[Adjective] Teenagers [Verb] [Noun]

Godzilla – Singularity Point
https://godzilla-sp.jp/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Technobabble
Premieres March 25th

Show Premise: 
23 year old teenagers study monsters

Random Thoughts:
The first episode already aired, first two at this point, and it was a bit of a trial to get through, seeming to be aimed at people who watch ghost hunting shows, but are concerned that they don't have enough babbling nonsense. The second episode was more of the same, but with a super janky CGI fight that was more goofy slapstick than monster punching, which seems like an odd direction to take things. I'm no stranger to shows about randos hunting monsters, be it from the corny Supernatural or Buffy angle, or from the also corny but not always quite so ridiculously meldoramatic Doctor Who or Primeval angle. Taking an entire episode just to get to the tease promised by the title is an odd approach, but since everybody just takes the existences of sentient AI viruses in stride, I'm not sure we're meant to be paying much attention to the content of the script it is laboriously reciting. What's left then? Not the monsters, and especially not Godzilla. Even Rampage remembered to put the monsters front and center, and it had The Rock as its fallback.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Rarr, I'm a dinosaur.

Fairy Ranmaru – We Will Heal Your Heart
https://f-ran.jp/
Studio: Studio Comet
Genre: Shiny Boys
Premieres April 8th

Show Premise: 
Magical teenage boys fight monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Note that I can't actually say with confidence that they fight monsters. This is an original affair, and the promos have Dynamic Action Bits where the dudes pose while speedlines blast by. Lots of speedlines. So many speedlines. All of the speedlines. Speedlines, sparkling, and closeups of them crying covers the entire array of how it's advertising itself. There is something more than a little disturbing about a bunch of what appear to be elf or vampire magical boys running a bar where they fawn over little girls. You'll notice that this is going to be sort of a recurring theme this season. Comet is terrible, promos kind of suck. Do we really need a 63rd show about slightly magical-but-not-really pretty boys who work in a cafe?

Preseason Swing Rating: 

It's incredible we haven't had one of these featuring exotic dancers yet.

The World Ends With You
https://subarashiki-anime.jp/
Studio: Shin-Ei Animation
Genre: Action
Premieres April 9th

Show Premise: 
Dead teenagers fights monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Not even the weirdest RPG to get an adaptation this season. The promos seem decent enough, and I liked the game when I played it nearly 15 years ago, but I'm not really looking forward to this given how Japan adapts things, but particularly popular RPGs. Which is to say, I expect an already very wordy game to have its script copy pasted, leaving all the fun of watching a let's play, but with somewhere between 25-50% more animation, and that's if we're lucky. There's at least some work that usually needs to be done for VNs, light novels, and manga, but with most of it already in place, and the belief that the audience will rebel if anything more ambitious is done than showing the scene from a different angle, it's hard to get excited.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Coming soon: Ski Free – The Animation.

Blue Reflection Ray
https://www.bluereflection-ray.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 9th

Show Premise: 
Magical teenage girls fight monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Here is what I'm calling the weirdest RPG adaptation, although this isn't actually based on the game, so it's even weirder. Everybody was done with it back in 2017 when it was released on every platform known to man and met with a resounding meh. Or at least it was when I originally wrote this, because Gust literally just the other day announced both a sequel and a mobile version, so apparently they're trying to franchise this for god only knows what reason. It was one of the many Persona wannabes like Caligula, but with an extra melodramatic magical girl angle, and extra poorly worked in assist mechanics where random girls you've befriended run onto the battlefield and *checks notes* touch up your make up. Uh, right. Girl power all the way. The promos are just sad sparkling girls, and nobody noteworthy is in key staff positions. I wouldn't expect there to be much monster fighting, if any at all.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The mantis shrimp of teenage girl puberty is judging you.

EDENS ZERO
https://edens-zero.net/news/anime.html
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Fairy Tail in Space
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
Magical teenagers go on space adventures.

Random Thoughts:
One thing I've learned poking around at this, is that the fanbase goes into paroxysms if you call it Fairy Tail In Space, so I recommend everybody do it all the time. It's not even much of a stretch. The author certainly has his template, right down to the goddamned magical cat pet. Supposedly what differentiates this, aside from being Fairy Tail, but in space, is that it's super duper serious, as in the protagonist gets shot in the face and they threaten to rape and/or sell women to be raped, but oops, rewind magic and now none of it ever happened, but we still get to say it did for our Seriousness bona fides. I just hope it's as hilariously horribly animated as Fairy Tail's first episode was. Lord knows JC Staff these days could pull that feat off.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Friendship power is sus.

