2026 has started off with a lot of big, complicated Gender Feelings, looked at with a range of styles and skill levels.
The team split up the three-episode reviews between staff volunteers, with one person putting together a short(ish) review on each series. Like we do with our check-in podcasts, we started from the bottom of our Premiere Digest list and worked our way up.
If we didn’t watch a show for at least three episodes, we skipped it, and we’ve used nice bold headers to help you quickly jump to the shows you’re interested in. We’ve also excluded shows that are continuing on in basically the same vein as our premiere review to conserve space. Because this article is coming out later than the usual check-in, writers may be mentioning detail up to episode five.
We don’t have the time to keep up with everything, so please let us know about any gems we might be missing in the comments!
Wondering, “hey, where’s the show I’m into?!” As we mentioned, we’re not able to cover everything every season—but we’d like to. In fact, we made it a funding goal. So you can make your dream a reality!
“Staying the Course” Digest
We’re still enjoying and watching these shows. However, they’re not doing anything dramatically different in terms of themes, characters, etc., so there isn’t anything new to write about them. Please check out the premiere review for details:
Wash it All Away
Vrai: This is a bit of an odd duck. After dipping a toe into the manga, I can certainly call the anime a improvement on every front, particularly in the execution of the core concept—a laundry hobby anime. Given how unappreciated clothing care is as feminine labor, it’s just nice to see the genre’s trademark care and detail put into the many traditional processes that still get used by professionals to this day. Giving Kinme amnesia is a tired trope, but it does effectively create a baseline to emphasize the connection between beloved objects and the relationships they represent, not to mention the care that must be taken in maintaining both. It’s a meditative, very Shinto series in that respect, which I dig.
It’s also working to remove the manga’s fan service, which ends up being a little bit of a double-edged sword. I am greatly appreciative that, for example, we don’t get a sudden panty shot when Kinme oversleeps after discovering she’s a lightweight. But there’s still the outline of where the horniness was, if you follow. Sometimes that works out fine—the many excuses to go to the bath house, with the nudity now de-emphasized, feel like they’re part of that community sensibility I mentioned above.
Harder to fix is the way that Kinme feels like a very throwback kind of moe character, the kind that’s so flustered by everyday events that one starts to wonder how she’s alive. I don’t mean the two isolated shots highlighting her cleavage, which I’m frankly happy to shrug off as “people have boobs.” It’s more the emphasis on her extremely blushy and almost tearful face at the slightest inconvenience or embarrassment. Combined with the regular use of the good old “visual novel CG” angle when she debuts a new outfit, it definitely leaves a sense that Kinme is for display as much as she’s our protagonist.
It also means I sincerely cannot tell if the series is trying to foster actual romantic tension between her and a high school boy or if it’s just an exaggeration meant to encourage the audience’s desire to comfort her, since she does the same flustered antics with just about every other character she spends time with. If it were there’s a whole conversation about whether it intends to actually go forward with the age-gap or travel the “intense platonic relationship followed by time skip” model—the latter of which only really works if you’re locked into the emotional experience of the younger party. But it’s so ancillary that it feels like an annoying occasional intrusion than a core show issue, especially when this likely isn’t a full adaptation. The issues leave a bizarre aftertaste, but not enough to assail the strength of what the rest of the anime production is doing.
SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table
Vrai: In a lot of ways, SHIBOYUGI is staying the course, which isn’t necessarily to its benefit. Episodes 2-4 step back in time to Yuki’s 10th game, and it spends three episodes retracing the same broad beats as the premiere, including the Shocking Twist at the end. It’s not bad at it, but it’s definitely a case of diminishing returns that would require a notable shake-up of the formula on the next go-round in order to keep audience attention. It also turns out that the edgy point-of-view tracking shot of a person walking into oncoming traffic is the show’s opening theme, which I do not love. It’s not getting more shocking, just more tacky and dull. The lengthy suffering shots are traded out for more character interaction, which is nice, but the meta commentary is also dialed down for the second game. That could be the author losing interest or, if I put on my optimism hat, holding onto it until the story returns to its “present” and a change in the status quo.
And yet, I cannot be mad at it, because introducing a haughty, sausage-curled girl who steps right on a hubris bomb and then declares Yuki her eternal rival, is pretty choice. Add in Yuki breaking her pragmatist persona to flirt with her in the smuggest possible manner, and it might be in Peak Cinema territory. It’s not nearly as emotionally resonant as it thinks it is, but it continues to look drop-dead gorgeous, and with a sprinkling of yuri on top that might be enough for me. I’m still on the roller coaster for now, but it’s in no danger of replacing Necronomico as my “lesbian death game anime that actually has something to say” recommendation.
