The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Turkey!-Time to Strike-

The story is set at the bowling club of Ikkokukan High School in Nagano Prefecture. Mai, the club captain, values having fun with everyone over winning. But her junior, Rina, pushes back, saying, “I want to win.” When Rina threatens to quit the club, Mai tries to talk her down—but Rina challenges her to a one-game match. Suddenly, the bowling ball begins to glow, and the five club members are enveloped in a mysterious light…When they wake up—They've somehow time-traveled to the Sengoku era!?

Turkey!-Time to Strike- is an original anime series by animation studio Bakken Record and production company Pony Canyon. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

Episode 2

I honestly think I'm even more confused about what Turkey!'s doing after this second episode. Oh sure, more of the actual premise is more plainly on display. The bowling club has been Ninja Turtles III'd back to Sengoku-era Japan, caught in the middle of all the dangers and distractions that comes with, and now need to figure out how to survive and return home—possibly bowling for their lives along the way. Initial obfuscation of the twist aside, it's a plotline that's informed plenty of stories over the years and could go any number of directions.

The issue then is that Turkey! is showing inclinations of wanting to go in all of those directions at once. The opening theme alone is a mash-up of goofy moments contrasted with harrowing historical violence. Like I have to throw up a warning for implications of suicidal imagery while also noting that I'm not sure why the girls are playing in a band? It's a microcosm of the whole show, where the time-slipped high schoolers are understandably freaking out over realistically rendered decapitated heads and dodging early arrows at first, and then twenty minutes later doing those goofy anime dotted-line reaction shots with a cute boy they picked up after he rescued them from bandits. Speaking of, you know what I definitely feel like my wacky time-traveling bowling cartoon needs? Threats of sexual violence!

At least it's something to know that all the tonal bizarreness of Momentary Lily was not a one-off from Susumu Kudo.

This second episode being reactionary flailing around and discombobulating vibe whiplash is why it's so hard to try to judge Turkey! in terms of where it might be going. As an evaluable episode of television, this was kind of a mess, as I've indicated! The character arcs are continuing apace, as Rina is still being snippy with Mai, only now there are far more serious situations to worry about beyond bowling win records! Similarly, it's kind of funny to see Nozomi's aspirations to fashionista her way through this quantum conundrum, but there's still a jarring tension to realizing she could get murdered at any moment over it. At least the bowling life-lesson metaphors are still sticking around.

The bowling, in fact, brings my opinion of this episode up by at least a solid point, since the swerving absurdity of the tone and situation means I was honestly delighted in surprise when the girls actually factually used their sick bowling skills to take out the bandits! All the inscrutability of Turkey!'s tone up to this point sort of faded into the background as I watched the girls distract the bad guys with cell phone and bowling ball future witchcraft. Then Mai wound up and knocked them all out with a high-powered backspin technique that could only call to mind a bowling equivalent of the super-powered skills glimpsed in Birdie Wing's absurdist take on golf. It was transcendent, and if this was what Turkey! was truly going all-in on, I'd probably already be writing up my Anime Of The Year submission. But it is instead just one strike bowled in a stretch of frames that are all over the place.

Episode 1

Not getting to Turkey! until well after it aired, the official promotional channels spoiled the twist and everyone already got their reactions out already. This means I got to be unburdened from judging it based on my shock-value reaction. Granted, much of the run-up to this anime was couched in allusions to a "Big Twist That You Didn't See Coming", so even without knowledge of the specific time-travel Sengoku swerve, it was going to be a show I wasn't coming at entirely on its own terms. While Turkey! isn't as obvious about being a setup as some other examples (School-Live! is the one that most immediately comes to mind), there's still a sense that something is up just in watching its first episode unfold. Why is that background music so ominously dramatic? What's up with the weird ancient bowling ball glimpsed? What the hell are Towa and Hayate from D4DJ doing in the background? It all creates an odd diametric effect between what it's doing now and what it will be doing after this.

The biggest point is the obvious accelerated nature of the sports-anime bowling club drama plotline. Turkey! has to set up Mai, Rina, and the other girls, the arc that led them to this point, and the baggage they're working out in just a single episode before everything gets upended. It is pointedly not a pure time-killing fake-out counting down to the reveal, either. These are actual characters with arcs and themes between them that will, presumably, be explored and followed up on even as these high school girls potentially wind up bowling against Oda Nobunaga or whatever. Arc words like "It only takes an instant to lose something" are laid out to theoretically be followed up on. This could work like an old-school isekai series or even one of those old kids' movies where scrappy youngsters get sent back in time to Camelot to "learn a lesson", but that remains to be seen.

