The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Dad is a Hero, Mom is a Spirit, I'm a Reincarnator

Ellen is a young girl reincarnated from modern-day Japan as a half-spirit. Her father, Rovel, is the legendary hero who saved the kingdom, and her mother, Origin, is the primordial queen and ruler of all spirits. Furthermore, she possesses an overpowered ability to manipulate the elements. While looking absolutely adorable, this perfect little girl will fall back on her past life's knowledge and the power of the spirits to protect her precious family.

Dad is a Hero, Mom is a Spirit, I'm a Reincarnator is based on a light novel series by Matsuura and keepout. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

One of the first things I look at in any of these modern fantasy anime is how the show chooses to establish its story in the very first scene. Often, the worst of the shows are entirely consumed by showing off the cliches of the premise and setting that they're flaunting - the reincarnation angle, the RPG powers, the hero with the godlike abilities and the dead, cold eyes. You know how it goes by now. These are the cartoons that are made first and foremost as cynical calculations to prey on an overeager market; it literally doesn't matter if the show is even watchable, half the time, so long as it has a title that can guarantee investors a return on their investments. In the West, you find these sorts of products in the dollar bargain bins at Wal-Mart, with painfully cheap-looking artwork and titles like Finding Greemo and Asian Pop-Star Monster Fighters.

On the other hand, you have shows that may share similar aesthetic and plot conventions to the cheap trash that floods the market, but they make the bold and challenging decision to - shock of all shocks - begin their story by introducing characters and plot elements that have been given a modicum of forethought. Imagine that. For whatever its faults may be, I have to respect Dad is a Hero by actually telling me up front that it cares a little bit about making its titular “Dad” and his cute little girl characters I could give a damn about. Rovel's been hiding from his fame as a legendary hero while caring for his eight-year-old daughter, and like the title suggests, the hook comes from the little girl actually being a reincarnated Japanese scientist. Again, though, take notice of the fact that Ellen being a reincarnated Earthling isn't the only thing that we're supposed to be invested in. She had a specific skillset in her previous life that is going to be relevant to the magical laws of her new reality, and the unique history that her parents share gives her a reason to stand out as special in her new life. A little bit of effort is all I ask for from most isekai anime, these days, and by Jove, Dad is a Hero puts in the effort.

That isn't to say that I fell head over heels for the show. It's fine. Maybe even “pretty okay," which is nothing to sneeze at if you know how bad the competition has been, this season. I like the 19th-century flourishes to the setting's architecture and fashion, and Ellen's relationship with her dad gives the premiere the necessary baseline of emotional connection for the audience to engage with. Ellen's mom is cute, too, and on the whole I have to commend the show for establishing a cozy family dynamic without going too far off the deep end. I won't say that I am personally dying over the wait for Episode 2 of Dad is a Hero, but I can tell you that this is easily one of the best isekai to come out all season. I'm willing to stick with it a little longer just to reward the creative team for accomplishing the task of making a television show that is not actively painful to sit through.

So far nothing has dissuaded me from my belief that I'd Rather Have a Cat than a Harem! is the best isekai story out there, but this one makes a decent case for being a good one on its own merits. A large part of that is that it doesn't adhere too strictly to the hoary old tropes. There's a hero, but he wasn't summoned. There's a spirit queen, but she has nothing to do with our isekai'd protagonist other than being her mom. (So again, no summoning.) And our reincarnator's only real link to her past life in Japan is that she has the periodic table memorized and uses it in her magic. It may not be innovative, but it's also much more palatable than a lot of other similar genre offerings.

My major gripe is the villain(ess), Agiel. Ten years ago, when heroine Ellen's dad was the hero Rovel, he was supposed to marry Agiel, second princess of the kingdom. Because he almost died heroing, he instead married Ellen's mom, the spirit queen Origin, and his younger brother was forced to marry the princess. That's all fine, but now that Rovel has returned, albeit incredibly reluctantly, to the human realm, does Agiel have to be a plus-sized shrieking caricature? She could have been horrible without being reduced to her size, especially since the narrative has already established that she's selfish and a profligate spender.

Fortunately, the rest of this is perfectly fine. Rovel's reluctance to return from the spirit realm is believable; he's got his wife and daughter there, plus being worshipped as a hero doesn't sound like something he enjoys. Adding to that is the fact that his new half-spirit state means that he's had a hard time learning to control his powers; why would he want to go back and potentially endanger the people he just saved? He's also justly concerned about what a return to the human realm would mean for Ellen – as the daughter of the hero, who's to say the kingdom wouldn't try to marry her off, tender years be damned?

Simply put, it feels like someone really thought about this story beyond milking the isekai cow. Rovel is a character rather than just a trope; the same goes for Ellen, although she's less developed than he is right now. It's not spectacular looking, but it also has more uniformity of costume design than I'm used to seeing in this sort of show, even if Origin's dress isn't exactly a triumph of design. I'm happy to give this another episode or two to see where it goes – even if it isn't breaking the mold, it's stretching it, and at this point, that's enough.