What I'm Watching This Fall 2025 Anime Season

It’s a bit of everything this fall season: something old, something new, something really old... and something really crazy.

The something old isn’t that old, really, but it’s been around now for eight seasons. Now in its final season, My Hero Academia is ending in a shonen supernova of fighting.

I’ve written before that - while I appreciate that shonen stories can only end in one way, i.e., the fight against the last boss - I do wish that they didn’t all have the same feel to them. As in: the team defeats the last boss only to find that he’s not the last boss; the big villain looks like he’s been killed (but he somehow springs back to life); the final boss that keeps morphing into even bigger and more spectacular forms until he seems totally impossible to defeat in any human terms, etc.

When you bet your climax on the biggest battle ever, it tends to run along the same lines as all the other shonen climax battles. While My Hero Academia is a quality show and there have been standout episodes here toward the end (the “Final Boss” episode, featuring Bakugo’s rescue of All Might, was absolutely killer), I find myself waiting for the big battle to be over so I can see how all the characters end up.

The something really old is, of course, Gintama. I didn’t even know they were doing a spinoff series, so the appearance of this one in the fall season lists surprised me.

Gintama ended years ago. It had a few concluding movies, and then it seemed like it would pass into anime history without any more iterations. As might be expected, this season’s Mr. Ginpachi’s Zany Class is a side story, or rather, a vignette-type series where the characters are school kids with Ginpachi himself as their teacher.

Naturally, I’ll watch anything Gintama, so I’m watching this one. It’s great hearing all the seiyuu in their roles again, and I love that they brought back Prince Hata, this time as the school principal.

Prince Hata is played by seiyuu Kouichi Sakaguchi, who gives the character just the most hysterically funny voice. He’s the perfect character to bring back in the principal’s role, as he delights in thwarting Ginpachi in various ways, while always failing (since he’s... not too smart).

There’s always at least one series each season that falls into the “when I have time to watch it” category, and this fall, it’s A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, my “something new” anime series.

I’m partial to stories about the manga publishing industry. My favorite remains Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi for its BL couples and intense love dynamics between Takano and Onodera, but I’ll watch literally any series if it’s set in the industry.

Here’s the description from MyAnimeList.net:
New shoujo manga artist Nana Futami works hard every day while being supported by Kaede Satou, her female editor who is older than her, and Mizuki Hazama, her assistant. According to the girl herself, she sometimes drums up intense daydream delusions of occupational illness! A working girls comedy set in the entertainment industry, brought to you by an author who always draws various girls.

And finally... I’m not even sure what category this last one fits into. Maybe it’s a new category of anime on its own? The only certainty is that it’s completely crazy.

From MyAnimeList.net:
In the middle of a ball, Scarlet's fiancé, Kyle, suddenly calls off their engagement. She's falsely accused of being a bully and people unfairly call her a "Villainess." The aristocrats and noble families all denounce her. For years, she had to put up with his abuse and idiocy, but she can't take any more of it! At her wit's end, she asks for one last favor; to give him a good fist in the face. So begins Scarlet's story of revenge against Kyle and his cronies! A fantasy about an elegant yet rebellious fighter, who doesn't let anyone take advantage of her!!

And... that’s it. That’s the whole plot of May I Ask for One Final Thing? Scarlet is wronged by various people, and then she goes and punches them out with her magic-enhanced fist.

According to Anime News Network, May I Ask for One Final Thing? is actually isekai. I haven’t gotten that far in the series yet, but that’s kind of interesting. Until that fact is revealed, I’m fine with Scarlet meting out her particular brand of justice to the deserving, for any reasons she chooses. ;-)

Fifteen Years Later

In June 2009, I wrote my first post for this blog.

It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have passed. When I started writing this blog there were a lot of anime bloggers out there. A few are still going, but most that I was familiar with have stopped blogging.

I’ve been writing this blog for so long that I’ve outlived some of Blogger’s features like Feedburner. If you were around then, you might remember the little counter in the right-hand column. At some point Feedburner glitched on my dashboard and disappeared and I figured they were out of business. (I just looked them up and actually they are still in business... but this blog now supposedly has a built-in feed so I probably won’t reactivate Feedburner, if I even could again for this blog.)

The industry and the people who write about it keep changing. This is normal. This blog had a slowdown in 2015-18 when I posted infrequently and thought about just stopping, until I decided otherwise and started posting regularly again.

My involvement in anime has been as a fan and also a translation rewriter and editor for a lot of years now. Like most interests, mine has waxed and waned and gone through many stages. It’s not the 110% obsession it once was, but it’s pretty strong once again.