That's because the speedrunning effect of Turkey!'s sports story interfaces with its setup in odd ways. Some of it feels like it's putting on an insincere face of being a fake girls' sports anime before the Big Twist for obfuscation reasons. Living by the life advice of "In bowling, it's the second throw that counts" feels like the sort of climactic on-the-nose metaphor that would be used as a joke in a parody glimpsed in a different anime. That's not helped by the acceleration necessitating that breakthrough coming so early in this story—or running through a whole character arc coming with multiple flashbacks to moments from only minutes earlier. Even if it's not the show's intent, it makes it feel like part of the story audiences might not need to pay all of their attention to before the show "does the thing".

It's either shrug-worthy or a frustration at this point—depending on how invested one is in the actual bowling part of the show. Even if it's not played straight enough that we might get the privilege of seeing an anime girl shout, "Who do you think you are? I am!", there is something to its treatment. Some of the bowling ball scenes are attentively animated enough to be convincing, and even as things get wild in the last minute, I appreciate knowing little touches like showing the slipperiness of the bowling lane floor. There might be something here, but even as the promotion for Turkey! was patting itself on the back for hiding the twist, the first episode ends before properly arriving at or doing anything with what should be an incredibly unique setup! It leaves this anime in the same place as so many other twist-based series, where evaluating it based only on this first episode is effectively impossible. We'll have to wait a week to see if it actually picks up that spare, or rolls straight into the gutter.

What did I just watch? No, seriously, what did I just watch? Last week's premiere episode of Turkey! was weird because ninety percent of the episode felt like it was setting up a traditional sports anime show using bowling. I was honestly looking forward to a little bit of that because I genuinely can't think of any well established show that has bowling as a centerpiece. But then we got a random supernatural twist in the final minute of that first episode, so it was hard to judge what the show was going to be about because it's clear the show wasn't going to be as grounded as it originally presented itself.

I was hoping that episode two would clarify what exactly we were going to do, but I'm left with way more questions than answers. Right off the bat, I don't think this show is going to do a good job of establishing what kind of tone it's supposed to have. We get really silly jokes that you wouldn't find out of place in a slice of life anime that sometimes get verbally repeated for the sake of nailing down a punchline. Then the next minute we have an old samurai threatening to sexually assault our main girls while another smacks one across the face so hard that she ends up bleeding. The tonal whiplash is so severe that I feel like I almost broke my neck. There are moments where the show tries to have bouts of logic like how they figured out that they're in feudal Japan by layering pictures of what things look like in modern day on top of the landscape of how things look now. Ignoring the fact that this doesn't make sense because the entire topography of Japan probably would've changed significantly between now and then, even if this show wants to be “grounded” or have things explainable, that goes out the window in the next scene.

Our characters knock out samurai using bowling balls in the last third of the episode! I understand the show is immediately throwing any sense of groundedness out the window, but I'm not even sure if the show is supposed to take itself seriously or not. I'm just assuming that the show is trying to be silly with its overall premise, but then will have moments where the characters are having serious conversations about risking their lives or being terrified about the circumstances of their actions in a very realistic way. I just don't know what to do. It genuinely feels like a situation where the creator was throwing every random idea that popped into their heads at a wall and instead of only picking a handful to integrate into a story, we just decided to throw all of them in without rhyme or reason for whether or not they would actually work. Personally, I'm not sure if I'm gonna stick with this one because it just seems a little too out there, even for me.

Episode 1

That took an unexpected turn, didn't it? Have you ever watched a show that thoroughly sells itself as one thing, but pulls the rug out from under you at the last second? That's what it felt like for me watching this first episode of Turkey!. We get the dramatic opener, tension between friends in a competitive field, and a pretty underrepresented sport in the sports anime genre. Everything was sold in a very melodramatic way. I'm expecting this show to be about a tragic friendship falling out—and that the sport would be used as a backdrop for that to be developed. We're even setting up some nice metaphors with the idea of the Turkey! and the snake in bowling.

Then we get that one lingering shot of something in the dirt, and I could feel myself twisting in my seat, thinking that the show was going to have a random supernatural element. I was expecting maybe some quirky mascot to show up, but what I was NOT expecting was the characters to get summoned to what appears to be the battleground of feudal Japan? What does any of that have to do with bowling? I don't know, and that's why it feels very weird to talk about this premiere, because anything that I could've liked about the show can be completely invalidated by episode two next week. I don't know why they're in feudal Japan or if it's some kind of alternate universe where bowling is used to determine everything. Maybe our main characters will be pitted against each other in some battle? It's really hard to say.

