Wherein We Pretend That It's 2007 Again

When The Cicadas Cry
https://higurashianime.com/
Studio: Passione
Genre: Silly Faces
Premieres October 1st

Show Premise: 
Horny teenagers in a remote village are infected with murder-itis.

Random Thoughts:
I was on the fence about this due to the "no-sequels" policy, but it's been bloody 13 years, and damn, does that make one feel old. This still does fall in the category of "…Why?" though. I could see it if we were getting a new retelling of it, not knowing who the true culprit or mystery is, which would fit perfectly with its whole time loop murder mystery setup, but that's never what it is. Every new iteration always promises to be sourcier to the source. It's not even like Passione has a reputation or history for high budget or critically acclaimed shows over Deen in the first place. Hell, I'd posit that the goofy, overly dramatic crazy-faces were part of what drove the original's memetic status in the first place. So let's try to re-cash in on what a billion other things have copied already. Maybe it's a joke and they'll just re-air the original with a filter over it, or in French. I'd be down for that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The snowman did it.

The Half Demon Princesses
http://hanyo-yashahime.com/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Adventure
Premieres October 3rd

Show Premise: 
The daughters of Sesshomaru and Inuyasha team up to hunt monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Like Higurashi, I made the call that a spinoff to Inuyasha some ten years later deserves at least some note. I technically watched quite a bit of Inuyasha, in that I turned on the TV while I was studying at 1am and it was ALWAYS GODDAMNED ON, which is also why I can never watch Cowboy Bebop or Trigun again, because I think I have been in a room with every single episode at least five dozen times each. I would be lying if I said I had any real memory of it, or any desire for there to be more. But here we are. With the entire cast replaced with 14 year old girls. Is this chasing a trend, or giving up entirely? Can't we splash water on one and have it turn into a pig? If we're going for nostalgia points, then by all means, let's go all out. Anyway, promos look… like more Inuyasha. Actually, they might have been clips from Inuyasha. I'm not sure I could tell the difference.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Sit, boy.

Warlords of Sigrdrifa
https://sigururi.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Girls Exist
Premieres October 3rd (One hour premiere)

Show Premise: 
Teenage girls fly planes.

Random Thoughts:
You can sum this one up nicely by this blurb about its origin: After working on High School Fleet, the creators wanted to do it with planes. And so here we are. Following in the footsteps of the ten hundred thousand trillion other shows where girls either drive or are some random piece of military technology or a military person. Frankly, I think that the trend peaked early with that show where girls were guns and wore thongs because gun straps are thin or something? I don't remember. In any case, High School Fleet But Planes is not a thing I think anybody thought the world needed, but we're getting it inflicted upon us anyway. And alongside Yet Another Strike Witches in case this has too many planes and too many pants for you! Or that has not enough.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Fast approaching the day of van girls.

Opening Act
https://maesetsu.jp/
Studio: PA Works
Genre: Girls Exist
Premieres October 4th

Show Premise: 
Girls are wannabe comedy duos.

Random Thoughts:
This one's claim to fame is that it's by the same person as Lucky Star. Note, however, that the anime and manga were meant to debut together in July, but the pandemic scuttled that. The anime has an advantage over the manga in that the character designs aren't 50% forehead, 30% eyes, and 15% empty triangle purported to be a mouth. Sometimes, the mouth in the anime is just a line or a dot. Cherish the small victories. The promos show nothing but that girls exist and they make silly faces sometimes, so that's totally on brand for Lucky Star. If the music in its promo, a screeching off-tune recorder, is any indication of the rest of the show, I think we're probably safe from having its music spammed like its predecessor. And without that, what else is there?

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The creatures are coming for us again.

Talentless Nana
https://munounanana.com/
Studio: Bridge
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 4th

Show Premise: 
Teenagers with super powers are sent to an isolated island to train to save the world, but someone is systematically murdering them.

