I Went To Another World and All I Got Was Super Powers

Dark Lord, Retry!
http://maousama-anime.com/
Studio: Ekachi Eplika
Genre: Fanservice
Premieres July 3rd

Show Premise: 
Akira plays a Dark Lord in an MMO. He's teleported into the game as his character with godly magical powers.

Random Thoughts:
Kicking things off with a real banger here. The promos are pretty damn close to unanimated too, just a parade of headshots of either a dude smoking, or one of about five different plaintive little girls, desperate to be saved by whoever. What is with these light novels and their delusions of grandeur always being combined with vulnerable, woebegone little girls ready to dote endlessly? That was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer and hate it.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Something something exploitation of animal girls

Astra Lost in Space
http://astra-anime.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Adventure
Premieres July 3rd

Show Premise: 
A group of students on a space field trip are teleported halfway across the galaxy. They must work together to survive and find their way home.

Random Thoughts:
One hour premiere episode. A Jump show, but a rarity in that it's both very short and complete. It indulges in all the usual Jump issues though, from the ridiculously one-dimensional characters who all have the exactly one thing that they're supernaturally good at to all of them shouting as a reaction to everything. Don't think this is a survival drama either. It's both too goofy for that, and if it sticks to the source, will be fully indulgent in stuff like "We're doomed unless there happens to be a spaceship nearby." "Oh, there's one over there." "We're doomed unless someone here is a super genius who can figure out a perfect course through uncharted space to life-supporting planets every 23 days!" "Wait, I think I've got it!" "We're all doomed unless someone here has an eidetic memory!" And then one meekly raises their hand. That seems to be how it all goes, even as it piles on every sci fi dystopia twist it can think of towards the end. Declares some apocalyptic situation in a deluge of exposition, then "but luckily, it all worked out perfectly fine." Ain't exactly expecting Voyager here, and nobody uses Voyager as a target to shoot for.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Remember the episode where Janeway and Paris turned into lizards?

Dr. Stone
https://dr-stone.jp/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Adventure
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Everyone on the planet is turned to stone. Thousands of years later, teenagers start to recover and rebuild society.

Random Thoughts:
Our second and thankfully last Jump show for the season, getting them out of the way quickly, also with a 2,000 IQ teenager and lots of shouting. Rest assured, they quickly revive society and establish a bunch of different little themed fiefs to have a tournament war of power to determine whose paper thin philosophy is the best. That war also consists largely of shouting. And you'll never guess what the promos are full of. Yep. That's right. Shouting. Well, they're mostly stills of dudes smirking or glaring at the camera, but whenever there's animation, it's either because a dude is standing in the wind, his long lockes flowing, or because someone is shouting.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

And his nemesis, Intern Egg.

The Ones Within
http://nhg-anime.com/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Drama
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
A bunch of streamers are teleported to another world where they're forced to participate in competitions by a dude in an alpaca mask.

Random Thoughts:
Games like be in a real life dating sim, or hide and seek, or use this ouji board, or "couldn't think of something, so here's a chapter about taking a bath." Oh, sure, they always go "and losing means DEATH!" but the dire consequences never manifest and every little game or challenge just happens to have someone in the group who has the exact specialized knowledge to solo it as long as they believe in their friends. This is Silver Link with some of their more… artistic staff working on it, but the promos are pretty heavily going in the goofy direction rather than dramatic. I'm not sure either direction sounds all that appealing though. I think we could all use a break from Escape Room stuff for a while.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Chest containing a good script can only be opened with a Ragbaby cypher.

From Commonplace to World's Strongest
https://arifureta.com/
Studio: White Fox/Asread
Genre: Adventure
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
Hajime's class is teleported to a fantasy world. All of them get magic powers except him, so they ditch him and his arm is eaten by a bear.

Random Thoughts:
I was about four sentences into the Wikipedia article and he had already forged himself a cyborg arm out of demon steel, was running around with automatic weapons to take revenge on the bugbear that chewed his arm off, and had inducted the first of what appeared to be about a baker's dozen of demihuman princess magical girlfriends into his harem. The path from peasant to strongest in the world is apparently as long and winding as a hopscotch court. 90% of the promos are either girls in bikinis striking boob poses or CG monsters skittering around. Obviously, they get more screentime than the supposed hero of the story, but even closeups of his demon-gun were more prominent than him, which really frames his importance well.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Bringing an orbital cannon to a sword fight.

Other World Cheat Magicians
http://isekai-cheat-magician.com/
Studio: Encourage Films
Genre: Adventure
Premieres July 10th

Show Premise: 
Taichi and Azuma get teleported to a magic world where they have godly magical powers.