I wonder if whatever ambition this show has will match the production values. We had some pretty fluid animation cuts with the characters setting up their bowling balls, and I like the CG of the bowling balls hitting the pins. Plus, the soundtrack is surprisingly really good, even if a lot of it sounds like RPG battle music. Was I the only one who felt like that? Still, the designs and the overall presentation just come off as very uninspired. So if we are going for something more battle-oriented and ambitious, I'm a little concerned about how that's going to look in the long run. I'm sure my episode two review will be an interesting thing to read next week.

Alright, Turkey!, you've won me over. Inuyasha was a seminal series for my early anime fandom, and while this may only bear only a superficial similarity in its time period, I'm an absolute sucker for a female-led timeslip story. In a turn of events absolutely nobody could have predicted unless they saw all the social media chat, the members of the bowling team have found themselves somehow transferred to the Warring States Period. This is a tough era for a group of modern teenage girls to find themselves in, let alone just outside of an active battlefield. Content warning for sexual menace, I guess!

But it's such a bizarre mix of genuinely strong music and character writing, anime weirdness, and the absolute goofiest nonsense presented with utter sincerity, I couldn't help but be deeply charmed. Rina is a walking mess of contradictions in the way teenagers often are, slapping a would-be attacker across the face on impulse, then snapping at Mai for wanting to rescue the young samurai who saved them for her own sense of satisfaction. When Mai proclaims, “In bowling, it's the second ball that matters,” most of her teammates give her skeptical looks for such a silly motto… except Sayuri, who bursts into tears at the truth of it. Again, the most teenage thing possible.

The bowling theme is incredibly silly, but played completely straight. Bowling balls go far and fast because you're slinging them down polished, oiled lanes, but somehow these girls are able to make theirs roll across grass and dirt with smooth precision… and suddenly fly up in the air and hit their enemy in the face? And then they run into a noble lady who just happens to have invented a game where sets up ten gourds in a triangle formation and then rolls a ball at them to knock them over? It's utter nonsense! But its willingness to present this nonsense without winking at the audience, hoping we'll just accept it, makes me more open to meeting the story where that is.

And as someone who entered anime fandom in the '90's, the voice cast for the Sengoku Jidai characters is outright jaw-dropping. Yes, that is Kikuko Inoue playing masc! Bet you haven't heard that before! And do my ears deceive me, or is that Noriko Hidaka, voice of Akane Tendo, Miaka Yuki, and Noriko Takaya? (They do not deceive me. I looked it up.) If nothing else, Turkey! is something to watch just to hear many of my old favorites again.

Episode 1

Because all the best jokes are ones that require explanation: the reason I gave Turkey!-Time to Strike- a 3.5 out of five is because it's equivalent to seven out of ten. You know, like a 7-10 split. I am very funny.

But also, it's easier to go with a joke rating because, uh, I'm really not sure what to give it in sincerity. This is a weird one, folks. I started the episode knowing what the twist was going to be, because the studio put out a trailer for the second episode right after the premiere aired in Japan and my social media feed exploded while I was waiting for the English release. Even then, the final minutes left me gawking at my screen. I guess this is what you get when one of anime's most notorious directors teams up with an award-winning J-drama scriptwriter, plus an acclaimed musical composer doing the score added to the mix.

I'm not opposed to a good first-episode swerve. ZENSHU was one of the best anime of winter, after all, and I still think about the big reveal at the end of the first episode of School-Live!. Even The Vision of Escaflowne started with Hitomi racing against the senpai she has a crush on before Van shows up with his dragon. But a good twist needs to be properly foreshadowed, and I don't think I can say that for Turkey!. The events leading up to the climax are vaguely unsettling and dissonant, but rather than making me curious, they came across as incongruous instead. Yuki Hayashi's ominous score doesn't match the mundane conversation the girls have about their club's goals following their loss. There are plenty of shots of a sinister orb dug up at a local construction site, but there's no hint that it may share a connection to Mai's bowling ball triggered by it getting struck by lightning. It's just clumsy.

If the pieces had come together, this could have been fantastic. Naomi Hiruta's script is a remarkable work of precision, balancing the need to get through a lot of character beats quickly, establishing the girls' personalities and dynamics, building up to the match between Mai and Rina without relying on them spouting anime cliches—unlike, say, Momentary Lily, where all the girls talked like toys that recite a pre-recorded line when you pull their string. Hayashi's score is excellent as always, especially in the latter half of the episode. The emotional stakes of a bowling match between two characters we've barely had time to get to know can be a hard sell, but the background music sets the tone so well that I cared despite my skepticism. As awkwardly executed as the twist may be, the accompanying ethereal flutes helped to sell it at least halfway.

I haven't forgiven Susumu Kudo for the crimes against my eyeballs he committed with Momentary Lily, The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, and The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today. Nor will I ever forget that he keeps somehow getting work while extraordinarily talented directors like Sayo Yamamoto and Rie Matsumoto have disappeared into the ether. Turkey! hasn't altered my view of him as a crackpot… But considering the talent surrounding him this time, it may be worth a round.