Battle Athletes Grand Meet ReSTART!
http://daiundoukai-restart.jp/
Studio: Seven
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
Space teenagers go to the space olympics.

Random Thoughts:
One of the greatest crimes of this season is removing Akari's giant hair antennas. I've never even watched Battle Athletes, but I consider her goofy hair to be a hallmark not only of her character, but of 90s anime. I miss giant, weird goofy hair, especially of the emotive variety. Bring back the big hair vents, dammit. Anywho, not quite a reboot, but an adaptation of the short lived and seemingly unpopular manga reboot from a year ago, no doubt meant to cash in on the Olympics that were wiped out by Covid. If someone boxes a kangaroo, I'll consider it a win. The promos are all melodrama, zero sports, but do have a kickboxing kangaroo in the background of one shot, so my hope is not totally out of the question.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Bring back ridiculous fashion in anime. Er, ridiculouser.

The High School Club Corner

Burning Kabaddi
https://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/kabaddi/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Speedlines
Premieres April 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenage dudes play kabaddi.

Random Thoughts:
I don't want to explain kabaddi. Let's call it the short range flag football version of red rover. It doesn't really matter though when you're not going to animate much of anything. I hope you like dramatic shots with speedlines, because the promo is goddamned made of them. Kabaddi doesn't even have all that much motion to begin with. More like random lunges and then frantic scrambling. It has the usual corny sports tropes too, like the dude with laser trails on his eyes to show how fast he's moving without actually moving, the dude with a fire aura, and the excessively details sweat drops. But in the end, it always comes down to speedlines. No Keijo or even HaruKana here. Just… speedlines, apparently.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

At least there probably won't be another sumo show for a while.

Those Snow White Notes
https://mashironooto-official.com/
Studio: Shin-Ei Animation
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 2nd

Show Premise: 
Teenagers play the shamisen.

Random Thoughts:
The key failing for 99% of these club shows is that they don't have any actual passion for or focus on their subject matter. Well, it'd be better if they just told compelling stories about interesting characters who also happen to involve being in some club or whatever, but I know not to expect the moon. Shows like GA Art Club or HaruKana display the passion that they have for their random activity exuberantly and unabashedly. It's not just the generic template, melodrama version, with a random activity slotted in. Which ones become popular and why remain a complete mystery to me. I think they need to hit a critical amount of melodrama and be a fringe enough activity. I doubt slightly weird banjo is fringe enough.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

You spin me right round baby right round.

Farewell, My Dear Cramer
https://sayonara-cramer.com/
Studio: LIDENFILMS
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 4th

Show Premise: 
Teenage girls play soccer.

Random Thoughts:
Lest anybody hope this is about some weird Butterfly Effect relating to Jim Cramer ending up the coach of a Japanese girl's soccer team, it's a reference to Dettmar Cramer, a German coach recruited by Japan who brought them, uh… soccer coaching. Man, we blew our load too early this season with the space olympics and kabaddi. And there's still two more banal club sports shows to go after this, and as I said, I pulled the plug on a show about pottery for being too blatantly a long advertisement. Almost makes one miss the glut of idol shows. Doesn't, but almost tempted to think about it. Anyway, from the promos, this one's big selling point appears to be very badly drawn lips. There is no soccer. Not even still shots with action lines. Just weird lips and melodramatic music. Be still my beating heart.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Play it with a large rat and then we'll talk.

Super Cub
https://supercub-anime.com/
Studio: Studio KAI
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 7th

Show Premise: 
Teenage girls ride motorcycles.

Random Thoughts:
The super cub is a kind of motorcycle. It's not about a bear with super powers who fights forest crimes. God, I wish it was. The promos for this are all sad music and shots of girls leisurely puttering around on bikes, both analog and mechanical. Great job, Honda. Money well spent advertising motorcycles to teenage high school girls. Is that really a target demographic worth pursuing? Who is this even for? I genuinely don't understand the way Japan does advertising. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Each day we creep closer to a topiary club show.

Backflip!!
https://bakuten-pr.com/
Studio: ZEXCS
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 8th

Show Premise: 
Teenagers do rhythm gymnastics.

