Summer 2026 Mid-Season Report, part 1

We’re at the midpoint of the Summer season, with earlier-starting series hitting episode 7 (or in a couple of cases, even episode 8!) this week, so it’s time to get the ball rolling on what a wide swath of series have been doing so far this season.

With the return of Re:Zero to action this week, I am now attempting to fully keep up with a whopping 26 series this season – maybe the most I’ve ever done. And that doesn’t include The Ghost in the Shell (despite having seen all previous iterations of the franchise, I bounced off of this new one hard) or the return of Bleach (I’ve seen all the previous episodes and movies, but just can’t muster enough enthusiasm to engage with this supposedly-last chapter). It also doesn’t include two series which are continuing from last season which I was following: MAO and The Classroom of a Witch and a Black Cat. The former is a simple time crunch, and I won’t rule out eventually going back and getting caught up on it, but I was losing interest in the latter towards the end of last season anyway, so it was an easy drop. I also didn’t end up engaging with a few titles that I rated highly in the Preview Guide, including The World is Dancing, Kaiju Girl Carmelise, and (most surprisingly to me, given the historical context) Jaadugar: A Witch from Mongolia. I did end up following a handful of titles that I didn’t rate highly at the start, and not because they got better; as you may have noticed if you’ve been following this blog for a while, mindless trash tends to make up about a quarter to a third of my viewing list in any given season, and this one is no different. I make no apologies for that, as those titles are my de-stressing fare.

One additional point on this front: I did watch multiple episodes of Red River, but I dropped off on this one after episode 4 and don’t feel inclined to get caught up. It may be based on a classic, but it’s just not a good adaptation in any sense.

This first part entirely covers shows which have aired seven or more episodes as of 8/15/26. Not all shows which I’m following which hit episode 7 on 8/15 are included here.

Black Torch

Rating So Far: B-

No title this season more purely falls into the shonen action stereotype, complete with a secret anti-mononoke organization and a mononoke faction mustering to fight against them, but at least this is a respectable execution of the concept. It helps a lot that the cynical Jiro and crabby Rago make a great pair in the central duo, while Ichika serves well enough as a probable tsundere type and Reiji is staking out territory as a traditionalist who’s a bit arrogant. Although Ichika never wears skimpy outfits and rarely shows much skin, the camera still takes every opportunity to ogle her body (especially her butt), which I only mention because it’s done to a purposeful and nearly distracting degree. That aside, the action scenes and plot development are good enough to maintain this one as a weekly but not priority watch. The English simuldub is also one of the better ones this season.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm

Rating So Far This Season: B

While I like this series quite a lot (and especially Yuru as the lead protagonist), I have to mark the series down a bit for way under-utilizing Asa, even if she does get distinctly more screen time in the last couple of episodes. Seeing Yuru start to come to a reckoning with some of the people responsible for tricking him back in the village is also good to see, as is the way that the traitor in the Kazemori clan was foreshadowed in a much earlier episode if you knew what to look for. The timing of its humor could still use a little work, but overall it’s still a solid-performing shonen action scenes with a couple of interesting angles to play.

From Overshadowed to Overpowered

Rating: C

The one thing this series has going for it is some pretty good character designs. Otherwise this is a very rote play on the “I’ve been reincarnated centuries later to a time when magic is weaker, so now I’m super-OP” concept. It even has a former apprentice who’s still around centuries later, and yeah, let’s not forget the sexy teenage sex slave. (Though to the show’s credit, the series is working on building her up to be something more and putting a couple of interesting spins on things like slave crests and generational curses.) It’s been watchable and mildly entertaining, and even offers a bit of fan service at times, but that’s about it.

Heroine? Saint? No, I’m an All-Works Maid (And Proud of it!)

Rating So Far: B-

How do you put a big twist on the standard “reincarnated into an otome game” concept? Have the protagonist be oblivious to the fact that she’s in an otome game (much less its intended heroine!), have her channel her OP magic into her obsession with maids from her previous life and resolutely pursue the path of a maid rather than a heroine, in the process inadvertently wreaking havoc on the storyline both directly and indirectly, such as by reforming a girl who’s meant to be a tragic boss figure into being the “Fae Princess,” giving her a dress capable of sustaining a blow from the main antagonist, or unwittingly putting the whole city to sleep in an effort to tame the spirit of the main antagonist, who’s become trapped within a puppy (but she’s not aware of that, either). And that’s just for starters. On top of that, there are two major characters who are also reincarnates and do know the otome game inside and out, and a newly-introduced character is strongly-implied to not only be another reincarnate but also one from a much later real-world time period than the previous three. (Or is it just three?) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for all the odd, sometimes very silly twists this story can deliver.

On the downside, the first few episodes of this adaptation are fairly weak, and the sharp-witted narration which was a major feature of the original novels is being downplayed a lot here. The series distinctly improves with episode 5, though, and is better from that point on, so the rating here leans more towards episodes 5-8 than 1-4. While I don’t feel this is the source material’s best possible adaptation, and the humor isn’t quite as sharp in its absurdity as might be hoped, it’s still doing enough interesting things to be worth a dedicated watch.