I think when Boruto went on hiatus in early 2023, it threw me for a loop. For months I didn’t even log in to Crunchyroll to watch anything. It wasn’t that Boruto was such a gigantic favorite of mine; it was more that it continued the feel of the Naruto universe and my fandom was hooked into shounen story universes in general. So when it went on hiatus, I just took a little break from anime simulcasts altogether.

This year I really got back into watching simulcasts again, and now I look forward to each new anime season to see what there is to watch.

For me, watching the finale of Attack on Titan last year also felt like an ending of some kind. It was like the era of shounen series I used to watch such as AoT and Naruto/Boruto was over and now something new would have to show up.

Other shounen series I loved ended years ago. Gintama is a prime example. Something like Kaiju No. 8, as good and as fun as it is, can’t compare to a multi-layered complex story universe like Gintama’s universe.

One can’t expect a gem like Gintama to come along every day, of course. And I don’t keep up with all of the series that are out there. I could be missing something special.

Regardless, I’m still a happy anime fan these days. I don’t know that I have another 15 years of this blog left in me (lol) - but I’ll be here a while yet.

If you’re somewhat new to this blog, I’ve written a few posts about Neo-Shonen Fujoshi over the years. If you’re interested, here are some of them.

Nine Years Later

Ten Years Later

The Story of This Blog

The Death of Long-Running Anime

I’m in a null zone right now in regards to anime.

It happened unexpectedly when Boruto suddenly went on hiatus with little notice. Boruto was my Sunday morning habit until it wasn’t, and that absence really made a difference.

Something else occurred in April this year that brought this home to me. I was on a business trip in the Sea-Tac area of Washington State and had planned a few free days in downtown Seattle after the business part of my trip concluded.

After I checked into my hotel, I was startled to discover that Sakura-Con was being held that same weekend. I went to the convention center to register for the con’s last day, only to find that registration had closed an hour before.

Sakura-Con was on my radar for years as an anime fan. I’d always figured I’d go to it sometime. It’s not on the level of Anime Expo or even Otakon, but it’s at least at Fanime level as far as the numbers go. I’ve been so out of the loop on anime news that I didn’t even know that Sakura-Con was going to take place while I was in the Seattle area.

And that brings up another thought. I haven’t watched any new anime series in quite some time. I don’t care for isekai and unless some old favorite miraculously comes back from the dead like Bleach I find I’m not interested enough to try anything new.

It’s not a quality issue... I think. I think it’s a difference in the types of stories being produced these days.

My favorite anime series have been long-running shonen stories like Naruto, Bleach and Gintama, stories that go for hundreds of episodes where you can really get into the characters and the universe that they inhabit.

There isn’t anything that feels like that kind of story now in the anime world. There’s no brilliant Fullmetal Alchemist or cool Gundam 00 to watch anymore, to look forward to every week.

It could be that that particular kind of manga or anime story belonged to a certain era - and that era is now gone.

This young anime fan puts it perfectly.

Title: The DEATH of Long Running Anime
Creator: Blank Thoughts
Warning: Some salty language



I can’t fault art forms for evolving, and nothing in life stays the same. I do miss this kind of story though.

Ironically... I am attending an anime convention this weekend. I made the arrangements months ago. I don’t know what it will feel like to be at a post-pandemic full-on anime convention again. I’ll post my con report here when I return.

Mukokuseki and Concepts of Race and Beauty

Eleven years ago, I wrote about mukokuseki, the Japanese term for the “race-neutral” big-eyed look favored in anime and manga. As a relatively new anime fan, I was struck by how western-appearing the characters looked... or so I saw it then.

At that time, I read the TV Tropes essay on mukokuseki, which has since been updated and is even more interesting to read now than it was then. The most commonly accepted explanation for why manga and anime characters typically have big round eyes is attributed to Osamu Tezuka being influenced by Disney characters, and his great success more or less cementing a certain look for manga and anime characters ever after that.

Recently I thought about the issue again in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and civil rights protests in the U.S. I support Black Lives Matter and all civil protestors, because attitudes toward race and ethnicity have not only affected me personally and professionally as an American of Japanese ancestry, but have profoundly affected the lives of millions of Americans, including white Americans. It’s impossible to divorce oneself from these issues if you are an American, no matter what your color.

To me, the obvious, logical, and gracious solution is to acknowledge that we truly are all equal in this country and our culture; that injustices happened and mistakes were made in the past; and that moving forward into the future that the entertainment media that reflects our society has to do a much better job of representing everyone who lives here.

