Snow? What’s snow? There’s only rain.
Tis the season for half-assed action. Don’t worry, there’s still an ungodly number of cheat power reincarnations, both in and out of RPG worlds. I miss the days when fantasy didn’t start with a fifty page rule book specifying the exact numerical principles that rule every single aspect of it. But we’ll get to that soon enough, because unfortunately, cheat power RPGs are what start out the season. There are relatively few sequels this coming season, though unusually, I did manage to get through the first cour of a couple, plus Apothecary Diaries is continuing, though I’m on the fence myself about sticking with it. The obligatory sequel list is:
Cardfight
Classroom of Elite
Darkness in my Heart
Fire Hunter
High Card
Kingdom
Mashle
Moonlit Fantasy
Shaman King
Synduality
Tomozaki
Thrown Out of the Hero’s Party
Urusei Yatsura
Last season, I marveled that there were no “girls in clubs” shows, and this season continues that with only one. Almost more amazingly, there are zero idol shows whatsoever in any flavor. Not even sequels. Might we finally have escaped them? *glances at announced shows for spring* …Nope! Well, one nightmare at a time. Let’s get to it.
Cheat Powers Are Just Getting Worse
I’m Trying My Best So I Can Enjoy Fluffy Things in Another World
https://mohunadeanime.com/
Studio: EMT Squared
Genre: ‘Comedy’
Premieres January 1st
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
What is it with these things and saying that they have no power except taming animals, and oops, the first animal they tamed is Fenrir, the All-Devourer, or in this case, a giant tiger. Of all the stupid, repetitive shows like this that we’re going to have to get through, it’s weird that this one is likely to be the most objectionable. The source material apparently repeatedly goes off the deep end, both with gross sexualization and straight up eugenics in ways that are difficult to describe. I’ll summarize as he/she (was he, reincarnated as she, internally narrated as… god, forget it) uses her power to control all non-humans to set up an endless ‘goblin farm’ for people to massacre for resources. And then goes back to glomping sheep, and thinking about how touching squishy things must be the same as squeezing breasts. Will the anime be like that too? Can’t imagine I’ll care.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Just me and my rabid baboon.
My Instant Kill Cheat Power is Too Strong – Nobody in This Other World Stands a Chance
https://sokushicheat-pr.com/
Studio: Okuruto Noboru
Genre: I Hate This
Premieres January 4th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
As if the premise alone wasn’t godawful enough, the studio here is horrendous (How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, Friends Game, Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter, end of list). The ‘twist’ is that the dude always had a cheat power, and he’s just summoned to the world of All Bastards® who think he’s garbage because his power level is 0. What a comedic and hilarious twist that is THE EXACT GODDAMNED SAME AS ALL OF THEM. And just an excuse for torture and revenge murder fantasies. Wonderful. It really says something about this whole subgenre that it keeps trying to come up with sufficient excuses to make the baddies fun to gratuitously massacre.
Preseason Swing Rating:
A critical failure.
The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – The Life Saving Team Running Around the Battlefield
https://chiyumahou-anime.com/
Studio: Shin-Ei Animation
Genre: Actionish
Premieres January 5th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
You see, healing magic strengthens the body, so a healer that strengthens their own body is actually the most invinciblest! What a creative twist on healing magic that certainly hasn’t been used ten thousand times before. Hell, Horizon used it to pop blood vessels in a werewolf for grunting too hard when he tried to shoot laser beams because he had a magic rod or something that gave him English invulnerability. Over ten years ago. And reading this sentence took about as much time as it spent using that, not attempted to build a whole mythos around it. Yes, he’s summoned to another world. Yes, he’s the weakest except is actually the strongest. And would you believe it, but he immediately amasses a harem of demihuman girls contracted to him as totally non-slaves. Shin-Ei is an awful studio as well. There are no redeeming factors here. Only regurgitated sameness.
Preseason Swing Rating:
And yet, can’t treat crabs.
Sasaki and Pii-chan: I Wanted To Enjoy a Relaxing Life in Another World, But I Got Caught Up in a Battle of People With Super Powers in the Modern World – Looks Like the Number of Magical Girls is Going Up
https://sasapi-anime.com/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: I… What
Premieres January 5th* (one hour premiere)
Show Premise:
Yes, that is the actual goddamned title.