Random Thoughts:
At the risk of being slightly spoilery, the twist is that this is all a pointlessly elaborate government conspiracy where instead of just rounding up kids with super powers and shooting them, they're rounded, put on an island, and then told a powerless teenage girl to secretly murder them, equipped with only a magic phone rationalizing it by giving a number of deaths each kid would supposedly have caused. I say slightly, because this comes from a manga where the cover for the first volume is her covered in blood splatter, grinning innocently. Also, she kills the supposed main character and then they have about a ten page info dump of all this by ten pages into the second chapter. It's written by Looseboy, a name you may recognize from visual novels like Devil on a G-String, all of the SHOCKING TWIST variety. How nice for it to share a season with a needless Higurashi reboot. Maybe the two can commiserate about trends they missed from fifteen years ago.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
One impostor remains.

Magical Teenagers Versus Invading Aliens

Assault Lily BOUQUET
https://anime.assaultlily-pj.com/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Action
Premieres October 1st

Show Premise: 
Teenage girls fight space monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Well, supposedly fight space monsters. The promos have about 5 seconds of that, 45 seconds of close-ups of various overdesigned silly looking weapons, and 60 seconds of girls scampering around, giggling and frolicking. Weirdly, this franchise isn't based on some stupid mobile phone game, but just a series of figurines. While a Shaft show, Shinbo doesn't have his fingers in it, so don't expect the usual Shaft stuff. This isn't really based on anything but a line of toys, and this to sell them, but probably without the moralistic life lessons of GI Joe.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Plumber deer MARCH.

Sorcery Fight
https://jujutsukaisen.jp/
Studio: Mappa
Genre: Action
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenagers with themed powers fight monsters and/or each other.

Random Thoughts:
The protagonist even fights against THE DARKNESS WITHIN HIM WHICH GRANTS HIM UNLIMITED POWER, BUT ONLY IF HE CAN CONTROL IT. And he's on a question to collect and absorb the magical fingers to summon Shenlong or something. Of course it's a Jump concoction. It was already getting pretty tiresome when it involved transforming into giant apes. Adding a martyr complex to it is only making it worse. It's a Mappa action show, so it'll probably look fairly good, but Mappa also seems to put all their creativity, for better or worse, solely into their original shows, and, again, it's Jump. Dude will grunt and power up for his friends, everybody will spare no chance to pose for the camera, and all the screentime will be chewed to a fine pulp overexplaining goddamned everything.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Please don't eat sentient fingers.

Noblesse
https://noblesse-anime.com/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Action
Premieres October 7th*

Show Premise: 
A teenager vampire who's not a vampire wakes up 800 years in the future, which is the present day, but a futuristic alternate version. He and his highschool friends fight an evil human secret society creating superhumans.

Random Thoughts:
My head hurts from trying to read that sentence. This would be yet another of those Korean Crunchyroll-produced shos which have all been… well, about as good as all those Chinese collabs from a couple years back. You might recall that this had actually a pair of OVAs a few years back, which was just Vampire Dragonball. With approximately 10 times the episode count and not having to get right to the big final powerup grunt-off and battle, I'm sure it'll be far less exciting than that, especially since the promos are really playing up how goofy it is to… *checks tape again* be a vampire attending high school and sign somebody's cast. Christ. How is this promo making me miss the somber and restrained nature of Assassin's Pride? Let's just not do vampires or highschool for a while, Japan, huh? Oh, right. This is Korean. Curses, foiled again.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

This Luigi is not a Luigi.

Villains Drive
https://akudama-drive.com/
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Genre: Action
Premieres October 8th

Show Premise: 
Futuristic teenager malcontents uh… fight things?

Random Thoughts:
Yeah, look, I'm sorry. It's a completely original series, and the blurb on its site is a weird explanation of how there was a war between two parts of Japan, which is as divorced from the promos as King Henry from Catherine of Aragorn. Historical Reference! The promos are mostly dudes fighting each other and/or robots while cackling madly about murder. The times when it's not those things, it's either dudes on motorcycles or closeups of cleavage. I'm not getting a lot to work with. Supposedly, the main character is a muggle teenage girl, but I'm not sure I even saw her in any of the promos. It's a Pierrot action show though, so odds are that it'll have a crazy budget for about ten minutes spread across the first two episodes, with mostly slideshows to fill in the rest of the series. This does have various tie-ins in writing and character designs with the Dangan Ronpa franchise, so maybe it's a backdoor sequel. Would make as much sense as anything else I saw.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
  
HOSTILE SOUP HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED.

