The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Puniru is a Kawaii Slime Season 2

Puniru is a cute shapeshifting slime with her goals set on opening an amusement park and being seen as one of the cutest ones on the planet! At the end of season one, she left her friends in order to train and accomplish her goal but it seems like she's done that with little effort. However, everyone in the world starts Calling You, what does that word even mean anymore? Puniru has now physically and mentally lost sight of herself so it's up to her childhood friend in order to put her back together.

Puniru is a Kawaii Slime Season 2is based on the Puniru wa Kawaii Slime manga series by Maedakun. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

It sucks that I had so much praise for the first episode of this season, only for episode two to deliver less on what we typically expect from the status quo. Half of this episode was just a fantasy RPG parody with very little nuance. The setup was just taking the jokes we already had from the series and slightly recontextualizing them in a fantasy setting. This can be fun, but unfortunately, it's so obvious that I could see the punchlines a mile away. Some things were cute, like Puniru being seen as a slime enemy or the joke about how this fantasy world weirdly has the Internet and social media. But everything else feels flat. I could tell the science teacher was going to be the demon king, and Mami protecting the goblin children is the same joke with a different coat of paint.

The only real character we get from the episode is at the end of the fantasy section, where Kotarō, being the hero, saves the kingdom and becomes king. But he's all alone because Puniru left him. The show is trying to emphasize how lonely he is without her, and that beat is repeated in the second half of the episode, which focuses on Valentine's Day. However, that section somehow felt less relevant despite having more character in it. I like the fact that we get to see some follow-ups on the side characters, like Gou-yan seemingly developing a relationship with another girl. But that segment and the episode as a whole just sort of stop. It seems like Kotarō was on the verge of something when he realized Puniru might give him chocolate, even if it was presented obnoxiously, but we don't even get that far. If anything, I'm just confused as to what Puniru identifies as because they don't even see gender as something that applies to them.

I will say I'm a little disappointed, considering that outside of that one moment, there wasn't much here. Even the animation seemed a bit lackluster compared to what we usually get, with a lot of still frames and choppy animation. There's some decent expression work here, but it's not up to the show's usual bar of quality. This is very concerning because this is only episode two. I hope things pick up or get a bit stronger moving forward, especially considering how dramatic the show's opening has become. We have an idea of what the character arc and goal are, so let's make sure that we are getting to that point smoothly.

Puniru is a very cute show that has a setup very similar to shows that were very popular during the early to mid-2000s, where we would have a girl obsessed with being the center of attention get paired with a tsundere boy who secretly has a thing for her. Season one was enjoyable because of its over-the-top animation and fun side characters. However, the show lost a little bit of steam for me during the halfway point when things started getting very repetitive. We had a few dramatic beats here and there with the biggest one being at the end of season one where Puniru says that she's going to train in order to be the cutest thing ever, and I have to give a lot of credit to season two in that it properly follows up on that cliffhanger in a creative way.

Puniru is able to accomplish all of her goals with very little effort, but season two seems to embody the idea of “be careful what you wish for.” She became one of the cutest things ever, but in doing so, she lost sight of herself, literally and figuratively. I like how the show uses the different forms she showcases throughout season one as a physical manifestation of her literal loss of identity. When everybody calls you cute, no matter what you do, the word starts to lose meaning, and so she went back to the one person whom she didn't easily sway, Kotaro.

Based on this first episode, it looks like the setup for this season is going to be more personal, which excites me. Now that Puniru has accomplished her goal, she's less about getting everyone's attention and more about focusing on Kotaro, who is still keeping up the tsundere act. I worry the story is still going to be repetitive like season one, but if we're going to maintain some type of focus, both narratively and creatively, then I could see this potentially being a massive step up compared to season one.