Random Thoughts:
Every volume of the light novel has the entire summary normally on the back flap instead printed on the front, and they’re all as stupid as that. I am legitimately not kidding here. Not to mention creepy, as the protagonist is supposed to be a 40 year old dude with cheat powers and ‘fighting’ a bunch of 12 year olds. This is a true Silver Link production with their core staff (Fate/Kaleid, Our Last Crusade, etc), so it’ll probably be at least decently animated one out of every four episodes, though the promos don’t seem like it. The only thing here that seems like a good idea is pretending like the title is only the first part of the goddamned paragraph on most promo material.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Actual image of my eyes vomiting trying to read that.
I’m the Only One Who Can Level Up
https://sololeveling-anime.net/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Action
Premieres January 6th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
AKA Solo Leveling, which is really burying the banality of the gimmick. If you thought the obvious premise here wasn’t tiresome enough, the protagonist is the weakest adventurer ever until a magical status screen opens up and lets him and only him level up, whereby he becomes the strongest. I would say “Come on, Japan,” but this one’s provenance is a South Korean webnovel. Steal something better, please. Nothing special about the staff. Production seems a bit on the high side of mediocre, but nothing special, which is about where A-1 usually lies. I’m just so goddamned tired of this premise and despite promises that it’s giving way to villainesses being reincarnated, it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Diseased and tired.
The Greatest Tank Conquers Dungeons – A Tank With Ultra Rare 9999 Endurance is Kicked Out of the Hero’s Party
https://saikyo-tank.com/index.php
Studio: Studio Polon
Genre: I Hate It Here
Premieres January 6th
Show Premise:
I’m so tired, boss.
Random Thoughts:
It’s kind of incredible how creatively bankrupt this industry is. RPGs have so many stats, and yet we always seem to end up on defense, magic, or luck. Whenever they need to be the best at cooking or monster taming or whatever, it’s always treated as if they’re the worst or have zero points in it. Is it because having 9999 in Str would be too on the nose? 9999 in Spd would make them too much like The Flash? But defense? A good shield? Now THAT’S creative, ignoring the fifteen hundred others that came up with that idea ten years ago. Anyway, another goddamned one of these, apparently trying to set a new record for how many cliches it can jam into the title alone.
Preseason Swing Rating:
9999 in electrical conductivity.
Dudes Fighting in Non-RPG Based Worlds
Ishura
https://ishura-anime.com/
Studio: Passione
Genre: Action
Premieres January 3rd
Show Premise:
Dudes fight.
Random Thoughts:
The summary is actually basically a translation of the title as well, but anything would sound and look ridiculous. And no, there’s not much more to the premise than that. It prides itself on being a series that is entirely a tournament format between 16 dudes/dudettes with gimmicky powers, stretched out to see who’s the strongest. The promos are actually pretty well animated and certainly action oriented, so that’s at least a little promising, though Passione isn’t the strongest, or most consistent studios out there. There are an awful lot of really ugly CGI robots tooling about in them though. I guess… dudes fighting? There are certainly at least probably twenty shows with worse premises than that this season alone.
Preseason Swing Rating:
What? No barbarians?
Sengoku Fox
https://sengoku-youko.com/
Studio: White Fox
Genre: Adventure
Premieres January 10th
Show Premise:
Dude and his magical girlfriend/sister fox spirit fight evil.
Random Thoughts:
A very generic fantasy adventure story. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and I do appreciate knight errant stories. The promos are very action oriented, but it’s White Fox, and they are nothing if not aggressively middle of the road, so I suspect that the merely passable animation in the promos is as good as it gets. But nothing horribly objectionable either. He’s not secretly banging his adopted sister pet fox or whatever, nor any real fanservice focused on in the promotional stuff. Hooray for likely generic time filling mediocrity, though in a season that appears to be filled to the brim with that, it may actually get lost in the shuffle.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Too furry! TOO FURRY!
Bang Brave Bang Bravern
https://bangbravern.com/
Studio: Cygames Pictures
Genre: Action?
Premieres January 11th
Show Premise:
Dudes pilot mechs?
