The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Tales of Wedding Rings II

Satou is the Ring King: a legendary hero who wields a set of powerful, elemental rings, obtained by marrying their respective Ring Princesses. After returning from our world to this world to defeat the recently revived Abyss King, Ring King Satō and his group of adventurers meet up with his beloved Hime's little sister, who has some magic of her own up her sleeve.

Tales of Wedding Rings II is based on the manga series by Maybe. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I have a certain respect for Tales of Wedding Rings. It's a show that knows exactly what it wants to do and what it wants to be, and commits to doing exactly that. It feels no shyness, no embarrassment, no cringe, no need to be deeper than it is—nothing. It's perfectly content to be a bland, but relentlessly horny fantasy series that can boob with the breast of them. And in that regard, this first episode of season 2 is no different. In fact, if anything, it somehow got even more well-endowed.

Now that all the Ring Princesses are assembled, this episode lays out that this season is going to be more focused on their getting stronger, so they can be ready for an eventual showdown with the mysterious Abyss King. And to get stronger, they need to deepen their bonds. Chaos is bound to ensue, and I have little doubt that as the season goes on, we're going to see more than our fair share of antics as the Princesses try to get closer to Satou—and, hopefully, each other as well.

If you're watching this show for a critical mass of critical masses, I have great news: this episode is precisely what you're looking for. However, as always, this show struggles with coming up with an engaging story. The plot for Tales of Wedding Rings has always come off as a series of very flimsy excuses to manufacture a harem for the 10 millionth Just Some Guy. And to be fair, the shamelessness of it all is the best thing this show has going for it, so that's not entirely a bad thing. It's always so much better when an anime knows what it wants to be and goes for it. However, if you were hoping to see this show's weakest assets receive some improvement, alas, there's no sign of that here.

All in all, this is an okay episode. For better or for worse, it's pretty consistent with the first season in both its strengths (commitment to being horny) and weaknesses (story). So, I doubt this first episode will convince someone to reconsider if they didn't care for the first season. However, I also don't think it wants to. The impression it leaves me is that, as ever, it's perfectly happy just to keep doing what it's been doing—which is something people who liked the previous batch of episodes will probably be glad to see.

I'll be honest, y'all, I didn't have high expectations going into this show. How could I when Tales of Wedding Rings' first season felt like “but we have anime Lord of the Rings at home” with dumb hentai mish-mashed in between? But holy good mother of Haruhi up above, was this new episode ever so...bland. It feels more like a continuation of the first season rather than a fresh new start. You could have snuck this episode in at the end of season one and nobody would have noticed a difference.

The story starts with Satō, Hime, and the rest of the harem meeting Hime's little sister Morion after the Abyss King has been revived. Fine, but couldn't we have started with knowing what happened with the Abyss King after he was revived, especially since the existential threat of him coming back to life is the entire point of the series? It would have been more effective to see him wreak havoc on the world to set the tone, then reintroduce our main cast as they waltzed their way into more adventuring. It almost feels like the show suddenly forgot that he was even a thing to begin with. Certainly Satō forgot too, because he (and I'm not kidding) actually asks who the Abyss King even is towards the very end of the episode. Is this guy dense or something? Why wasn't this question asked at the start? He's been trying to stop this dude from fucking up their shit for thirteen straight episodes now. It'd be like if the Philadelphia Eagles didn't know who Patrick Mahomes was. “Are we supposed to tackle this dude? What team is he even on? Is he the one dating Taylor Swift?”

But never mind that, because it turns out that spicy anime NSFW-ness is on the menu! And even more of it than the first few episodes of season one had combined! And along with nudity, this episode has no shortage of phallic symbols, from long magical rods to a giant white tower that stands ever so erect against the world's blue skies. The show doubles down so hard on the innuendo that it has the attitude of a twelve-year-old who thinks he's cool because he drew dicks all over his math homework.

Wedding Rings doesn't outright start as flaming hot garbage right off the bat. I do really enjoy the weird synth-y background music that kickstarts this episode. And the art style is nice for what it is, although I wish the animation were better. Two fight scenes occur across this episode's twenty-plus-minute span, and they are the PowerPoint slideshow-style animation you'd expect from a series like this. The character designs aren't original at all, but more than seeing another simulacra'd Rei Ayanami, I really, really wish Hime didn't look like Hinata from A Place Further Than the Universe here. All it does is make me wish I were watching Universe for the fourth time. But alas.