The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!

Kazuhiro Kitase's only hobby is sleeping. Ever since he was young, he would enter a wondrous world within his dreams and go on thrilling adventures. One day, he goes on an adventure with an elf girl he became friends with in his dream world, but it's put to an abrupt halt when they both get scorched with a dragon's breath. As he wakes from his dream, he notices a familiar figure sleeping beside him. Join Kazuhiro on his new adventures through Japan with Ms. Elf.

Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! is based on a light novel series by Suzuki Makishima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Every once in a while we get an isekai story where the concept just sells the show. Here, we have the story of Kazuhiro, a man who has been living two lives—one in the real world, and one in a fantasy world—without really knowing it. Each night, when he goes to bed, he awakens in the fantasy world and goes on all kinds of adventures, but if he loses consciousness in the other world—or dies—he simply reawakens in ours. He's always treated this as a kind of continuous lucid dreaming with grand adventures and recurring characters. It's only when he brings Marie, an elf, from the dream and into reality that he realizes he's been traveling between worlds for years.

The reason that this set up works so well from a metatextual perspective is the fact that it basically allows for two genres of story in one. On one hand, we have a fantasy adventure as Kazuhiro and Marie explore dungeons and fight dragons. On the other hand, we have a fish-out-of-water, slice-of-life tale that sees Marie become acquainted with our reality and all the ways it's so drastically different from her own. This mixture leaves room for all kinds of different stories, and it allows things to go from calm and light-hearted to dangerous and tension-filled as the story wills.

It also serves as a setup for a solid romance story. Up until now, Kazuhiro hasn't been too serious about his life in the fantasy world, believing that it, and all those within it, were figments of his imagination. Knowing that they're all real people means that his view of them has shifted—especially with Marie. Once, she was a tsundere elf that he sometimes went on adventures with. Now, he sees her as a beautiful woman who is infatuated with him and his world.

But, more than that, for the first time, Kazuhiro has someone with whom he can share his whole life. Before, it was strictly separated between worlds, but with Marie there's no need for secrets. He can truly be himself.

All in all, I had a lot of fun with this one. Kazuhiro and Marie have some real chemistry, and the story framework allows for a story that's anything but predictable. I suspect I'll be watching this one all the way to the end.

I'm not sure how the reverse elf-sekai anime became such a trend in recent years, but screw it; I'll happily go along with a new fad if it means a chance at getting some novelty injected into this tepid Winter season. Granted, most of these elf shows are fairly standard anime sitcoms, but that's okay! A good sitcom is hard to come by in most any medium, and I mean, far be it from me to complain about getting more sexy anime elf gals that can enjoy lives free from the insipid potato-golems they're usually paired with in crummy fantasy toons. Good for them, I say!

Now, if I had one major complaint about Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!, it would be that our hero, Kazuhiro, is still a bit too much of an everyman audience surrogate to make for an especially compelling protagonist. I will honestly never understand the need for such blatant self-insert type characters in stories like these, especially when there's a romantic angle. Am I the weird one for wanting a romance where both parties are exceptionally interesting, attractive, and memorable? If anything, that makes it way more fun to imagine yourself in the shoes of the romantic leads. My wife and I have been rewatching the TV show Lost these past few weeks, and hot damn, do y'all even remember how hot Sawyer is? That dude could have loin-meltingly steamy chemistry with a cardboard box, I swear. What I'm saying is, I don't think shows like Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! would hurt if they starred a James “Sawyer” Ford type of hero instead of Kazuhiro “I'm Literally Just Some Guy” Kitase. I'm sure the elves wouldn't be complaining, either!

Then again, we do get some genuinely endearing moments that show off why anyone would end up falling for Kazuhiro in the first place, like when he greets his lizard-monster buddy in the fantasy realm with an adorable high-five and a “Yay!” so he's got more going for him than most of his competition. For her part, the titular Ms. Elf is a perfectly sweet lady that possess the usual mix of charm, klutziness, and earnestness that typifies so many of these Fantasy Heroine Waifu types. She may literally be a pinup character ripped straight out of Kazuhiro's dreams, but that's sort of the whole point of a romantic fantasy like this one. Given how horny some of these other elf anime have been, I was honestly expecting Marie to be more objectified and lusted after than she is. There's still plenty of cheeky (heh) fanservice, but Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! remembers to balance its lewd impulses with enough cute antics to appeal to just about anyone in the audience. That is, so long as you can tolerate a thick layer of cheese and more than a few shameless lingering shots of Marie's magic orbs.

I don't know if there's quite enough substance to Ms. Elf's whole shtick to make it appointment viewing material, but I could see Kazuhiro and Marie growing on me quite a bit as their new life together in Japan goes on. I doubt it will come anywhere close to usurping the crown of Teasing Master Takagi-san when it comes to my favorite anime rom-coms, but I'm still a sucker for a cute couple getting into misadventures together. This one has earned at least another week or two of goodwill from me.

One of my favorite manga of all time is Megumi Tachikawa's Dream Saga, about a girl who travels to the fantasy land of Takamagahara every night when she goes to sleep. Perhaps that predisposed me to enjoy Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! more than I otherwise might have – protagonist Kazuhiko Kitase has been going to a fantasy world in his sleep ever since childhood. Time flows slower there (for him, at least), so he still looks like a teenager instead of his twenty-five-year-old self, and if he dies or goes to sleep there, he'll return to modern Japan. It's a welcome throwback to Tachikawa's (or Lewis Carroll's, if you go back another century and a half) style of isekai because it's not something we see often in today's iteration of the genre, but also because it allows the story to be about quiet, casual experiences. It's wish fulfillment in a slightly different way.

What Kazuhiko (or Kazuhiho, as he's known in the other world) doesn't realize is that he can bring someone back to Japan with him. Luckily for Marie, an elf sorceress, it turns out that he can because otherwise, I daresay she'd have been killed by the dragon that sent him back to his bed. That's really where the story starts: with Kazuhiko waking up with Marie in his bed and realizing that she, too, can now move between the worlds. (Or so he assumes – it's entirely possible that she's now stuck in Japan when awake since she presumably doesn't have a body in the other world anymore.) Thus begins a charming tourist adventure that, despite the obligatory scenes of Marie without any clothes on or acknowledging that she is an adult woman with breasts, is really very wholesome.

It has a lot of good details once Marie travels to Japan, too, like her being so freaked out at the concept of riding in a car that Kazuhiko has to drive at pedestrian-speed to him asking the waitress for a fork at the restaurant because Marie won't know how to use chopsticks. With Marie being an elf from a fantasy world, there aren't any awkward Japanophile moments that entertainment featuring otaku from other countries often includes, and Marie's enthusiasm is contagious in a very real way. Did the outfit he bought for her need to look like a school uniform? Absolutely not, but the rest of this is low-key charming enough to forgive a little pandering. With its gentle, bright colors and just-different-enough concept, this could be a pleasant show.