Random Thoughts:
This is an original show with next to no promotional material, and what little exists is almost entirely CGI mechs just cruising around empty streets. Even the summary on the website doesn’t make any sense. Soldiers from all over the world go to Hawaii and are attacked by mysterious planes, thus ending their peaceful days. I’m sorry. What were they all doing in Hawaii with WMDs to begin with that qualifies as peaceful? The staff here has certainly worked on plenty of mecha before, more the director than the writer, though for the last ten years, the former has been relegated to crappy web specials for various Sunrise shows like Warriors on the Border and Gundam Build. I don’t think I’d put money on any Cygames originals being decent at this point, but maybe it’ll at least be surprisingly unhinged?
Preseason Swing Rating:
Why Hawaii? Are we bombing Pearl Harbor again?
VICTORY!?!
https://bucchigiri.jp/
Studio: Mappa
Genre: Genies
Premieres January 13th
Show Premise:
Dudes fight?
Random Thoughts:
Remember SK8? That weird Bones original show about very pretty skateboarding dudes? This is another original show from the brain of the same lady, and being an original, there’s not a lot to go off of. There’s various characters that seem like they’re references to Aladdin, including a genie that he screams a wish to get laid to, but all except one of the characters is a dude, most without shirts. I’m not even confident in saying it’s meant to be an action show, but it does have the main character overreacting and yelling BWAAAAGH, so that’s a modern anime comedy for you. It’s promos are also pretty dismally animated for Mappa, though they certainly phone it in regularly enough for that not to be too surprising. I don’t know what to make of it, but the promos are definitely not promising.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Sorry, no girls allowed.
Meiji Swordsmanship – 1874
https://www.shochiku-tokyu.co.jp/special/meijigekken1874/
Studio: Tsumugi Akita Anime Lab
Genre: Action
Premieres January 14th
Show Premise:
Dudes with magic swords fight. In 1874.
Random Thoughts:
Another original show. Remember when Crunchyroll tried to get into producing anime? Right before Covid-19 hit? And then gave it up after about a year? This was originally teased as one of those projects, canceled, and was recently revived from the dead to release. Production messes like that generally are not a good sign for ending up with a quality product, and the sole promo is aggressively mediocre. If the big pitch is dudes having a ‘fateful encounter’ and lazily swinging their swords at the empty space between each other so they can clash them together, well, there’s a lot of competition for that little niche this season.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Why do I feel like we won’t be doing the Invasion of Taiwan?
Shows With Non-Villainess Female Main Characters
The Way of Pon
https://ponnomichi-pr.com/
Studio: OLM
Genre: Comedy
Premieres January 5th
Show Premise:
Girls play mahjong.
Random Thoughts:
The very lonely and sole “girls in a club” show this season, which shows how far out of fashion this once dominant subgenre has fallen. Technically ‘original’, as in not based on anything, though it does have an alternate manga version that started about three months ago, with a whopping four chapters now, each about 8 pages, so even if they adapt that, they’d have to set a new awful pacing record to not get through it by episode 2. It’s not like Saki either where they have magical powers or ultra dynamic mahjongging. Just girls with very large chests making faces. There’s hardly even any mahjong at all in the promos.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Like an unexpected shit tzu.
Princess, It’s Time for “Torture”
https://himesama-goumon.com/
Studio: Pine Jam
Genre: Comedy
Premieres January 8th
Show Premise:
Princess is faux-tortured by demons.
Random Thoughts:
Okay, time to explain a Japanese meme. It’s a THING to post pictures or videos of delicious food late at night to ‘torture’ people because it makes them hungry, but it’s too late to have them. This is a manga based entirely around that joke. “Look at this food. Doesn’t it look delicious? But you can’t have it.” “SQUEEEEE! BUT I WANT IT!” Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually, it branches out into things like petting a cute kitten, or playing with a fun toy. Truly varied humorous antics which will not get old after five minutes, let alone twelve plus episodes of this same goddamn joke being told over and over and over and over and over.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Why does all ramen look the same in anime?
Metallic Rouge
https://metallicrouge.jp/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Action
Premieres January 10th
Show Premise:
Assassins hunt cyborgs on Mars.