ROLL OVER AND DIE
Cy: I knew when I first picked up the thick initial volume that is ROLL OVER AND DIE that I would likely like analyzing this series chapter by chapter and that remains true in the anime adaption. And having read the bulk of volume one, I remain fond of this series, even though it is based in sexual slavery and slavery at its foundation, something which I’m always and even still in this context, opposed to. Slavery as a trope continues to beguile this Black reviewer, and I want to keep that in mind with my next paragraph and statement.
I really, really like this series.
It doesn’t strike the perfect revenge narrative, but what I do think it strikes at is self-emancipation in the same way the novel JK Haru is a Sex Worker strikes at finding empowerment in hostile, patriarchal societies. Much like JK Haru tackles a teenager forced into sex work due to her situation–being perceived as powerless in a stats way–I think that the forced slavery narrative quickly becomes a crude vehicle to demonstrate that we don’t have to feed ourselves to the machine of depravity in cruel systems.
This, of course, gets complicated by the increasingly obvious sapphic romance, which isn’t a shock since the novels are sold as Yuri. While still incredibly fraught, this feels like it’s giving “All The Things She Said” by t.A.T.u with depth, even if it’s not perfect. In truth, it would be easy to compare this series to The Rising of the Shield Hero for its broad foundation of cast-out characters who are forcibly downtrodden by their societies. But please don’t do that because I genuinely think Flum being capable of wielding a skill born of wrath outside of her, but that enables her to enact justice, feels distinctly different.
I genuinely look forward to keeping up with this series because I want to see it push and pull the narrative in interesting ways. I want to see what self-emancipation by the blade looks like in this series, and maybe…get a somewhat feminist surprise along the way.
In the Clear Moonlit Dusk
Cy: The gender dynamics of yuri have always fascinated me as a writer, reader, fan, and reviewer. The “girl princes” archetype is a staple, positioning a masculine girl, or woman, as being equal to—and in the case of yuri, better than—a cis man in terms of desired physical phenotypes and attributes. Here, In the Clear Moonlit Dusk continues to explore that as applied to a heterosexual romance and relationship that posits that girls who are princes—i.e. girls who are masculine—can be cute and desired too.
That’s genuinely interesting to me as a lifelong yuri fan because when removed from the genre and placed in more heterosexual-presenting media, you get this complex yearning for binary roles outside of the main pairing, resulting in an examination of what it means to naturally look a certain way, be comfortable with your body, but also how that can affect social presentation and the wants of your peers. And no character is more affected than Yoi, who is continuing to figure out what it means to like her gender-nonconforming body but understand that she should “want” to be more feminine. Kohaku’s increasingly obvious like of her only muddles that, though it blends well with Yoi’s internal struggles about her body and the gender euphoria she’s starting to find with Kohaku as friend and potential partner.
Now, I’ll admit: the current three episodes have proven that, to me, there’s a trans reading of this narrative even though this isn’t a trans story. After all, the pressure that continues to be put on Yoi to not engage with Kohaku so that people don’t lose their forced objects of their affections is not unlike many aspects of the queer and trans experience. Jealous students and enthused students alike treasure her for gender markers she has that make them view her outside of who she knows she is. In fact, I found myself feeling like the latent homophobia that’s starting to crop up from students who decidedly don’t like Yoi taking away attention from their handsome prince Kohaku is a marker of that examination, furthering a queer read of the series. The same can be said of the gender roles students who do like Yoi keep forcing onto her as their secondary prince.
If it’s not obvious by now, I’m fully invested in In the Clear Moonlit Dusk. I want to see how it chooses to continue to examine gender between two people who read more as “straight yaoi” than anything else. That said, I also genuinely think there’s something deeply fascinating happening with the conversation regarding gender here (which Caitlin is also unpacking over at ANN). Rather than cheapening the series as a gimmick, gender is quickly becoming a vehicle to discuss what heterosexuality can mean, and for that expansive exploration, I think you need to be sat, seated, and watching.