The Day I Became a God
https://kamisama-day.jp/
Studio: PA Works
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 10th

Show Premise: 
A girl shows up at a teenager's house, declaring that she's omniscient and the world will end in a month.

Random Thoughts:
In case you somehow watched the promos and missed it being plastered across the screen a billion times, this is a similar collab in terms of writing and studio to Angel Beats and Charlotte. The promos also take the approach that what sells is being screamed at incoherently by multiple 30 year old Japanese women all trying to sound like 10 year old Japanese girls throwing a tantrum, all of it set to the sappiest piano music imaginable and interspersed with shots of overly detailed scenery and vast amounts of light bloom. Granted, that's very on brand for both Angel Beats and Charlotte, and Key writing in general, but we're not exactly treading new ground here, and all the promos really showed me is that I'm going to be screamed at incoherently while it simultaneously tries to tug at my heartstrings with the subtlety of a buffalo in a butter dish.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Rotting, with a hint of basil.

Girls Exist, And They're Girls!

She's Just Kute
http://tonikawa.com/
Studio: Seven Arcs
Genre: Girls Exist
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenager spontaneously proposes to a girl he just met because she's cute, and she says yes.

Random Thoughts:
I'm choosing to misspell the title, because the original thinks that "Kawaii" should be written "Cawaii," and should be translated as "Fly Me to the Moon." It's petty, but I deserve this for my brave attempt to suffer through flipping through a few chapters. Its schtick is that he suggests they do something, she responds with "okay, you're my husband after all," he overreacts in shock and yells internally "She's so cute!" Repeat for being in the same room, holding hands, sitting together, sharing food, existing in the same zip code, so on and so forth. It's a comedy in the same way that a lawnmower is light jazz. It's not an Odd Couple kind of routine. Neither character has much of a personality. No wacky things happen, not even to the level of something like Perfect Strangers, and I'll also add that Perfect Strangers had more sexual chemistry between its housemates too. Man, did I even watch Perfect Strangers as a kid? I know the theme song by heart. Was it even on the air? How old is it? How old am I? Christ, this is getting existential.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Not actually kute at all.

Rock Hanging! Climbing Girls
http://iwakakeru-anime.com/
Studio: BLADE
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 3rd

Show Premise: 
Girls sport climb.

Random Thoughts:
This would be the OTHER kind of sports anime. Not the one that purports to be serious while being over the top melodramatic and ridiculous. The kind where everybody has various themed abilities, ridiculous outfits, and is over the top melodramatic and ridiculous… but comically. It's also the kind where all the girls are wearing skintight latex and the camera is firmly wedged in their cleavage and/or camel toe. I can't say that I'm really a huge fan of either variety. The few sports shows I've been able to tolerate came at their subject matter with enthusiasm towards it, but a focus more on the characters… or I guess in the case of Hip Whip Girl, being firmly absurd and knowing it. Unless this version of rock climbing involves Fall Guy-esque attacks on your opponents, I'm doubtful this will do either, and am extra doubtful that its schtick of "Rock climbing is actually like a puzzle" is as interesting as the promos repeatedly screaming it to shots of a 15 year old's genitalia seem to think.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Zoomed in tight enough to see the pubic lice.

Adachi and Shimamura
https://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/adashima/
Studio: Tezuka Productions
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 8th

Show Premise: 
Two girls like each other.