Random Thoughts:
It’s been a hot minute since we saw a Bones original action show, unless you count SK8. I’m always lamenting the lack of girls with guns that was popular trend for a few years a decade ago, though this appears to be more of a Sacred Seven thing where they transform into mech suits, which is way more marketable for figurine and toy sales. Yeah, I’m rambling. It’s an original. Bones is a solid studio. Promos seem fine and promise action, style, and a healthy amount of fanservice. The biggest red flag is the head writer is the same dude as Macross Delta, but given the competition… dot dot dot meaningful elipse.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Decidedly unsafe for tentacle monsters.
Snack Basue
https://snackbasue.com/
Studio: PuYUKAI
Genre: Comedy
Premieres January 12th
Show Premise:
Ladies run a bar named Snack Basue.
Random Thoughts:
I was on the fence about whether to include this at all because the animation in the promos is on the bad side of atrocious. It looks like it very well might have been most animated in Flash by two dudes on the weekend. But I was looking at this category that would otherwise have only three shows in it, and that made me depressed. We are on the borderline of all shows with a female lead being a reincarnated villainess, and that may be an even more horrifying thought than these stupid RPG world cheat power things just flat out never going away. Bold showing for the only new Jump show this season.
Preseason Swing Rating:
It is what it is.
Boobs! Boobs! Boobs!
Slave of the Devil City’s Elite Force
https://mabotai.jp/
Studio: Seven Arcs
Genre: Action
Premieres January 4th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
AKA Chained Soldier, because a localizer somewhere understands that slave is probably word better avoided. Given the other things this season, I am NOT going to complain about an ultra-trashy fanservice throwback. The premise is not hugely dissimilar to shows like Freezing or Shana, or yes, games like Duel Savior, where all the girls have powers, and the lead one takes the harem-master as her familiar, excuse me, slave, giving him super powers in the process, but is forced to uphold their contract by getting super horny as they fight badly rendered CGI monsters, but mostly other magicalish girls. This is a Seven Arcs production, through and through, and they’ve unfortunately become incredibly underwhelming for the last few years, and it’s not like stuff like Nanoha or Dog Days was blowing away people with the budget to start with. But I keep looking at the nearly dozen reincarnations into RPGs with cheat powers and… it could be so, so much worse.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Still probably a bad idea to be anywhere near.
Tales of Wedding Rings
https://talesofweddingrings-anime.jp/
Studio: Staple Entertainment
Genre: Boobs
Premieres January 6th
Show Premise:
Dude goes to fantasy land and has to marry all the princesses.
Random Thoughts:
There’s probably some anatomical issues when a character’s entire torso is cleavage. Or at least back pain. And the water princess? In the promo, she’s in a micro bikini that covers her nipples, labia, and nothing else. Good thing this medieval kingdom has really aggressive and thorough waxing. Anyway, that should clue you in on to what kind of show this is, and Staple has so far done nothing but ultra trashy low budget fantasy softcore porn (Vermeil, Am I Actually the Strongest). Here’s another one onto the pile then. Expect anything at your own risk.
Preseason Swing Rating:
That bulbous orb ain’t right.
Hokkaido Gals are Super Adorable
https://dosankogal-pr.com/
Studio: Blade/Silver Link
Genre: Fanservice
Premieres January 8th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
Jump is apparently getting into the weird regional tourism pitches here, with a very trashy fanservice thing. As in it takes to the second chapter where the girl spills milk all over herself and just goes “Oh well, guess I’ll just wear my underwear, you don’t mind, right? Let me just bend over in front of you so we can have a full page spread of my negligee riding up my asscrack.” That’s not wholly accurate. It’s a special HOKKAIDO brand of milk, which it calls out in and explains. This will never stop being a weird as hell thing to me. Sure, Seinfeld referenced the Yankees, but they didn’t do tourism pitches for… I don’t know, Duck Walk Winery, now with blueberry port. Try it today.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Begone thots, your Hokkaido skirts have no power here.
The Foolish Angel Dances with a Devil
https://kanaten-anime.com/
Studio: Children’s Playground Entertainment
Genre: Comedy
Premieres January 8th
Show Premise:
Angel captures demon and forces him to help her hunt other demons.