Anime and manga – especially anime and manga translated into English – is of course a niche medium, enjoyed here in the U.S. by people who appreciate Japanese pop culture, or who at the very least are not averse to Japanese culture and Japanese people. I recall recognizing, early on, the feeling of being comfortable when attending anime conventions. I knew I was somewhere where my Japanese face was always going to be welcome and not looked at askance.

I’ve been thinking about mukokuseki in the context of representation, because it occurred to me that manga and anime could have gone another way.

Take, for example, the real-life historical figure of Toshizo Hijikata. Hijikata was the vice-captain of the Shinsengumi, the legendary samurai force tasked with guarding the last shogun in 19th-century Japan. If you’re an anime fan, you already know that there are a lot of depictions of the Shinsengumi in anime and manga, from Kaze Hikaru to Peacemaker Kurogame to Gintama, and many other story universes.

The Shinsengumi – let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that they were an uber-reactionary law enforcement division of a rigidly hierarchical government system – are usually presented in a romanticized fashion as the last samurai of a dying era.

Hijikata in particular is a heavily romanticized figure. He was a handsome man (see his Wikipedia page for proof), and was idolized during his lifetime by many.

Here’s Hijikata as depicted in the Hakuouki anime series:

And here he is in the Gintama universe:

Notice anything? They look pretty Japanese, don’t they?

Representation has value not only for the obvious reasons of inclusivity and fairness, but for other reasons too. You can argue that the idea of what makes someone beautiful or attractive is of lesser importance, but I would say it’s part of the same thing. Do you see a certain segment of society or overlook them? And – the most difficult question of all – does that segment of society itself see and accept themselves as valued, attractive, important? Because seeing people who look like you being represented in your culture is part of it, and has more of a significant impact than you might think, especially if you are younger.

I wonder what would have been the outcome if Osamu Tezuka, instead of going with the Disney-inspired round-eyed look, had decided to create character designs that more authentically represented the way most Japanese people look.

One choice made over 70 years ago influenced the self-concept of generations that came after it. It’s something to think about.

Ten Years Later

Once upon a time, there was a young American girl.

Her grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Japan, making the girl a third-generation Japanese-American.

She grew up in a white neighborhood in Southern California, a child in the 1960s and a teenager in the 1970s. Not that long after WWII, with Pearl Harbor within living memory of most people.

She felt American inside, even if some people she met saw her face and considered her a foreigner. Her parents, who spoke both English and Japanese, only spoke English at home, perhaps to ensure that she would be seen as American as possible by other Americans.

They never taught her anything about the culture of her grandparents and ancestors.

She didn’t mind. After all, she was American.

Many years passed.

One evening, she was watching the Starz Network and saw something she’d never seen before.

It was something called anime — animation from Japan.

It blew her mind.

Not only was the story adult in tone, but it was what she knew as slash — a romance between two men. She had no idea that entertainment like this existed outside of fandom, and from a foreign country too.

Japan. A country she was connected to by blood made shows like this. She was staggered to find this out.

But that wasn’t all. The Starz Network also had other anime series.

Slowly, as if being drawn in against her will, she began to search out more anime to watch.

It was her first exposure to Japanese manga and anime art styles, and what she saw changed her whole view on art.

She particularly loved how some anime series created entire universes one could lose oneself in — the setting, characters and stories forming whole worlds in themselves.

She fell in love with so many characters... and the seiyuu who played them.

She attended many anime conventions, discovering the love her fellow fans had for anime.

... And that sometimes, one could meet a Shonen Jump editor in real life that you’d seen in an anime.

She started a blog so she could write about her love for anime and manga.

And she began taking Japanese lessons, finally starting to learn the language of her grandparents — and discovered what her name was in Japanese (ジャン 鈴川).

Since she’d worked as an editor before, she began freelancing as a translation rewriter/editor for the U.S. companies that published manga and anime-related books.

She edited many books in the field:

Even the yaoi light novels she loved to read... she became the editor of some of those books as well.

The world she entered when she became an anime fan expanded her sense of storytelling and setting, and inspired her first published novel.

That novel set her on the road to other fictional worlds, and other series that she is still writing today.

Her love for anime and manga gave her a second career in editing, as well as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream — to be a published fiction writer.

It brought her full-circle in terms of acceptance and appreciation for her heritage as a Japanese-American.

So be open, and stay curious as to the world around you. Because one day, you may be watching television or surfing the Internet and not expecting your life to change, but — it can.

A gift that takes your life in a new direction can come to you, unexpected, sent to you by the universe with hidden hands.

Thank you for reading this blog for the past ten years.