual, I’ll be checking out a ton of shows and keeping my ear to the ground for buzz and my eyes open for recommendations from my commenters.
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And with that, over to you! Check out the Summer 2022 Season Chart and the drop a comment – what are you looking forward to? Anything I missed?
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
Summer is here! Definitely most excited about Maou, but I am also interested Biscuit Hammer after reading the manga.
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Biscuit Hammer is one I’ve heard widely divergent opinions on… I think it’s on my “watch to see what people think” list.
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This looks like a big (as in quantity) season! I’ve got lots of potentials to check out (Mining the less favored shows for the occasional diamond or even a nice piece of chrome or stainless steel or…) and I suspect like last season my scythe will be swinging cutting about half of them by episode four or five. Among the shows you mentioned, I’m there for Luminous Witches since Ive been a Strike Witches tragic from way back. “Is it Wrong etc etc” is up for Season 4 and while season three wasn’t as strong as Season’s One or Two, an average Dan Machi is better than a lot of shows in a typical season, so its a definite for me. “Engage Kiss” could be interesting maybe, so that’s on the list. Like you I liked “The Devil is a Part-Timer!” so the second season is on the list too. There are about 85 Isekai shows so I will give them a look for assessment purposes, but i really have lost patience with lame isekais ov.er the years. “Isekai Ojisan” looks interesting, so like you I want to see what they do with a somewhat interesting premise.
I recently saw the first three episodes of “RWBY: Ice Queendom” and I was kind of impressed. Shaft are animating it so it looks great – the story? I thought it interesting enough to watch more. I dont know the franchise at all but know its heavily marketed. Let’s see if it can hold my interest. “The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious” is another which caught my eye, laden with maid tropes, maybe it wont be all bad. “Shoot! Goal For the Future” – a modern iteration of the highly successful soccer manga and anime from the 90’s could displace the only mediocre soccer anime AoAshi as my current sports anime but then it has competition from “Extreme Hearts” a sci-fi sports show. There is the usual crop of Idol shows but I will be watching LL Sunshine again and maybe Shinepost. “Yofukashi no Uta” (Call of The Night) has vampire themes, looks good to me and is my Lidenfilms pick of the season (Lidenfilms have a second entry so I will have to check that out too I guess – I’m a fan, what can I say?).
Shows I won’t be watching: (1) “Made In Abyss 2” – Not because its bad but because i prefer to wait for the Blu-ray release and watch it back to back – which I found the best way to watch the first series. (2) Rental Girlfriend 2 – I loathed the first season. Hated the MC, and dropped it by episode 4 or so. Im not going back to that dumpster fire no sirree.
BTW are you going to round up spring season at all? :)
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I’m getting very picky about my isekai‘s in my old age… I’ve seen one too many crappy ones halfheartedly executed.
The maid anime is on my radar, but it’s a low priority target. Curious, but not actually anticipating. I think Extreme Hearts is in more or less the same place.
Shudder I cannot even imagine watching Abyss back-to-back. Sometimes it was difficult to get through even one episode.
Yes, rounding up Spring is hopefully the work of next week now that life is back on an even keel. I intended to get both the preview and the roundup out this week, but IRL had other plans. (Nothing serious, just keep occupying my mind.)
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Well, it looks like we’ll be sharing a few series this season. I’m still waiting to catch up with the Neuroi/Witches series (it’s a long way off; I want to watch Kira Kira☆Pretty Cure à la Mode before I will be getting to the franchise), so I won’t be following Luminous Witches yet. Eventually, though.
I haven’t watched The Devil is a Part-Timer’s first season, so I’m going to double up episodes in order to catch up by the end of this season. There really weren’t many shows this season that interested me.
My timing was perfect in re-watching Made in Abyss. I still haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve set things up so I can watch it this weekend, having just completed re-watching episode 13 of season one (and crying again in that Mitty scene; you know the one). I am very much looking forward to seeing how the story continues through this Bondrewd arc, as I am told that Ozen was very much understating her description of him—and when you see videos on YouTube titled things like “Bondrewd Did Nothing Wrong” you know it’s going to be good. Made in Abyss seems to be giving me everything I’d hoped for, but didn’t get, in The Promised Neverland.