Random Thoughts:
In a real reversal, her magic power level is slightly higher than his, but he still manages to be more awesome by being more cheaty, so is still the top godling. Also, every good guy is a teenage girl wearing what wouldn't be out of place in a Victoria Secret's catalog. What is it with all these web novels turned light novels? If they're not doing a random unseen deity forcing people to play escape rooms to the death, they're shameless harems being awarded to godlings who also need to have every single trivial detail of the setting spelled out to them at exhaustive length. It's also great that all that the protagonist does in any of the promos is stand there invincible in the face of onslaught. At least the blonde elf swings her sword at things. Let's have a show about her instead. Give her the harem. …Actually, why hasn't there been a show on that yet?

Preseason Swing Rating: 

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BANANA MAN!?

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit AOE Attacks?
https://okaasan-online.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Fanservice
Premieres July 12th

Show Premise: 
Masato is teleported into an RPG with his helicopter mother who has godly magical powers.

Random Thoughts:
Really? Sigh. Why, Japan? I mean, maybe if we were going to be ironic about it, or go on an adventure like whose-his-face in Garou with his prostitute-loving dad. But no, this is just your typical light novel dude whose purpose is to be a punching bag for both having a helicopter mom and for doing anything that might establish his independence from her. That also seems to be the punchline to all its jokes. The promos are also only concerned with establishing that there's a harem, not action, humor, story, or setting. And yet, it's being coy with the boob bounces, so it's not even doing that exasperatingly badly. It's kind of not doing much of anything.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

One chunk of warm ham.

Swords and Sorcery Minus the Swords and Sorcery

The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II
https://anime.elmelloi.com/
Studio: TROYCA
Genre: Drama
Premieres June 29th

Show Premise: 
Waver Velvet and pals solve crimes.

Random Thoughts:
This is a light novel spinoff of Fate/Zero, which was a light novel spinoff of Fate Stay/Night, so of course, one of El-Melloi Waver Velvet's pals is yet another clone of Saber. Their first case? They're invited to a castle with a bunch of other mages, told to solve a mystery, and then someone's killed… so now it's A DOUBLE MYSTERY. Or, you know, quite literally dinner theater. This did have an episode 0 OVA last December, which is what's being broadcast on the 29th as "episode 0" before we get to Murder Mystery Dinner. I had glanced at the OVA, but in the true Fate tradition, it was almost entirely dudes standing around blathering and namedropping references to other Type-Moon things. At one point, they one-shot a CGI car, and that was it for the action. A setting of vampires, mages, legendary heroes, etc, and all we're doing is fighting some poor guy's Miata. Great. Bodes well for the dinner theater arc.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Visual representation of the current status of the Fate franchise.

To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts
http://katsu-kami.com/
Studio: MAPPA
Genre: Action
Premieres July 1st

Show Premise: 
Soldiers were imbued with the powers of mythical beasts during a war. Years later, one of them hunts the others while he himself is hunted.

Random Thoughts:
Look, it's totally different from Fairy Gone. Sure, the lead dude in both does the werewolf thing, but here, the heroine uses a silly oversized gun but DOESN'T have a persona. Oh, and they transform rather than summon personas. And yes, it is also based on a manga while FG is an original, and neither are the slightest bit creative in the first place. I probably trust Mappa to do a better job in the direction in their attempt at this, but unless the show has Garou in its title, they have real problems with the writing not being hot steaming cow plops, and even then, it's close to a 50/50. Promos are decent enough, but about what you'd expect from Mappa. I also couldn't help but notice that the writer in charge of adapting was the one who did the only decent script of Dororo's run (episode 7), and has worked on the scripts for the good Garous as well. Also was responsible for Zombie Land Saga as his first in-charge big boy project too, but maybe he learned his lesson. Or not.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
   
Sacred Beast Cowz dance.

If It's For my Daughter, I'd Defeat Even a Demon Lord
http://uchinoko-anime.com/
Studio: Maho Film
Genre: Drama
Premieres July 4th

Show Premise: 
Successful adventurer Dale finds a little monster girl and decides to become her helicopter parent.

Random Thoughts:
The only promotional stuff released are shots of the little girl smiling, and from glancing at reviews of the light novel source, that's going to be the sum total of it. Despite the title, what the protagonist is going to actually do is jack squat, which is helped by the girl being the epitome of angelic perfection. It has a little girl. She smiles. She's 'cute.' Start, middle, end. Don't worry about things like development or story. It's 'cute.' Give me a story about a dude actually being pushed to the edge and having to make questionable choices in pursuit of, well, goddamned near anything. This is just pure fluff with an overly hyperbolic title.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

You got a beer!