Random Thoughts:
The game I always play with these shows is "Do you think they understand how creepy they're being?" Even yaoi shows seem to understand that someone grabbing a used towel, taking a big whiff, and getting aroused by it is more deserving of a comical framing than covering the screen in glitter, pink haze, and light bloom, although still is probably not the optimal approach. I'm sure I wouldn't be so annoyed if the whole thing was just an endless tease. Will they, or won't they? Yes, obviously they will, off-screen, in the final chapter/episode, with a time-skip to ten years in the future. It's how it ALWAYS ends. Meanwhile, here's an entire episode where they blush over sharing an umbrella and sniff each other's used clothing. The promos have girls. They pass by each other in blurry slow motion. There's bloom. I think I got it.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

I can show you some real magic fingers.

Drop Out Idols – Fruit Tart
http://ochifuru-anime.com/
Studio: feel
Genre: Comedy
Premieres October 12th* (pre-air on September 24th)

Show Premise: 
Former pop idols hang out.

Random Thoughts:
The first episode beat this preview out. This is a four panel thing where each girl's gimmick is that they're some kind of failed or wannabe pop idol. How that's different from other things, I'm not sure. I mean, hell, we had a show about rapping zombies trying and failing to be pop idols while being screamed at by an abusive lunatic who sprayed them with pesticide. The problem was not that the girls weren't hapless enough or making enough silly faces, but that the zombie, rapping, lunatic, screaming, and pesticide parts all got cut for more of the idol stuff. Now, granted, the source is firmly on the comedy side more than the fellating-the-idol-industry side, but there's no shortage of girls-in-a-club-hang-out affairs either.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Post Doctorate Scientists – Bacon Cheeseburger.

In Another World With Nothing But Omnipotence

I'm Standing on a Million Lives
http://1000000-lives.com/
Studio: Maho Film
Genre: Adventure
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenagers are transported to a fantasy world and given quests to both return home and protect it from dragon-based apocalypse.

Random Thoughts:
This would be one of those "it's totally an MMO with all the MMO rules, and we're going to explain them all and rigidly enforce them, but it's totally a real magic world, and not an MMO" kind of things. What it goes whole hog on is classes. Everybody gets a random class, you have to level it up, and then when it's maxed out, you class change to another class at complete random. As in a wheel materializes out of thin air and starts spinning. The main dude starts out as the most useless class, obviously. The promo tries to go for some of that sweet sweet Goblin Slayer or Grimgar "we're totally serious and people COULD DIE" cred, but that's in between them comically overreacting to selecting equipment off a holographic menu and making goofy faces over trying to cast an attack spell and only getting a light breeze. I'm not buying it, and it was a bad selling point to even start with. Then again, they seem to barely have enough of a budget to surpass making it just a slideshow, so I don't think we're aiming for the stars here.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Spin the choice.

The Man Blessed by the Gods
https://kamihiro-anime.com/
Studio: Maho Film
Genre: Adventure
Premieres October 4th

Show Premise: 
Gods like a dude, so they reincarnate him as a child in a fantasy world with all his knowledge and attributes fully unlocked.

Random Thoughts:
In case you thought this wasn't enough of a knockoff by that premise alone already, the dude becomes a slime farmer and uses the various properties of slimes to become the envy of all. There's a harem of course, and all the other trappings of this nonsense. Promos are just barely animated slimes pulsating and/or girls breathlessly yelling his name. Know thy audience, I suppose. The promo images aren't even making any bones about it being an unabashed harem either. Yeesh.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Juggle that harem, boy.

Bear Bear Bear Bear
https://kumakumakumabear.com/
Studio: EMT Squared
Genre: Adventure
Premieres October 7th (Preair September 20th)

Show Premise: 
A girl with super powered bear pajamas gets transported into her MMO.

Random Thoughts:
The title is just the word "bear" written four different ways. Yes, I'm being spiteful. The first episode had a pre-air, and it was every bit of the knockoff of that other show about an invulnerable girl in a fantasy MMO world. Which show? I don't know. There have only been around ten in the last year alone. Let's say either that Make Me Average one or the I Put My Points in Defense. Either is fine. She merrily skips up to giant monsters, obliterates them while explaining every step of the process at exhaustive length, everybody screams "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHH!?", she bonks her head and goes"eheheheh". It's entirely "eh" based content.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Couldn't we at least have gone with badger⁴ for the internet points?