Episode 2

After Turkey!-Time to Strike- delivered that wild twist at the end of its otherwise formulaic premiere, there was one thing I wanted the show to do more than anything else in its second episode: Commit to the bit. It would have been easy to turn this into a lackadaisical fantasy story about girls traveling to a new era, making friends, learning lessons, and all that. As far as I'm concerned, though, the whole point in sending a quintet of girls who belong in a slice-of-life sports anime back into the Sengoku era is to play with the contrast of genre, style, and tone as much as possible. If the show remained a simple sports anime with a time-travel gimmick, it would be a wasted opportunity.

Thankfully, Turkey! doesn't waste the opportunity to exploit the humor and the tension that comes from a bunch of unprepared kids getting jettisoned back to the 15th-century. The episode admittedly spends a lot of time on getting the bowling club up to speed on the fact that they are now stuck in the Sengoku period, but it saves us from getting impatient by having the girls figure all of that our while they're stuck smack in the middle of a bloody battle between an army of samurai and their bandit foes. I'm glad the show managed to find a way to depict the brutality of the setting without getting too edgy with it. The girls are threatened with all manner of violence, but the episode doesn't indulge in anything more graphic than Rina getting hit one time by a skeezy bandit.

The violence also doesn't exist just to be titillating, but to establish the stakes of the situation, which Rina makes sure to remind Mai of when the team is debating whether or not they should save the samurai boy who helped them out. This leads to some genuinely good character development for both Mai and Rina that helps them become truly fleshed out heroines, instead of the two of them remaining as just slightly different varieties of sports-anime girl. This is the tonal sweet spot that I hope Turkey! can remain in this season. The girls' adventures shouldn't ever devolve into being nothing more than a timeline obliterating vacation, but when they are challenged to overcome the various obstacles that will naturally present themselves in this time period, the priority should always be on moving the adventure forward and demonstrating the strength and resilience of our protagonists.

I lied, before, actually. I didn't just have the one key expectation going into this episode. I also needed Turkey! to find some way to incorporate the bowling shtick into the time travel scenario. I am pleased to report that our ladies beat the everloving bejeesus out of those rapey bandits by smashing their limbs and skulls with a bowling ball. What more could anyone have asked for?

Episode 1

Finally, after so many years of waiting, we get an anime about bowling. You might think I'm being sarcastic there, but I mean it: It's about time that we got our anime about a bunch of cute girls knocking down pins and racking up strikes. If you think about it, bowling is the perfect sport for an animated story to focus on. It's all about singular players with big personalities taking their shots down the lane, one right after the other, and the dramatic tension is built right into the ball's trajectory down that slim path to victory. The action couldn't possibly be easier to follow for even the most neophyte of alleycats, and the improvement of CG animation means that it is more possible than ever to capture the weight and momentum that the sport demands. Bowling is pretty cool, y'all.

Now, how about the actual show that is being built around these bowlers and their balls? It's pretty good. Just don't go in expecting anything that dramatically diverts from the usual sports anime tropes. We begin the premiere of Turkey!-Time to Strike- with one of those teary, wistful openings that foreshadows the inevitable melancholy ending that must arrive for all high-school sports teams, and then we flash back to show our perky pink-haired hero totally biffing that final delivery, and how her bowling club isn't serious enough to make it to the big leagues (of local Japanese high school bowling, that is).

When disgruntled teammate Rina gets fed up with losing, will Mai be able to unite her friends and turn her bowling team into something that they can all be proud of? I'm sure we'll see, but it's the same shtick we've seen a dozen times before, except with bowling swapped out for baseball, or track, or cup speed-stacking, or whatever other sport is popular with the kids these days.

Oh, wait, I totally forgot that I accidentally paused the episode about thirty seconds before the end credits would typically begin. Well, I'm sure those last thirty seconds won't make much of a difference, but I have to do my due diligence as a critic.

Alright, let's just see what happens next…

Oh. Well, then. Alrighty.

So, as it turns out, the very final minute of Turkey!'s premiere sees a magical bowling ball open up a giant portal of ethereal light and transport the girls back to the Sengoku era of feudal Japan. That is certainly not where I expected this show to go at all. I can't say whether this is a good or bad twist yet, seeing as we have no idea how Turkey! will attempt to meld the world of warring shogun and bloody battlefields with, er, a bunch of high school students who are mediocre at the sport of bowling. I'm certainly interested, though. It's not often that I feel like I have literally no idea where an anime could possibly go next in its second episode. As such, I'm going to go ahead and give this premiere an extra half-star just for doing such a good job of genuinely surprising me.