Random Thoughts:
Oh thank god, it's the last of the absurdly melodramatic high school sports club shows. Just like all the others, the promos are mainly sad music, a lack of animation, and some random dude sparkling against a background flooded in sparklies. Wait, no, that's selling the differences here a little short. It doesn't have sparklies. It uses a flurry of cherry blossoms. Man, we were really expecting to cash in big on the popularity of the Tokyo Olympics, weren't we, Japan?

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Performative couch floor routine.

Pretty Boy Detective Club
https://bishonen-tanteidan.com/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
Pretty teenage boys solve crimes.

Random Thoughts:
This one's claim to fame is that it's based on a light novel series by Nisio Isin of *Gatari fame, but let's also not forget that he's penned a lot of stuff which has had all manner of adaptations, from Medaka Box to Zodiac War. It is Shaft though, and being directed by Shinbo, or Shimbo, or Simbo, or however he wants to Romanize his name these days. We're probably a couple years away from it being The Artist Formerly Known as Simbo. Point is that the art style is excessive and going to be filled with backwards leaning head tilts. I'm pretty sure it's still going to be a boy detective club, and since there are at least 2-3 of those every season these days, I don't think having a girl be one of the pretty boys or head tilts are the spice needed to reinvent the formula and make it cool again. As if it were ever cool in the first place.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

I promise to never refer to this as Pretty Boy Dick Club.

People With Magical Powers Doing Punchies

Shaman King
https://shamanking-project.com/
Studio: Bridge
Genre: Action
Premieres April 1st

Show Premise: 
Shamans fight in a shaman tournament to find out who the shamanest shaman is of all.

Random Thoughts:
We escape the melodramatic high school clubs and run straight into the maw of a Jump reboot of a twenty year old series, and as always, it purports to be even more true to the source than the first go round. Couldn't you just go the Dragonball route and create a supercut of the original? Is there really more money in a ground up complete reanimation? It's hard to see how. Yeah, yeah, I suppose the original run did its own thing and ended well before the source did, so the Kai treatment probably won't work, or would need to fork off after some 40 odd episodes. See I know vague things about Jump shows. Or can look them up on Wikipedia. It's a Jump show. It'll have a lot of screaming, excessive goofy exposition about the powers, even more screaming, and going on forever. My track record with them is not great.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

It lurks.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched
https://kisaragi-co.jp/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Comedy
Premieres April 4th

Show Premise: 
An evil organization dispatches special agents to invade a magical planet.

Random Thoughts:
Same author as KonoSuba, but seemingly where all the even worse ideas went, and that was a series that wore out its welcome with me by the end of the first season through sheer repetition of its few gags. Anyway, evil in this case meaning petty dicks, where they give out Evil Points for things like sexually harassing women, or forcing people to say "vagina." Step aside, Disgaea. New super evil badasses in town. It also takes approximately three picoseconds before they declare that there can only be one evil organization in town, so side with the good guys for the remainder of the story against the existing evil demon lord's forces, so way to really commit to the premise.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Might be okay. Might be filled with plastic. Definitely going to be bad for you.

Seven Knights Revolution: The Hero's Successor
https://sevenknights-anime.jp/
Studio: LIDENFILMS
Genre: Action
Premieres April 4th

Show Premise: 
There were seven knights. People are successors to their power.

Random Thoughts:
The promos for this actually aren't too bad. Granted, they're mostly just montages of people sort of generically fighting, but they're also of people fighting. It comes from one of the many, many cell phone games in this vein, which appears to be an action RPG where everybody transforms into silly costumes and flies around like it's Dragonball. There are also way more than seven magical people. Gotta fund that gacha somehow, right? Liden's sort of mediocre as a studio though, and nobody noteworthy on the staff. I don't expect the moon, but I feel like their head's in the right spot at least as far as highlighting what the fun part is of super powered crazy people in silly costumes fighting, so will probably be in the higher echelon of gacha-based game adaptions… which is becoming a disturbingly crowded field.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Log in for three weeks to unlock limited time rewards.

MARS RED
https://marsred.tv/
Studio: Signal.MD
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 5th

Show Premise: 
Vampires are spreading like wildfire, so the army recruits vampires to fight vampires.

Random Thoughts:
First episode already had an early webcast. It was trying to be artistic, but was barely animated and the main character had the presence and personality of drywall. It didn't establish much of a story, nor any compelling direction for either the plot or the characters to be going in future episodes. It did make overtures of being artistic, but I doubt that'll last unless every single vampire they come across is going to be some tragically killed actress. I wouldn't put it past the show to try that though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Like a wide variety of bread.