I Became a Legend After My 10-Year Long Last Stand

Rating So Far: C

Yes, one of the characters is a (non-verbal) chicken called Exalted Gerbera, whose clucking has the power to destroy vampires in mid-transformation. That’s not the only slightly weird element in this series about a venerated hero who is now wandering around pretending to be a low-ranked adventurer because he got de-aged (another character is an also-non-verbal spirit dog), but it doesn’t help enough to make this one stand out. It’s still running hard with the “protagonist builds a makeshift family” approach, one that currently includes the dog, the chicken, the chicken’s demon handler, the daughter of one of Luck’s adventuring companions, a beast girl, and a new orphan girl who just turned up with the last episode, and it still fully embraces the “I’m super-powerful though I don’t look it” line. With ordinary visual and action elements, it’s not doing anywhere near enough at this point to be memorable.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS: Gun Blaze Violence

Rating So Far: B

As it turns out, very little familiarity with the Nanoha franchise is needed to keep up with this one, as Nanoha, Fate, and especially Hayate are all supporting characters rather than lead plot drivers here. (I currently suspect that this may be a case where they’ve hopped into this world for a long-term mission and are pretending to be natives rather than an alternate timeline story.) That’s fine because Shiina and Towa are carrying the story well enough on their own. They’re following a fairly typical progression of becoming friends without each realizing that the other is actually a Diaboli from a not-yet-aligned organization, down even to them finally meeting in battle forms at the end of the most recent episode, and naturally there’s a complication which is going to put them at odds even though EXCEEDS and the Diaboli Slayers are both working towards the same end goals (albeit from different angles). So the series gets docked a bit for lack of originality, but it makes up for that with cool action scenes and some impressive power displays.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. s2

Rating So Far: C+

Is it a coincidence that the season’s two worst simuldubs are both on Prime Video? Probably not since both have the same director/scripter/caster. The dub job for this one wasn’t great during the first season but seems to have gotten worse, especially with stilted delivery and lines that don’t match well to lip flaps being frequent throughout. That’s the biggest drag on what is still a neat, corporate-focused take on modern magical girls, but it’s not the only one; the pace of the storytelling is sagging badly this season, too. On the plus side, the series has introduced how classical magic-using miko fit into the scheme in this setting, though I’d like to see a bit more commentary on how classic-form spellcasting morphed into technologically-supported spellcasting. Definitely will continue with the series but may be switching to the Japanese dub and subtitles.

Mushoku Tensei s3

Rating So Far: B+

This season’s episodes are only getting a B+ so far because, frankly, the story has been a little too much on the slow, domestic side even if it has been covering a lot of necessary bases, such as finally showing what Eris has been up to, Sylphiette and Roxy settling into their dual marriage with Rudeus, Cliff and Elinalise getting married, Rudeus finally coming to terms with his past experiences with Sara, and Pursena and Linia graduating with a duel for clan leadership since neither found an acceptable husband. All of this has been handled with the excellent artistic and technical merits seen in previous seasons and Rudeus is coming across as far less of a creep now that he’s taken on more adult responsibilities. (That aspect isn’t entirely gone, though. . .) And it definitely looks like a much more exciting arc is upcoming. This is still a standard bearer-level isekai series.

The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects

Rating So Far: B-

This one has been a bit controversial so far because of the age gap romance (a 15-year-old is earnestly seeking to be the wife of a mid-30s man, although he seems uncomfortable with it because of her age), the emphasis on manliness being a predominant attracting factor for a woman’s mate in Alna’s culture, and the semblance of colonizing a land inhabited by an indigenous population, but I find those concerns to be overstated. This has mostly been a fairly standard civilization builder scenario so far, though there are some distinct background elements of Dias being caught up in political intrigues involving a succession struggle within his kingdom, and it turns out that the twin girls featured prominently in the OP and ED are adopted not-elves, not Dias and Alna’s kids after a time skip (as I first suspected). On the plus side, Alna is among my favorite characters of the season; I very much like that she is an indispensable partner to Dias rather than just window dressing, and he fully acknowledges her on that level even if he’s not ready yet to engage with her in other marital aspects. The plot is shifting in some interesting directions even as the cast continues to build (you don’t have to be a furry lover to appreciate the appeal of the new female dogkin!), so this one may be on a slight upswing going into its second half.

The Cat and the Dragon

Rating So Far: A-

To be clear, the “Winged Uncle” doesn’t even appear at all in some episodes of this semi-anthology series, and he’s often in a supporting role when he does appear, with each episode past the first typically focusing on a different cat (although some cats, like the mother cat and the hero black cat, have now made more than one such appearance). However, that hasn’t stopped this series one bit from being the season’s most adorable title. The most remarkable thing about the series so far is that every episode generates a different kind of appeal, a different way to make the viewer smile and chuckle, rather than just relying on standardized gimmicks. The production staff has thought this one through wonderfully well, too, such as how the “next episode” dialogue is voiced all in meows or the mind-bogglingly cute scenes of the dragon at full size playing with Cait Sith kittens. And while there isn’t exactly an ongoing plot, there is a definite continuity, with earlier characters and events sometimes influencing later ones. No other series this season is anywhere near as much of a pure, unadulterated, heatwarming delight to watch as this one is.

The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power

Rating: C+

On the downside, this one has only mediocre artistic and technical merits and Carolina is far from impressive or compelling as the heroine, even for one who was oblivious to the nature of her divine power for the first four episodes. However, it has made at least some attempt to build up a greater sense of intrigue as Carolina’s powers come to light, and the amicable relationship she has with her husband (and that the series didn’t dawdle on getting her and Edward married) provides a nice contrast to her nasty older sister. I’ve been curious enough to see how the power dynamics play out to stick with this one, though it’s hardly doing anything fresh.