Granbelm
http://granbelm.com/
Studio: Nexus
Genre: Action
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Magical girls pilot magical giant robots.

Random Thoughts:
This is an original deal, although has put out the first half of its first episode as an exceedingly long promo. Weirdly, that didn't do much to elucidate what the show's deal is. Like the actual promos, it just kind of drops everything straight into magical girls! Lasers! Explosions! Girls screaming, their faces contorted in melodrama! There are certainly worse ways to begin a story, but what concerns me is that the ostensible protagonist spends the whole thing scampering around the rubble like a panicking guinea pig, while the various people fighting spend the whole thing namedropping random magical buzzwords, but there are also plenty of shows that do those things without lasers and explosions, so let's not sell it too short. It's also unclear if this is the kind of *ahem* edgy magical girl show that will have half of them being shivved in the baby box, or if they're just doing the melodrama rage contortions for the facial exercise. The strong focus on technobabble and explosions over story or characters makes me wonder if the answer is neither.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Are they really still magical girls if they're in giant robots?

Fire Force
http://fireforce-anime.jp/
Studio: David Production
Genre: Action
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Magical firefighters fight magic fire monsters magically.

Random Thoughts:
I love how they're dressed up like fire fighters, but then half of them are part fire monster and shoot fireballs or have fire punches. Which they use to extinguish fire. Hell, one of them fights fire with a lightsaber. The Jedi really missed their calling. It comes from the Jump-Magazine-That-Isn't-Jump, and David has been carving themselves out a niche in adapting long-running Not-Quite-Jump-But-Essential-Is over the last half decade. Promos aren't too bad, though they are possibly unsurprisingly enamored with covering the screen in fire, not to mention the traditional Not-Jump posing rather than actually throwing down with some fire monsters, or in this case, fire clown monsters. Because of course there's a clown antagonist. There's always a clown antagonist.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

But if they're made of fire, how will they eat ice cream?

Cop Craft – Dragnet Mirage Reloaded
http://copcraft.tv/
Studio: Millepensee
Genre: Action
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
A portal to a fantasy world opened 15 years ago. At a city on the border, dude cop and magic knight girl team up to fight crime.

Random Thoughts:
The other flavor of "teleported to another world," where the other world teleports to you, but since thankfully no protagonist inexplicably has super powers, it gets to be in this category. Promos for this are pretty action-packed, which is surprising because this is mostly the staff and studio who's been working on Teekyu for the last half decade. This is a bit of a change in scale, format, and ambition for them. The original light novels were by the same author as Full Metal Panic, which did have a significantly stronger start than middle or end, so there's some hope for at least the first arc or two.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Detective Pikachu's on the case.

A Beautiful Butterfly – Young Nobunaga
http://wakanobu.com/
Studio: Studio DEEN
Genre: Drama
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
The life and times of Oda Nobunaga as a teenager.

Random Thoughts:
I've got to ask, why do they all have ponytails? That seems weird to me, although certainly makes them all look even girlier than they already did. And with the staff behind Hakuoki, another medieval-era pointy-chinned pretty boy harem drama doing this too, Deen's not really straying all that far afield. Hell, they're already holding each other's hands as they stare mournfully into their eyes in the promos. And at least once, I mistook Nobunaga for a chick because they're literally all in flowing robes with big glistening doe eyes.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Float like a butterfly, sting like a pointy chin to the eye.

Vinland Saga
https://vinlandsaga.jp/
Studio: Wit Studio
Genre: Action
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
The life and dramatized history of Thorfinn Karlsefni.

Random Thoughts:
Another Not-Jump show, one that has been going on for nearly 15 years now. It especially fancies itself a historic histrionic epic. Every protagonist Dynasty Warriors their way through fifteen unnamed dudes with every swing of the sword, but don't let the peasants literally exploding into viscera chunks in the promos fool you. This is a serious show, full of stone-faced serious dramatic men. Standing out on the plains staring meaningfully. Standing on cliffsides staring meaningfully. Standing on boats staring meaningfully. Beats shouting all the time, I suppose. Also, at some point, it gets tired of fighting and tries to go all Game of Thrones royal drama before getting tired of that and farming. I wonder if it'll end before that, or fast forward things to get to that sooner. Note that the first broadcast is a 1.5 hour ordeal, but thankfully, Amazon is streaming the first 30 minutes on the 7th, a day ahead of the full broadcast.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Facial hair not nearly magnificient enough to be real truly Norse.