The Princess of Snow and Blood
https://joran.jp/
Studio: Bakken Record
Genre: Action
Premieres April 6th

Show Premise: 
Secret magical government agents hunt and execute monsters and dissidents.

Random Thoughts:
Also had its first episode premiere early, and definitely a stronger showing than the above in just about every aspect. Characters were more fun, a few more murderous children, some action, crossbows hidden in umbrellas, the works. A bit cornier, sure, but who really wants super serious brooding vampires? Even better, a fair bit of the action sequences in the promo weren't part of the first episode, so they haven't blown their entire load early. Not that it'll wow you on the action front, but at least it's putting in an honest effort. Bakken is a division of Tatsunoko, but they've been indulging in crappy children's shows for the last few years, so no idea if their old talent is still around. Well, it earned a look past the first episode at any rate.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Two Luigi changelings.

Tokyo Revengers
https://tokyo-revengers-anime.com/
Studio: LIDENFILMS
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
A dude discovers he can travel back and forth in time and change the past. He tries to use his power to save his ex-girlfriend from being caught in the middle of a gang war and killed.

Random Thoughts:
I wouldn't get my hopes up much for this one. The promos are barely animated, and the manga this is based on is an absurdly melodramatic affair where the dude is basically constantly crying and swearing he's going to do his best and not mess things up this time. His resolve touches the heart of the noble gangsters who take him under their wing until the next one can threaten him or his past-girlfriend and they go through the same song and dance. It sort of fancies itself a mystery, but not the kind where anybody is in any real hurry to figure anything out. More the kind where they go "Wait, he's a killer in the present, but he's a nice guy in the past. Something strange is going on here!" And then scream about seeing a woman in a bra and cry over running into the actual girlfriend again.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Getting over it, with lots of crying and screaming.

86
https://anime-86.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
The citizens of Area 86 are enslaved and forced to secretly pilot robots to fight in the robot wars.

Random Thoughts:
There's almost more shots of people putting on jackets in the promos than there is of war. It doesn't help either that the war here is all overtly 100% CGI, and even then, is more close ups of explosions than anything else. Which is to say, don't expect, say, Aquarion-like mecha battles. I'm not sure I'd expect even dogfights from what the promos show. But the light novel this is based on is less about that and more about torture porn centered on racism, but also fetishizing the hell out of garter belts. It's weird that that keeps coming up in impressions and reviews, but I guess it must be, uh, overt. We'll see, I suppoe, but I'm usually not much of a fan of heavy dramas. I can drive downtown most days of the week if I want to see racists trying to start riots. It's something I'd rather avoid.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Aren't we about due for another Aquarion?

Non-Humans Are People Too

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song
https://vivy-portal.com/
Studio: Studio Wit
Genre: Action
Premieres April 3rd* (1 hour premiere)

Show Premise: 
The AI of an unpopular theme park is recruited by a time traveling AI to stop the future war between humans and machines by wiping out the machines.

Random Thoughts:
This is a wholly original affair, and to its credit, the promos are full of blood, explosions, martial arts, and excessively detailed close-ups of eyes to show their digital nature. On the other hand, the time traveler takes the form of a magical pet teddy bear. Because anime. It does have the writer behind Re:Zero behind it, but let's remember that he also wrote one of those godawful Strike Witches/Azur Lane knockoffs, so even if you like him, or expect that means it's going to be full of bonkers plot twists, that's no promise of anything. Wit is also hugely uneven as far as production goes, but this certainly looks more like the effort put into (eg) Kabaneri than Vinland Saga. It certainly has some of the more promising marketing of the season so it's woth keeping an eye on.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Mischief Makers is the greatest robot apocalpyse story of all time.

Dragon Goes House Hunting
https://doraie.com/
Studio: Signal.MD
Genre: Comedy
Premieres April 4th

Show Premise: 
A slacker dragon gets kicked out and has to find a lair for himself.

Random Thoughts:
It's probably not a great thing when I can easily compare this to a Softhouse Chara (RIP) game and remember all the jokes and gags that had, on top of the story, romance, and vast rape dungeons. This one leans hard into the "we're 100% an RPG" schtick, and most chapters are basically explaining one kind of RPG dungeon, and then yelling that you can't actually live there. Here's a dungeon full of traps. Traps in a living space are dangerous! Here's an undead themed dungeon. Zombies and ghosts are scary! Here's an expensive dungeon. You have to sell adventurer loot to pay for it! Not quite plumbing the high points of observational humor here, guys. The promos don't promise much of a rollicking good time either.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

One triceratops mug.

