On Monday 9/21 Crunchyroll offered up a sneak peek at five series that will either return (in one case) or debut (in the other four cases) during the Fall 2026 anime season. Each was presented back-to-back with only a brief introduction in between, and the whole thing was preceded by a Bananya Halloween special that I believe may also have been a debut. Each episode was presented in “not entirely finished” form, which means that OP and ED (if present at all in the first episode) for each was not included.
The following entries detail each debut and will replace the Preview Guide entries I would normally do for these series.
Black Clover s2
Will Stream: Saturdays starting 10/3
Rating: 3.5 (of 5)
After 5½ years off, Black Clover is finally back! After a very brief recap, it continues right where episode 170 of the first series left off, so a review of the last few episodes before continuing with this one is strongly recommended; if you don’t remember who Nachht is in particular, then that review is essential. Asta has to train to learn how to draw out the full power of his devil counterpart now that he’s met and come to terms with Liebe, and that’s going to make him late for the big mostly-Captains raid party into the Spade Kingdom to retrieve Yami and Vengeance and stop the devil-summoning ritual the Dark Triad is conducting. That means that a lot of very powerful people are soon going to be getting in some epic-level battles.
Black Clover often looked a bit above average as shonen action shows go, and its return suggests that its technical side is going to be running full-tilt from the start. While the story doesn’t promise anything particularly fresh or original in a plot sense for its genre, it has enough dynamic characters and showy powers to still be a satisfying actioner. My one concern is that the power scaling shown here all but assures that we won’t see much (if anything) of the rest of the Black Bulls in action anytime soon.
Firefly Wedding
Will Stream: Fridays starting 10/9
Rating: 4.5 (of 5)
Satoko is the proper and dutiful daughter of a prominent nobleman, but she also has a heart condition which has always left her with a weak constitution and, if the doctors are to be believed, a limited lifespan. While she wishes to put her father at ease by marrying well, she’s also determined to make sure that any prospective partner knows what he’s getting into with her health, which she knows may limit her options. But a prospective husband may come from the most unlikely of sources. When she’s kidnapped while visiting a market, the man assigned to kill her at an appointed hour, one Shinpei, turns out to be a frightful, legendary killer, but he also goes to great – even bloody – lengths to stick to his assignment that she shouldn’t be molested before then. When he asks her what she can offer in exchange for sparing her at her pleading, she summons her courage and offers to marry him – and proves to him that she has the resolve to see it through.
This one is based on a romance manga, but it is almost certainly one of the bloodiest and most graphically violent openings to a romance series you’ll ever see. It’s also a spectacular opening, with a real chance to be a major crossover hit. Satoko may be (rightly) terrified of Shinpei, but she’s also a young woman of great resolve, one who won’t take any guff from a bratty younger stepsister and musters up the courage to follow through on a desperate gambit with a man who’s certainly strong but seems to be going out of his way to terrify her. After a season where the most prominent leading ladies in romance stories were very passive, Satoko is a breath of fresh air, and I’m very curious to see how Shinpei responds to the wonderful final scene. Kudos also to director Takahhiro Kamei (the new Urusei Yatsura) and script writer Yuko Kakihara (The Apothecary Diaries) for a flawlessly-paced opener. I should caution that it does contain an attempted rape scene, but if you can handle that and slasher film-level graphic content then check it out; it will be one of my keepers for the season.
Overgeared
Will Stream: Fridays starting 10/2 (early debut on 9/27)
Rating: 2.5 (of 5)
Grid, an avid VR game player, is going nowhere in life. He’s buried in debt, his family worries about his prospects, and he’s not even doing impressively in Satisfy, his favorite VR online game. When an item that grants him a legendary class falls into his hands, things are looking up, but getting the new class also resets his level to 1, and in this game, dying in a high-ranked mission means a -2 level loss, so before long he’s at level -3. He’s unaware that this gives him an unheard-of opportunity (since he’s starting from -3, he’ll be much stronger than any other level 1 when he finally gets back up to that point) and his new class just might give him some new perks, too. In a setting where game status can translate into real-world success, this could be a life-changing opportunity if he can just dig himself out of this level hole.
This one adapts a manwha and is a fairly blatant Solo Leveling wannabe, though it doesn’t takes itself anywhere near as seriously. The first episode doesn’t suggest that it will offer anything beyond a fairly standard “guy gets game-breaking abilities” story, and despite some flashy magical effects it’s nothing too special on the artistic or animation fronts, either. With generally average technical merits, the only things which distinguishes it so far is its somewhat lighter tone. Not a disaster, but nothing it’s shown so far is memorable.
Psyren
Will Stream: Mondays starting 10/5
Rating: 3 (of 5)
In this adaptation of a long-finished Shonen Jump manga, high schooler Ageha Yoshina is an ethical problem solver for pay, but in general he finds the world boring and short on long-term prospects. He takes an interest in classmate Sakurako when she pleads for his help right before disappearing and suspects that she may have become involved with a mysterious urban legend called Psyren. He has obtained a red phone card with that name, and when he starts to seek out its truth, a couple of thugs approach him. In trying to find his way out of that confrontation, he gets whisked away to another world where he finds the long-missing Sakurako.
An anime adaptation of this death game-type series has long been pined for by fans of the manga, so this is one of the more anticipated titles of the season. It’s not bad as shonen openers go, and it does establish its protagonist and central gimmick well enough, but it doesn’t do anything special or have a gimmick that’s anywhere near fresh. I may give this one more episode because I don’t feel like the first episode shows the full extent of the premise, but so far it’s not looking like anything special.
The Vermilion Mask
Will Stream: Saturdays beginning 10/10
Rating: 3 (of 5)
In a land where masks that can fuse with a person’s face and grant special powers are a reality, Peru d’Arrest is the former apprentice of the world’s foremost mask maker. A calamity which involved the most powerful of those masks going out of control has led Peru to travel the land, hunting down and destroying his former master’s masks so something like that can’t happen again. Naturally, some of the current mask owners are going to be resistant to that, as Peru finds out when faced with a usurper king who’s recognized as the land’s strongest warrior. But then that troublesome mask he’s been carrying around, unable to destroy, falls into the desperate hands of a girl who’s a fallen princess. . .
This one’s another shonen action manga adaptation, and honestly, the first episode doesn’t show much which suggests that it’s going to be able to break out of the pack in anime form. The concept of gaining powers that can be changed out from the masks is somewhat clever, the girl winding up using the dangerous mask instead of the protagonist is a neat (if predictable) twist, and a fair amount of supernatural action play is offered up, so the series has at least a chance to make something of itself, but I’m not feeling a particularly strong hook here; even the guilt Peru feels over what happened with his master isn’t all that unusual for the genre. (It somewhat mirrors Coco’s situation in Witch Hat Atelier, for instance.) Might be worth watching a second episode since the first one ends on a cliffhanger, but it’s going to have to fight to earn attention in what could be another busy season.
USA Anime 