Hana-Kimi
Cy: I have very fond memories of passing around the original VIZ paperbacks of Hana-Kimi when I was in high school. At the time, it was still being serialized, and every volume felt special. It felt revolutionary as a child who never fit their assigned gender, and the thought of being able to fool everyone for the sake of my dreams felt tantalizing.
However, in 2026, I think I’m okay with admitting that for as much as I like this adaptation, it feels…out of place. True, it’s made some very smart and of the time adaptations regarding queerness and how it affects Mizuki in her presentation as male, but there’s still a lot of comments about Mizuki that feel like I’m back in the aughts where “no homo” needed to be tethered to completely innocuous comments by the boys around me. In truth, this feels nostalgically dated, but in a way that pushed me to ponder. In fact, I frequently found myself imagining this situation right now and came to two conclusions: in 2026, Mizuki would likely be able to just do their chosen sport at a mixed gender, or even single gender, school. Or…they’d be a little trans dude. Either is good, to be honest.
That said, even though this is somewhat hamstrung by the fact that it’s an adaptation of a series that, while revolutionary in the 00s, ran from 1996 to 2004, there’s something so special here that’s hard to ignore. You immediately get drawn in by Mizuki and want to see her succeed. You want to see the antics play out. You want to see who she falls for in the end, even if, like me, you already know this story. Plus, I do think it’s fascinating to see older series, especially turn of the century manga, get modern adaptations. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come, but also a chance to do right with today’s language.
Fondness and nostalgia fuel my ongoing watch, but I also think this is just completely worth watching. It has all the hallmarks of a great shojo love story, and I think you’d be missing out if you don’t get on board right now.
Tamon’s B-Side
Alex: This is maybe the most fun I’ve had watching a seasonal anime in a while. I’m laughing through every episode, I’m grooving along to the opening credits, I’m kicking my feet at the more emotional and tender moments—just a pure Good Time all around. Maybe the running gag where Tamon spirals into self-destructive anxiety and Utage moves heaven and earth to pull him out risks getting repetitive; but, well, intrusive thoughts and self-doubt get repetitive in real life, too, and the execution is so charming that I’m not sick of it yet. The show has an excellent sense for pacing and visual flair, and I love that artistic metaphors like Tamon’s Anxiety Mushrooms and fangirls’ exploding heads are increasingly treated as literal aspects of the story world. It cracks me up and speaks to the show’s artistic sensibilities, which are consistently dedicated to being as entertaining and peppy as possible.
But it’s not just sparkle and color: Tamon’s B-Side is showing more and more of its heart as it goes along. The theme of conflict between stage persona and true self is expanding and deepening the more members of F/ACE we meet. Who wants to bet that none of the performers match up to their idol brand, and we’ll soon have a whole cast of troubled boys who have been forced into marketable archetypes by their corporate overlords? It might not become a full-fledged critique of the idol industry’s artificiality, but I predict it will reveal some fun character studies. At the very least, the show invites the audience to consider the way human flaws and so-called undesirable traits can be scrubbed away in the name of fostering parasocial fantasies and selling as much merch as possible.
It’s not shy about exploring the terrors of those fan relationships, either: in a hilarious but also horrifying scene, Utage’s friends and fellow Tamon stans form a pact to “murder that bitch” if they ever catch a fan attempting to breach the idol social contract and date a band member. It means our only other recurring female characters are one-note fangirls, which I’m not super fond of, but it does set up the stakes in an interesting way. Utage is in a constant battle between sincerely wanting to help Tamon, being a (self-aware) frothing-at-the-mouth fangirl, and understanding that she must respect his boundaries. All of this is inevitably going to muddle together as the two of them fall for each other, and I for one am keen to see how the show unpacks it all.
Journal With Witch
Alex: I’m not breaking any new ground if I tell you “Journal With Witch is really good!” but gosh, let me just preface this by saying: Journal With Witch is really, really good. The next few episodes continue the gentle pace, thoughtful direction, and clever and subtle characterization of the premiere, unfurling into a wonderfully grounded personal story about two compelling female characters.
There’s a lot I could discuss here, but I’m going to latch onto Minori, who fills a very different storytelling niche to the usual Dead Anime Mom. As she continues to haunt the narrative, I’m curious about what exactly caused the rift between her and her sister. Maybe the series is building slowly up to the reveal of a grand, emotional catastrophe… or maybe that’s the wrong question to ask. It seems likely, at this point, that we’re looking at more of a death by a thousand papercuts with regards to both her relationship to Makio and Makio’s self-esteem more generally. Interestingly, the narrative keeps quietly but consistently emphasizing that Minori was more “successful” at the traditional expectations of girlhood and womanhood than Makio. She’s nostalgic for the springtime of her youth while Makio threw her school uniform away after graduation; she became a mother while Makio plainly expressed that she didn’t want kids; she always appears in feminine attire while Makio skews more masculine, especially in flashbacks.