Pointy Chinned Drama Boys

Hypnosis Mic – Division Rap Battle
https://hypnosismic-anime.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
A group of women overthrew the government through "hypnosis mic" mind control devices. They abolished weapons and force men to rap battle using stripped down versions of their hypnosis mic technology

Random Thoughts:
Uh… huh. You sure this idea doesn't need to be workshopped a little more? No? We're going with the show about rapping pop idols being oppressed by evil fascist women? Who is this supposed to appeal to exactly? Okay, I get that the fascist women thing is probably pretty pushed off to the side and not mentioned when you can have a dozen pointy-chinned pretty boys all aggressively pop-starring at each other, but that's a lot of extra nonsense to toss in. I fail to see what you're gaining here. I don't understand the appeal of idol stuff in the first place, male or female, so somebody else will have to explain what demographic they're shooting for here.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

It's peanut butter misogyny time!

Ikebukuro West Gate Park
https://iwgp-anime.com/
Studio: Doga Kobo
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 6th

Show Premise: 
A young punk has a reputation for solving local problems. His girlfriend is brutally murdered, so he sets out for revenge.

Random Thoughts:
Given the complete lack of females in this one's promos, absolute barrage of pretty boys grinning for the camera, and the tatoo'ed man doing ballet, I have questions. Well, I don't, really. I think it's got its target demographic pretty squarely in its sights, same as if it was a show about girls in a club that seemingly take place in a world without the Y chromosome. Then again, it could be from reading its Wikipedia blurb, where apparently every single female is abusive, a prostitute, a junkie, murderously obsessive, or all of the above. Then again again, apparently one segment is about the entire neighborhood getting high off of hallucinogenic tea and talking to invisible people. This is why you don't read, kids. Levar Burton lied to us! *ahem* "Pretty boys who are ostensibly punks fight crime set to a bombastic OST" isn't the most treaded ground, but it's not new territory either. Let's all hope and pray it can step into the hole last left by *checks notes* Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Cleans and eats roadkill.

Gymnastics Samurai
https://taiso-samurai.com/
Studio: Mappa
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 10th

Show Premise: 
Dudes are gymnasts.

Random Thoughts:
I love how all the blurbs about this try to dramatize up "He's an aging, failed gymnast thinking about quitting, and then something CHANGES HIS FATE." It's not like he suddenly discovers magic powers or gets caught in a muder conspiracy. He just… apparently decides to keep doing gymnastics. And it's gymnastics at that, where females age out past their teens. It's a completely original thing though, and was clearly aimed at taking advantage of the Olympics that got delayed due to the pandemic. Bad luck for you, Mappa. I might've taken the L and just waited to air it until next year.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Contains zero samurai.

Moriarty the Patriot
https://moriarty-anime.com/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Drama
Premieres October 11th

Show Premise: 
The Moriarty family fights crime.

Random Thoughts:
Can't we do some other famous fictional detective? How about Poirot? Or does the BBC have him locked up forever? Oh, this is a Jump creation? Well, clearly not then. Not while Detective Conan's still raking in the cash. That said, this had a stage musical, and there is just an unbelievable amount of sass in its promotional image. This one's promotional videos, however, are montages of close ups of a blonde pointy chinned dude's face while he stares into the distance as things flutter around him, be it wind, feathers, or just plain light bloom. Wait… Wait. I'm reviewing the footage. Actually, I think that's supposed to be at least three diferent blonde dudes. Well, the mystery is obviously afoot here.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Indistinct Victorian face blobs.

Magical Teenagers in Fantasy Land

The Journey of Elaina
https://majotabi.jp/
Studio: C2C
Genre: Adventure
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
A witch decides to travel across the world.

