With the spring 2021 anime season entering its final third and many series gearing up to lead fans into their end-of-season climaxes, it’s time to start looking ahead to the summer anime season. Summer is generally a fairly busy season every year, except for last year which was a freak anomaly because of the world being on fire. 2021 is proving that while the anime industry might take its lumps every so often, they’ll always find a way to bounce back.
That said, I’ve compiled the most highly anticipated series of the upcoming season. I decided the rankings by charting down each series’ rankings on the most popular chart sites (AniChart, LiveChart, Anime-Planet, and MyAnimeList), then averaging their spots on each chart. The results are as follows, with very few surprises, ranked from 10th to 1st.
10. Remake Our Life
Along the same lines as other reverse time skip series such as Erased, Tokyo Revengers, and Re:Life, comes this series about a 28-year-old game developer who finds himself unemployed after his company goes bankrupt. Returning to his hometown, Hashiba Kyouya begins to regret his previous choices in life while lying in bed. When he wakes up the next morning, he discovers that he’s been transported ten years into the past to the point right as he’s about to start college.
Originally a light novel, Remake Our Life is animated by studio feel (who have made a career out of producing ecchi anime) and directed by Tomoki Kobayashi. They’ll be working off scripts written by Nachi Kio.
9. Tsukimichi
The summer anime season is jam-packed with isekai series and this is one of the newer ones that people are talking about the most.
In this fantasy series, the main character is a young man named Makoto Misumi who is summoned to a fantasy world in order to be their “hero”. Unfortunately, once he arrives, a goddess says that he has an ugly face, strips him of his hero title, and exiles him to the furthest reach of the wilderness where he is surrounded by various non-human species. Armed with incredible magical power (naturally), Makoto must make the best of his time in this new world.
Animated by C2C and directed by Shinji Ishihira, Tsukimichi is yet another series that started as a light novel before getting the green light for an anime adaptation. Interestingly, Crunchyroll already has the rights to this series outside of Asian territories, so we already know where we’ll be able to check this one out.
8. Girlfriend, Girlfriend
Being able to include this series on this list excites me to no end as I’ve been following the exploits of this series ever since its humble beginnings as a one-shot doujinshi published by author Hiroyuki, before it became a serialized manga in 2020.
In this series, Naoya has just started dating a girl named Saki who he has promised to never cheat on. Shortly after they start dating, another girl confesses to him. Instead of turning her down and potentially hurting her feelings, Naoya asks permission from Saki to date both of them at the same time.
Polyamorous representation in anime series is few and far between, with only a handful of examples scattered throughout anime history. It’s rarer still for a series to make polyamory its central theme.
7. The Detective is Already Dead
This entry on the list is almost confusing because it has so little source material to go off of, but was rushed into an anime adaptation. Originally a light novel series that has been collected into four volumes in Japanese as of November 2020, The Detective is Already Dead also has a manga that has a single volume. That said, this series does have some positive buzz behind it with the series winning the MF Bunko J newcomer award in 2019.
The central figure in this series is a character named Kimihiko who served as an assistant to the brilliant detective Siesta… at least he did until the detective died three years after they first meet. Deciding to return to a normal, quiet life, Kimihiko returns to school before a girl with a striking resemblance to the former detective appears before him.
Animated by studio ENGI and directed by Manabu Kurihara, they’ll be working off scripts penned by Deko Akao and character designs provided by Yosuke Ito.
6. Honor Student at Magic High School
A manga spinoff of the highly popular light novel series The Irregular at Magic High School, this series is an alternate retelling of the main story told from Miyuki’s point of view. The series is up to ten volumes in both Japanese and English. Animated by studio Connect, Honor Student at Magic High School features Hideki Tachibana as the director working off scripts written by Tsuyoshi Tamai.
5. I’m Standing On A Million Lives Season 2
Surprisingly, the majority of the series mentioned within the top five on this list aren’t brand new series but rather sequels, such as the second season of I’m Standing On A Million Lives.
In the first season, which ran from October to December 2020, we met a third-year middle school student named Yusuke Yotsuya who gets transported to a game world along with two other students. Tasked with solving quests in order to protect the real world, these three must figure out how to co-exist.
I’m Standing On A Million Lives is animated by relative newcomers Maho Film with Kumiko Habara serving as the director working off scripts written by Takao Yoshioka.
4. How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom
The last summer 2021 series on this list that’s not a sequel, this series is all about how a humanities otaku manages to put his knowledge to practical use by rebuilding a fantasy kingdom through administrative reform rather than war after being transported there somehow.
Originally a light novel series written by Dojyomaru and illustrated by Fuyuyuki, How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom has been collected in thirteen volumes in Japanese as of November 2020. The print volumes are at eleven volumes in English, as of April 2021.
Animated by industry veterans J.C. Staff, the crew is equally well-staffed with Takashi Watanabe serving as the director, with Go Zappa and Hiroshi Onogi handling the scripts.
3. My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom Season 2
The last three summer anime series on the list were without a doubt the top contenders on every site I looked at, with absolutely no wavering in their rankings.
I’ve stated before how much I loved the first season of My Next Life as a Villainess and how excited I am that it’s getting a home video release via Sentai Filmworks. I’m equally excited about the second season and seeing what fresh adventures Catarina is going to get into (and how much larger her harem of suitors is going to become!).
2. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Season 2
After the original director was killed in the Kyoto Animation arson attack, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was put on the back burner with some fans believing that we’d never get to see the continued adventures of the titular maid Tohru and her other dragon friends. Luckily for fans, a new director was found and this very popular series is getting a brand new lease on life.
In this comedic slice of life, an adult programmer gets drunk one night and finds herself in the mountains, face to face with a fearsome dragon named Tohru. After a night of heavy drinking together, Miss Kobayashi invites Tohru to live with her as her maid, thus beginning their lives together.
1. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 2
This last entry on the list probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone who has been following the isekai genre over the last couple of years. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has arguably become a standard-bearer for the genre.
With the start of the second season, the residents of the Jura Tempest Federation find themselves backed into a corner, with humans feeling threatened by their presence and economic growth into a central trading hub. Now that the great battle is over, however, it’s time to pay a visit to the demon lord who was pulling the strings in the first place and establish a brand new pecking order within the forest!
And there we have it, the top ten series that fans are looking forward to watching this coming summer anime season. Are there any series that you’re excited about that didn’t get mentioned? Sound off on social media and let us know what you’ll be watching once the season starts this coming July.