Random Thoughts:
A lot of the setup is not too dissimilar from Love is War where both are trying to seduce the other while blushing about being seduced themselves, except the dude is a screaming imbecile. While the supernatural side does mean there’s a SMALL bit of super power flexing, it’s mainly fanservice ‘comedy,’ and going by the promos, that means characters screaming BWAAAAGH and making a craaahzy face. You know, the same level of humor associated with Minions or Rabbids. I’m not sure I have it in me any more to be able to survive that kind of humor, even setting aside the pretty crappy studio (Hatena Illusion, Faraway Paladin’s first season, etc).
Preseason Swing Rating:
BE NOT AFRAID.
Dangerously High Amount of Sparkling Pretty Boys
The Demon Prince of Momochi’s House
https://www.momochisan-anime.com/
Studio: Drive
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 5th
Show Premise:
Girl inherits house filled with pretty boy demons.
Random Thoughts:
A very standard shoujo romance thing. The girl has special blood that attracts the vampires/demons/spirits du jour, the dude is a moody loner who protects and cares for her, but he’s definitely going to be grumpy about it. Supposedly it’s decent enough if you like these kinds of things, but they’ve never been my bag and this doesn’t appear to do anything all that interesting. It is rather short though, so it’s likely it’ll actually wrap up in a timely manner, but that’s in anime terms, so… confessing they have crushes on each other or something. At least it’s not another orphan being forcibly married to a dude with a lion or goat for a head.
Preseason Swing Rating:
…Wait, what?
A Sign of Affection
https://yubisaki-pr.com/
Studio: Ajiado
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 6th
Show Premise:
Boy meets deaf girl.
Random Thoughts:
Sign as in sign language, which is a really impressive localized turn of phrase. Which is more than I can say for any creativity in the manga, and especially adapting it to a medium with audio. This is a shoujo romance deal, and the deaf girl has a constant inner monologue going, which in the anime is just… spoken to the audience as completely normal. So the end result is… basically the same as every other one of these shoujo romances. They could do something like the whole first episode silent to really put the audience in her shoes or the like, but the promos are basically indistinguishable from any of a thousand other romances about a soft spoken or shy girl. Just this one uses sign language instead of mumbling, gestures, drawings, or a whiteboard.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Forget shoujo, give me a shoto romance.
Mr. Villain’s Days Off
https://www.vap.co.jp/warumonosan-anime/
Studio: Shin-Ei Animation
Genre: Comedy
Premieres January 7th
Show Premise:
Evil overlord has mundane days off.
Random Thoughts:
We’ve done the sentai characters doing regular people stuff many times, and none of them seem capable of coming up with any joke past that premise. This one in particular is content to spend about 10 pages doing the singular gag of “I am an evil villain… but I like *insert mundane thing*.” Pandas, popsicles, pandas again, cherry blossoms, pandas a third time. It has so much difficulty coming up with anything new at all that it starts repeating itself by the time it gets to the third joke. What did you do to your comedians, Japan? I guess at least characters aren’t going BWAAAAAGH as the punchlines, but still. I miss the days of absurdism. Bring back The Japanese Tradition. What ever happened to Rahmens? …Oh, right, the time one of them went on a kid’s show and said “Let’s play massacre the Jews.”
Preseason Swing Rating:
He did what?
If You’re a 30 Year Old Virgin, Apparently You Become a Wizard
https://cherimaho-anime.com/
Studio: Satelight
Genre: Ugh
Premieres January 10th
Show Premise:
Dude gets telepathy from virginity. Discovers coworker has crush on him.
Random Thoughts:
Ah, BL. You weird and creepy subgenre. Not that yuri is any less fetishized, but its characters and cliches tend to be a lot less predatory. And this one is especially guilty of that, as the dude with the crush is constantly thinking about how he wants to lick the protagonist, or is begging him in his mind to just let him push him down and sex him up, etc. And the protagonist just blushes from the attention and can’t decide if he wants to be taken against his will or not. So… yeah. That’s the kind of comedy and relationship here. Satelight only ever puts effort into their originals, so don’t even expect it to be particularly well made either despite them certainly being capable of doing so.
Preseason Swing Rating:
You shall not pass!