BEM
https://newbem.jp/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Action
Premieres July 14th

Show Premise: 
Three monsters hunt monsters to help humans despite being treated like monsters.

Random Thoughts:
This began life as a goofy series in the 60s. For some reason, it came back in 2006 with a remake, had a couple comedy short spinoffs, then a live action series, then a live action movie, and now we're remaking it again. This time, instead of being cartoonish, it's super duper serious. Rarr, we are monsters, fighting against the darkness within to do good things. Wait, the promo has them dodging giant marbles, spitting lasers, and there's a dude named Dr. Recycle who has clearly overdosed on Loreal's Luxurious Lockes For Ladies shampoo. Never mind. At least they're doing their own thing with an older IP. I mind that a lot less than iteration one thousand and fifty seven of… well, the first third of this season's preview.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Hippity hoppity, I'm a monster!

Being in a High School Club Makes You Complete

How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift?
http://dumbbell-anime.jp/
Studio: Doga Kobo
Genre: Boobs
Premieres July 3rd

Show Premise: 
Hibiki joins a gym.

Random Thoughts:
The formula this goes by is an explanation of some random exercise thing, such as how to do a push up, or dieting, etc, with overly sexualized illustrations, then the musclehead dude poses and explodes all his clothes off. Inevitably, the straight-man protagonist will shout out some subset of the previous sentence and everyone pretends like a joke has happened. There's worse things than edutainment. I still have fond memories of GA Art Club. Most things don't have the same cast or sense of humor though, and if this sticks by the source manga, then I'm afraid that I've already told you all of the jokes that it has to offer.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Brraaaaaiiiin fffooooooodddd…

O Maidens in Your Savage Season
http://araoto-anime.com/
Studio: Lay-duce
Genre: Drama
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Teenagers in book club are interested in sex.

Random Thoughts:
Remember last season when I said there was a super weird show by Mari Okada about teenagers masturbating? Here we are, with Mari Okada doing yet another goddamned show about overly naive and sheltered teenagers losing their innocence. Get a new schtick already. I should just be grateful that it's only puberty doing it, rather than some kind of existential monster, a cruel and exploitative adult society, or a monkey's paw being awarded for winning a tournament as comprise the other 95% of Okada originals. The promos full of girls squirming as flowers open ain't exactly subtle, but one of the very few things that Wikipedia has about any of the characters was how they catch each other masturbating. Even just reading the summary for each novel fatigues me. X is insecure about Y. Next novel, X has made up his mind about Y, but is unsure what to do now. X finally did it, but it seems like nothing has changed and is anxious because of that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Extremely subtle imagery.

The Wasteful Days of High School Girls
http://jyoshimuda.com/
Studio: Passione
Genre: Stupid Faces
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Girls exist in high school.

Random Thoughts:
This is basically your standard four panel thing that after a short while, realizes it doesn't have to be constrained to pretending like someone made a joke every fourth panel (by way of a character making a dopey face) so it… well, stops. One wonders what the point is then. Its supposed gimmick is that the main character gives people a nickname, which inevitably sets up the gag "Are you literally your nickname!?" It's just a barrage of cliches, presented, explained, and then followed through on. Will the adaptation be better than the source? The lack of jokes in the promos, but plenty of dopey faces, says "probably not."

Preseason Swing Rating: 

A'hyuk.

Could You Fall in Love With a Pervert if She Was Cute?
https://hensuki.com/
Studio: Geek Toys
Genre: Boobs
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
Kiryuu gets an anonymous love letter with a girls' underwear. In trying to find out who sent it, he discovers that every girl in the calligraphy club is a massive closet pervert.

Random Thoughts:
Well, not that massive. Pretty hum drum actually. One is a masochist. One is a sadist. You'd think they'd get together. One has a smell fetish. One is an exhibitionist. One crossdresses. So on and so forth. You know, the same thing that MM! did a decade ago, and now I just made myself feel old and sad. Except with a protagonist whose defining quality is that he's a doormat and inoffensively 'kind' to everyone by never having a thought in his head. Anyway, there's certainly no shortage of boobs in the promos, but the second most prominent thing are weirdly drawn eyes. The dog was the only one that looked like it wasn't suffering from massive cataracts.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The all seeing eye cares not for your ocular prejudices.