Tokyo Mew Mew Mew looks promising. I’ve never seen Tokyo Mew Mew, though I see that it is available (all 52 episodes subbed, or only 26 episodes dubbed as “Mew Mew Power”) on YouTube. I do know about it, of course, and the reviews and reports I’ve seen make it out to be one of the better mahō shōjo series, perhaps in the same class as something like Legendary Love Angel Wedding Peach or Magical Fairy Persia.
For myself, I’m also going to be following Prima Doll and SHADOWS HOUSE, which makes just five series this season.
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Ganbatte! It’s worth it.
You’re a better man than I! I don’t think I’ll ever rewatch Abyss. It’s like Grave of the Fireflies, having seen it once I live glad of the fact I survived with my sanity intact. Some weeks I couldn’t even go back to get screenshots.
I’m actually surprised you haven’t seen Tokyo Mew Mew given your dedication to the genre. I guess it’ll be “New” to both of us.
Prima Doll is on the “Curious but not anticipating list”, and somehow I’d missed SHADOWS HOUSE entirely and it’s now on my list too. I don’t know how big this season will end up, but it’s not lacking in potential.
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There are a lot of mahō shōjo series, and until fairly recently most of them were nearly impossible to get here. I still have gaps in my knowledge just because the opportunities don’t exist (I still have never seen any episodes of the second Minky Momo series, only the movies—which are both excellent—for example, and perhaps only 20 or so episodes of the first series; not to mention most of the Pretty Cure seasons are still unavailable, or at least difficult to find here). I should share a list of mahō shōjo shows I’ve actually seen sometime. But and also, I’ve read detailed descriptions of a lot of the series, so I know at least generally the concept of so many, Tokyo Mew Mew among them. Heck, even now, I find myself on more gray market sites than I like in order to catch shows like Sugar Sugar Rune that the main channels don’t carry. And I still can find hardly any episodes of the original Himitsu no Akko-chan or Mahōtsukai Sarī—though “hardly any” doesn’t mean “none” in those cases. And, of course, I keep learning about obscurities like Arisa☆Good Luck while still finding new minor shows like Healer Girl or Märchen Mädchen and watching for possible ones like Prima Doll or Girls’ Frontline (that last isn’t mahō shōjo as it happens, but it was on my list of possibilities; it’s more similar to Girls und Panzer).
Like I said, Abyss is feeding me something that I’d wanted but was denied fairly recently. Plus, when I’m watching a series and trying to piece things together, I have a tendency to lose bits, so if I really like something I’m almost certainly going to watch it twice, so the second time I can concentrate on keeping the whole (or holistic) narrative straight. In some cases, it’s a matter of finding the time, and really long series I’m more likely to just rely on my original impression (Chihayafuru is a major exception*: I just dove right back into watching it after the first time through; now I’m coming up toward the end of that second watch).
Prima Doll was something I saw that I put on the “maybe, if nothing comes up to push it out” list, but as I said, this season is really sparse for me so it easily kept its place.
SHADOWS HOUSE season one was so good. I’m really anticipating this new season. And yes, I rewatched it in anticipation already.
I suppose it’s also worth noting that I’m still watching Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure, possibly Waccha Primagi! if it keeps showing new episodes (supposedly there are 36 in this first season, which would mean it is now over, but the story isn’t so there’s at least going to be another season if they don’t extend this one), and of course the final episode of Requiem of the Rose King. Kodama Kawashiri is still ongoing, too, for another five or six installments, but 2.5 minute episodes don’t really count for my series count.
*Healin’ Good Pretty Cure might end up being another one, and I’ve tentatively put it into my queue for rewatching. It was a fairly short Pretty Cure season due to the pandemic, I missed the first 12 episodes, and it’s the second Pretty Cure I’d actually seen rather than heard about (the first was Futari wa Pretty Cure, the first series, which I’ve only seen partway through), so it’s a special case. On the other hand, once I’d gotten into the rhythm of Pretty Cure, it was pretty easy to keep the narrative. It’s not a very complicated series, after all. So I might end up dropping it from my rewatch schedule if I find other priorities for long-form stuff.
