This season was on the short-side for me which is fine given all the anime I plan to watch for the Summer 2025 season). I did binge-watch these shows in the last week of June, so that may play a part in how I view these anime. Of the 7 I have completed (I dropped one that I had actually been curious about: Kowloon Generic Romance), I will give my Top 5 below and do a little sum-up on each:
- Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Season 2
- KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! Season 3 OVA
- Lazarus
- A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof
- Fire Force Season 3
So "Aharen-san" season 2 was my pick of the season and was a nice way to wrap-up the anime franchise. It brought back the space-brained, but sincere humor of season 1 with all the surrealism and heart that I remembered with the twist of our couple being officially a couple.
I feel like I am cheating by including an OVA, but this is my list in my blog so I make the rules lol. KonoSuba OVA s3 gives you the comedy of the regular season 3, but in two episode specials. One downside was that the animation was noticeably downgraded from season 3, but the writing is what you come to expect from the franchise.
Lazarus was a mixed bag for me. I feel like if it was 24-25 episodes, it would've got its message across better. I think Watanabe was saying something profound about the healthcare industry and human nature, but 13 episodes was not enough time to say it. The aftermath of Luigi Mangione should've made this anime connect a lot more. Still it was not a bad anime: just incomplete by Sinchiro Watanabe's standards. I will still always be anticipating any project he comes out with.
A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof is an anime about amoral lesbian contract killers doing slice-of-life/CGDCT stuff. It was a lot funnier than I thought given how it started-off for me and would actually do a little pathos in between the killer-shenanigans. Unexpectedly solid yuri comedy.
Fire Force season 3 is the penultimate anime season of the franchise and one of the last (new) action shounen anime I plan to watch along with My Hero Academica (and I guess Demon Slayer, though I have completed the manga). I have really outgrown that particular genre of anime now given that I started watching DBZ around 1996-97. It was a bit of a chore to get through this season (the first time I have felt that way about FF) and I will be happy when I complete the last season. This and Lazarus were the two anime I watched dubbed in English.
Well that is my look at this season. It may feel like slim pickings, but given the amount of anime I watched in 2024 and the anime I have to look forward to in the second-half of 2025—I am not complaining at all. I may do a write-up of my first impression of Summer 2025 at the end of the month.