Monthly Mysteries
https://moh-scientific-anime.com/
Studio: OLM
Genre: Furries
Premieres January 11th
Show Premise:
Monthly magazine investigates and publishes weird events.
Random Thoughts:
This is an original, and is usually being not-really-translated as “Moh Scientific Monthly” which is just splitting the difference between puns and I hate it. Anyway, there’s only a very generic summary on its site about being a magazine that investigates mysteries and some profoundly confusing promos to go off of. From the promos, you’d think it was Bloody Roar, the bishie version, as everybody is transforming into large furry beast people and having very poorly animated punch ups. Which is at severe odds with the stated premise, not to mention all of the promotional images. There’s nothing whatsoever anywhere on the official website that I can find that indicates a weretiger and werebear will be bodyslamming each other into Big Ben, and yet… Nothing in the staff really indicates much either, except that they’ve collectively done a lot of shows about pretty boys, which this certainly has a lot of.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Behold the fury of El Ratón!
Obligatory Glut of Reincarnation Nonsense
Delicious in Dungeon
https://delicious-in-dungeon.com/
Studio: Trigger
Genre: Adventure
Premieres January 4th
Show Premise:
Party decides to learn about cooking monsters in order to spend more time and go deeper into a dungeon.
Random Thoughts:
The manga is generally very well regarded as a classic fantasy epic with heavy D&D influences and some food porn shoved in. Plus Trigger is definitely one of the top studios at the moment. That said, I’m skeptical I’ll enjoy it, because its schtick is exhaustive narration. Anything and everything encountered must have multiple pages dedicated to explaining every aspect of the thing’s biology, followed by another few pages of lessons about cooking things. The only exposition I need is “Oh no, a slime,” not a five minute monologue dissecting its exact nature as it undulates patiently. It eventually turns into a darker, more serious epic, but I highly doubt it’s going to be skipping out on reciting the footnotes of the Monster Manual and Joy of Cooking to rush to that. If it does, I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not hopeful.
Preseason Swing Rating:
It’s not living armor. It’s a very large mollusk.
The Unwanted Undead Adventurer
https://nozomanufushi-anime.jp/
Studio: Connect
Genre: Action
Premieres January 8th
Show Premise:
Adventurer becomes undead. Continues adventuring.
Random Thoughts:
Don’t worry. Even though it’s not a dude being transported to another world, it’s still RPG rules, to be laboriously explained as he gathers experience which makes him level up through different flavors of undead like a bloody pokemon. And like all these, every character that’s not him is a half-dressed girl swooning over the mysterious ‘man’ in a mask with a dark secret. Promos are barely animated. Premise is yet another one of these godawful regurgitated web novels vomited up to cash in on this trend that is seemingly never going away. Come on, anime industry. Have the slightest bit of ambition.
Preseason Swing Rating:
How fleeting are undead evolutions compared to the continuity of ducks.
The Witch and the Beast
https://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/majo/
Studio: Yokohama Animation Lab
Genre: Action
Premieres January 11th
Show Premise:
Inquisitors hunt witches.
Random Thoughts:
An actiony manga, but Yokohama is a dismal studio on the production side. See: Kingdoms of Ruin. Or the promos here, which have some poor giant shark coasting through downtown as a still frame. I’ll take it over RPG world, reincarnation or not, but damn, people. Go down to the subway and start panhandling for an animation budget. This is embarrassing and I’m starting to think that this studio has to have some kind of crazy tax dodge setup like Adam Sandler movies. Anyway, the lady is actually a monster, and they hunt various flavor of witches. Nothing too creative here, except for everybody dressing like they’re going to the opera at all times. It could be fine with good execution, but given the studio? Ha.
Preseason Swing Rating:
I was told the garbage would be palatable.
The Weakest Tamer Set Out to Clean Up Trash
https://saijakutamer-anime.com//index.php
Studio: Studio Massket
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 12th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Girl is reincarnated and has the weakest skill with zero points, so is kicked out of the village/party/orgy, but her power lets her bond with the rarest most specialest slime which can eat and absorb the power of all the ‘trash’ that everyone else is throwing out. Its big ‘twist’ is that she and the slime remain TECHNICALLY weak, in that she can’t even kill things, so has to trap them and bring them in alive, which actually makes them worth a hundred times as much as all those crappy normal adventurers who just kill them. Bold strides in innovation here. Barely animated promos, same goddamned premise as a billion other things, next.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Where’s all the cheat pet robots?