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Turns out that LiveChart shows Waccha Primagi! as continuing on this season, so I’ll keep on with that.
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I’ve never gotten into Strike Witches, but have seen too little to make any sort of judgement. I’m not going to try this one, either. I’m also not that fond of Love Live; I did watch the original season (after 3 false starts, over the years, mind you), but I didn’t care enough to watch season 2. Not really interested in spin offs, since then, though that might be a mistake. Shinepost looks at once very generic, but it also seems to have good energy. I’m not sure whether I’ll even try it. Maybe. If there’s any idol anime that caught my eye it’s the one where a lazy boy idol gets possessed by the ghost of an ambitious girl idol (Kami Kuzu Idol).
Made in Abyss is and always was a given. People really do need to have seen the Dawn of the Deep Soul film, though. It follows on from there, and what happens in that film seems crucial. Glad the devil is a part-timer again; not so happy about the new character designs – but I thought the same about season 2 of Oregairu (and that ended up being better than season 1). I doubt I’ll be back for Rent-a-Girlfriend, but it has the sort of trash magnetism that doesn’t put it off the table altogether. (ETA: Oh no, it’s airing soon and falls right into the hole between seasons. I’ll likely watch the first episode under those conditions…) If I do watch it, though, it’s likely going to be a mistake. There are plenty of other sequels, though: Shadows House and Jasshin chan Dropkick being my favourites of the bunch not mentioned. I think Utawarerumono-the False Faces has been pushed back? (It’s still on the list, but I think it’s no longer current? – ETA: Hm, no, every source I can find says it’s still airing; what sequel was I thinking of?)
The Yakuza Babysitting show wasn’t on my radar at all, but it could be really cute. We’ll see.
Isekai Ojiisan sounds like a trip. The oft ignored post-isekai disorientation deserves an anime. I wonder how they’ll play it. The worst case scenario: a bulk of the show is flashbacks. The best case sceneraio? Something brilliant I can’t even think of. It’s likely somewhere in between.
Not sure what to think of a new Tokyo Mew Mew anime. I’ve seen only one episode of the original, and seeing it on the line up makes me want to go back to that rather than watch the reboot. I’ll watch the reboot, of course, because viewing habits, but I think I should go back to the first anime.
New shows you didn’t metnion:
Hoshi no Samidare/Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer has me the most excited of all the new shows. You know back in the day, when Planet With aired, people raved about the mangaka of this and the even better Spirit Circle. I’m awefully curious, but a little cautious given that the key art looks the wrong sort of serious. We’ll see, though. There’s no way I’ll not watch this. (Jack mentioned it; I’m not in first.)
I have nothing else. We’ll see what comes out of the woodwork.
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I saw that one… But between Idoly Pride and that idol competition show that I dropped a couple of seasons back, I’m unreasonably sensitive to idol shows with a gimmick. So, I’m not sure I’ll watch it unless there’s a lot of positive talk.
We’ve seen it, but it was a long time back… Pre-pandemic? (Looks like sometime in 2020…) Hopefully we’ll remember enough.
Re: Isekai Ojiisan
To me, the worst case is that Uncle is a garbage human being, and parts of the trailer seem to hint at that. All flashbacks, could actually be interesting if done well. I don’t have that much confidence. Like you, I expect middle-of-the road.
Re: Character designs/Maou-sama
It’s been long enough that it’ll probably not bother me. And I’m a huge fan of YamaSu, which has had new character designs for each of the four seasons…
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Was the sequel you’re thinking of that got pushed back In/Spectre (aka Kyokō Suiri or Invented Inference)? That got pushed back to January. Also, Uzumaki is now pushed back to “when we finish it because we want to do right by Itō and not release something half-assed” after being pushed back previously.
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Ah, yes, thank you. That’s what I was thinking of. I totally forgot it was supposed to air this season.
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