Odd Taxi
http://oddtaxi.jp/
Studio: OLM
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 7th

Show Premise: 
Animal taxi driver drives a taxi in animal city.

Random Thoughts:
Sort of technically an original thing, in that the manga it's based on is literally just one volume that came out, uh, Tuesday, so not actually a lot to go on. It seems to be pretty much Zootopia Noir though, and anime hasn't usually done noir particularly well. There's a large cast, a murder mystery that is slowly uncovered and investigated that involves most of them, etc. I doubt it's going to have too many animal fun facts, but you never know. The weirdest part of the marketing pack is how they explain a taxi license like it's some kind of bizarre alien concept unique to the setting. …Yeah, I don't have much to go off of. The vehicles are super bad CGI in the promos? There's NOT going to be crazy animal fights? A taxi is involved?

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Abnormal jetski.

Shadows House
https://shadowshouse-anime.com/
Studio: CloverWorks
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
A family of shadow people is attended to by their servant dolls that act as their faces in the world.

Random Thoughts:
It's hard to describe the manga this comes from. Which is different from saying that the manga it comes from is particularly interesting or engaging. It is a Jump creation, after all, one more in the vein of Promised Neverland where there's a cadre of comically cruelly exploited children, but this one takes one hell of a slow burn and is content to goof around and treat the parasitic soot monsters wanting to body-snatch brainwashed children as just a silly joke most of the time. I mean, sure, not all parasitic soot monsters are bad people, so here's a goofy chapter about riding a giant vacuum to fight an army of tiny silly soot monsterlings. Yay, friendship! But also everybody is being drugged, brainwashed, and devoured by colonies of semi-sentient parasites. Anyway, like I said, a bit hard to describe, but definitely shooting for a specific crowd. For me to bite, they'd have to play up the surreal creepy angle way the hell more, and way the hell sooner than the manga does, which the promos absolutely do not seem to be doing, because it's Jump.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Their toilet system must be incredible.

To Your Eternity
https://anime-fumetsunoanatae.com/index.html
Studio: Brain's Base
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 12th

Show Premise: 
An immortal alien creature travels the world, assimilating new experiences from the deaths that occur around it.

Random Thoughts:
Written by the same author as A Silent Voice, and also not easy to describe because the manga here because it goes for a super artsy approach, but philosophically doesn't aspire to much greater thoughts than "death is sad but inevitable," or "immortality is suffering." It does apparently get a bit weird at some point, with like alien invaders killing people because they're essentially doomsday Christians trying to send people to heaven, or a puppet master overseer, but who knows? I'm not a big fan of the maudlin thinky kind of shows anyway, particularly the depressing ones.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

This bean means business.

In Another World With A Title That is Too Long and Too Descriptive

The Saint Has Omnipotent Magic
https://seijyonomaryoku.jp/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 6th

Show Premise: 
See title.

Random Thoughts:
I've put off the terrible light novel other world god power status screen nonsense as far as I can, and now the piper must be paid. The first of these for the season, and weirdly, the manga version seems fairly well received while the original light novel version is largely panned. It's schtick is that two girls were summoned to be the super magical healy saint, they picked the prettier one, and booted the other to the curb with the predictable results that the first status screen found reveals that the reject has 1,000,000,000 Holy Power and infinite MP, but she's just gonna sit here in her shack, making holy potions, being attended to by a nonstop parade of the prettiest of pretty boys, all vying for her reluctant attention. More sparkles. More wind. More monocles.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

More beholders never did harm to any show.

What If the Ultimate Advanced Full Dive RPG was a Crappier Game than Reality
https://fulldive-rpg.com/
Studio: ENGI
Genre: Action
Premieres April 7th

Show Premise: 
See title.

Random Thoughts:
An unabashed harem where the gimmick is that the VR game is super realistic, but very poorly coded and a bunch of the mechanics and sidequests don't make sense. Because that's so extremely different from the standard other world game-ification setting. Well, at least the promos don't really focus too heavily on that angle. Instead, they focus more on how there's a bunch of girls and oops, their clothes are falling off or they're making goofy expressions. It comes from the same author as Overly Cautious Hero, so that shouldn't be too great a shock. There are some little action bits, I guess. I still doubt it'll rise up to the great heights of things like, uh, Princess Connect though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Needs a better gaming chair.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
https://slime300-anime.com/
Studio: REVOROOT
Genre: Comedy
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
See title.

