Listicles like these usually have a hype-inducing phrase like “Most Anticipated,” “Looking Forward To,” or “To Look Out For.” Unfortunately, my most anticipated Winter 2024 and Spring 2024 anime turned out to be profound disappointments for me, so I couldn’t bring myself to title this article in a similar manner.
Still, there are many Summer 2024 anime that have caught my attention, and while this isn’t the first time I’ve had an inflated to-watch list at the start of the season, I feel like this one won’t be reduced that much come September’s end.
So, here are the shows from the new season that I’m most hopeful for — some have action, some have romance, and most look pretty strong on the visual front. With any luck, they’ll prove to be decent watches at the very least, though I’m expecting most of them to reach higher peaks.
SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary
Premiere date: July 6 JST (effectively July 7 at 1:30 AM JST)
Streaming platform: Crunchyroll
Core staff: Mamoru Kanbe (The Perfect Insider, The Promised Neverland) as director, Toshiya Ono (Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Season 2) as series composer, and Atsushi Saito (Love Live! Superstar!!) as character designer
One of the lines uttered by Dune’s warrior-poet Gurney Halleck goes, “Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset.” He forgot to mention that it also applies to watching anime. I’ve put off Kyoto Animation’s adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s Hyouka novels for so long due to mood reasons that there’s now an anime based on another mystery series of his: SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary. This one’s about two students who want to live regular lives, which obviously doesn’t happen (bad for them, good for us).
Lapin Track producing SHOSHIMIN is a bit worrying — its last production, the Mamoru Hatakeyama-directed Undead Murder Farce, had some wonderful storyboards/episode direction and good aesthetics, but saying that it possessed strong production values throughout its run would be like claiming that the planet Arrakis in Dune is covered in ice. Fortunately, the trailers for SHOSHIMIN have revealed a show that looks rather appealing to the eye, and those visuals ought to be able to sustain the experience even if the animation doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.
Too Many Losing Heroines
Premiere date: July 13 JST (effectively July 14 at 12:30 AM JST).
Streaming platform: Crunchyroll
Core staff: Shotaro Kitamura (Overtake! Episode 4 and Shaman King Flowers Episode 5 storyboard artist and director) as director, Masahiro Yokotani (Ohmuro-ke: Dear Sisters) as series composer, Tetsuya Kawakami (86 Eighty-Six) as main character designer
Animation production: A-1 Pictures
Someone always loses when there’s more than a single love interest in a story, but Too Many Losing Heroines isn’t about that type of losing. Kazuhiko Nukumizu is a regular teenager who discovers that various popular girls at his school are getting rejected by their crushes, and he winds up getting caught up in their affairs.
If I’d stumbled on the original light novels at my local Kinokuniya, I might nod in approval at how the synopsis sounds different from most LN rom-coms, but I probably wouldn’t carry a copy with me all the way to the counter. The anime’s trailers, however, quickly won me over with its production values and winsome comedic portrayals of its heroines, who seem like hopeless but lovable doofuses and failures at romance. Basically, it looks good, and it looks fun.
The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used To Be Archenemies
Premiere date: July 9 JST
Streaming platform: TBD
Core staff: Yuniko Ayana (BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!) as series composer, Haruko Iizuka (Horimiya/Josee’) as main character designer
Animation production studio: Bones
An adaptation of a 4-koma manga by the late Cocoa Fujiwara, The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant is about the lieutenant of an earth-invading force falling in love with the magical girl who defends it. The premise is interesting, and the anime’s compositing (the compositing director is Bungo Stray Dogs and Josee, the Tiger and the Fish’s Tsuyoshi Kanbayashi) looks to be a highlight — a best visuals contender for the season and maybe even the year, perhaps?
Plus, while I’m not very familiar with director Akiyo Ohashi’s work, I remember liking the beautiful-looking The Stranger by the Shore anime film that she directed a fair bit, so I consider her presence here as another positive.
2.5 Dimensional Seduction
Premiere date: July 5 JST (two consecutive cours)
Streaming platform: HIDIVE, Bilibili
Core staff: Hideki Okamoto (Konohana Kitan, Manaria Friends) as director, Takao Yoshioka (Horimiya) as series composer, Tomoyuki Shitaya (The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess) as character designer
Animation production studio: J.C.Staff
2.5 Dimensional Seduction has a cosplay theme, high school students as main characters, and romance, but it’s no My Dress-Up Darling clone. In this romantic comedy, Okumura, the president and lone member of his school’s manga club, gets a new member in the form of first-year student Ririsa. Okumura claims that he’s not into 3D girls, but Ririsa’s excellent cosplay skills, her request for him to be her photographer, and the fact that they both share the same favorite manga heroine changes the trajectory of his life.
The source material for this show is currently one of only two ongoing manga that I buy tankoubon copies of (the other is Yorha – Pearl Harbor Descent Record – A NieR: Automata Story, which has one new volume a year). While my continued patronage is partly out of obligation at this point, I genuinely love how supportive the main cast members of 2.5 Dimensional Seduction are towards each other, which easily makes up for the occasional moments of slightly convoluted drama. Based on the trailers, the anime isn’t going to be a standout production, but it looks decent enough that the charm of the manga will likely be preserved.
