It’s that time once again: when we say sayonara to the currently-ending anime season and konnichiwa to a new one, which will be filled with lots of exciting battles in fanciful isekai worlds, emotional love confession scenes to childhood friends, and, um, new seasonal waifus. What shows will delight fans and get us sharing memes on the Internet with each other? I don’t know, but I’ll be happy to tell you the 16 Summer 2019 anime J-List will be watching.
How should we approach a new anime season? As a guy who’s job involves watching a lot of anime, I think about this topic a lot. Although I watch a dozen or more shows at the beginning of a new anime season, trying to find the really outstanding shows so I can write about them on the J-List blog, none of us ever knows ahead of time which shows will stand out a really impress us. Which is all part of the fun of writing these kinds of posts.
Like Intel microprocessor offerings and iPhones, there’s a tendency for anime to follow a tick-tock kind of pattern, with a season that overflows with quality shows generally being followed by a less-amazing season with fewer exciting offerings. Considering the number of anime series I’ve enjoyed from the current cour, it seems the upcoming season might be a little less impressive, but time will tell whether this is the case.
J-List’s 2019 Summer Anime Picks
Okaasan Online, aka Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?
Imagine getting trapped in a Sword Art Online type video game world. Then imagine discovering that your super-embarrassing gamer mother was there, too, ready to go on an adventure with you? Considering the popularity of MILFs in anime these days, to say nothing of video games and isekai, I’m sure this will be a fun anime to watch.
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?
An anime about weightlifting, this is custom made for hardworking Swaps4, who can bench 160 kg/350 lbs. We’ll certainly be watching this show, and probably sharing sexy gifs online like we always do.
Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san season 2
One of the best shows of the past few years, Skilled Teaser Takagi tells the story of a junior high school girl named Takagi who loves Nishikata, the boy who sits next to her in class. She loves to tease him, and each episode consists of the many tricks she concocts in order to get his goat while getting closer to him.
Will you please like hentai if it’s cute?
An upcoming show called Kawaikereba Hentai demo Suki ni Natte Kuremasu ka? in Japanese, which translates to something like “Would You Fall In Love With a Cute Girl Even If She’s Perverted?” It’s the story of a Japanese high school boy who wants to have a girlfriend, but has no prospects, until one day he receives a pair of girl’s panties in his shoebox at school. A confession of love from a perverted girl? But whose panties are they? We love a good mystery!
(Remember that in Japanese, hentai just means a perverted or sexually deviant person, rather than 2D erotic animation.)
Dr. Stone
An anime based on a manga with a pretty compelling concept. After a flash of light, all of humanity is turned to stone for 5000 years. Eventually, the two high school boys who’ve managed to hold on to their human consciousness during that time break free from the petrification and must figure out how to re-build human civilization from scratch.
Maoh-sama, Retry!
Oh nice, season two of the long-awaited Hataraku Maoh-sama is finally here, right? Wrong? Damn it! Anyway, I’ll give this new show a try, in case it ends up being a sleeper hit like Recovery of an MMO Junkie.
Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator
The Toaru-verse continues in this new season, which focuses on the popular anti-hero in the show, Accelerator. While I have trouble following the huge complexity of the various warring factions in Index season 3, the show is great fun and filled with legendary characters, so I’ll be watching faithfully.
DanMachi 2nd Season
While I love anime, I can certainly feel frustration with studios to make boneheaded moves like waiting years and years to continue a popular show then expect 100% of fans to still be on board with the property. It happened with Attack on Titan, it happened with Code Geass, and now we can add Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? to the list for the Summer 2019 anime cour. Let’s hope fans remain loyal to Hestia’s boobs the innovative story after such a long period of time.
Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
Another isekai series, From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, aka From Common Job Class to the Strongest in the World, follows otaku Hajime Nagumo, who is pulled into a fantasy world along with his class members. Considering that the waifus, I mean female characters, have excellent character designs, I wonder if one or two might catch on with fans, propelling this show to popularity like a certain raccoon girl did? We’ll see…
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo
O Maidens in Your Savage Season is an anime about a school literature club in which introverted girls hold an event to get to know each other. When asked, “What’s the one thing you want to do before you die?” one of the girls’ answers “sex!” This unlocks a whirlwind in the lives of the girls as they explore what it means to become an adult. Being that kind of perverted fan, I will naturally be on deck for this one. The Summer 2019 anime season looks like it’ll be quite a sexy one!
Vinland Saga
One thing I love — and have blogged about repeatedly — is that anime is good because it’s a “big tent” with lots of smaller tents inside, each competing to find compelling and fresh tales to tell. Whenever fans whine that moe or isekai or harem shows have taken over and “ruined” anime, I point out how many experimental shows are made for us each season. One such offering might be Vinland Saga, a serious attempt at telling a story about Vikings. It looks pretty cool to us!
Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV
Another offering for the Summer 2019 anime season is the ongoing story of the seemingly unstoppable Symphogear multi-media juggernaut.
Sounan Desu ka?
An anime title built around a pun in Japanese, which sounds phonetically like そうなんですか？meaning “is that so?” but is really 遭難ですか？”Are you lost?” After a plane crash, these cute high school girls find themselves spending the springtime of their youths on a deserted island, where they must learn how to find food, shelter and so on. A combination of Lost and The Blue Lagoon?
Kanata no Astra
I love a good sci-fi yarn, and Astra Lost in Space might be such a show. It’s the story of humanity in 2061 when nine high school students head off into space to attend Planet Camp but find themselves teleported 5000 light years away from Earth. So it’s basically Japan’s answer to Star Trek Voyager?
Re:Stage! Dream Days♪
A multimedia franchise that’s been running in Comptiq, Re:Stage! tells the story of high school girls hoping to be chosen as the to school idol. As with all idols shows, whether it proves accessible to new fans will depend on several factors, including how cute the girls are, the choices of voice actresses, and whether they give us proper animation instead of that horrible CGI crap.
Isekai Cheat Magician
There are many small frustrations with being an anime blogger. One is anime studios who adopt a strange approach to ensuring third parties won’t spread their “copyrighted material” on the Internet without their permission by only releasing teeny tiny images that are barely larger than thumbnails in the age of retina screens. One example of this is Isekai Cheat Magician, by a studio that’s damned if they’re going to let any anime bloggers use large versions of their promotional artwork to, you know, promote their show for free.
Well, that’s our list of the Summer 2019 anime shows we’ll be keeping our eyes on. Are there any other great shows we should have added to this list? Tell us below, or hit us up on Twitter!
