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Crunchyroll Offers a Sneak Peek of Upcoming Series

It's been a few years since season one, but here comes the beginning of a new season for the anime A Returner's Magic Should Be Special. Featuring a hero named Desir who died after beating the final boss and wakes up thirteen years in the past, he is now he armed with the knowledge to prevent the catastrophe that befell him and his friends before. In this world, the Shadow World threatens to overlap and overtake the land, with season one ending after a big confrontation with an invasion. Episode one of season two picks up right where that last one left off with very little recap. Most of the episode consisted of taking down the head of the invading clan of warriors, and while there were some impressive animation cuts, the overall presentation was admittedly very spotty. In fact, this arguably ended up being one of the more unfortunate looking premieres at this panel.

The warrior clan just looks like carbon copies of each other outside of the chief, who is the only character in this episode that has any semblance of an inspired design; character models looked a bit off, and certain camera perspectives looked distorted. It also doesn't help that the most impressive cut of animation in the episode was just a carbon copy of Saber's Excalibur finishing move from the Fate franchise. In fact, the character who delivered that blow, Azest, even looks strikingly like Saber. Unfortunately, most of the episode was an action scene, and there wasn't really much story being told outside of setup.

There is a nice relationship between Desir and Azest being teased as they walk around establishing their resolve. Desir, as a main character, continues to just charismatically sway people with his plans despite the fact that people are reasonably asking how he has any idea when things are gonna happen before they do. Pram is also really cute as a jealous sidekick, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what their purpose is in the show outside of being just that. Still, this premiere definitely set a foundation as a calm before an even bigger storm. Hopefully, things will look a little bit nicer when the next big event ends up happening.

Most isekai stories revolve around a fantasy world, so it is still a bit refreshing to come across a show where someone gets reincarnated in a world that is largely sci-fi based. Granted, Reborn as a Space Mercenary is still very much on the generic side, being about a young overworked man waking up inside one of his favorite video games where his knowledge of the game makes him an unrivaled mercenary. However, there is a nice attitude here that makes this premiere at least a little bit enjoyable outside of the rather boring setup. Plus, there is definitely a degree of self-awareness that I can appreciate as the main character, Hiro, does have a bit of an edge that doesn't feel overly indulgent. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this premiere is how he gets over the fact that he just happens to be in this video game so quickly and is just along for the ride.

Weirdly, this premiere felt like anime Star Fox. Hiro felt very much analogous to Fox McCloud, and even has a slightly similar uniform. He is a mercenary who is almost overly qualified for the world that he's in, and the episode ends with him showcasing that he does have his own hero tendencies. He's a little bit of a jerk, but he can read people enough to understand when to hold back, which I like. This guy isn't an idiot. I know it sounds like an incredibly low bar, but considering some of the slop that we tend to get, it is nonetheless a bar I am happy with clearing.

The main spectacle of this premiere was definitely the space combat. Based on the action scene that takes place in the first third of the episode as well as what was showcased in the opening, there is definitely a lotta potential here for fun, dynamic action scenes. Outside of Gundam, space combat isn't so heavily featured as a focal point in a lot of space exploration or science fiction anime. The fact that this seems to be a video game all about going on missions or taking down other bad guys sounds like a lot of fun. I'm curious what kind of crew Hiro will acquire, I'm curious if the animation will be able to help the action feel more engaging, and I'm curious if there is going to be an overarching story or if this will just be sort of an adventure-of-the-week type format. While I don't think this has the potential to be anything outstanding, it definitely has the potential to be an enjoyable good time.

After watching two premieres that were very much power fantasies, this felt like a splash of cold water right in the face. Not only does it take place in the real world, but it deals with really uncomfortable real-world subject matter like parental neglect, addictions to gambling, and even mentions of suicide. While nothing explicit was shown, I do feel like there should've been a content warning, because I could just feel everybody in the room getting progressively more uncomfortable as the episode went on. The fact that the episode also starts and ends with a young woman potentially having her life ruined also felt like a really stern reality check.

I mentioned gambling addiction, but the show is technically about foreign currency margin trading, or FX for short. I wasn't good at economics in college, but as far as I can tell, it's very similar to the stock market, where people will invest money over different currency exchange rates for the sake of turning a profit because the exchange rate for currency can be impacted by various different real-world factors. It was easier for me to just interpret this episode as people investing and losing potentially millions of dollars due to the massive impact on the stock market. Major events like economic recession feel like things that a lot of people know about, but this episode really just opens with a young girl's mother losing money because she thinks she's found a way to game the system. The result is that she loses the money, hides it from her husband, gets depressed, overworks herself while causing her young middle school daughter to worry, and eventually takes her own life.

The show is from the perspective of the daughter witnessing all of that firsthand, and seeing her spiral similarly was really impactful. The fact that this young innocent girl goes from wondering what she can do to help her mom to feeling guilty over her mom's death to eventually repeating the same mistakes that she did was done really well, even if it was very hard to watch. Honestly, this premiere felt like a solid self-contained tragedy all in one episode to the point where I actually don't know where the story can go from here. The episode ends with a little bit of a teaser by showcasing other characters whose lives are potentially ruined by a massive financial drop. I know nothing about the source material that this show is based on, so I don't know if this is going to be a series that follows each new character individually, or if this is a story about all of these characters coming together to make up for the huge financial loss that they just endured. Either way, I will check more of this show out in October, but be warned that it might be a lot heavier than advertised.

For the final premiere of the convention, Crunchyroll did something truly wonderful. They realized that I never watched the first episode of Tomb Raider King back when it first aired at the beginning of the season. So instead of showing something new, they decided to just recycle the first episode of that show so I could finally have an excuse to share my thoughts on it! Wasn't that kind of them? In all seriousness, though, I have no idea why this was the case as no reason was given to the best of my knowledge.