Wistoria: Wand and Sword
Premiere date: July
Streaming platform: Crunchyroll
Core staff: Tatsuya Yoshihara (Chainsaw Man action director, Black Clover director [until Episode 152] and chief director [Episode 153 onwards]) as director, series composer, and scriptwriter; Sayaka Ono (Cross Ange: Rondo of Angel and Dragon, Bastard!! -Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy-) as character designer
Animation production studio: ACTAS
Honestly, I have little interest in Wistoria’s premise, which involves a magic-less, sword-wielding guy enrolling at a magic school (enough isekai, reincarnation, and fantasy school stories, please). However, the animation in here looks great even outside of the action scenes — there’s an addictive sense of physicality to some of the previewed cuts, and a couple of these are even presented in first-person. Plus, I can’t remember the last time I watched a fantasy action anime, so that’s another reason for me to give this a shot.
My Deer Friend Nokotan
Premiere date: July 7 JST
Streaming platforms: Crunchyroll, Prime Video, and more
Core staff: Takashi Aoshima (The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You; Synduality Noir) as series composer and scriptwriter, Ayumu Tsujimura (Onipan! main animator) as character designer
Animation production: WIT STUDIO
Shikanokonokonoko koshitantan!
My Deer Friend Nokotan didn’t need a viral brainrot song — the intro to the opening song on loop, to be exact — to appeal to me. The first trailer had more than enough silliness and absurdity to achieve that, like a girl menacingly dangling off power lines by her antlers. And if that didn’t do the trick, the opening shot of the second trailer, which has a mechanical deer opening up to reveal the smiling deer girl within, certainly would.
My Deer Friend Nokotan is an adaptation of a manga by Oshioshio, the character designer of hololive’s Amane Kanata. It’s about former delinquent Torako, whose life gets weird when the antlered Shikanoko enters it. The anime looks nonsensical in the good sense of the word, and with Masahiko Ota (Gabriel Dropout, Himouto! Umaru-chan, Love Lab, Yuru Yuri Season 1 and 2) as the series director, the whole show ought to be a riot.
Random deer fact: the Whitetails Unlimited conservation organization says that deer have almost 300 million olfactory receptors, compared to 220 million for dogs and about 5 million for humans.
The Elusive Samurai
Premiere date: July 6 JST
Streaming platform: TBD
Core staff: Yuta Yamazaki (Wonder Egg Priority assistant director) as director, Yusuke Kawakami (Bocchi the Rock! live performance director) as assistant director, Yasushi Nishiya (Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle sub-character designer) as character designer and chief animation director, Yoriko Tomita (My Dress-Up Darling) as series composer
Animation production: CloverWorks
I’m not as apathetic towards Elusive Samurai’s synopsis as I was with Wistoria: Wand and Sword — a boy trying to survive and achieve revenge after the death of his family and the fall of the Kamakura shogunate sounds fun — but the show (based on a manga by Assassination Classroom’s Yusei Matsui) was on the verge of slipping from my mind until the release of the second trailer. Looking at its production values, especially in terms of the animation and vividly colored historical clothing, there’s no doubt that this will be a feast for the eyes, assuming that the production can keep this up till the end. Hopefully, the plot will have some bite as well.
Monogatari Off and Monster Season
Premiere date: July 6 JST
Streaming platforms: Crunchyroll
Core staff: Akiyuki Shinbo (returning) as chief director and series composer, Akio Watanabe (returning) as character designer, Fuyashi To (collective pseudonym, returning) as series composer
The Monogatari series doesn’t occupy my thoughts much anymore, but there was a time when its dialogue and stylized visuals made it my favorite anime series of all time. I don’t feel the need to list my all-time favorites nowadays, but looking at the Monogatari Off and Monster Seasons trailer, this new entry — which begins with the Orokamonogatari and Nademonogatari arcs — could become one of my top Summer 2024 shows thanks to its wicked imagery. There’s plenty of theatrical shots to feast on from the PV, and the shot where a part of Nadeko’s face becomes an uncolored sketch when framed by her fingers leaves a strong mark. The flames look dreadful, though.
After Tatsuya Oishi (Bakemonogatari/Kizumonogatari) and Tomoyuki Itamura (the other Monogatari adaptations), the series director responsibilities now fall to Midori Yoshizawa (Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story Season 2 assistant director). I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with Yotsugi, Tsukihi, and Nadeko with a fresh pair of hands at the helm, but painful memories of RWBY: Ice Queendom and Magia Record’s second and “third” seasons make me wonder how sturdy this new SHAFT production will be.
OSHI NO KO Season 2
Premiere date: July 3 JST
Streaming platforms: HIDIVE, Bilibili
Core staff: Daisuke Hiramaki (returning) as director, Ciao Nekotomi (returning) as assistant director, Kuniyasu Nishina (Season 1 Episode 6 storyboard artist and director) as assistant director, Jin Tanaka (returning) as series composer, Kanna Hirayama (returning) as main character designer and chief animation director
Animation production: Doga Kobo
I’ll probably get reasonably invested in the upcoming “Tokyo Blade Arc” once I start watching the new season, but all I can think about right now when it comes to OSHI NO KO Season 2 are its colors. This was one of the first season’s greatest strengths, and Season 2 appears to have upped the ante. The first main trailer contains bold and striking imagery, like the shots where color is splashed and splattered like paint, that I’m still thinking about one month later. I really can’t wait to see what the full season has in store for us.