The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA

Awajima Opera School—where countless girls from across the country flock in hopes of one day standing on the big stage. As they work toward achieving their dreams of stardom, their time at Awajima is filled with as much friendship and admiration as competition and jealousy. The precious feelings of girls who are at once both classmates and rivals, tenderly captured in the portraits of an ensemble cast.

A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA is based on the Scenes From Awajima manga series by Takako Shimura. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

I'm not sure if this is the most Takako Shimura anime out there, but it's certainly the one that best captures the look and feel of reading her manga. There's an ephemerality to the art and animation that leans into the personal yet nostalgic qualities of Shimura's work. Although this isn't explicitly yuri (based on what I've read of the source material), it can be viewed as such if you're so inclined, which may be an additional draw for viewers. But what's most striking is the way this episode leans into the idea of stage productions without actually highlighting them. Everything that happens on the screen has the liminality of the stage, and that really works for the story.

Set at a Takarazuka-style high school, this first episode introduces roommates Wakana and Kinue. Wakana is a first year, trying to get a feel for the school and what it means to be a student there. Kinue is in her second year, mostly settled in but still mourning the fact that her middle school best friend Ryouko didn't attend with her. Kinue is doing her best, both as Wakana's de facto mentor and as a student, but the difference between her demeanor in the present and in the flashback to middle school is strikingly different – middle school Kinue radiated joy and enthusiasm, while high school Kinue is reserved. It's as if she lost some of her zest for performing along with Ryouko. The girls are still in contact and still friends, but it's not quite the same for either of them.

Wakana, meanwhile, hasn't yet found her space. She's made a friend – Momoko – but she gives the impression of being at loose ends. In her half of the episode, we learn that she's easily starstruck; if she sees a performance, she wants to become a part of it, whether that's musicals or taiko drumming. There's a sense that she's attending Awajima not because it's exactly what she wants to do, but what was suggested in the moment. She's overwhelmed, both by the amount of work and by the girls who clearly have a special talent, like the one she hears singing opera. Before, the singer was just the girl who freaked out over a communal bath. But now she's someone with capital-T-Talent. And where does that leave Wakana?

Illustrated in shades of blue, white, and green, many scenes are imbued with wind, while others are translucent, allowing backgrounds to show through the faceless girls walking the halls. It gives a dreamlike quality to the production that again works with the imaginary nature of performance. I could see this not working for everyone with its languid pace and deliberately artsy visual choices, but if you've enjoyed Shimura's works before (anime or manga), or if you're just looking for something different, I strongly recommend giving this a chance.

How lovely. I knew to expect good things from A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA based on Takako Shimura's pedigree alone, and this premiere didn't disappoint. The best slice-of-life stories, to me, are the ones that truly capture the messy, nuanced, and subtle fluctuations of, well, real life. It's all well and good to simply have cute characters doing cute things together, but such anime usually fail to interest me in the long term on account of the general lack (or deemphasis) of conflict. Here, the halls of Awajima Opera School are alive with all sorts of conflicts, big and small. One of the new students freaks out over having to use a communal bath. Hierarchies develop between the upper-classmen and the younger girls who either earn their approval or their scorn. Hearing just a few seconds of a truly talented girl's singing is enough to inspire awe, admiration, jealously, and self-doubt, all at once. At the end of a long day, after hearing about all of the pressures the girls at Awajima have to endure to be successful, all freshman Wakana can muster is, “I guess it's a tough world…”

It is a tough world, to be sure, but we've all got to live in it just the same, and that's also what makes A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA so compelling. Thanks to Shimura's gentle but honest writing and the veteran direction of Morio Asaka, every scene of this premiere is brimming with life and energy, even considering the episode's leisurely pace and subdued visual style. It's honestly a very impressive balance of mood and tone to pull off, and I think it perfectly captures that adolescent dichotomy of feeling so defined by the circumstances of school and society despite overflowing with so much latent potential that is just waiting to be set loose on the world. I especially loved the dreamy, watercolor expressions that elevate some of the more musical and emotional sequences.

Given that I'm twice the age of most every anime character that struts around in school uniforms, it has become very easy for me to get impatient with coming-of-age dramas that feel too far removed from any real human's lived reality. A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA is a tonic to sooth a cynical soul. It doesn't prey on cheap nostalgia, nor does it resort to laughable contrivances or stock cliches to get its viewers attention. Instead, it simply trusts that viewers of all ages and backgrounds will benefit from getting the chance to spend a few minutes every week with this cast of ambitious and vulnerable young women and watch their stories unfold. I'm very glad to take it up on that opportunity.

All throughout my childhood (all the way up until college), I was very much involved in musical theater. This included not only lead roles in school productions but also large roles in community theater as well. I was constantly surrounded by the exact type of kids we see in this first episode. I personally, was most like our introductory character Tabata. I loved the acting, the singing, the countless hours of practice—everything that went into the process. All I wanted was to put on the best show possible and would do anything I could to support the other actors and the performance in general.

However, that was not to say that there weren't divas in every production. They cared only about coming out on top—no matter who they had to trample on to get there. The interesting thing is that, while they were at times hard to work with, these are the type of people with the single-minded drive needed to go pro. You need that kind of unshakable ego—the certainty that you are the best on that stage (especially when it isn't true).

This first episode captures all this perfectly. Tabata just loves the theater, wants to be on stage, and has the raw talent to at least give it a go. However, she hasn't really come to understand that there are a limited number of positions for actors—and that everyone at her school is as good as her or better. Meanwhile, Takehara, her roommate, understands the reality they are facing but is still on the fence about if she can be as cutthroat as she needs to be. The back half of the episode, the origin story of Takehara, is likewise spot on. It handles the clashing of pride, jealousy, self-doubt, and love perfectly.

On top of all this, add some great visual style from the people over at Madhouse and you have what's looking to be an above-average coming-of-age story that'd I happily recommend.

Welcome back, Morio Asaka. We've missed you.

If you're the kind of person who pays attention to anime staff, you've probably heard of Asaka. If you're not, you're almost certainly familiar with some of his work: NANA, Card Captor Sakura, and My Love Story!! are just a few of the series he's directed. He's one of the top directors in the industry when it comes to series based on shojo and josei manga, consistently treating the material with the respect and care it deserves.

A Hundred Scenes of AWAJIMA is the latest pearl in his string, bringing Takako Shimura's newest yuri (or at least yuri-ish) manga to the screen. True to its name, the series covers of number of vignettes about the students of Awajima Opera School, a knockoff of Takarazuka because the real-life theater troupe is notoriously litigious. It's in the same family of series as Kageki Shojo!!, but while Kageki Shojo!! focuses on the rise of one particularly charismatic student with detours into the lives of the secondary cast, AWAJIMA is more interested in those of the mundane, everyday students who pepper the school.

The first vignette is told through the eyes of Wakana Tabata, a new student navigating the perils of living in a dorm away from her students. She's not struggling to adjust, per se, but there's a lot of culture shock around the norms and expectations. The second goes back in time to before another girl, Takehara, entered the school, taking a look at her through the perspective of the friend she left behind. As is typical of Shimura's manga, >AWAJIMA thrives in a space of emotional ambiguity. These excel as short stories, exploring the complexity of connection and resentment that tends to come up between people who are drawn to the performing arts – and I say that having grown up around theater people.

Of course, with any anthology series, some entries will be stronger than others. In the case of AWAJIMA, the latter half of the episode was so much stronger than the first that it made it feel weaker by comparison. I wonder how that will play out over the course of the hundred scenes.

Also? If they want to make it to the promised hundred, they'd better pick up the pace.