Given that plaid shirts and short hair aren’t necessarily a universal queer woman’s aesthetic, I don’t want to read too much into Makio’s younger character design. But I do feel these contrasts between the sisters are intentional, and are pointing towards some commentary. Makio is the family “outlaw,” a recluse, awkward, unmarried (but, also unconventionally, friends with her ex-boyfriend), consistently failing to meet expectations for an adult woman’s life… and that unconventional approach makes her the perfect safe haven for young Asa, who is an outsider in her own ways. Makio isn’t the most traditional parent, but she’s intensely protective of Asa’s autonomy in a way I find both heartwarming and fascinating. All will be revealed, I’m sure, and I’m 100% along for the bittersweet slice-of-life journey.
Isekai Office Worker: The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter
Tony: It’s a strange comparison, given the disparity in genres, but the show Bean Counter reminds me most of is My New Boss is Goofy. A salaryman develops an intense homoerotic relationship with a superior who gives him permission to relax after years of being overworked and underpaid? It’s difficult to not notice the similarities between the shows’ premises. And like Boss is Goofy, Bean Counter is a lovely and pleasant wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Unlike Boss is Goofy, however, it is clear from the beginning that Bean Counter’s protagonist is a gay man. Despite the “fuck or die” premise, Kondou is not somebody who is only having gay sex to survive. As he’s being kissed by Aresh, the narration says he’s “familiar” with what comes next in the bedroom. He even knows the drill when you get an anal sex induced hemorrhoid, and has a donut pillow at home he’s missing in the new world. The sex they have is very clearly consensual, and it is cute to watch Aresh, the younger one, get much more invested in it early on because of his inexperience.
I quite love the wish fulfillment of it all. The fantasy of a relationship that asks you to question your values, take better care of yourself, and generally have a life is one that is much more meaningful than most isekai anime’s power fantasy nonsense. Aresh is a paradoxical figure—often feeling like an older brother figure, even as he is much younger than Kondou, who has let his non-work life skills atrophy in his exploitation at his day job. As somebody with a disability which requires me to go on a fairly extreme diet, it felt extremely familiar to watch Kondou have to learn how to eat with his new magical food intolerances. I’ve had relationships with people who have helped me to navigate these new dietary restrictions, and they sometimes have mirrored the kind of stern but caring hand Aresh shows with Kondou—which, like in Bean Counter, did create some tension in the relationship!
To top it all off, Studio DEEN is animating it with the care they have consistently brought to BL over the last few years. I could not be happier with this show that was very much Made For Me.
The Holy Grail of Eris
Vrai: Eris has spent most of its run so far teetering on the edge between “fun” and “good.” The episodes fly by, and I have yet to tire of Scarlett stepping in at the perfect moment to say something cutting, witty, and considered in a tense social situation. That said, the plot of “Connie bravely goes somewhere to help Scarlett investigate the conspiracy, gets over her head, and requires someone to step in for her” does risk getting a little repetitive, and because this is such a long-achieved conspiracy, it involves a lot of characters monologuing backstory at one another. The brief inclusion of a trafficking subplot in Episode 3 also has a bit of an Othering flavor to it, since it’s the one and only time we’ve seen darker-skinned characters.
But Episode 4 is really where the story has started coming into its own—Connie is starting to find her own skills as Scarlett’s partner rather than just her vessel (in a very Yu-Gi-Oh!-esque fashion that delights me to no end), and the bond between them is a firm anchor for the show. But more importantly, there’s been a concerted effort to make the other women of court besides Scarlett complex in their own right. Plenty of them are cutthroat, horrible people, but there’s a clear sense that it’s born of their strangulating social system. Cecilia, the woman Scarlett was accused of poisoning, is a particularly interesting case, since there are hints that her schemes might be tied to atrocities committed against her homeland. The fact that the source material is completed also bolsters my confidence that there’s a solidly plotted and extant answer to this conspiracy, which counts for an awful lot. I can’t wait to see where this turn from popcorn-munching conspiracy to genuine character drama goes.
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