Being the Villainess is Its Own Genre Now
I Love Magical Girls
https://mahoako-anime.com/
Studio: Asahi Production
Genre: Fanservice
Premieres January 3rd
Show Premise:
Magical girl fan becomes sadistic villainess.
Random Thoughts:
The promos are the magical girls tied up and moaning. Her costume is a skirt, cape, and pasties. Every shot is characters either flushed and drooling in ecstasy, or nipples conveniently censored, as you can see in the promotional art at the side. Oftentimes both. Not so much a fanservice comedy as just softcore porn without lines like “This isn’t a beach, it’s a bathtub.” I’d rather see a show about lemon stealing whores, to be honest. Or is that too deep a cut as far as internet jokes go? Sure, the era of ultra trashy shows like Cosprayers or… uh… Koi Koi 7 is long past, but like the incest era or those years where dudes kept being forced to go to all-girl schools, it’s a trend that I don’t think has been too missed. Well, here’s the borderline porn anyway, back for another go.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Fair representation for non-molesting cephalopods in Japanese media, please.
On Her Seventh Reincarnation, The Villainess Wants to Enjoy Carefree Married Life in Her Formerly Enemy Kingdom
https://7th-timeloop.com/
Studio: Hornets
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 7th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
Why not just one reincarnation when you can do seven. Or is it six reincarnations, making it seven incarnations total? Either way, same as all the rest. She wants to not die as a villainess so she’s doing good deeds now and lightly romancing the villain, along with the entire stable of tertiary other sparkly pointy-chinned boys in the general area. It’s not a game at least, it’s just the exact same premise as the rest, but with more reincarnations giving her extra powers and essentially prophetic cheat-like powers and knowledge of literally everything, like that’s the secret spice all these were missing and not something literally goddamned all of them also have.
Preseason Swing Rating:
So, wait. This girl is effectively 140 years old?
Level 99 Villainess – I’m the Hidden Boss, Not the Overlord
https://akuyakulv99-anime.com/
Studio: Jumondou
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 9th
Show Premise:
See title.
Random Thoughts:
Same as all of them. The promo even has the goddamned crystal ball that declares explicitly the girl reincarnated into the game is “level 99” to everybody gasping in shock. A slightly different flavor of villainess in a type of game that never actually existed, though we’re getting to the point that they’ll be making games based on these things, thus creating the cliche that they’re parodying in an ouroboros of trite. A fantastic twist on this painfully tired premise that always ends up just making the same show over and over. The only thing in the promos that doesn’t look awful is the monster CGI, which looks embarrassingly awful, which is normal for this studio.
Preseason Swing Rating:
Doesn’t even have an angel form.
Surgeon Elise
https://surgeon-elise.com/
Studio: Maho Film
Genre: Drama
Premieres January 10th
Show Premise:
Villainess is reincarnated as a surgeon and then is re-reincarnated as herself.
Random Thoughts:
I guess at least she doesn’t come from a game. Does adding one extra life in between the reincarnations count as a twist? Well, too bad there’s that show that thought the same thing and had the wherewithal to say why not just one, but seven? Your ‘unique’ flavor was already co-opted and trumped. Pack it in. Should’ve been one step further ahead. I can’t wait for next season to have a villainess who has reincarnated fifty-seven times only to be one-upped by the cheat power dude who has reincarnated into a hundred different worlds. God, I hate this trend so much at this point. What is there even to say about them that couldn’t be said about ALL of them?
Preseason Swing Rating:
Completely unique, just like the four others exactly like it.
Closing:
It does look like a baseline more tolerable season than usual, though not much really stands out besides perhaps Metallic Rougue. It’s nice at least to see a few more originals than usual, even if most seem kind of bad or just plain bizarre. I’m also aware that Hazbin Hotel is finally getting its big release in January, though since it seems like it’s a full season dump all at once, I’m not sure how I’ll handle that, if at all. In any case, I’m sure at least one random thing will air a pre-episode that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to catch, but otherwise, ‘fun’ times kick off with cheat powers on January 1st.