Street Corner Demon
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/machikado/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Stupid Faces
Premieres July 11th

Show Premise: 
Yuuko is a hapless demon girl who befriends the magical girl she was supposed to beat.

Random Thoughts:
This comes from a four panel deal, which is frequently hard pressed to call comedy so much as "thing where a character restates the situation in the fourth panel while someone makes a stupid face." And a few stupid faces is about all the 'content' I got from its promotional material. I copied that sentence from a previous season preview. Or maybe it was from the show right above this one. Who can tell? There's only a small 15 second promo out at time of writing, and it sure… has some stupid faces.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Fifth most banal show of the season.

Try Knights
https://www.ntv.co.jp/tryknights/
Studio: Gonzo
Genre: Drama
Premieres July ??th

Show Premise: 
Dudes play rugby.

Random Thoughts:
I had a hard time digging up any information on this. It's apparently not popular. I think the adaptation exists either to advertise on the 2019 rugby world cup being hosted in Japan, or to try to cash in on its expected popularity. Either way, I have the feeling that they're vastly overestimating how much rugby is going to sell. Just going by the character designs, I'd guess this is more of the sweaty group of pretty boys as the appeal, but hell if I honestly have any idea. I'm rarely much for sports dramas anyway, and certainly not the pretty boy variety. Also, somehow still hasn't announced an air date. They're tweeting about how it's coming this summer, but apparently haven't figure out when. Now that says promising.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Knights have what to do with this exactly?

Let's Get Out There and Sell Some CDs!

Symphogear XV
http://symphogear-xv.com/
Studio: Satelight
Genre: CD Sales
Premieres July 6th

Show Premise: 
Girls sing and punch things.

Random Thoughts:
While I really liked the first season and the second was decent overall (flagged hard at the end), the last two seasons of this franchise have been pretty awful. The third was engulfed in terrible character drama that infantilized damn near everyone, and the fourth was almost textbook filler from start to finish, containing no character arc for anybody and one antagonist after the next declaring their personal invincibility only to immediately be defeated, even ending on "this was actually just setup for next season!" I don't know if I have it in me to hate-watch my way through another season. This one was delayed three months, so I'm sure the animation won't totally suck, but it badly needs to shake things up and/or hand these ninnies their asses a few times to actually build up some tension to give that actual weight rather than being just a bunch of explosions set to shouty pop songs. Season one had someone getting emulsified and season two had an arm being bitten off and then regenerated out of pure anger. Since then, they've been trying to skate by on the power of friendship and doing your bestest, and it ain't working.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Onward to the slaughter.

Ensemble Stars!
http://ensemblestars-anime.com/
Studio: David Production
Genre: CD Sales
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
Boys go to boy band school to be boy band members.

Random Thoughts:
Here we have one of those cell phone games about being the lone girl in an all male high school for pop idols, with the adaptation's contribution being stuffing the self-insert protagonist into a trash can so the boys can primp and pose for each other without having any cooties get in their way. Just look at these monsters. Meet that in a dark alley, and you'll be lucky if you survive, and you'll definitely be picking glitter out of every single oriface for the next month.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Same character design, 10% less glitter.

Re:Stage!
https://rst-anime.com/
Studio: Yumeta Company
Genre: CD Sales
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
Girls go to pop star school to learn to be pop stars.

Random Thoughts:
I'm tempted to copy/paste the previous blurb, and that would be more or less accurate, but there's a couple odd things in this one's provenance. For one, the 'franchise' existed as just some CDs for made-up pop groups for around a year. Development time and costs apparently got away from them. Second, unlike the above's TCG banality, the gameplay here is like Guitar Hero where you have to also rearrange the buttons on the fly. Just watching it stresses me out. I thought these things were supposed to be light and fluffy, not designed for twitchy meth heads. Maybe I'm old. Maybe I don't do enough meth. I'm sure the actual show will be the same prosaic crap as all idol things are, even the ones with zombies.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

*twitchy twitchy twitchy*

Given
http://given-anime.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: CD Sales
Premieres July 11th

Show Premise: 
Dudes are in a band and also dating.

Random Thoughts:
Unlike the last two, this has a more traditional manga origin. They're all still overly melodramatic ponces, going into conniptions over a broken guitar string because of the trauma they've suffered but they'll be there for each other, sparkly backgrounds and soulful gazings into the eyes. I opened to a random spot in the source and it was about three straight pages of fawning over a guy and internally narrating how hot the dude was. Yeah, great. This is also the noitaminA show for the season, and we're already at a lot of strikes against it, so pretty sure I'm passing.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Dig that crazy jazz, man.