Random Thoughts:
This is firmly more Kino's Journey than Slayers, which if you visit its Amazon page and thumb through the reviews, "Mediocre Kino's Journey knockoff with an overtly transparently cloying heroine" is a bit of a recurring theme. I guess if you though that what Kino's problem was that its main character wasn't girly enough, or that it wasn't magically whimsical enough, then this one's for you. I expect this will probably have fewer episodes about the glory of vigilante justice and gun ownership though, so that's probably a good thing. I could be wrong though!

Preseason Swing Rating: 

45% hat, 40% exposed thigh.

King's Raid: Successors of the Will
https://www.anime-kings-raid.com/
Studio: OLM
Genre: Action
Premieres October 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenagers fight monsters.

Random Thoughts:
The origin of this is a cell phone game of the variety where every female is in for a future of chronic back problems and sagging. I'm serious. There is as much plunging cleavage in every screenshot of the game I saw as there are silly faces in your average four panel comic. You can't escape it. It's like every female in this universe got as far up their body as the nipples and decided that was enough clothing, and all of them have chests twice the size of their heads. *ahem* Promo was technically action oriented, and not mostly speedlines, but there's not much more to it than that. Staff is uninteresting. OLM is firmly middling at best. It'll… be a generic fantasy adventure thing with giant boobs almost certainly.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle
https://maoujo-anime.com/
Studio: Doga Kobo
Genre: Comedy
Premieres October 5th

Show Premise: 
The princess is being held captive by demons, but all she wants is to get a good night's sleep.

Random Thoughts:
The manga for this is an extraordinarily episodic affair. Each week, something is preventing the princess from sleeping, so she wanders around the castle, usually either considering or actually menacing some random monster so they can go "EEEEHHHH!?" and then falls asleep at the end of the chapter. It seems… harmless enough, or perhaps I'm just feeling charitable because the promos don't involve any close-ups of genitalia, but the promos are also virtually unanimated, and the one to two gags that the source has were already getting pretty tired in the three minutes I spent thumbing through it. I can't imagine stretching them out will do it any favors.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Sweet dreams, demo man.

The Last Crusade Between You and I, Or Perhaps the Start of a New Holy War
https://kimisentv.com/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Action
Premieres October 7th

Show Premise: 
Two teenager super-prodigy soldiers of warring nations, one of magic, one of science, fall in love.

Random Thoughts:
Yes, that is the full title. Of course it is. It's a light novel. I actually rather like the promos though. Just music set to action scenes for the most part, although I am a bit suspicious of how 'science' in this case seems to be "dudes with magic swords." Yes, magic swords are exactly what I think of when it comes to scientific fascist empires. Also, why can't the girl be the science person, and the guy be the one stuck with emotional magic? More women in STEM! Anyway, it does seem a far sight better than that similar Black Cat/White Cat thing a couple seasons back with a virtually identical premise, although I barely got a paragraph into browsing through its wikipedia page before it was explaining how every goddamned female in the world had a crush on the dark-haired, clueless protagonist. Light novel's gonna light novel. Maybe Silver Link will put some effort into an action series again. I've said that multiple times before though, and I'm not sure it's happened for anything since 2015. It really kind of seems like Totally Generic Fantasy Light Novel though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Witches need to learn spreadsheets too.

Dark Wahrheit
https://magatsu-wahrheit-zuerst.com/
Studio: Yokohama Animation Lab
Genre: Action
Premieres October 13th

Show Premise: 
Fantasy teenagers fight fantasy monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Another cellphone fantasy RPG, but this one with the females dressed a bit more conservatively and just in need of some light massages to keep their back problems in check. Then again, the player character in the actual game is literally vat grown. That's the character customization sequence. Dude/Dudette being decanted like a plant person to be sent to fight a giant evil face. It's not exactly inspired though, and the promos don't promise much other than a generic Final Fantasy/Trails of Adjective Noun kind of RPG non-adventure. Maybe it'll surprise, but I don't have high hopes from the fledgling studio that brought us *checks notes* Lapis:ReLights.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The eyes are random monsters. It sounds like a joke, but it's not.