Random Thoughts:
The super weird thing about this one is not just that it somehow ran for 15 volumes in 5 years (which is disturbing output in and of itself), but that it's somehow spawned a ton of dumb spinoffs, like "I Did Data Entry For 1500 Years So The Demon Lord Made Me His Minister." I'm serious. That's an actual title of a light novel that spun off from this. It's also a little baffling because it appears to be more Anne of Green Gables than anything, just some random immortal girl living a pastoral life with her personal harem of little girls, avoiding adventures, everybody screaming their bloody heads off and overreacting to everything despite having a literal demigod next to them. The promos seem to have a lot more monsters and adventure-adjacent things than the light novels, so maybe they're looking for a more slapstick approach? Still a crowded field even in the niche it's trying to claim and I don't know what unique selling point this is purporting to bring.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

I've been boiling water for 15 minutes and my pot overfloweth.

Romances For People Who Detest Healthy Relationships

After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took In a High School Runaway
http://www.higehiro-anime.com/
Studio: project No.9
Genre: Drama
Premieres April 5th

Show Premise: 
See title.

Random Thoughts:
What a smooth transition from one awful subcategory to the next. The defense for this one is that he tries to have a fatherly relationship with her, because anime has never done that horribly wrong in any way every single time it pulls that crap. But is taking in a teenage runaway and forcing her to be your live-in maid to rehabilitate her really an improvement because you said "but no sex allowed. No siree." Kind of seems like you're doing the same thing as a billion other terrible shows and all you've added is a creepy power dynamic. Nor does it help that the thing is transparently a big ol' harem with every single goddamned female in it inevitably falling in love with the dickless idiot. What fun.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Gold prize for sanctimonious ass.

It's Disgusting to Call This Love
https://koikimo.jp/
Studio: Nomad
Genre: Ugh
Premieres April 5th

Show Premise: 
Businessman falls in love with his teenage sister's best friend.

Random Thoughts:
Another show that had an early premiere, and it is every bit as bad as the premise suggests, if not worse. The dude literally stalks her and tells her that he gets off on her telling him to stop. She makes a disgusted face and then shrugs and goes on with her day, learning to love and appreciate the attention in the process. Truly, these obsessive stalkers are just misunderstood, and their underage victims need to be doing a better job empathisizing with their feelings and working to understand and return their affection. Uh… right.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Officer, that's him.

Don't Tease Me, Nagatoro
https://nagatorosan.jp/
Studio: Telecom Animation
Genre: Ugh
Premieres April 10th

Show Premise: 
Girl teases socially awkward boy.

Random Thoughts:
Another one of these, huh? But with slightly more exaggerated expressions to make it less and less distinguishable from bad pornography. Because that was the issue with Takagi or Uzaki's schticks. This has essentially all the same issues as the above, but with the genders reversed. It merely trades out the creepy age thing for a creepy threats of violence thing. All forgivable and laughed off because she actually likes him. Why won't anybody ever think of the feelings of overbearing tormenters in a relationship? Can't we all learn to love our bullies? They do it out of affection, after all. I feel like mostly what this is going to contribute to the world is the variety of screencaps trolls post with "U MAD" as a cutting riposte to utterly disarm their opposition.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going 'Beep-Beep!'

A Romantic Comedy Where the Childhood Friend Absolutely Will Not Lose
https://osamake.com/
Studio: Dogakobo
Genre: Comedy
Premieres April 14th

Show Premise: 
A dude finds out his crush already has a boyfriend and swears revenge.

Random Thoughts:
Sure, it seems horrid, but would it help if I told you that the surprise twist is that she actually has a crush on him and it's another trashy harem instead? No? What if you found out that every single character is secretly some kind of famous author or TV star? Still not on board? Well, all of them have nicknames from Fire Emblem! See how in touch with young people it is? Can't get that just anywhere, now can you? The promos play up the trashy angle too, with the titular character being all over the main character like some kind of particularly aggressive octopus. So… fanservice to feed the Nice Guy contingent, basically. Grand.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Dragon Ball set the bar for thematic naming so, so, so low.